Tina Marquis
Tina Marquis 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, though she will be able to run for re-election in 2026 if she so chooses.
Q – Why are you running?
Marquis’ path to the Council race is a bit of an extended story. She has lived in Boulder for about 20 years, and her early local experiences including getting involved with her kids’ school as a volunteer. In 2013, she started learning about the City of Boulder’s resiliency work following the historic flood, and then was elected to the Boulder Valley School District Board, where she served two terms. She continued learning about underrepresented schools in the district and “less-resourced communities,” and learned that perhaps half of BVSD employees can’t afford to live in the district, let alone the City of Boulder.
The COVID pandemic hit while she was still on the school board, and she worked collaboratively with many local entities on this serious issue – the city, Boulder County, the business community, and the University of Colorado among them. Armed with what she considers quite a bit of direct knowledge about the community and its issues, she said she “rested after COVID” and decided to run for City Council.
“I’m really committed to this community. I feel like I do good work with an equity lens, I’m highly pragmatic, and I’m deeply concerned about social justice but also affordable housing. I love B the way it is, but I also want it to adapt in a way that’s more inclusive to different groups of people,” said Marquis.
Mini-Life Story
Marquis was raised in the Los Angeles area, living there until she was 18 years old, and then moved across the country to earn an undergraduate degree from Princeton University in New Jersey. She lived in East Coast areas for more than a decade, with the exceptions of earning a MBA from the University of Michigan and living in Santiago, Chile, for more than two years. She met her husband in New York City, and she worked in a marketing department housed in a building next to the World Trade Center.
On September 11, 2001, she recalled that she thought she was seeing confetti outside from a marketing stunt, but it was in fact debris from the Twin Tower buildings that were eventually destroyed in the 9/11 attack. The couple moved to Westchester County, NY, but didn’t like it and started shopping for new places to live, eventually moving to Boulder.
Her two terms on the BVSD school board included time as Treasurer and four years as President. She said she was proud of her work to help get Alicia Sanchez Elementary School in Lafayette back on track to meet its performance metrics, the process to hire BVSD’s current Superintendent Dr. Rob Anderson, working on BVSD’s Title IX anti-discrimination policies, and voting to deny a charter to Ascent Classical Education because they would not “incorporate gender identity or gender expression” in their anti-discrimination policies.
Her Council campaign website is https://www.tinaforboulder.com/
Housing, Affordable and Otherwise
Like some candidates, Marquis said Boulder faces real challenges with affordable housing but it can point to some good accomplishments including that more than 8% of the city’s housing units are permanently affordable. Unlike other candidates, she questions whether the city is planning to increase the right type of housing supply that’s optimal for families.
During this early September interview, she spoke often about how her BVSD experience intersected with City of Boulder issues, plus that she had direct experience working with the County Commissioners and state legislators from Boulder or elsewhere in Colorado. She noted that BVSD had a demographer who looked at a roughly 320-unit attached housing project, and determined only about 10 K-12 students would live in these 320 units. According to Marquis, she then looked at what would appeal to families with children, and found more appealing choices might be manufactured homes, single-family homes, duplexes or triplexes – with “a caveat that there should be a porch or a patch of grass or something like that” where kids could have a comfortable environment outside of the housing unit.
Marquis noted that the city did an “in-commuter survey” in around 2016 to learn more about people commuting to Boulder for work and school, and she’d like to consider if in-commuters largely really want to move into Boulder with the types of housing it has or is planning to supply. She also said certain people might be looking for ownership opportunities as opposed to rentals, in turn mentioning the city’s new middle-income housing down payment assistance program as a potentially promising way to help people own a home in Boulder, and repurposing the Boulder Municipal Airport at some point into the future might provide space for some deed-restricted homeownership opportunities. Plus, she is interested in seeing affordability addressed in new development, which can help support “a more diverse population and a more diverse workforce.”
She had some disappointments with the state Senate Bill 23-213, a massive bill that would have set state housing-related land use standards, possibly overriding local control. She did not believe the bill was adequately “stakeholded,” and as a result most major Colorado cities (except Boulder) opposed the bill as an entire package. However, she noted that Boulder had already worked on some of the components found in 213, including its recent decision to expand housing occupancy limits and its work on density near transit center.
Marquis said if the city is to add density, whether due to state mandates or local action, she would favor making sure developments are actually affordable and actually walkable. Versions of SB213 would have supported upzoning single-family neighborhoods, but Marquis believes it’s possible that this type of development might even increase car trips if homes aren’t in walkable areas or near transit. She also brought up the potential for gentrification in other developments, which could price lower-income residents out of areas where expensive new housing is being built.
She is also interested in exploring a “vacant home tax” on homes that have been vacant for an extended period of time, partially to expand housing availability and partially because the city misses out on some types of revenue, notably sales tax, when the property owner is living elsewhere and nobody else is living in the home.
Crime and Policing
According to Marquis, she’s seen numbers showing significant property crime in Boulder, including bike theft and catalytic converter theft, along with various types of crime occurring near the Boulder Creek along with other areas of the city. She added that there was a drug overdose happening very close to a meeting she was attending just the night before this early September interview, “and I don’t think that’s where we want to be as a city.”
As a former member and President of the BVSD Board, she said she believed it was very important to have a good relationship with the City of Boulder Police Department (BPD), and said it was her expectation that there would be a timely police response in case a BVSD school facing a safety issue. She was also one of the Board members who voted to remove School Resource Officers (SROs) from BVSD schools, but said she made an amendment to the Board resolution to not remove the SROs until there was a clear plan from BVSD on how to maintain student safety in case of an incident(s).
Back to the BPD – she said she had followed its process to create its Reimagine Policing plan, and spoke positively about the department’s efforts to create a policing system that is “more just, that is equitable, that is compassionate.”
Marquis had also followed issues regarding the city’s Police Oversight Panel (POP), and said the POP was initiated with good intentions but occasionally new processes can experience “hiccups” in the early going that need to be adjusted or corrected. At the time of this interview, the city had recently hired an Independent Police Monitor, along with a consultant who was working on recommendations regarding the POP, and Marquis said it will be important moving forward for the city to set clearer expectations about the role of the POP.
Local Political Polarization
Marquis said she believes there is political polarization within the community, but it might be more manageable with proper communications and commitments to civility in discourse. Like many candidates, she noted that “social media doesn’t help,” partially because it can spread incomplete information about complex topics. Also like many candidates, she said this year’s crop of people running for Council get along well and share a high level of values.
She said BVSD had a good idea to do a better job with communication by hosting “community universities,” where residents spend quality time with the district to really learn more about BVSD departments and issues. She added that potentially polarizing citizen initiatives might arise because residents are frustrated that they aren’t getting the actions they want out of city government, and suggested again that better communication from governments might help residents better understand the government’s actions and priorities.
Services for People With Special Needs
Marquis specifically noted that the city could benefit from more supportive housing for several populations in Boulder. This could include housing or facilities for people experiencing significant mental health or substance abuse issues, which could apply to some of Boulder’s unhoused population, and she mentioned that people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) might need services or specialized housing. She said she supports making sure people have opportunities to integrate with their communities, but also to make sure “they can get the supports they need because of their very unique circumstances.”
Climate
On the day of this early September interview, Marquis had just attended a meeting where city staff explained some of the city’s climate initiatives including issues around resilience to mitigate against or manage natural disasters.
She said it’s not an issue of “when” the city might face a catastrophic wildfire, but “when,” adding that the city needs to keep working on issues like making sure owners of existing homes take on fire mitigation projects at their properties, not just setting standards for new properties. There are also concerns that some insurers are pulling out of areas of the U.S. considered at high-risk for natural disasters, or adjusting coverage, and Marquis said Boulder should consider the insurance issue moving forward with an eye on if proper mitigation measures might help control insurance costs.
“The question is – is taking down your wood fence more expensive than increasing your insurance premiums?,” said Marquis.
She added that her child has been in the city’s Junior Ranger program for about two years, in which Boulder’s young people are learning about how nature and the natural environment can be used to help support fire mitigation and enhance climate resilience.
Safe Zones (Question 302)
Marquis supports Question 302.
Sales Tax Extension with 50% of Revenue for Arts (Issue 2A)
Marquis supports Issue 2A.
