Aaron Neyer

Aaron Neyer is running for Boulder City Council in 2023. If he wins a seat, he will earn a three-year term that expires in 2026, but he could run for re-election in 2026 if he so chooses.

Q – Why are you running?

According to Neyer, he has a platform along with specific ideas he’d like to bring into Boulder’s governance (lots more about those issues below), but in the big picture view he’s running to work toward system changes. He said current systems aren’t doing a good job of supporting people or supporting the planet, not just in Boulder but also at national and international levels. He’s among the youngest candidates in the 2023 race, and says he’s noticing political disillusionment and unwillingness to participate in the process – some even choosing not to vote – among people in his generation. But Neyer believes the down side of withdrawing from the process is that change requires participation, and the lack of participation is one of the reasons that society isn’t changing.

“I’m running because I think participation is vital, and I want to model what it looks like to participate so I can inspire others to participate. I think I can be a bridge to participation for many different people, to help include more voices in the conversation,” said Neyer.

Mini-Life Story

Neyer was born in Oregon, grew up in Oxford, Ohio, and studied computer science at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He said his mother passed away when he was young, and his father passed at about the time he was finishing college. He then got full-time work as a software engineer, but “pretty quickly left that career behind,” spending his next four years “traveling around as a nomad,” experiencing intentional communities, transformational festivals, creating community where he went, and “just getting to know a lot of human beings in this world.”

He went back into the tech world in 2019, and enrolled at Naropa University in Boulder to study Ecopsychology, which he described in part as “exploring humanity’s perceived disconnect from the natural world, and exploring what it means to re-connect.” He said the word “ecopsychology” refers to a combination of “ecology” as the study of our web of natural relationships, along with “psychology” which studies the self and the soul. He graduated from Naropa with a master’s in Ecopsychology, and said while studying for his thesis he studied the idea of “paradigms within businesses, and the idea of how participation allows us to change systems from the inside out.”

He said he has lived in Boulder “on and off” since 2018, and he eventually landed a job with Google as a Developer Relations Engineer in 2021.

Backing up a step, he said he became more seriously interested in politics when U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders ran for President in 2016. While he doesn’t have formal experience in governance, he said his time in the tech world connected him with people who work on policy, including policy relating to sustainability solutions.

His campaign website is https://regenboulder.org/

Housing, Affordable and Otherwise

According to Neyer, some increases in housing density will be necessary to address affordability, but too much focus on densifying alone will lead to unintended consequences. For example, he said rapid increases in dense housing supply could be less than optimal if developments don’t address ecological impacts or provide shared community spaces. He said he doesn’t believe it’s necessary to re-zone all of the city’s low-density areas into high-density “right away,” but does support removing permitting and processing “roadblocks” that create challenges in supplying units in areas already zoned for high-density.

Personally, he said he never desired to live in an apartment complex because there is a typical lack of private space between units and he believes people generally need some space, though he said apartment living works for some people. He supports zoning changes in Boulder that would allow for housing types that might provide space, like tiny home villages, saying “If we want to create housing that works for more people, that people genuinely feel they can be home in, then we have to be much more creative.”

Neyer was aware of Colorado’s Senate Bill 23-213, a massive piece of legislation that would have established state housing-related land use standards, possibly overriding local standards. He said he thought there were good things about the bill, and had spoken with “housing experts” who felt positively about 213, but Neyer also said he agreed with criticisms from many Colorado local governments saying the bill was too “top-down” and laden with state mandates. The bill failed in the state legislature, but if similar legislation comes back in 2024, Neyer would support an approach of empowering local governments who best understand their jurisdictions to craft their own housing solutions, while meeting a certain set of criteria to help address the state’s affordable housing needs.

Consistent with how he responded after being asked why he was running for Council, Neyer said 213 was an example of overly prescriptive legislation that could discourage people who don’t feel like they were heard from participating in government processes.

Neyer said he had some mixed feelings about potentially repurposing Boulder Municipal Airport into a residential area. He said he liked the idea of using the land for affordable housing, and if that can happen he would like to see the city “explore a lot of different ideas” in development, including establishing community centers, exploring tiny house villages, and making sure the project would be in harmony with the environment. On the other hand, he said he might like to fly a plane someday, while also noting that airplane flight creates greenhouse gas emissions and saying society should move away from activities that contribute to climate change.

“I really want to talk to more stakeholders, especially people who really value the airport…I want to know more of their perspective,” said Neyer.

Crime and Policing

Neyer said there are problems with crime in the community, including open drug use that he said is “getting ridiculous,” and believes some level of enforcement is necessary. However, he also supports altering the balance of how police resources are used toward more outreach and less enforcement, saying he thought the city’s Reimagine Policing plan was in line with his vision of a more balanced approach that could both “address crime and support people.”

There will be more on homelessness later in this piece, but Neyer said it will be important for the city and law enforcement to better understand who among the homeless population might be causing serious trouble, such as breaking into stores or selling drugs. He also said the city’s Police Oversight Panel is necessary in part to create stronger relationships between law enforcement and the community, and to make sure all voices can be heard.

Climate Action

Neyer’s campaign website is centered around the concept of “regeneration,” and he said he was influenced by a book called “Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation” by Paul Hawken. In very short, Neyer said of regeneration that the Earth’s systems are self-healing unless humans do harmful things that impact the environment, but people can use regenerative practices such as ecological restoration or reforestation to help move the environment back into balance.

This interview took place with views of the Boulder foothills, and Neyer pointed toward the foothills to illustrate that the visible trees were probably mostly of one basic type. He would like to increase biodiversity in Boulder’s landscape, employing strategies such as planting various types of trees in a dense area and tending to them, then using the healthy trees to reforest in other areas.

“By doing that, we can change what’s happening in the climate. You create enough density in the forests, then those forests create more transpiration, which then creates more rain, which affects the whole landscape and mitigates wildfires. You might think more rain would equal more flooding, but actually because you have dense root systems the soil can hold so much more water,” said Neyer.

He also said he was influenced by another Hawken book called “Drawdown,” which in part discusses using the natural environment to draw carbon out of the atmosphere and into trees, plants, and the earth. In Boulder, Neyer said he’s been encouraged by the work of the city’s Nature-Based Climate Solutions team and its partnership with Cool Boulder, an organization that supports community-led climate actions.

“To do this effectively, we don’t just want government programs, we want to create programs where people can go out and volunteer…and by doing that you also bring people to the table who will do these same things, because we’re creating an educational and informational program that helps people understand how they can do this in their own back yards,” said Neyer.

Local Political Polarization

Like several candidates, Neyer said there are problems with political polarization in Boulder as well as elsewhere across the country, but the candidates in the 2023 Council race care about many similar issues and get along fairly well. He also believes this year’s race is a little less polarized than the 2021 race.

According to Neyer, quality communications and building relationships can help limit polarization, and he said in early September that he was attempting to build friendships with every candidate even if he doesn’t agree completely with their positions. He also believes sitting City Councils and members can help model how to engage in quality discourse in a way for the community to learn from, including being able to criticize people who use harmful discourse even if they’re on their political side, while Councils should not be “modeling needless identity politics and bickering.”

Homelessness

While Neyer said he has seen problems associated with some of the people experiencing homelessness in Boulder, he also said it’s not fair to tell the unhoused “you can’t be here if there is nowhere for them to go.” He said the city can make some advances through better outreach to the unhoused and better services so people can get the help they might need. Ideally, he would favor having a 24-hour shelter, not just separate day shelters and night shelters people might need to commute between to stay sheltered over the course of a day. He would also like to “entertain the possibility” of sanctioned campgrounds.

He said he does not favor “blanket enforcement sweeps” of encampments, since the people are likely to just move someplace else, and sweeps don’t get to the root of problem behavior. However, he does believe enforcement can be necessary in the case of serious crime, and said potential shortfalls in addressing drug problems is “not helping the unhoused population – it’s actually hurting the unhoused population.”

“We want to make sure we’re helping the people who need it and arresting the people who are causing harm to the unhoused population and the rest of the city,” said Neyer.

Safe Zones (Question 302)

Neyer said he does not support Question 302, saying it actually is vital to prioritize student safety and safety along multi-use paths, but to him 302 is a top-down inflexible proposal that tells enforcement what they have to do. He said the current Police Chief is working on how best to address safety in the areas called out in 302, and believes the Chief will be able to do a better job if given the spaciousness to address issues in the way she sees fit.

Sales Tax Extension with 50% of Revenue for Arts (Issue 2A)

Neyer supports Issue 2A, saying “it’s a great idea.”