Thread by @samlounz

Sorry, I've missed the start of the main event while reporting on the under card. We're well into a presentation by Luis Toro of the #Boulder City Attorney's Office on what happened with the deadline switch that made it impossible for resident-led ballot petitions to make ballot.

This is a wild conversation, I can't wait to write about it for you.

Wallach: Tells Carr he "could not disagree" with him more on his conclusions on how to interpret the interaction between municipal and state laws on petitioning.

Brockett: Fundamentally, we do not have clarity on what the 100% correct legal interpretation is. He suggests what's fair is putting on the ballot what makes the signature requirements and originally, inaccurate deadline provided by city.

Brockett: Let's work on ordinance at end of this year to get this cleaned up. But let's put on the ballot the measures that get the signatures.

Friend: There are six attorneys on this call that are not agreeing. I don't know how we could have expected correct interpretation even by the petitioners who consulted lawyers.

Friend: We have a chance here to try and not make interpretations difficult and do something different.

Yates: Through questioning of timelines clarifies that city officials warned campaigns for charter amendments to get on ballot that state law might apply, meaning stricter deadlines, before those deadlines. They had as much as a month and some change from warning to deadline.

Yates: Believes state law applies. "That's the safest course of action."

Carr: I told them on April 20 that the there was a risk if they didn't get it in by June 20. But Friend raises point that Carr said, and Carr agrees, that Aug. 5 was still the deadline that would be applied. But his thinking has evolved on that.

Friend: Telling petitioners they should have known the deadline was June 5 is not in the spirit of the law.

Friend: It doesn't pass my gut-test to have screwed up in this fashion and not make it right for people.

Nagle: Agrees with Yates and Wallach that state law should apply to petitioning process.

Swetlik: I agree that state law is what makes the most sense, but that does not preclude us from this year making a decision for ourselves.

Joseph: To me this is more about fairness. I think part of our job is customer service. I know that may not be the right term, but we represent the city, and community members are our customers and we serve at their behest.

Joseph: Our behavior, as of today, as of right now, leans toward bad governance, as opposed to good governance. I know there is human error in everything we do, we are not perfect. We gave people the wrong ideas, the wrong threshold, but we can make it right.

Weaver: I think we have to defer to state law on this. To me it seems like either the charter controls or the state law controls. I'm not compelled by the charter controls argument.

He is siding with the elections working group that convened several years ago and took this up.

So Council interpreting that state law controls the charter amendment petitioning process means the two initiatives need 8,096 signatures, twice as many as they were told originally by the city.

It seems to me the deadlines for all the active petitioning campaigns are past, still. So... they're still out of luck.

Council is clearly confused. They are saying some of the active campaigns can still hit their deadlines under the interpretation that state law controls. That's not true according to city staff's presentation. Those deadlines are passed, they were in June.

Correction: One campaign that is still active, the Our Mayor Our Choice group, could hit deadline of July 30. For Bedrooms initiative, the deadline is already expired.

Back after a break. Friend: Wants to give the CU South petition, if its organizers revive it, some extra time. And wants to possibly modify the Our Mayor, Our Choice measure if it gets enough signatures to clear up one clause. But would put Bedrooms initiative on as is w/ sigs.

Friend has raised Polis urge to cities to suspend occupancy limits amid the pandemic. But it sounds like research on doing that couldn't happen bc Planning Dept. is slammed.

Young: Confused why occupancy should be increased when people are living in tight quarters fuels spread of virus.

Yates: I don't know if the governor was saying let's have lots more students live in a house, or if he was saying families could double up. I think those are very different propositions.

Wallach: Disinclined but possibly persuadable to put Bedrooms or mayoral election on ballot.

Swetlik: Following the original guidance is the most fair thing to do in this instance.

Swetlik: You gotta trust the city when the city tells you something, otherwise, what's the point of being the city?

Swetlik: We should also give PLAN Boulder more time for the CU South annexation ballot proposal.

Young: Can we do that?

Carr: You can put whatever you want on the ballot up to Sept. 1.

Friend: Pushing back on Wallach, says it would be perfectly fine for a land use amendment like Bedrooms Are For People proposal.

Yates: I just want to come back to the dates, that's what's troubling me. On April 20, our city attorney's office told one of the charter folks what the alternative date was, that was 3 months ago. They made a decision to follow the guidelines given previously instead of new info

Yates: I'm struggling with the negative impact since they were notified early in their respective processes.

Yates: I agree with people who think there could be unintended consequences of the Bedrooms proposal, should it be approved. He suggests forming a working group that could analyze increasing occupancy. I think this is worthy of a more lengthy discussion.

Yates: It's our prerogative to discuss the content of the measures when putting something on the ballot.

Says working group should be formed right away, not wait until next year.

Weaver: To me, land use and the charter doesn't work, and zoning is even worse. I couldn't in good conscience refer the CU South or Bedrooms initiative unless they hit the signature thresholds that are required of them.

That's impossible for Bedrooms.

Weaver: Is open the ranked choice elections of the mayor proposal. Each of these has a certain amount of appeal, he says.

Young: Not down with the CU South petition. Doesn't believe the Our Mayor, Our Choice petitioners did their homework, it's trying to do too much.

Young: Also nervous about the Bedrooms initiative. Without putting an affordability restriction on it somehow, similar to how ADUs were done, I think you would just have escalating room costs.

Nagle: To be clean and fair, I'm personally not going to vote to have any of them go onto the ballot. I think we need to get this cleaned up, but trying to pick and choose and extending dates, I just won't be voting to send any to the ballot.

Swetlik: Housing Advisory Board tried several years ago to tackle occupancy limits. Council should use the boards we have to avoid these situations in the future.

Wallach: It's probably time to take a look at occupancy limits.

Story coming soon, guys.