"Boulder picks candidates with experience for council"
Rocky Mountain News
Nov. 6, 2007
By Bill Scanlon
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Voters went with experience in a City Council race in which they had their choice of 22 candidates vying for seven seats.
complete article
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"Janet Roberts was a Boulder icon:
Former City Councilwoman was known as political pioneer for women"
Boulder Camera
Nov. 3, 2007
By Alyssa Urish
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When Janet Roberts moved to Boulder in 1948, she probably didn't anticipate all the titles she would soon accumulate.
complete article
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"'Smart growth' like 'smart death'"
Boulder Camera
Oct. 29, 2007
By Al Bartlett
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One of the candidates for election to the City Council has criticized
PLAN Boulder County for being too focused on the single issue of
growth. How does the candidate's view match up with the problems that
need to be solved?
complete article
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"No shortage of candidates on Boulder City Council slate"
Rocky Mountain News
Oct. 16, 2007
By Bill Scanlon
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So many candidates are running for City Council here that they could
play baseball against each other and still have plenty of pinch
hitters.
complete article
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"PLAN-Boulder County endorsements: We need experience and new perspectives"
Letter to the editor
Oct. 19, 2007
By Pat Shanks for the PBC Board
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PLAN-Boulder County has endorsed seven candidates to fill the seats on City Council.
complete article
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"Accountable renewal: Louisville Issue 2A should pass"
Boulder Camera
Oct. 11, 2007
By Clint Talbott (for the editorial board)
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Louisville is engaged in a battle over how to manage its urban-renewal
efforts. To an outsider, the debate might appear, in equal measure,
spirited and picayune.
All minutia aside, the central debate about Louisville Ballot Issue 2A
is one of accountability: Is the Louisville Revitalization Commission
accountable, in some measure, to the citizens it should serve? Yes.
Would Issue 2A augment and improve that accountability? Yes.
complete article
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"Vote 2007: Cowles, Espinoza, Gray, Morzel, O'Hashi, Osborne and Pearson"
Boulder Weekly
Oct. 11-17, 2007
Editorial
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Boulder is facing the mother of all City Council elections — 22
candidates and seven open seats. That's a lot of candidates for Boulder
voters to research, a lot of websites to read through, a lot of
campaign blather about "giving back to the community" and "leadership"
to have to absorb. But it also provides a lot of options, and that's a
good thing. With so many candidates, there are 154 different City
Councils that could emerge from this election. In other words, voters
have the ability to make real choices.
complete article
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"Seven for the city"
Boulder Camera
Oct. 7, 2007
By Clint Talbott (for the editorial board)
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Serving on the City Council is harder than it may appear. Knowledge, much of it gained from experience, is critical.
complete article
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"Morzel — exponentially civic"
Colorado Daily
Oct. 7, 2007
By Ryan Morgan
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The old adage of "the apple never falls far from the tree" might help
illustrate former Boulder City Council member and current council
candidate Lisa Morzel's approach to civic involvement.
complete article
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"Gray: Perseverance paid off"
Colorado Daily
Oct. 4, 2007
By Richard Valenty
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It's fair to say that Crystal Gray, a current Boulder City Council
member and a candidate for re-election, has at least one thing in
common with many other candidates.
complete article
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"Groups endorse Boulder City Council candidates"
Boulder Camera
Oct. 2, 2007
By Ryan Morgan
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Five groups with interests ranging from open space access to growth and
the environment have issued their endorsements for Boulder City Council
candidates.
PLAN-Boulder County, the Sierra Club, Friends Interested in Dogs and
Open Space, the Boulder Outdoor Coalition and the Boulder Mountainbike
Alliance have all announced their endorsements. There's plenty of
overlap: Ten candidates among the 22 share the endorsements from the
four groups. Two candidates, Susan Osborne and Ken Wilson, won
endorsements from all five groups.
complete article
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"Endorsements piling up"
Colorado Daily
Oct. 1, 2007
By Richard Valenty
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Registered, active Boulder voters might begin receiving ballots for the
2007 election in roughly two weeks, and a number of local groups
recently released their lists of endorsements.
complete article
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"PLAN-Boulder County endorses seven Boulder council candidates, two county issues"
PBC press release |
PLAN-Boulder County announced its endorsement of seven candidates to
fill the seven seats in contention in the upcoming Boulder City Council
race, as well as county ballot issues pending in the election on
November 6th.
complete article
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"PLAN-Boulder County endorses three Louisville council candidates, 2A"
PBC press release |
PLAN-Boulder County announced its endorsement of three candidates to
fill the seats in contention in the upcoming Louisville City Council
race, as well as city and county ballot issues pending in the election
on November 6th.
complete article
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"Forum: Greenhouse gas and greenfields"
Colorado Daily
Sept. 30, 2007
By Richard Valenty
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Seven Boulder City Council candidates gathered last Friday for the
citizen group PLAN-Boulder County's fourth and final 2007 candidate
forum.
complete article
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"Tackling isssues at Friday forum"
Boulder Camera
Sept. 22, 2007
By Ryan Morgan
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Seven of the 22 candidates vying for seven open seats on the Boulder
City Council gathered Friday afternoon to talk about why they're
running and how they'll deal with the challenges of a growing city.
complete article
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"Candidates talk"
Colorado Daily
Sept. 16, 2007
By Richard Valenty
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Three candidates for Boulder's City Council in 2007 - Adam Massey,
Macon Cowles and Rob Smoke - attended last Friday's candidate forum
hosted by the citizen group PLAN-Boulder County.
complete article
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"Candidates talk issues at Friday forum:
Contenders discuss experience, conference center"
Boulder Camera
Sept. 15, 2007
By Ryan Morgan
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Three candidates for Boulder's City Council in 2007 - Adam Massey,
Macon Cowles and Rob Smoke - attended last Friday's candidate forum
hosted by the citizen group PLAN-Boulder County.Three more Boulder City
Council candidates talked about why they want a seat on the council and
how they'd do the job at a candidate forum in the Boulder Public
Library on Friday.
complete article
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"First of four candidate forums off and running:
First of four Friday talks hosted by PLAN-Boulder County features 5 hopefuls"
Boulder Camera
Sept. 8, 2007
By Laura Snider
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On Friday, the Boulder Creek Room at the public library was packed with
people eager to learn a little more about five of the 22 candidates
vying for seven open seats on the Boulder City Council.
complete article
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"PLAN-Boulder County hosts series of City Council candidate forums"
PBC press release |
PLAN-Boulder County will be hosting a series of city council candidate
forums every Friday in September. The forums will be held on
consecutive Fridays—September 7, 14, 21 and 28—in the Boulder Creek
Room of the downtown Boulder Public Library from noon to 1:30 p.m.
complete press release
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"PLAN-Boulder County weighs in on special election — Group suggests five top contenders"
PBC press release |
With ballots for the July 10, 2007 special City Council election
already arriving in many citizens' mailboxes, it's vitally important
for various local groups to get candidate endorsements out fast.
complete press release
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"Nods Abound"
Colorado Daily
June 18, 2007
By Richard Valenty |
With ballots for the July 10, 2007 special City Council election
already arriving in many citizens' mailboxes, it's vitally important
for various local groups to get candidate endorsements out fast.
But the whirlwind election cycle was a little too fast for at least one
group that decided against making an endorsement at this time. Also,
certain groups decided to offer a list of several acceptable candidates
as opposed to endorsing one choice to hopefully fill the single open
council seat.
complete article
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"Book looks at expansion challenges"
Boulder Camera
May 6, 2007
By Todd Neff |
In the opposite corner are the relative waifs of what Travis calls the
weak forces of smart growth, including regional planning organizations
such as the Denver Regional Council of Governments, intergovernmental
agreements and local watchdog organizations such as PLAN-Boulder
County, which Travis says "was founded by visionaries and has held
planners' feet to the fire."
complete article
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"Endangered buildings, too"
Colorado Daily
March 11, 2007
By Richard Valenty |
It might be a challenging fixer-upper, but there are people in Boulder
who think preserving the boarded-up house at 800 Arapahoe Ave. will
also preserve a part of the city's history.
complete article
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"Physicist criticizes Boulder's 'McMansions'"
Daily Camera
Jan. 27, 2007
By Jeremy Ryan |
Bigger isn't always better when it comes to housing, retired physicist
Jim Faller said at a PLAN-Boulder County meeting on Friday.
Faller spoke about how the presence of scrape-offs, or "McMansions," in
Boulder has been steadily degrading the aesthetics of older
neighborhoods and pushing out families who aren't rich enough to keep
up.
"It's a cancerous growth," Faller said. "It's getting too expensive for common people. Boulder isn't just for the rich."
Faller said one of the biggest problems is that, with people allowed to
build on 80 percent of their plots, some homes are cramped together.
Older homes sometimes fill only between 45 percent and 50 percent.
In music, "the important thing is the spaces between the notes," Faller
said. "The spaces between the buildings are what make the beauty."
Faller, a retired physicist at JILA, became concerned about scrape-offs
a year ago when a house in his neighborhood was bulldozed to make way
for a larger one. He fought the project, saying it would ruin the
ambiance of the neighborhood.
But after being told the City Council couldn't do anything and that it
could cost upward of $35,000 in court to enforce a neighborhood
covenant, Faller lost his fight, and the house went up.
"My house is ruined," Faller said.
He said he feels the sentimental value of his house and neighborhood
will only be lowered as more surrounding houses are razed. His house,
though, has increased in value to about $800,000 to $1 million since he
bought it in 1971 for $60,000, he said.
Susan Richstone, acting long-range division manager for the city's
planning department, said the Planning Board has urged the City Council
to take up the issue of scrape-offs, but it hasn't because of a lack of
public concern.
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"PLAN Boulder's green standard"
Colorado Daily
July 5, 2006
By Richard Valenty |
Not every vote that a Boulder City Council member casts is truly
memorable, but the citizen group PLAN-Boulder County is taking notes
while the council votes.
The local environmental advocacy group (PBC) recently released a
spreadsheet showing voting records for each council member on 63
different issues decided between July 2005 and June 2006. PBC then took
the records from 25 of the issues to illustrate which council members
agreed most closely with its formal positions or with selected other
"green" positions.
complete article
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"Green group
wants green campus"
Colorado Daily
April 30, 2006
By Richard Valenty |
There are geographic lines where the CU-Boulder
campuses end and city or county turf begins. But environmental factors
don't give a hoot about boundaries, and that's one reason why Dave
Newport, the director of CU's Environmental Center (CUEC), has taken at
least one of his acts on the road.
Newport is soliciting support for the 2006 version of CUEC's Blueprint
for a Green Campus — as the name suggests, a document delineating an
eco-friendly framework — and he spent Friday afternoon with a citizen
group that knows a thing or two about environmental activism.
Very few citizens know it as the People's League for Action Now
anymore, but PLAN-Boulder County (PBC) has been advocating slow growth
and supporting green political policies or candidates since 1959.
complete article
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"Development plans hit snag in Boulder"
Rocky Mountain News
Feb. 21, 2006
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An ambitious plan to transform 450 acres into a European-style
pedestrian community housing 11,000, considered a model for development
around FasTracks stations, is running into surprising opposition. PLAN
Boulder County, whose members usually are in concert in advocating for
slow growth and a sustainable future, is split down the middle on this
one.
complete article
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"PLAN-Boulder County likes McGrath, Cowles & Pearson"
Colorado Daily letter to the editor
Oct. 26, 2005
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PBC has endorsed incumbent Councilman Shaun McGrath and candidates Macon Cowles and Eugene Pearson for seats on the Boulder City Council.
complete letter
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"No need for study: Project at 28th and Jay raises too many issues for Boulder"
Daily Camera PBC guest opinion
Sept. 18, 2005
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On Sept. 20, the Boulder City Council will be voting
on advancing a project that may violate Boulder's most important
planning principle: limiting sprawl. Palmos Development is seeking to
annex a parcel of planning reserve land at 28th Street and Jay Road to
build a large shopping center on the edge of town. In order to begin
the process, a work plan for a service expansion study is required...We
urge council to vote against proceeding with the service expansion
study.
complete editorial
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"Leave the Planning Reserve alone"
Colorado Daily guest opinion by Pat Shanks
Sept. 17, 2005
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Even though Boulder citizens have consistently opposed sprawl, the
proposed Palmos Development in the Area III Planning Reserve may come
before City Council this Tuesday. "Let's keep our options open," has
become the mantra of those who want the proposal to proceed to the next
step. This would happen if the Council votes on September 20 to
authorize staff to proceed with a work plan defining the scope of a
service expansion study.
complete editorial
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"Boulder's future depends on all people working together"
Colorado Daily
May 7, 2005
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Founded in 1959, PLAN-Boulder County is a group of civic-minded
citizens concerned about preserving the natural beauty and amenities of
the Boulder area through education and political action aimed at wise
land use decision-making. PBC believes that planning for the future of
the Boulder area involves complex and interrelated environmental,
fiscal and social issues and can best be achieved by a well-informed
citizenry working together with local officials in an open, fair and
thoughtful process to safeguard the quality of life that continues to
keep Boulder unique and desirable.
complete editorial
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"A PLAN that works"
Colorado Daily
March 6, 2005
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Despite no shortage of activists, long talkers at city
council meetings, a reasonably smart collection of council people and a
Board of County Commissioners, the real force for effective city and
county government and policy making in Boulder is PLAN-Boulder County.
All government organizations and civic groups could take a lesson from
the group.
complete editorial
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"Head tax concept floated"
Colorado Daily
Feb. 17, 2005
By Richard Valenty |
City of Boulder annual sales and use tax revenues have
decreased dramatically since the "glory days" of the late 1990s, and
citizen group PLAN-Boulder county has asked the city to consider a
"head tax" on employers and/or employees to possibly create a more
dependable revenue stream.
But the city's business community doesn't seem keen on the idea.
Former City Council member Dan Corson said PBC does not have a detailed
head tax proposal yet, but said the group hopes to help spark a
community-wide discussion on the topic. He said Boulder was a center of
retail commerce for a large percentage of its history, but the openings
of Twin Peaks Mall in Longmont and FlatIron Crossing in Broomfield gave
retail options to residents of nearby communities and changed Boulder's
basic economy.
"What Boulder is now is a job center, and even with businesses leaving
because of cheaper rent and more land on which to build, it still
remains a job center and probably will continue to be a job center,"
said Corson.
PBC suggests a head tax could fund special projects such as
implementation of the city's Transportation Master Plan, and Corson
said the tax might also be used in place of sales-tax revenue needed to
pay for desired levels of city services.
Susan Graf, Boulder Chamber of Commerce CEO/president, said Boulder's
business community generally opposes a head tax because the possible
added expense could make the city less attractive to business owners.
She said a head tax could also be unfair to segments of the local
population, depending on its implementation.
"In the context of transportation funding, we're concerned because
residents who work out of their homes take three times as many trips
during a day as do people who work from a workplace," said Graf. "What
you're doing is asking people who use the system the least to pay for
it."
Corson said a tax as low as two dollars per month could raise $2.4
million annually if applied to an estimated 100,000 employees within
the city. He said he personally pays $5.75 per month to work in Denver,
and several other communities in Colorado already charge some form of
employment tax (see graphic). He said his employer, the Colorado
Historical Society, does not pay the head tax because they are within
the state personnel system.
Corson said Boulder has a higher percentage of federal and state
employees, notably at CU-Boulder and the NIST/NOAA federal labs, than
most other communities. He said employers would probably be exempt from
paying the tax, but the tax might be levied only on employees, similar
to Corson's state employment situation.
CU Vice Chancellor Paul Tabolt said he has heard conversations about a
head tax, but offered no opinion in part because CU has not been
formally approached with a proposal.
Graf said she would prefer that the city re-examine its spending before
suggesting a head tax, but said one head tax implementation might spark
her interest.
"I would rather see money raised from businesses be used for something
that actually benefits businesses," said Graf. "Perhaps a head tax
could be instituted for business assistance tools, a business incubator
or a small business support center."
Corson said PBC and other head tax supporters want to discuss a number
of issues, including impacts on local businesses, how a tax could apply
to people with more than one job and who might be exempt.
"I think anything would be on the table for discussion," said Corson.
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"We Are Stewards
of Precious Lands, Population boom means no one group gets it all."
Daily Camera
Dec. 12, 2004
By Pat Shanks, Chair of PLAN-Boulder County
Board |
Commentary on the City of
Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks Visitor Master Plan |
"The Town that Said No to Sprawl — Lessons from Boulder, Colorado"
Planning Magazine
April 1990
By Sylvia Lewis |
Much of the credit for keeping the city relatively compact must go to long-time residents whose
stick-to-it attitude has put planning issues at the forefront of community debate for 30 years.
Many of them are members of a group called PLAN-Boulder County. . . Al Bartlett, whose blue line
concept made Boulder a planning pioneer in the 1950s, says the key ingredient for success is
consistency. He's especially proud of PLAN-Boulder's ability to influence government decisions-through
white papers, public testimony, candidate endorsements, and referendums galore. |
"Business, enviros try to mend fences"
The Daily Camera
June 17, 2004 |
Business leaders and environmentalists sat down Wednesday night to
try and figure out how they can get along better. It's possible,
members from both sides agreed — but only if the two sides start
talking face-to-face, rather than battling stereotypes of each other. .
. . The activist group Plan-Boulder County convened the unusual meeting
at the Boulder Chamber of Commerce building in an effort to heal what's
commonly perceived as a deep rift between environmentalists and
business owners on many issues. About 50 people attended the meeting. .
. . By the end of the evening, the four agreed in principle to meet
again and follow a suggestion offered by Boulder Mayor Will Toor, who
was sitting in the audience. Toor suggested brainstorming and finding a
few small, concrete projects to work on together.
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"Lots of people want Valmont"
The Daily Camera
May 29, 2004 |
On Friday, PLAN-Boulder County invited people from several agencies who have — or want — a piece
of Valmont Butte, near the intersection of Valmont Road and 63rd Street, to talk about the
property. |
"Voting concerns remain"
The Daily Camera
April 24, 2004 |
Two of Boulder County's top election officials told a curious and
sometimes hostile crowd Friday afternoon that they're slowly making
some of the changes activists want to see in policy on voting machines
— but decision-making power resides over their heads.
Linda Salas, the county's clerk and recorder, and Tom Halicki, the
county's election manager, told members attending a Plan-Boulder County
luncheon at the Boulder Public Library that they've been lobbying
Secretary of State Donetta Davidson to approve procedures designed to
improve vote-count accuracy. |
"A vote of confidence —
It wasn't a year for dramatic change after all"
The Daily Camera
Nov. 5, 2003 |
The 2003 election season in Boulder County was full of sound and fury.
But in the end, it signified little, as voters freely taxed themselves
and issued a firm endorsement of the status quo. . . . No surprise,
then, that voters also elected a "status quo" council: Mark Ruzzin (the
lone incumbent), Crystal Gray, Robin Bohannan, Jack Stoakes, Andy
Schultheiss, and Shaun McGrath. Every candidate endorsed by political
powerhouse PLAN-Boulder County was victorious in this election, and of
the six only Stoakes can be considered a "business" candidate.
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