Steve Pomerance

  In 2019, Boulder citizens passed the ballot measure entitled “Tax on Tobacco Vaping Products.” Now the City Council is considering extending this to marijuana vaping devices. The 2019 measure imposed a 40% tax on the retail sales price of electronic smoking devices and components thereof, with “devices” being defined in the Boulder Revised Code, Chapter 4.5. That chapter is titled “Sale of Tobacco Products.” And it defines “Electronic smoking device” as “any product containing or delivering nicotine intended for human consumption …” During the discussions around that 2019 ballot measure, to the best of my memory and also based on feedback from others, there was no serious discussion about applying it to devices used for marijuana. And the people in the business seem to be in agreement that marijuana devices are not suitable for tobacco. So why is the Council considering extending this tax to marijuana devices? If they think this is a problem and that teenagers — or whoever — ...

Remember back when the executives of Enron, convinced that they were the “smartest guys in the room”, instigated the California energy crisis, lost billions of dollars, and some ended up in jail. That title is now used to identify any group that thinks they are way smarter than they actually are. Thus we come to Boulder’s franchise agreement with Xcel/PSCo, where the smartest guys told us last fall that this was a great deal, we’d get ten years of back undergrounding, a whole host of great projects, and maybe get to 100% renewables by 2030. After the 53%/47% vote on the Franchise Agreement last November, Xcel/PSCo filed for PUC approval. Shortly thereafter I tried to intervene in the proceeding, because I wanted to ensure that specific issues would be considered. The Administrative Law Judge hearing the case, as well as the PUC itself, turned down my request to intervene, but not before I had communicated my issues. This triggered a closer look by both the PUC trial staff and the Off...

Robert Frost’s famous poem The Road Not Taken ends with: I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by,  And that has made all the difference.   For me, this captures the essence of the struggle around flood control for area around South Boulder Creek and what should happen on the CU South property. The “road” that the majority of the city council has committed to is almost certain to be looked back on as one taken with inadequate foresight. Climate change will likely cause significantly larger and more frequent floods. But using detention ponds (new to Boulder on this scale) means that a flood significantly bigger than designed for will overtop the dams and inundate the downstream areas anyway. And committing to allow CU to develop land that otherwise might be used to expand detention capacity means that improving protection levels above that currently planned will be lim...

  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...