Tara Winer, a current Boulder City Council member, is running for re-election to Council in 2023. She finished fifth in a race for five open seats in 2021, earning a two-year term. If she wins a seat in 2023, she will earn a three-year term that expires in 2026, but she would be able to run again if she so chooses in 2026. She is the only incumbent running for a seat on Council, not Mayor, in 2023.

Q – Why are you running again?

According to Winer, it takes time to really learn the issues and processes necessary to serve effectively on Council, and she considered the first year of her two-year term as a learning experience. She said she believes she had to focus on multiple sides of complex issues and consider trade-offs, since opposing sides on issues can both have valid points. Winer said she’d like to take the experience she has now into another term, so she can see things she’s worked on to date through into improvements or fruition.

“I really love being on Council. I love talking to community members, I love being there for people, and I love the camaraderie of City Council. It’s also a lot of hard work,” said Winer.

Q – Why should the voters put you back in office?

Winer said she is not an ideologue, but instead she believes she’s a practical public servant who listens to multiple points of view as opposed to acting as an advocate. She said another Council member nicknamed her the “Queen of Unintended Consequences,” and she went on to say it’s important to at least consider what could go wrong.

She added that she tries to bring Council members together and have good discussions in the interest of what’s best for the city. She believes she can also function as a key vote in case the voting outcome isn’t obviously going one way or another, an influential role that can also help shape policy. For example, she said she was very proud of her work to get more funding to clean up encampments along bike paths or in underpasses so members of the Boulder community could better enjoy safety in their public spaces.

“In business, if you try something new you also keep track of what’s going wrong with it and try to fix it along the way, and I feel that would be good for govt as well,” said Winer about part of her general approach on Council.

Mini-Life Story

Winer was born in Brooklyn, emphasizing she lived there “before it was nice” in the neighborhood of Canarsie, and graduated from high school in Brooklyn. She went on to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in economics. After leaving Wisconsin she moved to Philadelphia and lived there for roughly 37 years, meeting her husband and raising three daughters.

Winer’s sister had lived in Boulder for decades, and Winer said she visited her often and loved it, and she and her husband bought a house in 2009 but it took until 2011 to settle in.

Professionally, she has been an independent contractor since the age of 23, in the world of branded merchandise manufacturing, and currently works as a contractor for a company called ePromos Promotional Products.

In Boulder, she was appointed to the Chautauqua Access Management Plan Working Group about seven years ago. She then was asked to join the Capital Tax Working Group when there was an opening. She became a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board (PRAB) in 2020, though she had to step down after being elected to Council. Winer was also a member of the Boulder Community Initiatives Board, which was at the time engaged in pursuits such as bringing events back to Downtown Boulder that were curtailed during the pandemic, and making Downtown more welcoming to diverse members of the community.

Her website is https://www.taraforboulder.com/

Crime and Policing

According to Winer, it’s important to separate the different types of crime, partially because different types of crimes are routed through different court systems. For example, the Municipal Court deals with what she calls “quality of life” crimes like drunk and disorderly or trespassing, while the District Court will handle violent crimes, and each system will operate in its own way.

But on the other hand, she emphasized that there are actual victims of crime in Boulder, and depending on who you ask, perceptions about dangers and levels of crime in town. She said when it comes to seniors or other people who are afraid to go to public places because of drug deals or possible violence, there are perceptions in Boulder of “not order, not safety.”

Winer noted that even though there may be reasons not to incarcerate certain offenders, it at times makes it feel like there is a lack of consequences for criminal behavior. For example, it’s possible for the court system to tell offenders they won’t be responsible for a ticket if they get a drivers’ license or Social Security card, while some are released on Personal Recognizance (PR) bonds. There have also been capacity problems at the Boulder County Jail, while she believes some inmates suffering from mental health issues shouldn’t be in jail, but there’s also a lack of available beds at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo.

She said the rash of bike thefts can be especially harmful to lower-income residents who can’t afford a new bike, while the City Council member herself will visit bike underpasses and report back to city staff physical hazards that might make riding through the tunnels dangerous.

According to Winer, she and the City Council can’t directly make decisions affecting policies and practices at the county or state levels, but she will attempt to do what she can to keep Boulder a safe place for as many people as possible.

“What I can do is try my best to make sure the police are doing a good job, that we are keeping people relatively safe, and we figure out what to do in Municipal Court,” said Winer.

Police Oversight Panel

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.

After reviewing the independent counsel’s recommendation and reading what Winer called “incendiary Tweets,” she voted to remove the POP member. She also said she was looking forward to an outside consultant’s recommendations on how to improve the city’s existing POP ordinance, saying “we shouldn’t be sitting around wondering what ‘bias’ means.”

Winer said she knows there are people in the community and on the POP who have been traumatized by the police, and citizen oversight is valuable, but felt demonizing the police was not her preferred approach if the community was to work collaboratively in a time when there are public safety concerns and a need for policing.

“Being an advocate for change is different than being on a Police Oversight Panel and looking at cases, trying to be fair,” said Winer.

Affordable Housing

Winer started talking about housing by saying there is permanently affordable housing, but also housing that’s affordable. She said she believes the city is doing “pretty well” in providing permanently affordable housing for lower-income residents, but not so well with affordable housing for middle-income earners, partially because lower-income housing can be financed with grants or vouchers while it’s not the same financing environment for middle-income housing. The city had recently launched a middle-income down payment assistance program in the fall of 2023, but it was very new at the time of this interview.

Winer also spoke of the challenges inherent in running affordable housing complexes where some residents have serious mental health issues and need supportive services, while other residents might be seniors or working families simply in need of affordable housing. She said she would support systems moving forward in which people with different needs aren’t placed in the same complexes, or there are adequate on-site services for people who might need them.

She supported the state Senate Bill 213, a massive bill to set land use standards, while also saying it had “a lot of faults.” Despite criticism from a number of other cities about the potential loss of land use local control, Winer said some communities aren’t doing enough to address their lack of affordable housing, so state guidelines could help create solutions or improvements where there are regional problems. She also said the City of Boulder had already done some things better than the state bill would have, such as the city’s update to its policies around Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU). She acknowledged that the bill was a shock to some municipalities, and said she hopes the state tries to be “more collaborative” if legislation comes back in the 2024 session.

Regarding the possibility of using the Boulder Municipal Airport land for affordable housing, Winer said she knows there are challenges – including contractual obligations with the Federal Aviation Administration – to settle before the land could be used for housing. She also noted that she has visited neighborhoods near the airport and has no doubt the people live in a noisy environment, when only a voluntary noise abatement program is in place. According to Winer, she knows there are good people who use the airport for good reasons, but would like to see advances in addressing neighborhood concerns about noise and pollution.

Local Partisanism in Boulder

Like a number of 2023 candidates, Winer said she believes the candidates and even the current City Council get along fairly well, but there is polarization in the community. She said it’s “human nature to be tribal,” but tried to pull back on her own tribalism when she realized she didn’t like the sense of belonging to a “side” when she was actually looking for quality solutions. According to Winer (and many other candidates), social media has exacerbated the tribalism, notably NextDoor and Twitter, where users can get “super mean.”

On the positive side, she said she enjoys personal interactions like respectful phone calls with constituents, her friendships with sitting Council members, and the “open comment” portion of Council meetings. “It gives people a voice and this is democracy, so there’s a lot of good in the system,” said Winer.

Homelessness

Winer said she has learned a lot about the issue of homelessness over two years on Council, and spoke about a few key issues, including but not limited to having places for the unhoused to go if they’re not in a shelter, and available city resources.

The Boulder Shelter for the Homeless is not open during daytime hours, and Winer noted that many peer cities in Colorado have a day shelter but Boulder doesn’t. The issue of potentially using a building at 1844 Folsom for a day shelter generated controversy, partially because existing residents didn’t want to live next to a day shelter, and Winer said the residents’ opinions are important to her – although Boulder might still need to locate a shelter near other people if it doesn’t happen at 1844 Folsom. She said it’s expensive to run a day shelter, but “in my dream world” she’d like to see more transitional housing to get people into a house or apartment.

Also, she mentioned that it will be important to have services and places to go for people who might be recovering from addiction, suffering from mental illness or leaving jail. According to Winer, the city can only do so much on these fronts, and she’d like to see assistance from the state or Boulder County, but she acknowledged that there may be staffing or funding challenges facing other non-city entities such as Mental Health Partners as well.

Winer expressed some hope for positive advances on the issue of homelessness, given that the city is looking at a day shelter, the county is looking at adding transitional housing, and services at the city level already exist while officials are eyeing improvements. But she cautioned that improvements are going to be slow, partially because of the pace of government but also because personal recovery tends to be slow.

Climate Action

Before this interview in late August, Winer had just returned from a vacation to Seattle and she went toward British Columbia, but couldn’t see anything due to wildfire smoke. While climate-related problems exist worldwide and nationwide, Winer said Boulder should engage in actions including pushing Xcel Energy to “underground” power lines, work harder to reach city renewable energy goals, and possibly investigate moving toward Community Choice Energy if it’s enabled at the state level.

She said e-bikes and other alternative forms of transportation will help address the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, but the city needs to improve its protected bike lane infrastructure and help make sure people are confident their bikes won’t be stolen to make sure the city reaps the full benefit of the relatively new e-bike revolution. Winer spoke positively about a local “bike valet” service in which people could feel safe about leaving their bikes without being stolen, and said she uses it often where it’s available.

While wildfires or localized fires are almost certainly going to happen as the climate warms, Winer said the city should try to minimize the likelihood of property damage through strategies such as clearing fire-prone shrubbery or not using wood fences. She also noted the city should be prepared with good evacuation plans in case a major fire happens, recalling that she had just been on Widby Island on a very smoky day and then realizing there was “only one way in and one way out.”

Safe Zones (Question 302)

Winer supports Ballot Question 302, the Safe Zones 4 Kids ballot measure. She said a group of local parents actually came to her looking for solutions to safety around schools, but she suggested the parents should do something and the parents decided to launch the ballot initiative. Winer said ballot measures are “the peoples’ way of changing government,” and added that she believes it is legitimate to have concerns about safety near Boulder High School.

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

Winer said she was a “strong yes” vote to put Ballot Issue 2A on the ballot. Originally, a community member told her they were gathering signatures for an initiative to devote 100% of the tax extension revenue to arts and culture, but Winer was concerned about the potential impact to General Fund revenues that fund general services, so she suggested a 50-50 split but the community member did not agree. Eventually, the 50-50 split became what would go to the ballot. Winer said she does not blame the arts community for being aggravated about their current level of city funding, and added that artistic pursuits are economic drivers.