Jenny Robins

Jenny Robins is making her second run for Boulder City Council in 2025, hoping that two years of direct experience on a city board and increased involvement in city issues will help earn her a seat on Council this time.

“I have found over the last two years that although my priorities still lie in trying to make this city a better place for my children to live and for everybody to live, there are some additional issues that I have become passionate about that I want to focus on this time. Those issues include good governance, maintaining our basic needs like our roads and our rec centers, public safety, a good budget, and economic vitality,” said Robins.

Mini-Bio

Robins was born in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Her mother was a former village trustee. Robins enrolled at Marquette University in Milwaukee, but ultimately wanted to go to law school in Chicago, so she transferred to DePaul University, earning a degree in communications with a minor in pre-law. She was interested in studying intellectual property law, and was accepted into John Marshall Law School, but got a summer job in the telecommunications field and is still in telecom today.

Robins and her husband moved to Boulder about nine years ago, and she wanted to go to law school at CU but determined her passion in law was in legislation, regulation, and political law, so she did not pursue law school. She remains in telecom as a director for Insite-inc.com, in part working with local governments on legislation, contract negotiations, zoning, and permitting processes.

She made her first run for Council in 2023, finishing 6th in a race for 4 seats with 11,249 votes. In 2024, she was appointed to a five-year term on the city Parks and Recreation Advisory Board (PRAB), and currently chairs the Board. She said serving on PRAB has been interesting in part because the city’s Parks and Rec department accounts for around 10% of the city’s total budget, and also because the city is full of people who are extremely passionate about recreation and their activity of choice – whether it’s swimming, tennis, pickleball, or anything else.

“We have had a lot of community members come in (to PRAB) and ask us for more services. We’ve never had anybody come in and ask for less,” said Robins.

Her campaign website is https://jennyforboulder.com/

Concerns about Boulder’s economic future?

In general, Robins said she has economic concerns about federal cuts to the federal labs, and feels it will be important to address safety and area management in Boulder’s commercial centers like the Pearl Street Mall or University Hill. She also mentioned that local small businesses face challenges such as high rents (though she did not propose a solution), and barriers to doing business including city fees, permitting delays, and regulations.

“Our code is extremely complicated, and this comes from somebody who knows codes. My job has been to view city codes throughout multiple municipalities and jurisdictions from the Midwest to the west, and this one is probably the most complicated I’ve ever read,” she said.

Does Boulder spend taxpayers’ money wisely?

Despite polling results saying only half of respondents think the city’s spending wisely, Robins said “the city has over time done a good job” managing spending. However, she believes the city needs greater transparency in budgeting, noting that even following the Parks and Recreation budget alone is challenging. She also said she does not favor taking taxes that voters approved with dedicated purposes and repurposing them into the General Fund where the city could spend the money on different purposes. She believes taxpayers should at least have access to ways that they can weigh in on how their money is spent, which could include more public process.

“One of my campaign promises has been to create accountability committees. If we have a Police Oversight Panel whose sole job is to make sure that the police remain accountable, I think we should do the same thing for our budget, for homeless initiatives, and for wildfire policies,” said Robins.

Crime Concerns?

Being from the Chicago area originally, Robins finds Boulder a generally safe place to live, but added, “With that in mind, I don’t allow my kids to walk around near the creek at night. I myself wouldn’t walk the creek path at night.” While some types of more serious crime are addressed at the state or county levels, at the city level she supports making sure individuals with multiple municipal offenses are likely to face consequences, as opposed to going free with lighter options like personal recognizance (PR) bonds. Robins is concerned that certain types of treatments might not be effective in preventing a person from offending again.

“We’ve got to make sure that they’re not being put right back out to where they started from. That’s not helping,” said Robins.

Homelessness Objectives

Like most candidates, Robins mentioned the recently released Clutch Report, but gave it mixed reviews. She agreed with its focus on helping people who are actually from the area as a priority, while giving people without a connection to the community near-term services before helping them “get to wherever it is that they need to go.” On the other hand, she was critical of the plan’s identification of possible multi-million-dollar price tags to accomplish its objectives, and added that it was “laughable” that the city had been considering a goal of ending unsheltered homelessness completely by 2028.

She supports a strategy of “diversion, reunification and prioritization” moving forward, but also enforcement of the city’s current camping ban.

“Letting people sleep on the street and sleep out by the creek, and sleep outside, is not a compassionate solution. There are no good things that happen out there. So, I am for the camping ban, and figuring out ways to provide people with solutions,” she said.

Core Arterial Network Projects

Robins began answering this question by saying the CAN projects on the table have been “well-planned” and that safety for users of all modes of transportation needs to be a top concern. However, she is concerned that the needs of people who have to drive are not being given enough consideration. Using herself as an example, she said she lives in Gunbarrel plus has teenaged daughters, which makes biking or using transit difficult or inefficient. “It takes my daughter an hour and 40 minutes from door to door to get from Fairview to our house (using transit),” she said, noting the distance is only about eight miles.

She also believes that community input on some of the CAN projects was not always considered adequately. “I think that it is extremely important that we don’t force modes of transportation on people,” she said.

Council Meeting Open Comment Period

Robins said she “absolutely” respects free speech, during Open Comment or not, but believes there have been disruptive behaviors at recent meetings that go beyond free speech. “In our city charter, there are rules of decorum for open comment. If you break them, you should be escorted out of the chambers. And that goes for anybody who comes into council and starts screaming profanities, or breaking the rules of public comment. They should be immediately escorted out, and then given some time to not be able to come back,” she said.

Boulder and International Issues

Robins called herself a “hyper-local candidate” and said several times during this interview that Council should not get involved in international affairs, preferring to focus on the many local issues that need attention. However, she said she understands “the other side of this argument” for reasons including that some residents have connections to other nations, City Council has taken positions on international issues in the past, and the city has international sister cities.

New Administration in Washington and Boulder Impacts

As mentioned earlier, Robins believes cuts to the federal labs in and around Boulder threaten the local and regional economy. She also it’s a real problem in a broader sense that attacks on the federal labs happened because of a disregard for climate research and even to some extent science. She said this was a “horrifying” thought because the labs are among “the most important parts of the fabric of the United States, and we’re leaders in science, and we have to maintain that.” Moving forward, she also said it will be important for the city to keep the local immigrant community safe, which she believes would also require collaboration with the state and county.

Performance of “Progressive Council”

Robins spoke of three general big-picture characteristics. First, she said the progressives on Council generally haven’t wanted to enforce the city’s camping ban; second, they have supported a “road diet” approach that might limit auto lanes in city corridors like with the CAN projects mentioned above; and third, she said their general support for housing development feels like a “build, baby, build” approach.

Robins said she does support some new housing density where appropriate, and she’s fine with multimodal transportation projects if the needs of people who have to drive and input from citizens are considered. In general, she said the progressives have “not done a terrible job,” but “I think it’s all been a little bit overdone.”

Climate Action

According to Robins, recent conditions like high summer temperatures and events like the Marshall Fire show that climate action is essential. She favors actions including but not limited to “expanding clean energy, undergrounding utilities, and strengthening neighborhood wildfire mitigation” to reduce carbon emissions and protect the community.

Need More Housing?

Robins believes Boulder is doing a good job of bringing market rate housing and permanently affordable units online, but the city’s got a problem with lack of availability of middle-income housing, including units that work well for families with kids. But when it came to just adding more housing quantity, she noted that there are projects in the works presently, along with potentially much larger developments being considered into the more distant future, like at CU-South or the Area III Planning Reserve in north Boulder. While favoring adding what’s called “missing middle” housing, she said she wasn’t looking to expand quantity in general far beyond what’s already in the works at this time.

CCRS Ballot Measures

Robins supports both the CCRS tax extension and the debt authorization ballot measures, but noted that she wasn’t “a huge fan of leveraging our future” so far out into the future with extending the tax into perpetuity and associated debt. She said passing the measures would give the city “a jump” on fixing some of the city’s infrastructure.

County Mental/Behavioral Health Tax

Robins supports Boulder County Ballot Issue 1B, basically because she said there is a real need for services. At the time of this interview, the tax as written was to last five years but Robins said she wished it was for three years. She got her wish, since it was reduced to three years a few days after the interview!

Endorsements

Robins has earned endorsements from Open Boulder, PLAN-Boulder County, Boulder Elevated, Stop Antisemitism Colorado, Boulder Action, Blueflower Fund, Safer Boulder, Engage Boulder, Boulder Police Officers Association, and Moms Demand Action.

Follow The Money

Robins has raised the maximum of $11,994 in campaign contributions, including maximum $100 donations from current Council members Mark Wallach and Matt Benjamin; former Council members Gordon Riggle, Susan Osborne, Jan Burton, Bob Yates, Allyn Feinberg, Crystal Gray, Sam Weaver, Steve Pomerance and George Karakehian; former District Attorney Stan Garnett; current District Attorney Michael Dougherty; and current state Senator Judy Amabile.