Personal Information PLAN-Boulder County 2017 City Council Candidate Questionnaire How long have you lived in Boulder and what is your employment? Since 1968 retired Provide a description of your involvement with City of Boulder issues. Former Community Development Block Grant member (responsible for federal funds for disadvantaged communities/neighborhood improvements); neighborhood activist (West Pearl Neighborhood Association, Boulder Neighborhood League steering committee); chaired city s first Transportation Master Plan Committee (2 ½ years); Boulder City Council Member (during that 4 year term, was city s first liaison to Chamber s Bureau of Conference Services and Cultural Affairs; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMOCA); Gates Scholar, Kennedy School of Government); worked on various citizen petition drives throughout the years, including as a steering committee member of the successful Campaign Finance Reform initiative; Daily Camera Pacesetter Award in the Arts; University of Colorado Board of Regents (6 years) Tell us why you are running for City Council and what you anticipate your contribution to the council will be. I m running because we are at a crossroads in this election with two clear choices: traditional progressive values and greater trust in government on one hand; and on the other, big money and dwindling trust in government. My contribution will be a long understanding of Boulder s modern civic history and incorporating progressive values and a sense of place into current decisionmaking. Are you seeking City matching funds for your campaign? yes 1. The Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan s (BVCP) four-body review process requires City Council, County Commissioners, City Planning Board and County Planning
Commissioners to review and approve shifts of properties from County jurisdiction to City jurisdiction, as defined by the BVCP. In the recent BCVP 2015 update, the four-body review process was significantly changed. Do you agree with the changes? Why or why not? I disagree with the changes. I favor four-body review it has served the Council well since the 1970s by providing wider review from different perspectives on land use issues that affect us all. The recent changes border on arrogance for the City Council to think that it knows best. With a new majority on Council we may be able to re-examine this issue. 2. Sub-community Plans, Area Plans and Neighborhood Plans have all been proposed as approaches to giving citizens some certainty about the future of their neighborhoods and the quality and extent of our community s built environment. Do you favor this approach to city planning? Why or why not? Yes. I favor this approach, because all participants will be able to come to the table (residents, neighbors, businesses, land owners and the city) to say what they would like in the area the kinds of retail, services, infrastructure, facilities they want to see as the area grows/develops and also the character and benefits they want (as described in BVCP Chapter 5). Everyone gets to weigh in, and although everyone gets a voice in the process, the outcome is a consensus that provides predictability and stability for those involved in and with that sub-community. North Boulder is an example of how that has worked well. It is time to work towards such shared visions in other parts of town, which is why this is for me a top priority. It may require reallocation of resources within the Planning Department, and I would support that. 3. The final report of the Public Participation Working Group was sharply critical of the City s current processes for obtaining the public s opinion about important issues, and recommended many changes to these processes. Do you agree with the report s conclusions and recommendations? I do wholeheartedly. We need a change in culture otherwise it appears to be a community ruled from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. The group s recommendations include a series of steps things like clearly defining the problem BEFORE taking sides or attempting solutions, creating a public communications and engagement plan, encouraging all voices to be heard in a civil and public way that s transparent. All who want to are participating. This kind of process assures greater buyin and trust in government. I will give top priority to this along with community planning. 4. Do you support Boulder s effort to create a Municipal Electric Utility? If you do not support a Boulder Municipal Electric Utility, or if Boulder should fail in its efforts to create one, what would be your plan to achieve Boulder s emission goals? 2
Yes, I support the creation of a local Municipal Electric Utility. We should stay the course that has been approved by voters multiple times, take control of our own energy mix, source our energy from renewables, and attain the various long-term goals wrapped up in Municipalization (from economic transparency to resilience). That is the most direct way to achieve our goal of 100% renewables by 2030. If we are not able to create a Muni, reaching that goal becomes very difficult because of state and federal regulatory barriers. Our city s team of experts are working on many promising approaches that need to be pursued: increasing solar generation on the best rooftops (as shown in the city s aerial analysis), ramping up hydro generation, getting state legislation to allow us to use competitive pricing for selecting our power sources and to pass other measures that will change the rules regarding power generation and sharing (like microgrids). Also, how about getting IBM and other hightech companies to be 100% renewable [Google figured it out, why not IBM and the others?]. In addition, we would need to more aggressively pursue reduction of GHG emissions from transportation (via e-vehicles, universal Eco-passes, parking fees/disincentives to driving gas-powered vehicles) and by increasing building efficiency (via retrofits and new net-zero buildings). 5. What do you consider to be the major causes of the housing affordability issue in Boulder, and what policies do you support to address the problem? The causes of our housing affordability issue are Boulder s own success in attracting jobs and the imbalance in the amount of space we have zoned commercial/industrial vs. residential. We ve been talking about this jobs-pop imbalance for 20 years. It s time to get it right. Over the last 2 years, the community has clearly stated its vision through the process of updating the BVCP. That Plan points to the need to retain small businesses and existing affordable housing and to make sure that we begin correcting the jobs-population imbalance and that new development benefits our community as opposed to adding to our traffic and housing problems. Now we need to implement it and create policies and actions with teeth to move us forward. (For examples, see # 6 9 below.) 6. The City has a well-established program for funding affordable housing for low and moderate income residents. The surge in development has put significant pressure on housing that used to be affordable to Boulder s middle-income residents, defined as earning up to 150% of AMI. Do you view this as an affordability issue that should be addressed, and if so, what are your ideas for how to address it? Yes. The fact that people with the area median income cannot afford to buy or rent a new unit in Boulder (according to the Keyser Marston s 2016 report) is of concern to me, and an issue that the Council must address. At least 50% of new housing should be permanently affordable to maintain economic diversity in our community. This can be addressed in three ways: 3
* Tuesday night, the Council started the process of ratcheting up the Affordable Housing requirement from 20 to 25%. I support that move and also the changes that provide developers with incentives to build affordable housing on-site and to include housing for middle-income residents. * New commercial/industrial developments should be responsible for providing funds to house their employees who are paid salaries at and below AMI. Keyser Marston s linkage fee recommendation was set at a level that would require linkage fees to accomplish that. Because I believe that people need to be held responsible for costs they impose on our community, I support a fee higher than the one Council passed in the last year. * The City needs to come up with a plan to maintain current housing that s affordable to low and middle-income residents. This will not be easy, but if the solution agreed to by Council requires new revenues, we should look for innovative ways to fund it or if necessary put it to a vote of the people. * Other options worth exploring include: putting conditions on annexations to require affordable housing, using deed-restrictions, and creating land trusts on city-owned land. 7. The Jobs Housing Nexus Analysis prepared for the city in 2016 determined that the legally supportable affordable housing linkage fee on new commercial office development was $129.49 per square foot to pay for the need for additional affordable housing caused by the new development. This number was adjusted to $50.50 for Boulder s share of housing need based on percent of workforce currently housed n the city (39%); The city staff recommended that the Council adopt a linkage fee of $15 per square foot, and the council adopted a fee of $12. Would you favor increasing the affordable housing commercial linkage fee? If at what level should it be set? Yes. The linkage fee should be set somewhere between the staff s recommended $15 and the consultant s recommendation of $50.50. We need to ensure that new development does not make our affordable housing situation worse. Existing citizens and businesses should not end up paying to solve problems that new development creates. Another factor this question points to: We spend tens of thousands of dollars on consultants and then ignore their recommendations. Why bother seeking their advice if we are going to ignore it? 8. The 2015 BVCP update projects that at least 5,000 and up to 15,000 more students will be added at CU-Boulder by 2030. Who should be responsible for housing these additional students and where should they be housed? The University should be more responsible for housing these students on university land within easy walking, biking, and shuttle distance of the main and East campus. Four areas (Smiley Court at 30 th and Colorado, East Campus, Williams Village, and Grandview Terrace) offer opportunities for housing development or re-development. A well- 4
planned, cohesive centrally-located campus could ease several problems for both the City of Boulder and the University. 9. In order to help relieve the pressure on the City s housing market caused by more jobs, the 2015 BVCP update recommends that some areas in the City currently zoned for commercial and industrial uses be rezoned to residential and mixed use. Do you support this recommendation? If so, which industrial and commercial areas would be most appropriate for rezoning? I do support this recommendation. East Arapahoe and Diagonal Plaza are two large areas that have been recommended as appropriate for such rezoning. Before we start rezoning and scraping, we need to determine what is needed and wanted. We also need to make sure that existing uses could be retained. For example, in Boulder Junction, the lawn mower repair shop was displaced and Colorado Plastics moved to Lafayette. When we zone mixed-use we need to be sure to include a variety of services that residents use and depend on. 10. An estimate of the current number of visits to Open Space is nearing 6 million. In the face of this increasing demand, what measures would you support to ensure that the Open Space system is sustainable into the future? We are approaching the end of our Open Space acquisitions, which will make our Open Space system a finite resource at the same time that the human population and the demand for recreation resources continue to grow. In 2017-18 we will be crafting the OSMP Master Plan. Council must ensure that the Master Plan process fully engages the public following the recommendations of the Public Participation Working Group and leads the community in vigorous discussions and assessments of the difficult trade-offs needed if we are to both ensure recreation and conservation. In addition, the Master Plan needs to accurately assess the costs of maintaining the system and determine whether additional revenues are needed. In keeping with the OSMP Mission and Charter, we must reach consensus on the measures needed and the actions we will take to sustain the OSMP system for future generations. 11. The plan for the bike trail on the west side of US 36 north of Lee Hill Road on ecologically sensitive Open Space property was approved by the City Council on the condition that it carefully limit any negative impacts to the eco-systems there. How would you assure yourself and the public that the trail does not create such negative impacts? I do not think that we can be assured that there are no negative impacts from the trail because of the number of studies that show humans inserted within native habitats have negative effects. We disrupt breeding patterns and population congregations; we displace native populations and introduce invasive species. Extensive inventories of the biological resources on the West side were done at the beginning of the TSA planning 5
process. I would use those as a baseline, and do follow-up inventories to assess the impact. It s unfortunate that the reasonable alternative on the east side of US 36 was not more thoroughly considered. 12. The Hogan-Pancost property, a 22 acre parcel along South Boulder Creek that contains numerous wetlands, has once again been proposed for annexation and a residential development of 117 dwelling units. Do you think it should be annexed and developed as proposed? Annexed and developed in some different manner than proposed? Not annexed? Why? I do not think it should be annexed. The property exists as wetland; the water table is variable; new construction has created a need for sump pumps in existing dwellings. If the 2013 flood event teaches us nothing else, it should teach us not to place developments in wetlands. This property should be moved to Area III. 13. Do you support a community-wide Eco-Pass throughout the City? If so, what are your ideas for paying for it? For years the City s plan to reduce GHG emissions from transportation has depended on efforts to move people out of single-occupancy vehicles into shared vehicles and buses, bicycles, and foot travel. It is increasingly being predicted that surface transportation will soon be dominated by self-driving, electric-powered vehicles owned by large organizations and rented to users on a ride-by-ride basis. Do you think this prediction will be fulfilled in the next 20 years? If yes, how should the City prepare for, and respond to this new transportation reality? I support a city-wide Eco-pass. We should look at a variety of ways to pay for them. For example: * look to the entities that are causing the additional traffic for payment perhaps assess fees for all new developments, public and private, as tap fees are assessed now; * mandate permanent employer-paid Eco-passes for all employees in new commercial/industrial developments; * use part of the linkage fees charged on all new commercial/industrial development to pay for or subsidize universal Eco-passes. I think the number of electric-powered vehicles will undoubtedly increase and the city should encourage that by, for example, making it easy to re-charge with more charging stations, facilitating purchase incentives, and giving special parking preference. Regarding the future of self-driving vehicles, my crystal ball is more cloudy. It would be interesting to explore some kind of public-private partnership to set up an autonomous ride service, once again strengthen our local economy and keep our dollars at home. 14. At present, the City only requires that developers implement Transportation Demand Management for a limited time period. Do you think that TDM should be required to extend over the entire life of a development? 6
Yes. TDM should extend over the entire life of the development because this program has to do with saving energy, reducing poor air quality and peak-period congestion. Since Boulder has experienced expanded Peak congestion times, it s more important than ever to continue TDM. We need to measure traffic volumes at more times of the day and evening hours and use that information to assess how much we need to ratchet up TDM actions. New applications are being developed to reduce peak congestion and the City should be exploring how it can apply these locally. 7