[BoulderCouncilHotline] Questions/Comments for October 10, 2019 Study Session - Local Power

[Young, Mary]

Dear Colleagues, Community and Staff,

Thank you for the study session on Local Power. Unfortunately, I will be out of town and unable to attend.

While the study session memo did an excellent job of reporting the status of the engineering, finances and the meaning of recent state legislation related to the local power project, it did not evaluate the project in terms of its ability to provide systemic change and replicability. Based on the July 9 study session, I expected such an analysis.

As we move forward towards a go/no go vote, an open, honest, objective and transparent conversation is essential. Good decisions cannot be based on hope.

As someone with engineering training, I know that if you give an engineer a problem, they will solve it. A solution then generally boils down to a function of how much will it cost, how long will it take and how good will it be. These are quantifiable variables.

Can we create a municipal utility? Yes.

Our Local Power project, however, is grounded in community values. We should evaluate it on that front as well.

Should we? I, for one, do not know.

However, I believe that quantifiable information can be provided to help answer the latter question.

There are a variety of other questions needing answers, too:

Is the problem still the same and, if it is, is the solution still the same?

What can we do now that we could not ten years ago?

What could we do with a municipal utility that we could not do otherwise?

For those things we cannot do without a municipal utility, can we move policy at other levels so that we can?

Given state legislation, there are gaps in the relative timelines for city goals vs. state goals. What do those gaps mean? What options exist to close them?

How have things shifted (e.g. narratives, attitudes, alliances, voices)?

What other approaches could we take that may have a similar or greater impact?

We need space for this conversation.

My direction to staff would be to provide the information to council and the community so that we can knowingly and with great confidence answer the question: Should we?

It is the elephant in the room.

Thank you.

Mary Dolores Young
Boulder City Council
303-501-2439

"All ethics . . . rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts . . ." - Aldo Leopold

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