Terri Brncic
Terri Brncic is running for Boulder City Council in 2023. If she wins a seat, she will earn a three-year term on Council that expires in 2026, but she could run for re-election in 2026 if she so chooses.
Q – Why are you running?
Like a number of candidates throughout history, Brncic decided to run for Council after realizing a need for action on an issue that affected her personally. She is the mother of two students attending Boulder High School (BHS), and her youngest experienced a propane tank explosion at an encampment of unhoused people near the school, plus she had become increasingly concerned about the safety situation in general around BHS.
“That was a moment for me where I just couldn’t sit by any longer,” said Brncic.
She started on her path by organizing with other concerned parents to launch a citizen initiative that eventually became the Safe Zones 4 Kids measure (Question 302), which will be on the ballot in 2023. During the process of putting 302 together, she also said she met with a number of local elected officials at both the city and school board levels, and felt that some of them seemed “somewhat paralyzed by ideological arguments, not really looking for effective and meaningful solutions to the problems we have.”
So, she started attending Council meetings – speaking at some of them – plus signed up for city newsletters and started following the Council’s “Hotline” to read email conversations between Council and city staff. Beyond her public safety concerns, she has a professional background in finance and accounting, and believes she can bring “pragmatic and data-driven” leadership to Boulder City Council.
Mini-Life Story
Brncic was born and raised in the southern California city of Agoura Hills, and moved north to attend college at the University of California – Berkeley. After graduating from Berkeley she moved to San Francisco, earned a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) degree, and worked in executive finance positions for Bay Area startup companies.
Brncic and her family lived in San Francisco for about 20 years, but realized at some point that they just couldn’t raise their kids the way they wanted to in the city, partially because they didn’t have a neighborhood school and they had to “commute half-way across the city” to get their kids to school. They moved to Boulder about nine years ago, and today Brncic owns a consulting firm that offers fractional CFO services to start-ups (CFO = Chief Financial Officer). Since coming to Boulder Brncic also became involved in health and safety initiatives at Whittier Elementary and Casey Middle School.
Her campaign website is https://www.terri4boulder.com/
Q – How would your finance background translate into work on Council?
According to Brncic, having attention to financial detail will help guide budgetary decisions in the “zero-sum game” of funding departments and programs in times of finite revenue – “and when you decide to fund one initiative you have to take from somewhere else.” She also said it’s important to re-evaluate programs and services that have been funded to make sure they’re achieving the objectives originally identified, and if they aren’t achieving the right objectives it might be time to change course and shift resources to where they’ll be more effective.
Housing, Affordable and Otherwise
Brncic favors certain measures to increase the availability of affordable housing in Boulder, but does not believe straight market solutions like building more or relying on density will equal affordability “without explicit policy measures.” She said Boulder has an “inelastic market” in which there will still be unmet demand for housing even with increased supply, and said the city might want to take a step back to consider whether people who want to live here actually want the type of housing units that are predominately currently being built.
“I’m not opposed to the infill that’s happening, but it looks like we’re building a lot of high-priced apartments and town houses, and I have yet to see any data to suggest that it’s chipping away at the affordable housing needs we have…I think it’s irresponsible for us to be chewing up our last remaining developable land here without any target in mind as to who we’re building for,” said Brncic.
Back to affordability, she said rezoning single family neighborhoods to allow duplexes and triplexes won’t bring affordability without requirements, “otherwise we’re just building three $1.5 million townhouses which is not solving any of our problems.” She said the city missed an opportunity when it recently increased housing occupancy limits but didn’t include affordability options like it did with its Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) update.
However, she did speak positively about the city’s linkage fee and cash-in-lieu programs to directly fund affordable housing, and supports looking at large parcels of land including the Boulder Municipal Airport and the Area III Planning Reserve near 28th and Jay as possible future sites for large-scale affordable housing projects that might “move the needle” toward housing supply the city needs. She said she would need to learn a lot more about the financial aspects of repurposing the Airport, and knows the Airport is a current home to important emergency services, so she’s looking forward to a deeper analysis so the community can understand the pros and cons.
Brncic said she was “definitely opposed” to the state’s Senate Bill 23-213, a massive bill designed to set state housing-related land use standards that might override local standards. She said Boulder actually has been a leader in Colorado housing issues, and noted that the city’s percentage of permanently affordable units is higher than many municipalities. She believes 213 was too full of mandates and “prescriptive language,” but would have appreciated the state providing guidance and support to municipalities on housing instead – and noted that Boulder already has some “really smart people in our housing realm” who could provide some of that guidance.
Crime and Policing
When it comes to crime, there are statistics and there is perception, and Brncic says she has spoken with many Boulder residents who share a public perception that they don’t feel completely safe using Boulder’s public spaces. She said she’s heard from people who have experienced or witnessed open drug use, harassment, and property crime such as bike theft or catalytic converter theft, plus Brncic herself says she has had bikes stolen.
For next steps on how the city might better address crime moving forward, Brncic in part believes there need to be changes in the court system regarding how offenders are handled. For example, she said certain offenders can be set free with personal recognizance (PR) bonds or very low cash bail, while repeat offenders might just keep offending or not showing up for court dates if they’re facing only minimal consequences. There will be more about homelessness in a later section, but she added that it will be vitally important to establish a safe indoor shelter for the unhoused, partially because the unhoused are significantly more likely to be crime victims themselves compared to people with housing.
Brncic said she is “100% in support” of having a city Police Oversight Panel (POP), which was established shortly after a troubling event in which a young Black man who was picking up trash in front of his home was surrounded by a large number of armed police officers. Beyond Boulder, she said providing community monitoring and input to law enforcement is important in light of the George Floyd murder at the hands of police and the Black Lives Matter movement. However, a POP member was removed from the panel after an outside counsel determined the member may have demonstrated “bias,” and Brncic said the notion that the POP couldn’t have been effective without having members who hold police abolitionist positions is “flawed.” Still, she said the POP can make a big and positive impact, “as long as they aren’t seen as openly and nakedly partisan.”
Climate Action
Since electricity is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions in Boulder, Brncic said it will be important to continue pushing Xcel Energy to meet clean energy percentage target. The city might have some leverage on this front because its franchise agreement with Xcel includes “off-ramps” under which the city could get out of the agreement if Xcel doesn’t meet certain provisions. She also supports Xcel action to “underground” power lines as part of a strategy to minimize wildfire risks.
Transportation is another significant source of emission, and she would like to see the city revisit a survey of people who commute into Boulder for work or school to better know how to enhance or design the area transit system in a way that would best accommodate in-commuters. Also, she supports the e-bike rebate program because e-biking is “a pretty great shorter-distance commuting tool,” but believes the city needs to keep an eye on safety and co-usage of local bike paths to help make sure all the different users can co-exist with minimal user conflict.
Homelessness
Like a number of candidates, Brncic said it’s important not to talk about the unhoused population as if they’re monolithic, because there are different characteristics and different needs among people experiencing homelessness. She said she believes Boulder does “an exceptional job” for people who will stay in shelters and take advantage of local services, which is partially because the city spends several times the amount of money on services as other cities in Boulder County.
On the other hand, she said Boulder is not doing as well in dealing with the unsheltered population, partially due to what she called a “meth and fentanyl crisis” that is manifesting in the unsheltered population. She said the idea of “insisting that housing alone is going to solve the problem” is an inaccurate approach, and wants to see the city move toward making sure people suffering from substance abuse/addiction and/or mental health issues get the support they need, along with options for “sober supportive housing” or transitional housing post-treatment.
According to Brncic, an approach of putting people in permanent supportive housing before they’re sober or have been through recovery would not be the most cost-effective use of limited housing resources. She would be in support of using more city resources on behavioral health programs and facilities, but said the City of Boulder “can’t do this alone” and needs assistance from the county, state, and federal governments. She added that Larimer County is close to opening a new behavioral health facility that will add 64 beds for long-term treatment, and was disappointed that Boulder County didn’t decide to extend its alternative sentencing facility sales tax for a similar behavioral health facility. (Note – revenue from this year’s Boulder County Issue 1B would go toward affordable housing and potentially supportive housing.)
“I’d be in favor of spending more on behavioral health type services, and I think this is the area we’re most lacking. Even getting a full-fledged medical detox facility would be a big win. I would not be in favor of spending more on, say, building a sanctioned campground. That to me is prolonging homelessness, not getting us any closer to the solution of treatment or housing. So to me, any spending that isn’t focused on those kind of ultimate outcomes is not in my mind money well spent,” said Brncic.
Local Political Polarization
Brncic said she believes there definitely is a problem with political polarization in Boulder, but said there are similar types of polarization happening across the nation due to narratives “around anti-police sentiment,” adding that a lot of the polarization around homelessness and its impacts on public spaces is “about the involvement of law enforcement.” Like many candidates in 2023, she said the current group of candidates get along well and appreciate that they’re in the race for the right reasons, but also believes there’s a segment of the community that is “really aggressive in not really giving people grace and appreciating that we’re trying to do the right thing.”
Safe Zones (Question 302)
As one of the parents who helped work on what eventually became Question 302, Brncic is very obviously a supporter of the measure. She noted that she thought 302 was necessary, as opposed to relying on non-codified city prioritization, because parents were reporting encampments and propane tanks near schools to the city and school district in the spring of 2023, but she believes it took actual propane tank explosions to get authorities to take stronger action.
Sales Tax Extension with 50% of Revenue for Arts (Issue 2A)
Brncic supports Issue 2A, but said she is glad parties reached the compromise of devoting 50% of the revenue to arts and culture instead of 100%, because the city has numerous other spending priorities. She said she fully agrees that the city should support the arts to a greater extent compared to its current level of support.
