Mark Wallach

Mark Wallach, the only incumbent running for re-election to Boulder City Council in 2021, is hoping to earn another term despite a very difficult two years that has included a pandemic, a mass shooting, a contentious CU-South annexation discussion, and heated discussions around homelessness and housing.

“There’s going to be extraordinary turnover this year. I thought I could contribute to a little more continuity on council, with so many incoming rookies and so many departing veterans. And the last two years have been, frankly, brutal for this Council. It’s been a very difficult and hard-won education, and I wanted to apply some of that perhaps to a better time, an easier time, to be able to have my voice heard on a number of issues,” said Wallach on his reasons for running again in 2021.

SHORT LIFE STORY

Wallach was born in the Bronx and raised on Long Island, both in New York. He said in 2019 that he wasn’t shaped as much by his physical surroundings as he was by the events and controversies going on during his younger years, including opposition to the Vietnam War, and the civil rights struggle. He didn’t particularly like living on Long Island, so after leaving for school he never went back. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, and a law degree from Columbia University.

Wallach worked as a real estate attorney in New York City, with clients including private developers of low-income housing and corporations working on public/private projects. He then moved into real estate development, often working in landmark districts, and said he and his partner enjoyed working on historic buildings while other developers might not have liked it as much due to the tight regulatory systems.

As a climber, Wallach visited Boulder frequently over the course of roughly 40 years, and he and his wife eventually decided to make it official. He purchased a Boulder home in 2011, although it took until 2014 for the couple to finally settle in. Before being elected in 2019, Wallach served on the city’s Advisory Committee to the City Council on Development-Related Impact Fees, which included discussion of development linkage fees to help fund affordable housing programs. He earned a two-year term on Council in 2019 by finishing sixth in a race for six open seats.

Among the many things a Council member must tackle, Wallach served during his first term on the Council’s Financial Strategies Subcommittee and worked on what eventually became the Community Resilience, Safety and Culture (CCRS) tax extension that will appear on the 2021 ballot. The CCRS proposal would help fund, among other things, city infrastructure needs for the next 15 years. He said that the city has a maintenance backlog of about $300 million, and his life experience tells him that neglecting maintenance leads to problems over time. The CCRS tax would help fund needs like road maintenance, a new fire station, energy efficiency projects for inefficient city buildings, and more. Plus, the revenue from CCRS would enable the city to bond and get things started before increasing construction costs make projects more expensive into the future. Wallach made it clear that people don’t often regard infrastructure as a “sexy” issue, but said he is proud of his work on this project, and believes CCRS will make a serious dent in Boulder’s maintenance backlog.

ON THE ISSUES

Housing: In 2019, Wallach emphasized his experience in housing and real estate as a positive attribute he would bring to Council, and he has also since served for a year on the Boulder Housing Partners Board of Commissioners. During his first campaign, he referred to Boulder as an appropriate place for a “small, sophisticated city,” and in 2021 he still agrees with that statement while emphasizing that he is not a no-growther, noting that Boulder’s population has grown about 11 percent since the last U.S. Census. He acknowledges that Boulder has a serious problem with lack of affordable housing, but said he will still fully consider the full range of attributes of any project before voting for or against.

The City of Boulder has a stated goal of 15 percent affordable housing units by 2035, but Wallach believes that the city can’t supply the thousands of units needed to reach this goal at its current rate, even with a number of current large-for-Boulder projects ongoing or in the hopper. However, he believes redeveloping the Boulder Municipal Airport could actually move the needle on affordability. According to Wallach, the 179-acre site could “easily” accommodate 3,000 to 4,500 units, and since the City owns the land it would be better able to set the terms of affordability percentages than a project on privately-owned land. He also suggested that the city’s Area III Planning Reserve land in unincorporated north Boulder could eventually provide an area large enough for significant numbers of affordable units.

Wallach said he believes there is an important role government must play in ensuring affordable housing, since in his opinion the private sector will not solve problems of affordability on its own. He also does not believe history has shown that increasing housing density will ensure affordability, and said new construction may even contribute to negative impacts such as displacement, gentrification, and increased inequities in housing.

Wallach does not support eliminating single-family zoning in Boulder. He acknowledged what he called the “terrible origins” of single-family zoning from last century, but does not believe eliminating it would provide a magic formula for affordability, especially since new developments on expensive residential lots would probably not be affordable for middle-income families unless there were affordability requirements. He said many people would actually prefer to live in single-family homes if they’re attainable, and to assume that large numbers of people will want to move out of single-family homes and into stacked flats is not a realistic assumption.

CU-South: During this interview in late August, Wallach said he was leaning toward voting to approve the CU-South annexation agreement, despite dissatisfaction with the process and concerns with some details or lack of details in the agreement as it stood at the time. He had already voted in favor of the agreement during an August 10 Council first reading, but this was before an extended public hearing was held on September 14 in advance of another possible vote on September 21. One of his primary reasons for support is his belief that flood mitigation is necessary to protect residents who could be in danger during a serious South Boulder Creek flood event. He questioned CU officials during the process why flood mitigation couldn’t be decoupled from annexation, and said he was told candidly that this coupling provided CU with its greatest position of leverage in negotiations. Saying “you have to deal with the world as it is,” Wallach said he came to accept that annexation was a necessary condition to get flood mitigation.

He also said he believes the annexation agreement has improved over time as a result of negotiations, but he was still concerned in late August about the possibility that CU might sell some of the property after development, and wanted to ensure that the project yielded development that would benefit the community and not large corporations. (The agreement has since been amended to include items including new provisions on acceptable uses if parts of the property would be transferred to another owner.) Wallach shared a lengthy post about his views on CU-South annexation in early September via the city’s Hotline service, and re-emphasized his likelihood of voting for the agreement.

A number of Boulder citizens have opined that the project’s proposed mitigation to 100-year flood standards may not be sufficient to protect against more extreme flooding, but Wallach said this current mitigation plan is “A, what we can afford, B, what we can get, and C, it’s better than nothing.”
Wallach does not support the 2021 “Let The Voters Decide on Annexation of CU-South” ballot measure that would prohibit providing city services to CU-South, except for flood mitigation, without a voter-approved annexation agreement that includes a site plan and transportation plan, among other provisions. He believes passing the initiative could threaten the likelihood of a CU-South project moving ahead, but noted that citizens are also likely to file a future referendum that would put the current annexation agreement, if adopted, to a vote of the people.

Governance: Wallach described one of his guiding principles as an elected official by saying, “I do policy – I don’t do ideology.” He says he’s less interested in making sweeping political pronouncements than working on the slow, incremental process needed to find pragmatic solutions and make the community better and more inclusive. He believes Boulder is currently politically polarized, but says that unlike some areas it’s more of a polarization over which people or groups are more progressive than the other. He would like to see improvements in Boulder’s current state of public discourse, in which he believes people are talking past each other, at best, but becoming unfriendly and not always fact-based at worst.

Wallach believes Boulder residents could use additional outlets to get more complete public information, but questions how much time people will really devote to becoming informed in deep detail. He personally puts out statements on the city’s “Hotline” service, his own website, and on Facebook to more fully explain his positions on issues, and has submitted guest opinions to local media. In the end, he believes it’s minutia that makes a policy good or bad, not just how a policy is messaged or judged, and hopes the next Council will operate in a pragmatic and non-ideological manner.

Homelessness: Wallach voted in favor of a $2.7 million package in 2021 to clean up encampments of people experiencing homelessness near local paths and on public lands, support a Downtown Ambassador program to help ensure public safety and help people get set up with services, use unarmed rangers to patrol public lands, and for additional police presence. He has no regrets about the vote, in part because he felt that the city should take action to make sure public lands and pathways remain safe for all. As a resident of New York City in the 1970s, he said the city did not emphasize public safety at the time and the results were “disastrous.”

Moving forward, Wallach said he could support additional spending on homelessness services that don’t involve policing, though he doesn’t believe the City of Boulder can by itself adequately provide certain items, including substance addiction or mental health facilities, that might be needed for longer-term solutions. He would like to see a regional approach where other cities or counties provide increased amounts of resources, so the City doesn’t bear the brunt of providing services and dealing with potential problems, and said discussions on regional solutions are ongoing now.

Public Safety: Wallach noted in late August that the city was down about 30 police officers relative to full staffing. He does not support the slogan “defund the police,” and suggested that Boulder might have already experienced consequences including significant reports of property crime and citizens reporting feeling unsafe in the community, without actually adopting “defund the police” as an intentional practice. He is aware of nationwide reports of abuses in policing which may have given rise to sentiments questioning the role or behavior of law enforcement, but said he believes Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold is committed to police reform and hiring high-quality officers. According to Wallach, Boulder needs a police force that’s able to do its job, and emphasized that public safety has to be the primary objective of any government.

Transportation: Depending on the availability of funding, Wallach would like to see increased amounts of protected bike lanes, electric vehicle charging stations, electric buses, and frequency of transit availability in Boulder. He said subsidies might be necessary to pay for improvements, but if transit services aren’t frequent and convenient, people will more than likely choose to drive personal vehicles for more trips. He also said he is “almost ready” to abandon the idea of RTD’s Northwest Rail service to Longmont, perhaps supporting improving State Highway 119 and providing better regional bus service instead.

Bedrooms Are For People: Wallach opposes the Bedrooms Are For People ballot measure, calling it a “missed opportunity” partially because he believes BAFP was drafted in a way that does not protect against unintended consequences. He believes there is a legitimate conversation to be had around occupancy limits and Boulder’s current laws, but said BAFP as written does not consider a number of factors, including: potentially creating desirability for investors to acquire existing homes for the income potential; difficulty for families to afford renting homes if property owners could make more money renting to students; no protections in the ballot measure for neighborhoods that might be impacted by higher occupancy; and no affordability requirements in the initiative language.

CONNECTIONS

Endorsements: Wallach has received organizational endorsements from Forward Boulder, a declared Unofficial Candidate Committee (UCC). He has also received endorsements from the Boulder Daily Camera, Boulder Weekly, PLAN-Boulder County, Together4Boulder, and South East Boulder Neighborhood Association.

Contributions: Wallach has received maximum individual $100 contributions from former Council members Allyn Feinberg and Steve Pomerance, current Council member Bob Yates, and current Council candidates Michael Christy, Steve Rosenblum, and Tara Winer.

Online Presence:
Website: https://www.wallachforcouncil.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.wallach.1806/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wallach4council/