[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Suzanne's Input for Sept 20th Mtg

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Jones, Suzanne

Dear Colleagues—

I will be missing this Tuesday’s Council Meeting in order to represent the City of Boulder at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York City, so I am sending you my thoughts in advance regarding key issues on Tuesday’s agenda. But first a word about the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) trip, which Boulder was quite honored to be invited to attend.

Clinton Global Initiative.: Jonathan Koehn, Greg Guibert and I will be traveling to NYC to participate in the CGI for the purpose of raising awareness of Boulder’s efforts to develop/implement a resiliency strategy that aligns our climate mitigation efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and our climate adaptation preparedness efforts in a way that benefits the entire Boulder community and provides a replicable model for other cities. Specifically, we will be:

·       Publicly announcing a CGI “commitment” with our partner Pos-En to install clean energy infrastructure at 5 critical facilities around Boulder to provide energy for daily operations as well as off-grid energy during emergencies;

·       Showcase Boulder’s resiliency efforts and identify potential partners/funders at an 100 Resilient Cities breakfast being hosted for us by the Rockefeller Foundation; and

·       Participate in high-level discussions at CGI and identify potential opportunities to further our existing climate mitigation and resilience efforts.
We’ll let you know how it goes!

SUZANNE’S THOUGHTS ON A FEW KEY TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED AT THE SEPT 20TH MTG:

Development-Related Impact Fees and Excise Taxes:

A)      Capital Facilities Impact Fee & Transportation Fee/Tax: The consultants’ studies provide the justification for legally supported and justified increases in these two categories of impact fees. Given the relatively modest increases proposed, I recommend that we direct staff to proceed with ordinance updates to that effect and have these increases go into effect in January 2017 along with other annual fee adjustments without further delay.

B)      Affordable Housing Credits/Fee & Tax Study: It is important to note that this credit only applies to new residential development (so is separate for the discussion about appropriate housing linkage fees for commercial development). Given that the current system results in only a relatively modest per unit fee ($8,000 for a 1,000 sq ft unit), it is not in my mind a major game-changer that warrants further delaying our update of development fees. As such, I think we can leave the current system as is, and revisit the credit issue as part of our larger Inclusionary Housing Ordinance discussion—scheduled to be completed in the next 9 months—where we will look more broadly at whether/how we may want to further incentive the building of affordable housing using our full suite of tools.

C)      Affordable Housing Commercial Impact Linkage Fees: This is obviously the biggest of the tax/fee issues before us. Given that the final decision on linkage fees will be one based on a weighing of trade-offs between community goals (as opposed to a simple data-driven equation), I think that we have enough information to proceed with getting public input and then making our decision on an appropriate fee level. While some Council members have expressed wanting a more detailed financial analysis, given that a study would take a lot more time and money, and then still require us to make a value-based decision in the end, I am ready to proceed. We already know that commercial development provides many benefits to our city, including direct and indirect sales tax revenues. These sales and use revenues are used by the City to pay for increases needed in city operations (e.g., more police, traffic enforcement, etc.). In addition, we ask new development to pay its own way thru capital facility/transportation fees, as well as to mitigate the impact of the need for additional employee housing—needs which exists regardless of level of sales tax revenues. While the nexus study calculated the maximum amount that we could charge for housing impacts (ranging up to $71.50/sq foot), convention argues for a lower number with less impact on development costs—hence Council direction to look at a more modest $10, $20, and $35 range. If enough Council members want to move the $35 option a little lower, I can live with that, but I think we should stay with a low, medium, high range of options for the November 15th public hearing to get public input.


My desire is to make a decision on the linkage fee and implement it expeditiously -- as soon as is reasonable, but definitely before October 2017. If we aren’t careful, we will be “closing the barn door after the horse has left.” Given that housing is a top priority for our community, Council should move forward asap to provide additional much-needed housing funds. And since we have been discussing this issue for well over a year, I think the development community has been well notified that there may be fee increases coming down the pike and should have factored in some potential increases into their planning.


Short Term Rentals: I am pleased to see that, with the hiring of additional enforcement staff, that enforcement efforts and results have increased significantly. After nine months of implementation, I think Council should make some tweaks to improve the STR ordinance and in general agree with pursuing all the issues suggested by the City Attorney—but especially issues 1, 2, and 6.

Statewide ballot measures: As a member of the Legislative Committee, I agree with the committee’s recommendations to: support Amendment 70 to raise the state minimum wage, which would result in a more livable wage for lower-income workers; and to oppose Amendment 71, which would increase the requirements for citizen-initiated amendments to the state constitution. Both positions are in keeping with the City’s adopted Legislative Agenda.

I would add further that many politically progressive interests are opposing the Amendment 71, because it fails to provide protections for statutory ballot measures and would likely make constitutional ballot measures cost prohibitive for non-profits. In addition, new information is emerging that while repeals of previously adopted constitutional amendments would be exempted, the higher threshold would apply to amendments of previously adopted constitutional amendments (such as TABOR), making it harder to reform TABOR.  For more information, see attached legal memo by Mark Grueskin (attached) and todays’ Denver Post editorial against Amendment 71: http://www.denverpost.com/2016/09/17/colorados-raise-the-bar-initiative-gets-it-wrong/
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