[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Budget

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Burton, Jan

Council and Jane:
Apologies that I will not be at the Study Session tonight, as I am in Chicago for a funeral. I will watch the video of the proceedings and look forward to learning more about our priorities and plans for 2017.

Jane, I’d like to ask a few questions and give a few comments:


1.       What is our total spending on consultants? I am counting at least $750K in the Planning Department alone for planning and strategy work. As we have hired more very high quality people in the past few years, I wonder why we still need to lean on consultants.  Perhaps we know enough already and just need to act. Or, if we have the content but need someone to pull it together, perhaps we hire one person to pull together the recommendations, cross-department. Another example: $141K to develop a Housing Strategy. I would like more detail on that, as we have already completed the Middle Income strategy. Again, we have a great team with good expertise, and we’ve been studying it to death over the past few years. Why another $140K for a strategy?

2.       How many “perception” studies are we doing? I have counted at least 2-3. Perhaps we do one a year, so we can really act on it.

3.       I’d like to propose an ombudsman to take on some of our knotty constituent issues and work them through the complex city environment. I would suggest that we start with an identified person in the City Manager’s office; make it a part-time job and see how it goes.

4.       I notice $150K for Code Assessment. I’d like to understand more about that, and if it’s an effort to dramatically simplify and streamline, I would support.

5.       Finally, I’d like to increase the speed on figuring out the purpose of the Alpine/Balsam (BPH) property. This provides a potential housing solution, and we’re paying a great deal of money on interest. Let’s slow down work on the future segments of the Civic Center and put our wood behind this arrow to make some progress on our housing (yes, I understand that’s not yet the determined use).
Thanks!



Jan Burton
Member of City Council