Steve Pomerance

Back almost 30 years ago, when I was on the City Council, we engaged in a very detailed study of the major drainages that flow through Boulder, and the likely damage that could result from floods. Our objective was to come up with appropriate risk mitigation standards. Council member Spense Havlick and I even went to CSU and tried to walk across their artificial flume at various flow rates and depths to test our ability to walk through a flood. Out of this study came Boulder’s regulatory standard using the 100-year and 500-year flood maps and also the high hazard areas, which were based on such flows. The “100 year flood” is a statistical notion that uses historical data to attempt to indicate what areas would have a 1 percent probability of flooding in a given year. The “500 year flood” has an annual probability of 0.2 percent. Setting the rules based on these standards was a compromise. The council did end up requiring some buildings that were at very serious risk to be torn do...

When I heard about the Attention Homes project at 1440 Pine, now under review by the Planning Board, something about the large size and high number of at-risk young adults that would be housed there didn’t ring true to me. Then I learned that this was the result of a “ density transfer .” I couldn’t remember ever hearing that term in my 10 years on the City Council, so I inquired as to what was being proposed. What I learned was, frankly, pretty bizarre. This proposed “density transfer” first calculates the amount of residential development that would be allowed on the whole block, including the 1440 Pine site, as if it were all bare ground, even though most of this block is already developed and so there is no space to build anything close to that amount. Then it “transfers” this block’s worth of development “density” rights to about one quarter of the block. So the existing buildings remain on three quarters of the block, and extra new residential development gets built on one co...

Xcel is a for-profit monopoly that was created in 1998 to take advantage of outmoded, non-competitive, but highly profitable regulated utility systems in multiple states. Xcel wants Boulder to give up its chance for freedom in exchange for a new franchise that effectively locks Boulder to Xcel for 20 years, guarantees nothing of substance in return, and from which the escape terms are so expensive or painful that they could not ever be used. As Camera readers, I suspect you’ve already read about the flaws in Xcel’s proposal. But just to reiterate some important points: Practically everything would have to go through PUC review, and so could easily be stopped. The renewable energy programs offered are either already available or overpriced. And giving Boulder what it doesn’t offer to others would put Xcel at risk in all sorts of ways. Perhaps the biggest flaw is that Boulder could not really enforce the terms. It was clear going into discussions over a year ago that it would be a ...

Much of what has made Boulder such a great place to live has been the work of people half a century ago. These people recognized what I call the “ ratchet effect ,” that bad development decisions cannot be undone, so policies needed to be put in place to prevent, or at least limit, the damage that a growth-at-all-costs majority of the council could do. These policies include charter limits, like the Blue Line that prevents city water for development from being supplied above a certain altitude, the 55-foot height limit that has prevented high-rise development from cutting off our views, and the open space referendum process that allows a 60-day window for citizens to challenge disposals of open space. Other constraints include the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan’s requirement for Planning Board agreement for land-use changes in the area inside the city limits (Area I) and additional agreement by the county commissioners and county Planning Commission for urban development further...

Because the discussions on this subject are all over the map, I thought it would be useful to summarize what I think would be an appropriate approach. A reasonable goal would be to maintain some level of economic diversity in our community. But that doesn’t mean that everyone who wants to live here and every business that wants to expand here can do so. We have finite resources: our streets, our water supply, our views, and our Open Space are limited in their carrying capacity. Besides, trying to build more market priced housing won’t work. The market has already priced this housing out of range of anyone even somewhat above the area median income . So just adding market rate housing will just add more people with high incomes or net worth, and leave out the middle and lower income folks. Also, the demand is so huge that it cannot be reasonably satisfied: There are over 60,000 workers that commute in every day, and together with their families, they would double Boulder’s pop...

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Originally electric utilities in the U.S. competed with each other by covering the streets with multiple sets of wires, but this competition lowered prices and cut profits. Then, roughly 100 years ago, these utilities realized that it would be a lot more profitable to not compete but rather to control their regulators. Thus was born the regulated private monopoly structure we now have. As new power plants got bigger, the unit price of electricity dropped, so customers could tolerate these excess profits. (Nonprofit public utilities also emerged as an alternative. Per the American Public Power Association, Colorado now has 31, and all 151 utilities in Nebraska are public.)  Recently, the for-profit private vertically integrated monopoly structure has begun to break up. Large sectors of the country(but not Colorado) now have competitive markets for electricity supply, independent system operators that match...

“The people’s representatives will reach their destination, invested with the highest confidence and unlimited power. They will show great character. They must consider that great responsibility follows inseparably from great power. To their energy, to their courage, and above all to their prudence, they shall owe their success and their glory.”  — Translated from decrees of the French National Convention, May 8, 1793. By now, most council members must have figured out that their notion that the whole council could design co-op legislation from scratch just using public hearings but without adequate problem definition, alternatives analysis, or data collection, was ill conceived. Prudence, as the French advise, would direct the council to own up to the mistake and take a different tack, as I suggest below. I believe it would produce a more satisfactory result in less time, even starting at this late date. Here are some parts: The council needs to consider other alternativ...

I recently read through the latest draft of the co-op ordinance. Unfortunately, it is still a mash-up of ideas that sound good but have significant flaws. And it is still disorganized — general requirements are mixed with specifics, concepts show up in multiple places, and some terms, including “limited equity cooperative,” “certification,” and “privilege,” are undefined. One of the biggest problem areas is the “permanently affordable Group Equity Cooperative” (GEC). I’ll focus there, but it is not the only problem by any means. The ordinance allows up to 12 people to live in a co-op in low-density zones, and up to 15 in higher-density zones. But if the Planning Board so recommends, the city manager can increase the upper limit for a “permanently affordable” co-op like a GEC. The Planning Board must consider impacts, crowding, parking, and the co-op’s “mission,” but there are no actual rules for the board to follow to calculate their recommended number. So no one can challenge the ...

From my perspective, many of the current hot political issues have angles that haven’t been adequately discussed. Here are a few: Amendment 71 is an attempt to make it extremely difficult for any but the most well-funded interest groups to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, much less get it passed. The argument by Colorado’s “We know best” power-brokers is that we need more stability. But in Switzerland, one of the most stable countries in the world, it’s easier to petition to amend their constitution than to amend Colorado’s. A far better fix for Colorado would be to better protect statutory initiatives by only allowing them to be changed with concurrence of two-thirds of both the Senate and the House and consistent with their stated purpose. This would make this type of initiative more attractive and thus limit the use of constitutional amendments, and the Legislature could fix any technical problems discovered after passage. Propositions 107 and 108 support open pri...

Given the controversy around the protest filed over the “Three Term Limit” petition, I thought Camera readers might find it useful to have a brief analysis of the charter amendment process for home rule cities like Boulder. The Boulder City Charter, Section 137, references the Colorado Constitution as the authority on charter amendments. The Constitution (Article XX, Section 9) provides the basics, and empowers the Legislature to set the procedures. These are in the Colorado Revised Statutes (mostly in CRS31-2-201 through 31-2-225). For citizen-initiated charter amendments, the CRS are very specific as to the form of the petitions (the documents that voters sign), including size (8.5″ x 11″), orientation (portrait, not landscape), and that the warning (requiring signers to be registered voters, etc.) must be printed in red on every page. Disassembly, such as removal of staples, is not allowed, to help prevent fraud. CRS 31-2-219 specifies, “Any such petition which fails to confor...