Who we are | Area III | Pro-Rural Alliance | Guest Opinion | BCC voting

Dear Neighbors,

WELCOME!

Great to see you! Not wanting to increase your email load, we'll send this newsletter only once a month. But we may send a message when there's a time-sensitive action you might want to be involved in, OK?

So… WHY BoulderAction? The easiest answer: BoulderAction exists because our local government is not responding to issues threatening our city. We formed during the 2023 election cycle to help our local political scene. Although there were various groups that focused on specific topics (public safety, housing) and public forums that allowed people to vent their frustrations (Next Door, Facebook), there were no groups (other than the so-called Boulder ‘Progressives’) that gave moderates a way to focus, mobilize and act for change.

We comprise a group of ‘city hall watchers’ who stay on top of and seek to raise awareness of the Boulder political scene and specifically Boulder City Council actions that we believe serve a small minority and are not in the best interest of the general citizenry of Boulder.

• Area III: 8000 Units, High Density/Huge Cost

  Area III Planning Reserve

  This article relies heavily on the analysis and wording of Boulder City Council member Mark Wallach.

  At the 11/23/24 meeting, Boulder City Council voted to continue consideration of the Annexation and Development of the Area III Planning Reserve. What initially looks like an appealing area for future development is mired in tremendous unfunded costs, however, and responsible voices are raising profound questions about the massive amount of money required and the lack of realistic financial thinking on this project, which at lowest estimates would represent 10 CU South projects in terms of expenditures for offsite, onsite, and parkland expenses.

  Offsite costs alone are estimated at $980M over 20 years, equating to $49M annually. Staff estimates onsite capital expenditures to be $135-$160M. The proposed funding sources include undefined 'development interests' and property taxes. Since the City receives only 14% of property taxes, it would take decades to pay off these amounts, which would be due alongside the $49M per year. According to Mark Wallach, City Council member and authoritative voice on real estate and finance, to recover even a modest estimate of $150M in capital improvements, “homes with a total assessed valuation of $1.07B would need to be constructed. To achieve this over 10 years, homes with an annual assessed valuation of $100M are required.” Clearly, this does nothing to improve affordability of housing in Boulder. There is also the awkwardness of no apparent funding for initial expenditures, which must be paid upfront for construction costs before any recovery from development or taxes.

  There are additional unfunded expenditures and feasibility concerns, namely, questions on the City's ability to condemn homes and displace long-term residents of the area as well as....

  Read More

• Guest Opinion

  No Letup in Boulder’s Drug Epidemic

  By Steve Lynton

  Overdoses and deaths from fentanyl and meth persist in the city and county, data show. Just over a year ago, Boulder’s former police chief, Maris Herold, warned the City Council that Boulder faced an “alarming” epidemic of drug overdoses. “The drug explosion that we’re seeing is really scary,” she said, citing drug-related concerns over mental illness and evidence of sex trafficking. By the end of 2023, city police had recorded 123 emergency calls for overdoses. Deaths from drug overdoses within the city totaled 31 last year, according to data compiled by the county coroner’s office.

  Now, preliminary data for the first eight to 10 months of the current year indicate that Boulder’s drug epidemic hasn’t faded, although city and county statistics for 2024 are incomplete.... By the end of October, city police had logged 94 calls for suspected overdoses, at least 39 involving fentanyl. From January through August, the county coroner’s office had recorded 15 deaths in the city from drug overdoses, the same number as reported for the first eight months of 2023.

  Countywide, the coroner’s office recorded 40 deaths from drug overdoses in the first eight months of this year, three more than in the same period of 2023. Because data compiled by the coroner’s office may lag by eight to 12 weeks, additional drug fatalities–five so far since August–provide a still-incomplete picture. In the countywide data, most drug fatalities occur in the cities of Boulder and Longmont, where 18 were recorded by the end of August, the same number as in the first eight months of last year. During 2023 as a whole, the total for Longmont was 27. The county coroner’s data for deaths from drug overdoses show that most occur among those who are housed rather than “unhoused” (40 housed compared with five “unhoused” countywide so far this year) and that fentanyl and methamphetamines account for most drug fatalities, with a smaller proportion attributed to cocaine.

  In Boulder, neither the city nor county government has embarked on a major effort to address the area’s surge in drug overdoses or shortage of treatment facilities, as the county commissioners rebuffed appeals by elected officeholders and others last year to establish a behavioral and mental health treatment facility with funds from a sales tax extension. Meanwhile, city and county officials now confront budget cutbacks that threaten existing social welfare programs.

• Featured Action Group

  The PRO RURAL ALLIANCE is a group focused on Boulder County rural issues. We consider them ‘kindred spirits’ as they share many of BoulderAction’s values and principles around conservation and preservation. Check out their website and see what is on their radar.

• Boulder City Council voting records

  Unbelievably, there seems to be no official log kept of how each council member has voted on a particular issue. You can see how the vote went by individual issue, but if you wanted to see how, say, Matt Benjamin has voted over the years,  you’d be out of luck unless you went through the minutes of every single meeting and looked for his name. Boulder Action is now hoping to resolve this by recruiting citizens to research past meetings minutes and monitoring current meetings so our members can see, in one place, exactly how each member has voted across all the issues. Let us know if you’d like to help by responding to this email address.

WHAT DO WE DO?

• Bring attention to and simplify understanding of city council initiatives

• Publish city council meeting dates and agendas

• Give Boulder’s best thinkers on the moderate side a free space to fully express themselves without editorial restrictions

• Manage a website (www.boulderaction.org) that hosts writers and provides blog space, informational links and a video library of many civic presentations that most citizens normally never see.

• Maintain a presence on many social media platforms (Instagram, Bluesky, Threads)

• Work to ensure the community at large is aware of how each council member has voted on key issues

• Bring awareness of any civic function that supports our values and positions through email and social media communication.