Steve Pomerance

  I’ve engaged in a number of conversations recently about the need to defuse the increasing polarization that is occurring around almost every issue in Boulder. We face complex questions around issues such as growth, affordable housing, our energy future, and racial equity. But our governmental processes, at least as far as they involve giving ordinary citizens a role in the decision-making, have become more and more of a one-way street, with input being depersonalized and almost no interaction. As a result, there is no realistic way for most citizens to have meaningful discussions with our decision-makers. The expanding importance of these issues has resulted in citizens feeling an increased need to engage, supported by real fears of the consequences of not doing so. But at the same time citizens are experiencing a decreased ability to actually have any influence or effect on the outcomes. This frustration comes from feeling that no one is listening. In particular, many citizen...

First off, I would like to acknowledge our community for coming together after the tragedy that occurred at King Soopers in Table Mesa. I shop there, and could easily have been there on that Monday afternoon. Also, thanks to the Daily Camera for the following Sunday edition’s story, which made the awful events very personal and real. This all reminded me of a question that has been on my mind for some time: How did the Second Amendment, which includes the phrase, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, …” become interpreted as creating an individual’s right to “bear arms”, rather than the collective right that the “well regulated Militia” language would imply? So I looked it up. Wikipedia has an excellent and lengthy discussion. I don’t claim to be an expert on this, but here are some things I learned. The various states’ militias were seen by people in the 18th century as protection against potential oppression by the federal army, since no ...

A couple of weeks ago, having received both my COVID vaccinations, I decided to risk a plane flight and went to San Diego. After flying across the mostly unoccupied areas of western Colorado, Utah, and eastern Nevada, we went over Las Vegas. I was looking down at the tall buildings in the casino area, and had the thought that they looked like a huge termite hill surrounded by a sprawl of peripheral sub-nests. It was as if a new species of giant insect had invaded the area. As we approached the coast of California, the same sensation came over me, like I was seeing another form of this species’ home, with a lower but more clearly rectangular pattern. Anyway, I think you get the idea – what I was imagining seeing was the takeover of the natural environment by a highly successful species that had transformed huge swaths of land into a form that works for it. These experiences did not have any feeling of negative judgment. It was more one of those epiphanies that we all get sometimes, ...

Based on the Boulder City Council’s discussion last Tuesday night, the answer is — whenever the council decides it isn’t. To understand why this is important, some background is necessary: Boulder has very stringent open meeting laws. Charter Section 9 provides the primary directive, “All meetings of the council or committees thereof shall be public.” So, unlike under state law, the council cannot hold executive (closed-door) sessions for any reason. The citizens temporarily granted executive session power in 2014 for the Xcel negotiations occurring then. But it was abused, and in 2017, the citizens rejected the council’s request to extend that power. Section 9 also contains the only exception to Boulder’s requirement that all committee meetings be public. It allows a committee of not more than two council members and any number of noncouncil members to meet privately to screen applications for city manager, city attorney and municipal court judge; to evaluate their performance, an...

I thought it would be interesting to review the legal history around municipalization and the franchise. In 2011, Boulder’s charter was amended to allow for creation of a municipal electric utility under certain conditions, the most significant of which was, “The city council shall establish a light and power utility only if it can demonstrate, with verification by a third-party independent expert, that the utility can acquire the electrical distribution system in Boulder and charge rates that do not exceed those rates charged by Xcel Energy at the time of acquisition …” Even at that time, some of us raised concerns with the vagueness of the “can charge rates that do not exceed … at the time of acquisition” language, since it is not clear whether this rate test applies for a moment, for eternity or what. This unclarity, plus the use of the word “establish” would prove fateful down the road. In 2013, a very public wrangle occurred over the city’s attempt to condemn Xcel’s circuits...

  A few days ago, I was watching the video of the Dec. 15 City Council meeting to find out what happened with the ordinance addressing on-line and other petitioning matters. I heard a number of council members complaining bitterly about “ad hominem” attacks, presumably related to comments made by citizens about the performance of the city attorney. As a former council member, I can understand their upsets. But what seems to be missing is any acknowledgement of the existence of some serious underlying problems. Just for example, relative to this ordinance, I had sent in some obvious corrections to the ordinance. It was missing the 180-day limit on signature gathering, and it continued the city’s self-created exemption from state requirements for petition formats, which leaves the city without complete legal standards. But nothing was fixed. This is far from the first time I’ve taken on mistakes that never should have happened. For example, in the recent election, the council p...

Boulder has one of the most educated citizenries of any city in the U.S., and Boulder citizens are very knowledgeable and strongly engaged in the issues that affect our future. Unfortunately, many citizens have lost trust in the city’s processes. Our City Council should take advantage of the recent retirement of City Manager Jane Brautigam to resolve many longstanding issues so that our city government works better for Boulder citizens. The next city manager must have the ability and interest to successfully manage “policy projects” – those efforts that address the significant issues and opportunities in such difficult areas as: flood planning; the new Xcel franchise and getting to a clean energy future; and growth issues, including jobs/population balance, affordable housing, transportation planning that actually reduces congestion, and keeping Boulder livable. For policy projects to succeed, the manager must ensure that citizens are involved early and often. That includes using...

I’ve heard many misconceptions as to what would happen if we sign this franchise with Xcel Energy. So I’ll try to try to clarify a few points. Regulated for-profit monopoly investor-owned electric utilities (IOUs) like Xcel are not the norm. Competitive markets, including some multi-state, exist in many areas of the U.S. Rural electric associations operate in other areas. And around 2,000 municipally owned utilities operate across the U.S., with 29 in Colorado, including Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, Colorado Springs, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, and Gunnison. This current regulated for-profit structure was created about a century ago. The companies’ goal was to eliminate competition, and “capture” their regulators (public utilities commissions, or PUCs) by limiting them to operating in a reactive mode. That way, the companies secured both market control and profitability. These IOUs then invest as much as the PUCs will allow in power plants, transmission lines, etc. For exam...

A number of people have asked me about this year’s bumper crop of ballot measures. Here’s my brief take. The big money ones are Amendment B, repealing the Gallagher Amendment; Proposition 116, reducing the state income tax; and Proposition 117, requiring voter approval for certain new state enterprises. The argument for repealing Gallagher started with some small districts that are predominantly residential and where property values have not risen like in the majority of the state. So Gallagher’s mechanism, which lowers residential property taxes to keep a statewide balance between residential and commercial taxes, has cut into their revenues. But eliminating Gallagher will just raise everyone else’s residential property taxes even faster. The solution needs to be focused on solving the small districts’ problems, not just throwing out what has worked so well in keeping residential and commercial taxes in balance. Prop 117 requires voter approval for many fee-funded “enterprises.” This ...

The “Our Mayor, Our Choice” ballot measure failed to gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. But the Boulder City Council voted 5-4 to put it on, anyway. The council fixed a number of problems that both the petitioners and city staff had ignored. But the council failed to address the fundamental problems that a directly elected mayor will face within our governmental structure, as well as the serious flaws with this measure’s mandated “ranked choice voting.” Ranked choice voting (RCV) is a system where the voters rank order the candidates using a grid on the ballot that has the candidates’ names down the side and first, second, third, etc. across the top. Voters fill in the ovals in the grid to “rank” order the various candidates. Obviously, this could get tedious and mistake-prone with lots of candidates, which we’ll likely have, because there are no restrictions on who can run. Worse, we could easily end up with a mayor who is not the people’s optimal choice. Imagine a ra...