Nicole Speer
Nicole Speer is a candidate in 2023 for a three-year term as a directly elected Mayor of Boulder. She is a current Boulder City Council member and has been since 2021. If she wins the 2023 Mayoral race, she will earn a three-year term as Mayor, but if she doesn’t win she will remain on City Council at least until her term expires in 2025.
Q – Why are you running for Mayor?
According to Speer, she has characteristics that she believes would be useful in leading the Council to work on the city’s challenges. As a scientist (see “Mini-Life Story” below), she said she is trained to use evidence and data in decision-making – but also to experiment to find out what could work or what isn’t working, and then move on to next steps accordingly, a process she described as “failing forward.” As a professional with management experience, she believes she has already led organizations through change and toward becoming more diverse. And as a mom, she feels this experience really taught her how to handle pressure and balance demands.
Her two years of service on Council has included being a city representative to Denver Regional Council of Government (DRCOG), a regional council that performs metro-area planning and is in charge of disbursing federal transportation to local governments in the region. She said Boulder will be bringing in about $50 million during the upcoming project cycle, which will benefit multimodal transportation in town, and in turn she developed connections with other members of local governments.
“Over the last couple years I’ve really acquired the knowledge, the skills and relationships we need to make sure things are not just working well on Council, but that Council is working well with city staff, and with other staff and elected officials across the region and state to get things done for the city,” said Speer.
Q – What is your take on the role of Mayor?
While the direct election of the Mayor won’t change legal responsibilities and powers, Speer expressed some thoughts on how she would try to run Council proceedings. She said she would attempt to “create some space for debate” on Council, so the members could fully debate key issues without feeling rushed. One technical responsibility of the Mayor’s position is setting meeting agendas through the Council Agenda Committee (CAC), and Speer believes it is possible to plan meetings with consideration about when issues are going to need more discussion and more time for that discussion.
A time-honored function of Mayors in most cities is to be the “face of the city,” for example, attending and perhaps giving a speech at events. Speer said there will be times when the Mayor has to be the one attending given events, but she thinks it could be a good idea to have other Council members represent the city at other events, partially to give the Council members experience and also to give the community a chance to hear from other members. She is the only woman running for Mayor out of four candidates, and said in her opinion being collaborative and group-oriented is “somewhat characteristic of female leadership.”
Her answer to a question about whether Boulder should consider turning to a “strong Mayor” system like Aurora might consider in 2025 was “a resounding no.” She said the job of running a city requires specific management and leadership skills, plus knowledge about how cities work optimally, and believes those would be responsibilities best left to professional city managers in Boulder.
Mini-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. She then enrolled at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, but after a year she 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 CU-Boulder in 2005. She went on to work for a nonprofit that did higher education policy research, with a focus on mental health education policy. Next, she landed a position with CU 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 that houses a shared MRI scanner. Due to the demands of serving on City Council, she is now working limited hours. 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. She earned a four-year term on City Council in 2021, finishing third in a race for five open seats.
Her campaign website is https://nicoleforboulder.com/
Housing, Affordable and Otherwise
According to Speer, the city has a “huge backlog” to fill if it wishes to meet affordable housing needs, but it won’t be solved immediately. She said it will take a long-term commitment to the problem that might last decades, but there are strategies that might help in the shorter-term. In short, she favors changing land use policies so in the long run housing prices in some areas will be lower in her opinion than they would have been without the changes, increasing the minimum wage and possibly moving toward a “self-sufficiency wage,” and funding greater basic needs financial assistance for lower-income residents.
On land use, Speer said DRCOG recently passed a Mitigation Action Plan (MAP) designed to limit greenhouse gases, and it mentions potential housing strategies such as rezoning for increased density and for density near transit stations. Speer said some of the MAP topics were similar to components in the giant state land use bill SB 23-213, but she noted that 213 did not include money for transportation to support new density, which she hopes will be addressed if new state legislation comes up in 2024. She believes an approach that was not mandate-driven but incentive-based could have helped 213 go farther in the state legislature (it did not pass), giving cities some freedom to craft solutions that suit localities but potentially withholding resources if cities decide not to do enough to address affordable housing.
She supports increasing several types of financial assistance so lower-income residents can better afford housing, including the upcoming city Guaranteed Income program, and the city’s existing rental assistance program potentially available to people who have received eviction notices. Speer also noted that the city’s current budget is tight, so increasing spending in one area will probably force spending cuts in another area. One area she believes could be cut is the amount of money the city spends on encampment clean-ups, adding that she thinks money could be better spent on programs to keep people housed and get people “permanently off the streets.”
Regarding the potential use of the Boulder Municipal Airport for housing, Speer said it will take a long time before it might be possible, but said in the long run it might be economically feasible even if the city would owe substantial money to the Federal Airport Administration to close the airport. She said the land on which the airport sits has been assessed at several hundred million dollars, and the city might be able to recoup the FAA cost by selling some of the land. According to Speer, she appreciates that there are people in Boulder who value the airport and its uses, but also knows there are neighbors who are concerned about the noise and pollution associated with living next to an airport – so, “we have to get better and better at making hard choices.”
Crime and Policing
According to Speer, Boulder’s current situation when it comes to crime is “not tenable…not acceptable…unconscionable.” She said she personally has had people jump out at her while riding her bike, one of her kids was on a bus while a passenger was engaging in lewd behavior, and in general she is aware of trash problems and open drug use. She added that she is aware of problems experienced in the business community, including employees and patrons feeling threatened.
While she noted that unhoused persons living on the streets in Boulder are not solely responsible for the city’s crime issue, she does support approaches that can help move people into more stable housing and get them off the streets. For example, she said Denver passed a recent tax to fund Permanent Supportive Housing, and research shows people who have stayed in the program have had reductions in jail time and reductions in interactions with police. “It really works not just for ending homelessness, but for reducing crime and the load on our police department,” said Speer.
Readers interested in precise crime statistics in Boulder can visit the city’s Crime Dashboard, but Speer noted generally that statistics were bad during the early years of the pandemic while some statistics might actually have been decreasing in mid-2023. She said she does not believe that “more police is the solution to what are fundamentally social problems,” and supports strategies including use of mental health first responders in non-emergency situations, opening a day shelter so the unhoused have a place to go when the Boulder Shelter is closed, and transitional housing for people who might have been through mental health or addiction treatments but don’t have anyplace to go post-treatment.
The city established a Police Oversight Panel, largely in response to a 2019 incident when a Black Naropa student was surrounded by police while simply picking up trash outside his apartment. The panel’s charge was in part to review complaints regarding police conduct. In 2023, the panel was in the news partially because City Council voted to remove a POP member, after outside counsel determined the member’s actions and postings critical of police on social media could have been seen as contrary to a part of the POP ordinance saying members should not exhibit “bias.” The POP actually suspended formal operations shortly after the Council vote.
Speer was one of two Council members to formally vote against removing the POP member. She said her decision was based in part on how groups supporting minority communities in Boulder asked not to remove the POP member, and POP members themselves expressed concern that citizen complaints could put them in the same situation. She said she was looking forward to seeing upcoming proposals to change the POP ordinance, potentially in a way that might reduce the likelihood of another situation similar to the process leading to the removal. But she also said there might be strong disagreements on POP topics and objectives moving forward, quoting U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley who said “The people closest to the pain should be the closest to the power.”
Partisanism in Boulder
Speer said she is aware of local political polarization in Boulder, but in her experience it doesn’t seem as evident among residents who are “not incredibly politically engaged, and that’s likely representing a majority of the community.” She said social media (notably NextDoor and Twitter) can amplify polarization. She added that the current Council itself casts more “crossover” votes (differing from expected partisan lines) than people in the community might assume.
She said it’s possible to combat polarization with dialog and open conversations even if people disagree on given issues. This interview took place the day after Speer was jeered in a Council meeting for her statement on an issue, and she said it’s up to “all of us, starting with Council” to model how to best engage in tough discussions with healthy disagreement.
Homelessness
Some of Speer’s thoughts about Boulder’s homelessness situation were mentioned earlier in this piece, but in general she supports approaches that help link people with services. She said it’s vital to understand who the unhoused are and why they’re unhoused, if the city is to craft the appropriate solutions, and it’s also important to consider whether associated issues are myths or realities.
For example, she said a recent Metro Denver Homeless Initiative report showed that 87% of the unhoused responding had a Colorado address as their last permanent address, providing some data to show that people might not just be flocking to Boulder or other metro areas just because of services. She added that homelessness might be increasing in general because people can’t afford increases in the cost of housing, and again noted that financial assistance could keep people from falling into homelessness.
According to Speer, Boulder has been working within a program called Built For Zero in attempts to reduce homelessness, based on a Houston program from a city that has dramatically reduced homelessness over the past decade. In turn, Denver metro homelessness has increased except for in the category of veteran homelessness, which Speer said has decreased thanks to a Homeless Initiative program she called a “data-driven evidence based strategy for getting people off the streets.”
Climate Action
Speer spoke during this interview largely about resilience efforts to adjust to the likely impacts of climate change. She said she would support using existing funding from a Climate Tax voters passed in 2022 to conduct a risk assessment for land parcels in the city, and to use “ecological monitors” including tribal members to watch for rapid ecological changes in Boulder that might require action.
She would support changing city landscaping code to better manage available water supplies, since about half of the water use within the city goes toward irrigation and landscaping. She mentioned the “Cool Boulder” partnership initiative, partially because it supports expanding the city’s tree canopy in ways that can provide what she called “natural air conditioning,” along with the “Garden in a Box” program that can help provide pollinator-friendly and drought resistant plants in landscaping.
Aging Population
Speer also spoke about the need to plan ahead for a likely aging of Boulder’s population in coming decades, in which populations 65 and older will grow at a rate much higher than those under 65. She said the city should consider issues including workforce needs, services and programs to help people with issues such as declining vision and hearing or mobility challenges, and outreach to get more immigrants to come to the city in order to help meet the workforce and service needs of the aging population.
Safe Zones (Question 302)
Speer opposes the Safe Zones 4 Kids ballot initiative, saying she believes it “changes absolutely nothing” about Boulder’s current policy, and she would prefer “evidence-based solutions” to get at the root of problems.
Sales Tax Extension with 50% of Revenue for Arts (Issue 2A)
Speer also opposes Ballot Issue 2A, which would extend a city sales tax but split revenue 50-50 between arts and General Fund needs. She believes earmarking revenues in the manner 2A is written would leave the city with “no ability to fund new things” for roughly 5 years in case new needs arise. She said the city is moving toward a new budgeting process, and believes deserving arts programs and projects would get funding through the budget process even without the ballot measure.
According to Speer, while the city’s regular budget process takes many months, the 50-50 split was negotiated without the fullest range of input possible. She would have preferred putting both a measure to keep all of the tax revenue in the General Fund, and a measure with earmarked arts funding, on the ballot so city voters could weigh in on which approach they preferred.
