Nicole Speer

Nicole Speer, Director of Operations at the University of Colorado’s Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium, is making her first run for public elected office in the 2021 race for Boulder City Council.

“One of the values that’s really important to me is service, and when I was looking around to see how I could be of greater service to my community, particularly coming out of the COVID pandemic, city council was something that popped up on my radar. Looking around at the different crises that we’re facing – existing in a climate emergency, existing in a housing crisis, existing in a space where many in our community don’t feel welcome, and we have a lot of younger people leaving our community, city council was the place that came up for me as one, where my skills could be of service and help us make some progress on some of these crises,” said Speer about some of her reasons for jumping into the Council race.

SHORT LIFE STORY

Speer was born in Portland, Oregon, but her parents soon moved to Gladstone, which she described as a “working-class suburb” of Portland in unincorporated Clackamas County, and she graduated from Rex Putnam High School. Saying she wanted to go to college “somewhere sunnier,” she enrolled at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, a predominantly math, science, and engineering school. After about a year, she found she was interested in trying to understand people, and transferred to the nearby Scripps College where she earned a degree in psychology.

After earning her undergraduate degree, she attended grad school at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she earned a PhD in psychology. She met her husband while at Washington, and the couple moved to Boulder for post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Colorado-Boulder in 2005. While raising a family in Boulder, she said she realized that it’s difficult to balance raising kids with an academic career, and left her “tenure-track focus” to work for a nonprofit that did higher education policy research, with a focus on mental health education policy. She worked on a national study on the topic of mental health services intervention, to see if it could get college students in need of mental health services to seek services before symptoms got “chronic and incapacitating.”

Next, she landed a position back at CU, but this time at the Anschutz campus in Aurora, then took a job studying human adaptation to new energy technology with the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute.

Today, she is the Director of Operations at CU’s Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium, a brain imaging research facility. According to Speer, this facility is beneficial to more than CU because it’s home to a shared MRI scanner, which may be too expensive for any one institution to own and operate. She said this scanner is similar to machines used in hospitals, but has unique software and associated equipment to capture images of peoples’ brains while they’re engaged in different types of cognitive or sensory experiences. Currently, she said the facility was researching adolescent brain development, including how factors such as nutrition or exercise could influence development.

While living in Boulder, she has also served as a trustee with Bixby School, and participated with the First Congregational United Church of Christ, NAACP Boulder County Branch, and United Campus Workers Colorado.

ON THE ISSUES

Housing: Speer said she looks at housing from long-term and short-term perspectives. This interview took place in early September, shortly after the worst impacts of hurricanes hitting Louisiana and New York, and Speer noted that Boulder might actually become a place where people relocate if climate change makes coastal areas uninhabitable. Her longer-term goals include working toward making Boulder able to “sustain as many people as we can, given the resources that we have available.” For the nearer-term, she suggested strategies to increase housing stock like relaxing current restrictions on Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU), relaxing certain zoning regulations, building infill development that’s compatible with neighborhood character, and passing the Bedrooms Are For People ballot measure.

She does not support eliminating single-family zoning across Boulder, but said she would consider alternatives in certain areas without making a “blanket change.” Like many candidates, she said converting underutilized malls and/or parking lots into “15-minute neighborhoods” or parts of fuller-service neighborhoods could help the city gain a more diverse housing mix that could be attainable for middle-income earners. Unlike most other candidates, she spoke about the possibility of the City of Boulder purchasing more land specifically for public housing, comparing the potential of this idea to the city’s decades of purchasing Open Space – but emphasizing that she does not support building housing on what is currently Open Space.

Development proposals in Boulder can get contentious, and Speer said it’s important for city officials to listen when opponents or skeptics are expressing frustration, but it’s also important for city officials to explain why a project is in the broader best interests of the city. She also said she’d like to see more public engagement before an issue reaches the Council level, for example during board and commission processes or when city staff is soliciting public input. She currently lives near the CU-South property (south of Table Mesa Drive and west of CU-South), and said she and her neighbors took part in visioning conversations and staff presentations, beginning several years ago. According to Speer, this involvement did help lead to results in the CU-South process, including plans for a buffer zone between existing neighborhoods and new development, and traffic mitigation provisions.

CU-South: During an early September interview, Speer said she supported the CU-South annexation proposal as it stood, with an exception of perhaps reducing the “trip cap,” noting that it might take a number of years for residential development to be completed, and people living in the area might become less car-dependent by then. As a person who lives near the property, she has used the land for hiking and walking her dogs, and said “it’s sad to think about losing this land” to the envisioned development. Still, she believes the benefits of flood mitigation, new housing, and affordable housing outweigh the loss of the currently undeveloped land, and added that the annexation plan calls for more than 100 acres to formally become Open Space.

She believes 100-year flood mitigation is the “absolute best we can do” at this time, saying proposals to mitigate to 500-year standards potentially took up “too much land,” could have been cost-prohibitive, and said the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) was “not on board.” She acknowledged that climate change could mean future storm events affecting the South Boulder Creek floodplain might be greater than 100-year events, but said the 100-year mitigation protections could still buy time for people to react in case of an emergency.

Speer does not support the “Let the Voters Decide on Annexation of CU-South” citizen initiative, saying so many people had already invested significant amounts of time in a complicated project that she didn’t believe the initiative would be helpful toward better solutions. Also, at the time it looked as if Council would approve the annexation agreement before the election, and Speer said it was unclear what passing the initiative after Council passed the annexation agreement would mean legally, or if the issue would need to go to court.

During the recent Council annexation agreement process, Council members Bob Yates and Junie Joseph had to recuse themselves due to prior work with CU. Speer said as she understood at the time she, as a CU employee, would also have to recuse herself from certain formal processes involving CU if she was elected to Council, although she was planning to discuss the matter with city legal authorities. She also said she was not a member of South Boulder Creek Action Group, though she talks with members and considers them friends.

Governance: According to Speer, having a “teenager and a tween” has given her skills in dealing with people who have very strong feelings. She said when things get contentious, it’s important to acknowledge peoples’ emotions, especially when it’s obvious that something feels very wrong to them, and to accept not only that people aren’t always going to agree, but also that people can learn as a result of disagreement. She said she doesn’t believe it’s good to put people into categories, and said she tends to avoid using language along the lines of defining someone as a NIMBY or YIMBY. Still, she said strong opinions are normal, until it reaches the point where there are threats to the safety of officials, which has certainly happened nationally though Speer didn’t believe she had seen or heard of threats in Boulder.

Speer said there are many opportunities for interested citizens to get information about city issues, including formal City communications, traditional media, social media, podcasts, and other sources. However, she said there could be improvements in outreach or collaboration with different segments of the community. For example, there are language barriers. Speer’s mother is an immigrant from Luxembourg, and she said it was very important for her to read something in her native language. As of mid-September, Speer’s website was the only Council candidate site to include information in Spanish as well as English. She added that while some CU students are still growing up, others are “brilliant,” and it could be beneficial for the city to build partnerships with departments such as the CU College of Media, Communication and Information, or to reach out to any group of people in Boulder who are not typically engaged.

Homelessness: Speer did not agree with the Council’s 2021 decision to adopt a $2.7 million package to address issues related to homelessness, partially because she believes an approach leaning on policing to clearing encampments didn’t solve the problem in the past, and investing more into a policing approach now was no more likely to work optimally. She is also concerned about the legality of enforcing the city’s ban on camping in public spaces, before there are enough optional places for people experiencing homelessness to sleep. Instead, Speer believes there are other city departments that could be more appropriate than the police to provide longer-term solutions, and she would be open to spending City money on what she called “the right solutions.”

Speer cited a recent study from the Urban Institute regarding a supportive housing alternative in Denver, which compared two groups of chronically homeless people – one assigned to a supportive housing program including support services – and found that this group wound up having lower numbers of interactions with law enforcement and lower arrest rates. Also, it found that public costs were not significantly higher for the group in supportive housing, since people who don’t have access to services might face conditions such as incarceration and visits to the ER, which can be costly, and these expenses could be limited by getting people services earlier.

She said Boulder could use more supportive housing services, along with a day services facility, and more ways to ensure that people in need of various services don’t need to travel to multiple parts of the city. She mentioned a local organization called “Feet Forward,” run by a formerly unhoused person named Jen Livovich, that helps coordinate services and access to services on a regularly scheduled day and in a consistent place, and Speer said service providers are starting to show up on those days because there’s a better chance of finding their clients there.

Public Safety: Speer acknowledged that there are concerns with public safety in Boulder, and that the Boulder Police Department is currently understaffed. She mentioned that she and her husband have had three bikes stolen during their time in Boulder, though not recently, and she’s aware of an uptick in auto catalytic converter theft. She said some crime in Boulder might be prevented through personal protective measures, like high-quality bike locks and locking car doors.

She went back to her positions on favoring a more service-heavy approach to issues associated with homelessness, saying not having the police as the primary responder to some of these calls could free up time to focus on property crime. Also, she said the police also receive a lot of nuisance complaints for behavior on University Hill, but they’re often in regards to a minority of homes, so again the police might free up time for other pursuits by focusing on the homes most responsible for trouble.

Transportation: According to Speer, adding housing stock could help minimize traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, and limit transportation impacts on local air quality, especially if more people could live nearer to work or school. She believes the city needs more and better transit in town, along with “first/last mile” options so people can take transit to central locations and conveniently reach their destinations after getting off the bus. She said she can bike to work in only a few minutes more time than driving, but taking the bus is vastly slower and she doesn’t have the spare time as a working mom to justify using transit for this purpose. Like most candidates, she said Boulder could use better north-south bike routes, electric bike use, and protected bike lanes. She also favors more employers providing shuttles within town, which might encourage employees to use transit most of the way to work and take the shuttle the rest of the way.

Bedrooms Are For People: Speer supports the Bedrooms Are For People initiative, saying increasing occupancy limits is one way for the city to “get a little bit closer” to managing its housing crisis. She said she was aware that opponents and skeptics say there could be unintended consequences should the measure pass, but said there are normally unintended consequences with many decisions, and does not believe people should let the “perfect be the enemy of the good.” The initiative if passed would go into city code, not the City Charter, and Speer said Councils of the future could address potential consequences “as they come.”

CONNECTIONS

Endorsements: Speer has received endorsements from the Unofficial Candidate Committees (UCC) The Coalition, Better Boulder, Boulder Progressives, South Boulder Creek Action Group, Boulder Is For People, Sierra Club Indian Peaks Group, and United Campus Workers Colorado. She has also received endorsements from Open Boulder, Communications Workers of America CO/WY, Colorado Working Families Party, and the Boulder Weekly.

Contributions: Speer has received maximum $100 individual contributions from former Council member Jan Burton; current Council members Aaron Brockett, Rachel Friend (also Junie Joseph for $50); and current Council candidates Dan Williams, Lauren Folkerts, and Matt Benjamin. As of her last filing with the City, she had contributed $100 toward her campaign that had not been reimbursed.

Digital Presence:
Website: https://www.nicoleforboulder.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NicoleforBoulder
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nicolekspeer