Election 2023: The Condensed Version

Whew! I published about 60,000 words for this year’s Election Guide. With Election Day closing in, I begrudgingly understand most people won’t have time to read it all, so I’m including this “condensed version.” I’d still like to hope readers will check out some of my longer-form pieces if they need more detailed information, so there are links to each page and each post included with what’s below.

Mayor of Boulder

Willie’s probably a real candidate somewhere, but he’s not running in Boulder.

There are four candidates for Mayor, and this year’s winner will earn a three-year term until 2026. The election will be held by ranked-choice voting, and here’s a link for more information about how to vote in a RCV election.

Click on any candidate’s name to access my full profile on each person. I wrote about their takes on issues including housing, crime, local political partisanism, climate, homelessness, their views on the office of Mayor, and more about their political experience and careers. I’m listing the candidates in the order in which I interviewed them.

Aaron Brockett: Brockett has been Mayor since 2021, though before 2023 all Mayors were chosen by an internal vote of 9 City Council members, not a direct citywide election. He earned two four-year terms on Council (2015 and 2019 elections, fourth place in both elections), and served one year as Mayor Pro Tem. Brockett served five years on Boulder’s Planning Board, and was the President of the Holiday Neighborhood HOA. He earned a degree in music from Swarthmore College, and was part-owner (with his wife) of a software development company called Charon Development, though the company was sold a few years ago.

Bob Yates: Yates has served two four-year terms on City Council (2015 and 2019 elections), earning the most votes among all candidates in both elections. He served one year as Mayor Pro Tem. He has chaired the city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and the Museum of Boulder Board. Yates earned degrees in business and science from the University of Scranton, and a law degree from the University of California Hastings School of Law. He practiced law with an Omaha firm, and went on to work as general counsel for European operations with Level 3 Communications.

Paul Tweedlie: Tweedlie is a retired software engineer who has not served in government at any level. He was born in Scotland, and earned a degree in computer science from the University of Glasgow. Tweedlie worked for a defense contractor in Scotland, and after moving to Boulder about 20 years ago he worked for a local software company, the Anark Corporation.

Nicole Speer: Speer was elected to a four-year term on City Council in 2021, finishing third in that race. She is currently the Director of Operations at the University of Colorado’s Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium, though she had to scale back her hours to serve on Council. She has also worked for CU at the Anschutz campus and with the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute. Speer earned a degree in psychology from Scripps College, and a PhD in psychology from Washington University in St. Louis.

Boulder City Council

Not actually Boulder City Council, but meetings sort of look like this.

There are four open seats in this year’s Council race, and voters can only vote for up to four candidates. The four candidates with the most votes would win three-year terms until 2026. However, if the current Council member Nicole Speer wins the Mayor’s race, the fifth-place finisher in the Council race would earn a seat on Council until the end of Speer’s term in 2025.

Click on any candidate’s name to access my full profile on each person. I wrote about their takes on issues including housing, crime, local political partisan climate, homelessness, and more about their political experience and careers. I’m listing the candidates in the order in which I interviewed them.

Jacques Decalo: Decalo ran for Council in 2021 but did not earn a seat, finishing 10th in that race. He was born in Boulder and has spent most of his life here, except for his college years which took him to Washington (state), Utah, Chile and Argentina. He earned a degree from Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University, has worked as a Tesla Advisor, and today works in solar energy sales for Sunrun Solar.

Tara Winer: Winer is the only incumbent running for re-election to Council (i.e. not running for Mayor) in the 2023 race. She earned a two-year Council term in 2021, finishing fifth in that race. Before being elected, she served on Boulder’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and the Chautauqua Access Management Plan Working Group. She has been an independent contractor most of her adult life, and today works in branded merchandise marketing with ePromos Promotional Products. She earned a degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has lived in Boulder for about 12 years.

Waylon Lewis: Lewis is the founder of the Buddhist-inspired media company Elephant Journal. He is making his first run for office in 2023, and has not served in government, but has served on the boards of several organizations including New Era Colorado and the Boulder Co-op. Lewis is one of two candidates born in Boulder and has spent most of his life here, but attended high school at St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont and college at Boston University, where he majored in journalism and minored in political science.

Jenny Robins: Robins has not served in elected office, but grew up in a political family in which her mother was a village trustee and candidate for county commissioner. She works in the telecommunications field as a director for Insite-inc.com, which has included work with local governments on issues including land use and contract negotiations. She grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and moved to Boulder about seven years ago. Robins earned a degree in communications and a minor in pre-law from DePaul University.

Silas Atkins: Atkins has not served in elected office, but was appointed as a task force member of a City of Boulder direct cash assistance pilot program called Elevate Boulder (note – this is not related in any way to the local group Boulder Elevated). He was born in Nova Scotia and lived in Vermont before coming to Boulder in 2016. Atkins has a high school diploma and some college education. Today, he works with the Boulder Valley School District as a paraeducator at Manhattan Middle School, working in an Intensive Learning Center.

Ryan Schuchard: Schuchard has not held elected office, but he has served since 2021 on Boulder’s Transportation Advisory Board. He did his undergraduate work at Oregon State University and earned a MBA from Thunderbird Global Management School. He has spent most of his adult life in fields including sustainability and transportation. He’s worked with large corporations with Business For Social Responsibility, in a policy advisor role with CALSTART, and today owns his own firm called More Mobility. Schuchard and his family moved to Boulder in 2019.

Tina Marquis: Marquis is making her first run for Council, but has been elected twice to the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education. She served for four years as the school board President, and worked with other levels of state and local governments on current issues including those of health and safety. Marquis was raised in southern California, moved to the East Coast where she worked in marketing, and earned a MBA from the University of Michigan. She and her family moved to Boulder about 20 years ago.

Terri Brncic: Brncic is making her first run for elected office, but has been involved in local politics since deciding to work toward getting the Safe Zones 4 Kids measure (Question 302) on this year’s ballot. She was born and raised in southern California, earning a degree from the University of California-Berkeley and a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) degree. She worked in executive finance positions for Bay Area startup companies before moving to Boulder about nine years ago. Today, she owns a consulting firm that offers fractional CFO services to start-ups.

Taishya Adams: Adams is making her first run for elected office, but has served as members of the City of Boulder’s Police Oversight Panel and the State of Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission. She was born in suburban northern Virginia, moving to Los Angeles for middle school and New York City for high school. She earned undergraduate degrees in political science and film production from Vassar College, and a master’s in international education from George Washington University. She has worked in public education and environmental organizations, and today runs an organization designed to transform systems called the Mukuyu Collective.

Aaron Neyer: Neyer is making his first run for elected office in 2023, and has not formally served in the public sector. He was born in Oregon, grew up in Oxford, Ohio, and studied computer science at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He has lived in Boulder “on and off” since 2018, and enrolled at Naropa University where he earned a master’s in Ecopsychology. He landed a job with Google as a Developer Relations Engineer in 2021.

Ballot Measures

This ballot measure is in Greek so as not to influence any voters at this point.

To vote on any of the ballot measures below, voters need to be a registered voter living in the jurisdiction that’s running the ballot measure. Basically, voters must be City of Boulder residents to vote on City of Boulder measures, Boulder County residents to vote on Boulder County issues, and State of Colorado voters to vote on State of Colorado issues. Every ballot measure listed below would pass with a simple majority.

City of Boulder Issue 2A: Passing Issue 2A would extend an existing 0.15% City of Boulder sales and use tax until 2044, and would devote 50% of the revenue from this tax to arts and culture, with the other 50% going to the city’s General Fund for general city needs. I will probably vote for 2A, but it’s a lukewarm endorsement. It’s not unreasonable to say arts are currently underfunded in Boulder, and 2A would basically double arts funding in its first year relative to current funding. Arts make for a more beautiful and vibrant community, plus they have an economic impact. On the other hand, earmarking arts funding might contribute to minimizing the city’s ability to fund certain needs over the course of 20 years – think infrastructure or housing/shelter for starters. The first year difference to the General Fund if 2A passes might be about $1.8 million, a fairly small percentage of the General Fund and even smaller compared to the city’s overall budget. I’ll end by saying informed voters should always weigh the raw numbers and cost-benefits on any fiscal ballot measure.

City of Boulder Question 2B: Passing Question 2B would make changes to five sections of Boulder’s City Charter. Perhaps the most significant change would allow city candidates to get petition signatures outside of the Boulder Municipal Building. In three other sections, 2B would make (in my opinion) minor adjustments to election administrative timelines. One other language change would simply clarify that charter amendment processes are subject to state law, which they already were in fact. It’s an easy yes vote for me.

City of Boulder Question 302: Rarely in my decades of following election issues have I seen one sentence proposed for inclusion into the city code blown so far out of proportion, so I feel I need a few paragraphs here.

The “Safe Zones 4 Kids” ballot measure (Question 302) in reality would classify “prohibited items” in areas 500 feet from school property and 50 feet from multi-use paths and sidewalks as “subject to prioritized removal.” It’s really that simple. Boulder in practice already has prioritized removal, and prohibited items (basically tents and propane tanks) are already defined as prohibited items in city code.

I will vote yes on 302 because I believe it’s reasonable to ask for and even expect safety near schools, along with relatively clear paths and sidewalks in a city where many people just want to walk and bike with some level of comfort. I really wanted to stay on the down-low with this one, but the opposition to 302 has flooded Boulder with deceptive-at-best talking points, and I’m not proud that some people who ought to know better have been parroting them.

The opposition is trying to get people to believe 302 would prioritize almost the entire city, partially because so much of the city is near a sidewalk. It’s at the bare minimum not logical if one actually thinks about it, but I actually think it’s false. Imagine how this argument would work with something like speed limits.

Since so much of the city is covered with streets or multi-use paths with speed limits, these very reasonable speed limit laws would in essence cover a major portion of the city, which simply does not make them bad laws. Meanwhile, there is no way the police could patrol the entire city for speed violations, so they prioritize where and when they can best patrol with finite resources, and they’ll respond elsewhere as best they can when there are emergencies or reports. That’s how 302 would work in practice. City teams already know most of the most common problem areas, which don’t include the vast, vast, vast majority of sidewalk areas in Boulder. Teams won’t be patrolling most sidewalks or multi-use paths on a daily basis, and they won’t need to be in many parts of the city at all unless they receive complaints.

The opposition is also tarring 302 with a scarlet “E” of “Enforcement-only,” which only works logically if people consider one sentence proposed in 302 as the be-all and end-all of Boulder’s system of addressing homelessness and unregulated camping. For the short list of why “enforcement-only” is an awfully misleading talking point – the Boulder government spends millions yearly on homelessness and related programs; the state and county will provide significant money through County 1B and Proposition 123 available to help house the unhoused; the city has several programs to deal with non-emergency public safety situations without using uniformed officers; the city is in the process of finding a location for a new day shelter and starting a sanctioned campground pilot program; Boulder already has its Shelter for the Homeless; there are existing transitional and permanently supportive housing locations in Boulder; and there are numerous nonprofits in Boulder providing assistance or services.

I will state plainly that I believe there should be good services for the unhoused in Boulder, and I don’t mind paying reasonable tax money to support these services. Since 302 doesn’t increase existing city funding for enforcement, it won’t prevent the city from spending money on services relative to where we’re at right now, plus Boulder is likely to benefit from state or county money/programs that might provide housing or services within the city. But services are not what 302 is about anyway! That’s all that other stuff in the paragraph above.

People have a First Amendment-type right to make whatever political point they want that’s basically not libelous or slanderous. I’m using my 1A right to let readers know opponents to 302 are trying to throw “stuff” at the wall and hope it sticks. I still love living in Boulder, but we’re going to be in trouble down the road if we don’t get better at recognizing when we’re getting fleeced.

State of Colorado Proposition HH: This is by far the most complex measure on this year’s ballot, so I’ll strongly recommend reading more about it if you have time.

If HH passes, it would set statewide maximum property tax rates through 2032, at rates lower than they would be if there are no other adjustments. This might not prevent property tax bills from increasing because taxable property values might continue increasing and local governments could still pass local increases, but HH should limit statewide property tax bill increases. HH also includes some assessment valuation reductions, which should decrease property tax bills relative to tax bills if HH doesn’t pass.

In Colorado, property tax revenues primarily go to local governments, school districts, and other special districts. HH would provide money to “backfill” revenue losses to local governments and districts, partially by increasing the state’s revenue retention (TABOR) cap. Increasing the TABOR cap could mean less money available for TABOR refunds. Some local governments (but not school districts) would stop getting backfill money if their taxable assessed property values (which translates into tax revenue) increase by 20% or more. Some of the money from HH would go to the State Education Fund, a Local Government Reimbursement Cash Fund, and a relatively small amount for renters’ assistance.

I will vote for HH, but individuals might want to do some honest research to see how it would work for them, because there are trade-offs involved in this whole formula.

State of Colorado Proposition II: This measure asks voters to approve letting the State of Colorado retain about $23 million in “excess revenue” from tobacco taxes that came in above estimates made in 2020. If II passes, about $18 million would go to preschool programs, and the rest would go to the state’s General Fund. If II fails, the excess revenue would be returned to tobacco merchants, and tobacco tax rates would be reduced. It’s an easy “yes” vote for me.

Boulder County 1A: This measure would extend an existing Boulder County 0.05% sales and use tax until 2039 for Boulder County (not city) Open Space uses, including acquisition if properties are available, maintenance, and other needs. It’s an easy “yes” vote for me – it’s a small amount of money, I love and use Open Space, and it’s just an extension so it won’t raise tax rates.

Boulder County 1B: This measure would extend an existing 0.185% Boulder County sales and use tax until 2039 for affordable housing uses. I will vote yes because affordable housing is a very bad problem in Boulder County right now, and the money will help some number of people either find a place to live or possibly have some money left over for other needs after paying rent. But I’m supporting it with a few asterisks.

One, the 0.185% tax we’re extending was for building an alternative sentencing facility, decidedly not the purpose we’re voting on this year. I’d rather see fresh ballot measures into the future if we’re changing the purpose of a tax program, with real analyses to figure out if the tax rate is actually the right amount of money for a new program. Two, the commodification of housing is one of the worst problems we face as an American society right now, and some housing-related corporations are taking in obscene amounts of money while many ordinary people are rent-burdened or unhoused. 1B would only nibble at the edges of this problem ($17 million per year is not a bad nibble, in fairness) by using regressive sales taxes – often from the poor people who need housing assistance themselves – to subsidize in some instances private-sector earnings.

If we don’t address issues including wealth hoarding and price-fixing, the imbalances will only continue to grow and measures like 1B will only help with the tips of these icebergs. But I think 1B will help real people, so I’m voting yes.

Boulder Valley School District School Board

In the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education races, only one person from each of the districts will earn a seat. All voters in the BVSD district can vote for one candidate (and ONLY one candidate) in each of the Board districts. The candidate with the highest vote total in each district wins a four-year term.

Click the candidate’s name in bold-face to access answers to the questionnaire I sent to each candidate. I asked questions about issues including BVSD finance, school district censorship, diversity, academic performance, achievement gaps, and how they would interact with students and teachers – among other questions. Check these out if you have time, because most of the answers were really thoughtful!

BVSD District A

Jason Unger: Unger has spent about 25 years working in education, including as a teacher, administrator, and policy advisor. He earned his bachelor’s in economics and political science from UCLA, and a master’s in public policy and education from Harvard. Unger is the founder of the education policy consulting firm Baseline Strategies. He worked as an Education Policy Advisor for former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Neil Fishman: Fishman was a member of the District Parent Council at Creekside Elementary School, and chaired the University of Colorado’s Geological Sciences Advisory Committee. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Geology at the University of Colorado, and worked as a research geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey for 33 years.

BVSD District C

Alex Medler: Medler has extensive experience with charter schools, including positions with National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Colorado Association of Charter School Authorizers, U.S. Department of Education, and currently with National Network for District Authorizing. He worked for the University of Colorado’s Political Science department as a graduate student, teaching assistant, and instructor.

Cynthia Levison: Levison earned a bachelor’s in chemistry from University of California-Berkeley, along with a master’s in environmental engineering and a PhD in atmospheric science from Stanford. She was a lecturer in the chemistry department at the University of California-San Diego, and a classroom monitor in BVSD for three months.

Andrew Steffl: Steffl has not returned a questionnaire to me as of late October, but it’s as they say in the school biz an “excused” absence by me.

BVSD District D

Lalenia Quinlan Aweida: Aweida worked as a Child Abuse Prevention Educator in BVSD Elementary Schools, a Sexual Violence Prevention Educator in BVSD Middle Schools/High Schools, and currently serves on the BVSD Title IX Advisory Council.

Andrew Brandt: Brandt currently works in the field of cybersecurity with Sophos, in which he combines research, journalistic writing, and publishing. He has worked as a daily news and investigative journalist. He earned a bachelor’s in English from the University of California-Berkeley.

BVSD District G

Jorge Chavez: Chavez has worked as an Associate Professor in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado-Denver, plus as an Associate Professor in Sociology at Bowling Green. In local schools, he’s served on the District Accountability Committee, School Accountability Committee, and Latino Parent Advisory Council. He earned bachelor’s in criminal justice and psychology from the University of Nevada, along with a master’s and PhD in criminal justice from the University of Albany (SUNY).

Stuart Lord: Lord has worked in leadership development with Delta Developmental, Executive Director of EFAA, President of Naropa University, Associate Provost with Dartmouth, and Associate Dean with DePauw University in Indiana. He was a member of the BVSD Partnership Council and the BVSD Leadership Academy. Lord earned his bachelor’s from Texas Christian University, master’s in divinity and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a doctor of ministry from United Theological Seminary.

Anil Pesaramelli: Pesaramelli did not return his questionnaire to me, even after multiple contacts. His website is https://www.anil4bvsd.com/