Jacques Decalo
Jacques Decalo, a Tesla Advisor, the youngest candidate in the 2021 Boulder City Council race, and the only Boulder native out of 10 candidates, is making his first run for public elected office this year.
“I grew up here, and I left when I was 18 to go to school in Washington. When I came back at the end of 2019, I had learned a lot about sustainability and climate justice, and pushing for new ways of environmental stewardship, and so I think Boulder has a lot of opportunity to push on this forefront. I think we just need a little more encouragement, and we need a little more dedication to it at the City Council level. Climate change is a topic that a lot of people talk about but not a lot of people have active solutions that are ready for the now, and ready to be implemented tomorrow. I think I have the solutions that can make Boulder one of the most sustainable cities in the world,” said Decalo on some of his reasons for deciding to run.
SHORT LIFE STORY
Decalo was born in north Boulder, and stayed in Boulder until leaving for college. He went to Mesa Elementary School, Southern Hills Middle School, and Fairview High School before transferring to Catalyst High School, which he described as an “alternative school.” He gave Catalyst and his guidance counselor credit for guiding him on a creative educational path, and said the experience might have been the reason he attended a four-year college right after graduating.
He enrolled at Western Washington University to study in its Huxley College of the Environment, which he called one of the best environmental schools at a public university in the nation. He took a gap year after starting college, and attended the Leadville-based High Mountain Institute to better understand environmental stewardship and protection. This led to work in the Utah desert with the Access Fund – an organization dedicated to keeping climbing routes open – and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). He had an opportunity to visit Chile and Argentina, also spending time in the newly dedicated Parque Patagonia, established as a national park thanks in part to funding from North Face co-founder Doug Tompkins and his wife Kristine through the nonprofit Tompkins Conservation. On a practical note, during this gap year Decalo also learned how to rock climb, gained camping survival skills, and worked on trail maintenance projects.
He returned to college, but finished his degree with the Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington instead of Huxley. He said he had realized that hemp was key to the sustainable consumer economy, and took up a concentration in Hemp Policy and Sustainability, studying issues including hemp’s link to drug laws even though it’s by definition incredibly low THC, and how hemp tied into environmental and sustainable agriculture. After graduating in 2019, he said he tried to operate several CBD business but found “the market was saturated.” He came back to Boulder, and has been helping take care of his father since returning.
Today, Decalo is a Tesla Advisor, which he described as a job where he helps Tesla auto customers find the correct configurations for their vehicle, and assists them with solar operations. He said he tells customers it’s important to remember that electric vehicle owners are still using high percentages of fossil fuels for the electricity to charge their vehicles if they’re not using solar.
And as the Council candidate who’s actually lived in Boulder the second-longest, he’s got some memories of how Boulder used to be. He said upon returning to Boulder after college he observed that it’s becoming a little boring or mundane – changing from a town that used to have a “weird, grungy edge” to a city that has more of a “Silicon Valley vibe.” He saw new development in town like the Diagonal Crossing project, which was built on basically undeveloped land along the Diagonal Highway, that made him at least do double-takes. He also wondered why the city would enter into a franchise agreement with what he called a “monopoly energy company” in Xcel Energy, and said he was underwhelmed by Boulder’s overall commitment to sustainability. Still, he hopes to build on sustainability as a member of City Council through strategies including using greywater to avoid wasting water, and finding ways to limit the use of plastics.
ON THE ISSUES
Housing: Decalo said he believes Boulder needs more housing to accommodate for the demand, but does not think building more will guarantee lower housing costs. He said new housing should be constructed using sustainable building techniques to truly make housing a part of the city’s environmental efforts. He does not favor eliminating single-family zoning, but said he could support limiting such zoning to allow for duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes, which he said might enable more families to live in Boulder.
He supports looking toward increasing opportunities for land trust home ownership models, including arrangements where the City of Boulder owns land but individuals own the home. In this way, the city might be able to control home rent or purchase prices. He also believes the cooperative housing model could allow more people to live within certain houses, sharing space but giving more people an opportunity to live in town. He is interested in regulations that might prevent large corporations from buying properties in Boulder, or might only allow for local real estate companies to sell properties in town, but during an early September interview he noted that he was impressed after recently reading a story on the general topic, and he did not have specifics as to how this could work.
Decalo believes public input is important should there be contentious new housing development proposals, especially since people living in districts near the developments might wind up experiencing new traffic impacts or even feel like they’re being forced into living in higher density. He added that he thinks it could be more appropriate if this input comes from people who actually live in the area up for new development.
CU-South: During an early September interview, Decalo said he was “torn” by the proposed CU-South annexation agreement, saying he thought there were both positive and negative aspects. He said he didn’t believe the plans for 100-year flood mitigation were sufficient, given that climate change might contribute to more extreme storm events into the future. He added that nobody knows if the next serious storm feeding the South Boulder Creek floodplain would happen in the autumn like when the 2013 floods raged, or during the spring snowmelt time frame when drainage and detention systems are already full – potentially meaning a storm event similar to September 2013 but in the spring might be even more dangerous.
The annexation plan also anticipates 129 acres of new development on what is now a greenfield. Decalo said this development would remove a significant amount of carbon sequestration potential from the property, while the project could also threaten certain endangered species that live in the area.
On the positive side, he said the city and CU both need housing, so adding potentially 1,100 new housing units would help, but he mentioned that a city land swap with CU for land in the Planning Reserve in unincorporated north Boulder could eventually allow for the housing without some of the impacts of CU-South development. Also, he believes the CU-South property could still be a good location for open-field recreation, to help meet CU’s recreational needs but with facilities that would absorb some of the water during extreme storm events.
In early September, he believed the negotiating parties should have taken a step back, to more fully investigate potential environmental consequences, along with light, noise, and traffic impacts that could affect people living near the project. Overall, he said the agreement might be good for CU, but he didn’t believe the proposal on the table was an agreeable solution for all parties across Boulder.
City Crypto: Decalo is clearly the only candidate in the 2021 race touting the idea of Boulder getting involved in city cryptocurrency. He said he started learning about the concept in 2017 while in college, through a company called Power Ledger that in part determines rates of electricity and calculates value on an electricity exchange. According to Decalo, Power Ledger introduced a cryptocurrency based on the electricity exchange in Australia.
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency team behind CityCoins has launched a system under which cities could earn revenue via blockchain technology. The City of Miami, Florida, has already established Miami Coin, and the CityCoins website says San Francisco could be next. Decalo hopes Boulder could be among the early adopters.
He said he envisions that people in Boulder with solar panels could mine cryptocurrency for the city and for themselves, and some of the city revenue could go toward solar infrastructure incentives. This type of cryptocurrency would actually have value backing it, in this case the value of the electricity, and the city would not have to build the blockchain infrastructure because CityCoins has already done so. Decalo said crypto fluctuates so the system would not be without risk, but it should generate what he called “passive income” for both the homeowners and the city.
Governance: Decalo said he understands that he would face opposition if he wins a seat on Council, and said one of the most important ways to meet objections would be to be ready with factual evidence of how an idea could work – or how it has worked in other places. For example, he said Australia has been using greywater to save water for years, and there’s even a greywater system right here in Boulder at CU’s Williams Village North. He again mentioned cryptocurrency, saying people might be hesitant to embrace it because it’s new and unfamiliar, but it’s also important to encourage people to consider new ways of life in the interest of societal progress.
He said technology that can be used to disseminate information has “never been easier to acquire,” and believes Boulder could use new systems to keep residents informed about issues such as air quality levels, carbon sequestration, or carbon offsets. In this way, he believes people can better understand how sustainable living can benefit the environment and possibly help save money on utility bills. In his words, “We just have to show them that the long-term goal is much better than the short-term goal, and I think that’s a fundamental flaw with capitalistic America, that we’re short-term mindset all the time.”
Homelessness: During this early September interview, Decalo had mixed feelings on city policies regarding people experiencing homelessness. He said Boulder provides some very good services and facilities, including the Homeless Outreach team, the Bridge House, and of course the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless. At the same time, he said Boulder bears much of the brunt of homelessness in part because it spends a lot of money on services compared to other communities. He could, however, support moderate amounts of increased spending on services in Boulder, such as support systems and increased availability of personal needs like restrooms and showers, if money can’t be reallocated from other sources.
Beyond the issue of spending, he said it’s important to address a basic issue of humanity – that some people experiencing homelessness come to believe they’ve been “tossed aside by society” and their issues can’t be resolved. He used an example of creating an industrial greenhouse with an aquaponics system as one way to possibly build dignity, since people would be able to grow and cook their own food, which might even provide useful job skills.
Public Safety: Decalo said he hears first-hand about public safety concerns in Boulder, since some of his girlfriend’s friends report not being comfortable being out in Boulder at night. He said it will be important to replace the Boulder Police Department officers that have been lost over the past year, and also for authorities to understand why people might be acting out and address root causes of problems. He mentioned the STAR program in Denver, in which responses to service calls might include therapists or first responders as opposed to a police-only course of action, and said this could be an example of how to address root causes.
Transportation: Not surprisingly as a Tesla employee, Decalo is a supporter of autonomous transportation. It’s not ready for full-scale use, but he said currently vehicles can exit lanes, merge onto lanes, stop at a red light, recognize pedestrians, and make a right on red. He mentioned that the nearby City of Golden and the Colorado School of Mines has launched a program including an autonomous eight-person shuttle vehicle, and suggested Boulder might be able to use such a system on certain corridors. He also mentioned the possibility of a future “hyperloop” project in which people would be carried at very high speeds, using magnetic levitation technology and pressurized tubes. While the hyperloop is a project associated with Tesla’s Elon Musk and Virgin’s Richard Branson, certainly not a Boulder project per se, Decalo said there might eventually be future “mini-hyperloops” with connections from regional lines to Longmont or Boulder.
Bedrooms Are For People: In early September, Decalo said he agreed with the statement saying “Bedrooms Are For People,” but had mixed feelings about the initiative itself. For example, he had concerns that the BAFP ballot measure, if passed, could incentivize large corporations to buy existing homes and turn them into rental units with lots of bedrooms.
CONNECTIONS
Endorsements: Decalo has received endorsements from the Boulder Daily Camera and PLAN-Boulder County.
Contributions: Decalo has received a maximum $100 individual contribution from former Council member Crystal Gray, while Lisa Morzel has contributed $50. DeCalo has also contributed $100 toward his own campaign.
Digital Presence:
Website: https://jacquesdecalo2021.squarespace.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacques4citycouncil/
