2021 Boulder Voter Guides
City Council - I've been volunteering with the Bedrooms are for People and Boulder is for People campaigns, which have thoroughly vetted council candidates on whether they support updating commonsense housing and occupancy laws in Boulder, climate resiliency in the form of needed flood mitigation, cyclist safety and cycling infrastructure.
The following candidates are strong YES: Lauren Folkerts, Nicole Speer, Dan Williams and Matt Benjamin. I also voted for incumbent Mark Wallach because while I disagree with a lot of his decisions, I appreciate his methodology for decision-making. He appears to take his council job seriously and this was evident when he read through all of the CU South material and ultimately came to the conclusion to vote in favor of the annexation and flood mitigation.
The only other issues I feel strongly about are:
Ballot question 300 (YES) - "Bedrooms are for people" question. I support this as a person who has lived illegally for years in Boulder, in a house with more than 4 unrelated people. I think it's unfair that this rule is randomly enforced. The idea that rent will go up if this passes is silly. Let's legalize people's living situations first. Landlords already charge per room. I don't think this will have a huge impact on average rent per room in Boulder, but I do think it is absolutely necessary to pass so that people can stop living in fear of eviction for over-occupying under current law. This shouldn't be that controversial. This law needs to be updated. I'm voting YES.
Ballot question 302 (NO) - CU South - So this is a measure put on the ballot by the conservative group PLAN Boulder. Basically, even though City council has already voted to annex the CU South area so that the city can perform flood mitigation work and add housing for CU students and staff, PLAN wants to prevent any city services like water and sewer to the future housing that would be built there. It's a sneaky way to protest the annexation. While I agree with some folks that CU and the City did a shitty job of educating voters about what the heck is going on here, it is clear that the smart people in charge of this situation say we need flood mitigation and this is pretty much the only way to get it done. I live hundreds of yards away from CU south and while the idea of construction is not exciting to me, the idea of a devastating and potentially fatal flood, like the 2013 flood, is way worse. I trust that Boulder will do a great job of making CU South safer and ultimately better once the project is done. Also, the bobo link trail will be entirely unaffected. I'm voting NO.
REST OF BALLOT
I googled other questions and used the following voter guides to help with the rest of this year's ballot:
Boulder County DSA Voting Guide - love how thorough DSA is. This I think is the most succinct and useful guide of this election.
Boulder Weekly - independent journalists in town who follow local politics closely.
Boulder County Democrats Voting Guide - note that Dem groups typically cannot endorse individual candidates in elections, they just state which candidates running are Democrats, which is why you don't see individual candidates endorsed.
Boulder Beat Voter Guide - local journalist Shay Castle's very succinct summary.
Also to note: on every ballot issue, DSA and the Dems state the same choices on this year's ballot.
And more endorsement info on City Council candidates made by Kristen Eller:
