I was elected to council in 2017 and resigned in 2019 after our Congressman called me personally and asked me to serve. I did not plan to leave council; I was not job hunting; I did not seek out open applications on his - or any other - website. I remember exactly where I was when he called.

I believe Representative Neguse is one of the most talented and consequential public servants Colorado has ever had. The role with him felt like a calling, so I shut down a successful real estate business and resigned from City Council to answer that call.

What few people remember is that there was precedent for my choice. Mayor Shaun McGrath resigned from Council in 2009 to take a role in the Obama administration, and the city accepted the resignation without controversy.

I was in the minority on Council at the time, and I calculated that I could better serve Boulder by helping build a congressional office than by casting losing votes. I'm not asking anyone to agree with that calculation, but I know that I made it in good faith.

While serving with Representative Neguse, I built a constituent outreach program that won awards and deeply engaged the community, and I supported him and this community through the longest federal government shutdown at the time, an impeachment in which he served as a manager, the COVID response, and the King Soopers shooting. I also learned from the best.

Knowing what I know now about how the resignation landed for the people who elected me (even though I believed at the time I was continuing to serve them), I would not make that choice the same way.

I was one of those people who was activated to run for office after Trump won and was caging kids. But I’m not 35 anymore. I'll be 45 next month. The reasons that pulled me out of the seat in 2019 – the urgency of the moment, a call to help build something at the national level under a leader I believed in – are not the reasons I’m running now. I'm running because the work I want to do is here, in Boulder, on the issues I’ve spent the years studying, writing about, and engaging with publicly.

Former Councilman Mark Wallach texted me this morning to remind me that I am the only reason he was even in office. My vacancy opened a 6th seat, and he came in 6th in the election. Even though Mark and I have disagreements, I am glad that Boulder got him instead of me. I was far less thoughtful back then, and far more easily swayed by interest groups. Mark was one of the most thoughtful council members we have ever had, and he was not beholden to interest groups.

I encourage anyone who has questions about me to read my website (the home page, especially).

My platform is not based on the values of one side or another. It is based on two decades of continuous engagement in this community, my deep experience in housing and land use, and four years of studying Boulder at the University of Colorado. My thesis is the most extensive single document we have on the history of Boulder's land use and economic development. It will outlive me, and I am proud of that. If you walk through the history with me, you can see exactly why I have landed on the platform I have.

I’ve learned a lot since my first term on Council, especially from working for Joe Neguse. Joe listens before deciding. I watched him spend months bringing stakeholders together before proposing legislation, and I helped design his outreach program. I would bring that same commitment to Council through regular office hours, town halls, and earlier community involvement.

Here are some specific changes I would work toward:

• Bring people in before plans take shape. Restore process committees to help design engagement on major decisions, involving residents, people directly affected, and those with relevant expertise. Start by defining the problem and exploring options, then explain how public input shaped the outcome, including why some suggestions weren’t adopted.

• Strengthen financial oversight. Establish an independent Performance Auditor reporting to Council and a Capital Improvement Advisory Council with relevant community expertise to scrutinize project costs, priorities, and progress.

• Require regular check-ins. Major projects should return to Council at key milestones, with public updates on budgets, schedules, and changes in scope. I believe more rigorous checkpoints could have helped Council catch and address problems at Alpine-Balsam earlier. Housing policies also need scheduled reviews: Are they producing the outcomes we intended? If not, what should we change? The Hill is a great example of this right now. I think we need to check back in on some of our policies and recalibrate. 

• Take Council’s oversight responsibilities seriously. Strengthen evaluations of the city manager, city attorney, and municipal judge, with clear expectations, meaningful feedback, and follow-up appropriate to each role and respectful of judicial independence.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with every decision I make. But I want people to know I heard them, understand why I voted the way I did, and see that I’m willing to change course when something isn’t working. That’s how I believe we begin to earn back trust.

1. Take care of what we already have first. Boulder’s first discretionary dollar should go toward maintaining the buildings, streets, and corridors we already own before we add new facilities or expand at the edges.

2. Every new asset creates a maintenance obligation that lasts for decades. Boulder’s Facilities Master Plan covers 75 buildings totaling 1.8 million square feet, with a replacement value of more than $550 million. One of its two guiding priorities is consolidating city uses.

   Buildings the city no longer needs should be leased, sold, or repurposed for housing, small-business space, or other community uses. The proceeds could help maintain the facilities we keep or pay down debt on underfunded buildings.

   Area III is the one place where this principle may get more complicated, but only if Council decides to make middle-income family housing there a real priority. Producing the kinds of homes and prices those families need would require a serious public commitment. More on that below.

3. Show stewardship before asking residents for more. This entire framework depends on public trust. And trust is not something the city can keep spending without earning it back.

   Boulder voters have been extraordinarily generous, approving tax measure after tax measure in good faith. The city should regularly show residents what they received in return.

   I support creating an independent performance auditor reporting directly to City Council to evaluate whether city programs and spending are delivering the results residents were promised. We need to know what is working, where costs are growing, and what needs to change. Findings should be public, with clear timelines for addressing recommendations and regular follow-up.

   I also support establishing a Capital Improvement Advisory Council that brings residents and people with relevant financial, construction, and infrastructure experience into the process of evaluating major capital investments. It would help assess maintenance needs, scrutinize cost estimates and alternatives, and recommend priorities before the city commits to major projects or asks voters to approve more borrowing. Residents should be able to see what a project will cost to build, operate, and maintain.

Also see answer #4

Boulder has spent years professionalizing the administrative side of city government. The democratic side hasn’t necessarily developed the same professional capacity alongside it.

There are some pretty concrete ways to change that.

1. Give Council its own professional capacity: an independent performance auditor.

One reason technocratic systems naturally accumulate power inside the administration is information asymmetry. Staff develops programs, administers them, measures them, and then explains their performance to a part-time elected Council.

An independent performance auditor who reports to Council, rather than through the management structure, would give elected officials their own professional analytical capacity. Staff can say, “Here is our analysis,” and Council can independently ask: Is it right? Is this program producing what we were promised? Is there a better way to accomplish the same goal?

It is, in a sense, professionalism with which to check professionalism.

2. Democratize major capital decisions without politicizing construction.

Alpine-Balsam shows why this matters. The problem wasn’t that Council failed to choose the right architect. The problem was that an enormous public investment evolved through many smaller decisions without enough moments when the cumulative political choice was visible.

I support creating a Capital Improvement Advisory Board that would establish and monitor the public parameters around major projects: What problem are we solving? What are the essential public benefits? What is the financial ceiling? What are the alternatives? How much can cost or scope change before the project has to return to Council?

East Boulder Community Center is exactly the kind of project this body should examine. A proposed $53 million deep-energy retrofit and renovation may ultimately be justified. But Council and the public should be able to see clearly how much is deferred maintenance, how much is renovation, and how much results from our own energy requirements. We should also know what alternatives exist, and what tradeoffs we’re making with other needs.

3. Professionalize Council’s oversight of its three direct reports.

Council directly employs the City Manager, City Attorney, and Municipal Judge. Oversight of those three people isn’t peripheral to Council’s job. It’s one of its core responsibilities.

Their evaluations should be serious 360-degree assessments. Council should receive structured feedback from people who work with and experience their leadership, including department directors.

This matters even more as the organization becomes more centralized and professionally managed. Some people may experience that as better coordination; others may experience it as micromanagement or loss of autonomy. Council shouldn’t have to choose between staff anecdotes. It should have a serious process for evaluating leadership.

4. Move Council upstream in the budget.

Right now, Council enters the conversation after programs, staffing levels, and priorities have already been built into a proposed budget. Much of the policy-making has already happened.

Budget conversations should begin months earlier and should probably operate on two-year cycles. Council should debate what our priorities are, what’s working, what isn’t, where we need to invest, and what we need to reconsider. Then professional staff can build the budget around those elected priorities.

5. Create a fast lane for obvious problems.

Technocratic systems naturally value consistency, process, risk reduction, and analysis. There are important reasons for this, but it also increases bureaucracy and slows down Council’s ability to act decisively and quickly (not that we were ever great at that, but we were arguably better).

Again, take small-business permitting. Council could establish a real deadline, maybe 60 days, for straightforward, low-risk permits and licenses, with automatic escalation when the city misses it. Then let staff determine how to achieve it.

Instead of asking, “Why can’t we do this?” the question should become: “What would it take to do this?”

6. Bring the public upstream too.

We don’t need more engagement for engagement’s sake. We need earlier engagement when the actual values and tradeoffs are still unsettled.

The DDA discussion is a good example. By the time the broader public was asked to weigh in, staff and consultants had already defined the problem, developed the analytical framework, and identified the institutional solution they believed made sense.

A more democratic process starts one step earlier: What problem are we trying to solve downtown? What should success look like? What role should the city play? What alternatives exist? What are residents, businesses, and property owners willing to trade for greater investment?

Then let professional staff analyze those choices, explain the consequences, and make a recommendation.

That’s the balance I’m after throughout this essay. Staff should absolutely recommend. But whenever possible, Council and the community should help define the question before staff determines the answer.

7. Restore human access where professionalization has created distance.

Remote work, online permitting, and virtual meetings have real advantages. But efficiency for the organization isn’t always efficiency for the public.

In Planning and other public-facing departments, residents and businesses should have the opportunity to sit down with someone, work through a problem, and get an answer. We used to have this above Mustard’s Last Stand. Our code was just as complicated back then, yet people could navigate the system with greater ease.

There is also value in newer employees working alongside experienced professionals and absorbing institutional knowledge that doesn’t always transfer through scheduled video calls.

I would end Boulder’s use of any ALPR system that cannot protect our data and privacy. I don’t support sharing residents’ information across jurisdictions or with other entities without meaningful limits and oversight. I want to understand whether an ALPR system can provide public-safety benefits while meeting that standard. I haven’t gotten a clear answer yet.

This also needs to be a real community conversation and a Council decision. What level of surveillance are we comfortable with? What safeguards do we require? Where do we draw the line? That conversation will inform my decision.

And we need to look beyond license plate readers. Removing city cameras would not resolve questions about privately collected data or information the city can obtain elsewhere. We need clear rules about what information the city collects, purchases, accesses, and shares, and who is responsible for making sure those rules are followed.

I do not support the bond measure as currently proposed. That doesn't mean I don't support investing in our parks, recreation centers, and other public facilities. Quite the opposite. I think we've fallen too far behind on maintenance, and taking care of what we already own should be a top priority.

My concern is that the city is asking voters to authorize hundreds of millions of dollars in borrowing without a sufficiently clear, prioritized plan for how that money will be spent. We need better financial oversight, more transparency, and a serious commitment to maintaining existing facilities before taking on new projects and obligations.

The request also comes at a time when businesses are hurting and it hits them hardest. I would have preferred a smaller, more focused bond that prioritized our most urgent needs, with independent oversight and clear accountability for spending.

And if this measure fails, I would absolutely support bringing back a separate bond specifically to address the South Boulder Recreation Center. I don't think residents should have to accept a financially flawed package in order to protect a community facility they value.

I believe Boulder needs to invest in its future, but we also need to be much more disciplined about how we spend public money.

Historic buildings and places give Boulder a sense of identity and continuity. They help us understand how the city developed, who lived and worked here, and what earlier generations valued. They also give us places to feel attached to. It is part of why people so deeply mourn the loss of longtime businesses and gathering places. These are where so many formative memories are made. I think of the song, “make new friends, but keep the old, some are silver and the other gold.” Our new places and spaces are silver, and our historic places and spaces are gold.

Researching 150 years of Boulder’s housing history for my graduate work deepened my appreciation for those connections. What drew me to geography was how it brings together space, place, and time, and our relationship to all three. A building can tell us something about how people lived, but also about who had the opportunity to live there and how that changed over time. Boulder’s history is deeply meaningful to me after the work I just completed. I also have so much love and gratitude for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program, and local historians such as Sylvia Pettem, Lyn Perrigo, Dan Corson, and Peter Pollock.

My work also reinforced that our history is complicated. Preservation can help us tell a fuller story, including the experiences and contributions of women, Black and Indigenous residents and other people of color, workers, renters, and others whose stories have too often been overlooked. Modest homes, workplaces and community gathering spaces deserve attention alongside prominent buildings and well-known residents. I think these places are best preserved when they remain part of everyday life. Keeping an older building occupied by a local business, adapting a home for another generation, or making a historic gathering place more accessible allows people to keep building connections to it. That is a large part of what makes Boulder feel like home.