Ryan Schuchard

Ryan Schuchard is running for re-election to Boulder City Council in 2026, after serving most of a three-year term. He said he’s running in part to continue work on local affordability; to help the community adapt to the threat of wildfire with “true circuit-breaker protections” in case a serious fire breaks out; and to work toward minimizing power outages that might do more than disrupt people or businesses who rely on having electricity. Also, at a number of points during this mid-September interview, he emphasized a desire to improve the city government’s customer service to and with its residents.

“We need to make our local government predictable and effective, and partly, that means just making it be a really great service provider, so that people have a good experience when they work with it, and things happen quickly. And we need to continue the city’s leading work to get our finances right, and to have a good, long term financial strategy with good control at the council level,” he said.

Mini-Bio

Schuchard was born in the town of Roseburg, Oregon, located about an hour south of Eugene. He said his parents ran a small family-owned business, and he worked the cash register “from the time I had to stand on a barstool.” After high school, he went to Oregon State University, not knowing what he wanted to do, but with a small business background he was interested in using business and economic systems as a lens into the world. He joined the Peace Corps, and in about the year 2004, he said he had a realization that climate was “the problem, the thing we’re going to have to work on.”

He studied for his MBA at Thunderbird Global Management School, using the work of Dr. Greg Unruh as his frame. Unruh was the discoverer of “carbon lock-in,” in short an idea that humanity continues to entrench itself into the climate crisis in part because it’s not convenient for elected officials to make better decisions. Schuchard then took a position with Business For Social Responsibility, working to “build the business case for climate action” with some of the world’s largest corporations, nationally and internationally.

Schuchard moved on to a policy advisor job with CALSTART, a nonprofit consortium working on what he called the “climate-transportation nexus,” and he took former Vice President Al Gore’s climate leadership training at around the same time. Schuchard moved to Boulder with his wife and children in 2019, saying they wanted to live somewhere that was “car-light and near the mountains.” Currently, he has his own company called More Mobility, which specializes in policy and program administration.

He was appointed to Boulder’s Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) in 2021, and launched his first campaign for Council in 2023. He finished fourth in a race for four seats, earning 14,411 votes and a three-year term.

His campaign website is https://www.ryanforboulder.com/

On The Issues

Q – Has Directly Elected Mayor Been a Good Experience?

Schuchard won his Council seat in the same year as Boulder’s first directly elected Mayor, and he said he didn’t have “much of a baseline” for comparison with other systems. But he did say he thinks the current system is working well. While the shift to direct elections did not produce a “strong Mayor” system, and the Boulder Mayor still only gets 1 vote out of the 9 Council members, Schuchard said the current Mayor is like a “team leader” who checks in with him often.

Q – Contentious Council Meetings?

In 2025, certain Council meetings got heated with vociferous protests about the situation in Gaza. Schuchard was on Council at the time, and said the situation was difficult to deal with, plus it was challenging to find ways to balance the need to conduct city business with upholding freedom of expression. The Council ultimately made some policy changes intended to make meetings less contentious. Schuchard believes they worked, as evidenced by the less-heated meetings that followed, and he said he proposed a few of the changes. “I continue to watch it and want to make sure we’re getting the balance right, but I think we’ve done a great job,” he said.

Q – Status of Boulder’s Economy and Ideas?

Schuchard noted that there are problems in today’s economy for many, not including investors with significant stock market gains, and added that there are local challenges in part because of the current administration’s attacks on federal labs and science. On local levels, he said some of the challenges include basic affordability and having adequate public revenues for services. On affordability, he spoke about creating a “more structurally affordable place to live” in areas such as housing and transportation, which might allow residents to have more income that they’re not spending on the rent or mortgage (there will be a section on housing below). He also supports better worker protections, a more dependable electrical grid, and reforming Boulder’s permitting process so businesses can open in a more timely manner and start making money. Schuchard said he wants to improve resident experiences while working with the city, perhaps by implementing a “cross-departmental customer service line or hub,” in part to help people get routed to the right city department or people. “We should have a great customer service experience. I think that’s at the heart of some of the business challenges,” he said.

Q – Does Boulder Need to Continue Pushing for More Housing?

According to Schuchard, increasing the supply of housing will “on average” decrease housing costs, but while answering this question he mentioned a few specific areas in which housing quantity could be boosted. He said he would support more middle-income housing, more availability of places where seniors could “downsize” from bigger homes into smaller units, and more housing near transit. He believes having more units in town with “smaller footprints” could help with affordability, as might greater availability of modular homes – and Boulder has a modular home facility in town. Schuchard would support a system making it more straightforward to finance an ADU. He brought up that some of the problem with affordable housing in Boulder is due to outside institutional investors buying up properties and converting them to student housing. “We’ve got to get our arms around that, and make sure we’re protecting people who live here,” he said.

Q – Status of Boulder’s Public Safety?

Schuchard noted that public safety is a multidimensional issue, including topics like ICE targeting racial minorities and other disadvantaged groups coming to Boulder or Colorado to escape oppressive policies elsewhere. “In some ways, we have a really special place that makes it safe for people to come to, and I’m really proud of that,” he said. He said crime rates in the city have generally been going down, adding that he co-sponsored a recent Council bike security and theft prevention initiative with Mayor Pro Tem Tara Winer. He also said the city has developed a problem-solving policing approach, which he believes is “one of the first steps towards making the people feel like we’re making the public realm feel more orderly.”

Q – Public Safety FROM Public Safety?

Schuchard started this question by saying Boulder should halt the use of automated license plate readers “until we have the community’s consent.” Like many candidates, he said these tools can be very handy for law enforcement trying to solve crimes, but there’s a risk to personal security, and he alluded to the U.S. 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause. “I think we could ultimately get this right, such that this technology could work with safeguards,” he said, but he also said there were reasons not to fully trust tracking and how the data might be used right now.

Q – Homelessness?

According to Schuchard, despite lots of effort the city still has a problem with unsheltered homelessness, in part because it can “lead to a sense of disorder” in parts of the city. He said he believes Boulder has made some positive advances, including getting day shelter services provided at the All Roads shelter, but said there’s “a long ways to go” including obtaining funding for the behavioral health services some members of the unhoused community need.

Q – Is Boulder Ready for Sundance?

With only several months to go before the festival begins, Schuchard said he believes Boulder is “in the process of being ready” while adding that there was a lot of work currently ongoing. He said he is concerned with a type of local inflation that might happen, including with a limited number of eye-opening short-term rental prices being asked, along with the possibility for people to buy second homes but not live in them year-round. Still, he said “I think it’s really exciting. It’s a major project that will have a lot of potential benefits for Boulder over the years”.

Q – Should Council Engage in International Affairs?

He began answering this question by saying, “Global consciousness and social justice are Boulder values,” but Schuchard added that he believes the Council needs to stay focused on local issues that they must manage, such as housing, public safety, and the city’s economy. He added that “As a city, we have a big heart, but generally not the resources nor the mandate to bring cross-cultural or cross-border conflicts to resolution. We need to be wary about the city initiating work that could create risks or harmful impacts in our community, even if unintended, that we couldn’t responsibly respond to.”

Q – Downtown Development Authority?

Schuchard voted against sending a DDA ballot measure to DDA voters earlier this year. Like several incumbents and candidates, he said the process didn’t have enough stakeholding and buy-in from the numerous groups that might have been impacted if tax-increment financing diverted money from dedicated funds. So, the Downtown and University Hill business districts will move forward without DDA money, but Schuchard believes certain improvements are things Boulder “should be doing anyway,” like better restrooms, drinking fountains, parking, and transit. He once again mentioned issues like permitting reform, city customer service, and more reliable electricity as ways that could improve the business district experience.

Q – Climate Action?

Schuchard said he is proud that the city’s Climate Initiatives Department is doing what he called “national and maybe world-leading work in some ways.” During a mid-September interview, he mentioned that the department had just unveiled a biomonitoring program regarding bees to better understand this part of the local ecosystem. Moving forward, he said he believes advances could be made at the intersection of housing and transportation, especially if more people could live close to work or school or transit and drive less. He again mentioned local power outages, and said he was disappointed when recently an Xcel Energy executive said he couldn’t estimate when or if the rate of outages might return to where it was just a few years ago. He said local residents can face serious problems when the power’s out, including those who need medical equipment or refrigerate food or run a business. “I mean, it went out on a Friday night before Christmas this last year. It’s just awful,” he said.

Q – Is Boulder Shifting Toward Reliance on Fees and Property Taxes?

According to Schuchard, the city is too reliant on sales taxes. Boulder recently proposed a city Transportation Maintenance Fee, and he said people asked him during his 2023 campaign if the city could do a better job with road conditions. He said the TMF “created an annually durably funded pavement maintenance program that aligns the costs and the fixes for pavement with its use.” He said the city has been looking at its revenue structure since at least a Blue Ribbon Commission took up the issue in 2008, and said in mid-September that Boulder’s close to having an online dashboard where residents might be able to better understand the city’s long-term financial health.

Q – Rec Centers and Deferred Maintenance?

While Schuchard acknowledged that Boulder is having a difficult time with deferred maintenance, he believes many other cities are experiencing similar problems. Moving forward, he said he hopes the city can establish something along the lines of a “capital renewal fund that is citywide, and creates controls for maintenance across all of our assets, and that has oversight from City Council.”

2026 Ballot Measures

  • City of Boulder $400 Million Bond: Schuchard supports this measure, in part because costs of maintenance or improvements will only get more expensive over time. He added that the measure doesn’t mean the city will take out all $400 million at one time, so there would be a future opportunity for a city conversation around the specifics.
  • City of Boulder Vacancy Tax: Yes, to help make sure more of the city’s housing stock is useful to residents.
  • Boulder County Increase 3 Commissioners to 5: In mid-September, he did not feel it was appropriate for an official with his level of local government to weigh in on this Boulder County issue.
  • City of Boulder Debt Limit Increase: Yes, partially because it would bring Boulder in alignment with other cities.
  • City of Boulder Firefighter Collective Bargaining: Yes.
  • Boulder County Childcare Tax: Yes, because he believes “families with young kids are really struggling.”

Endorsements: Schuchard has earned organizational endorsements from Boulder Progressives, Transform RTD, Better Boulder, Sierra Club IPG, PLAN-Boulder County, Run on Climate, Daily Camera, and Boulder Area Labor Council.

Follow The Money: Schuchard has received maximum $100 donations from Mayor Aaron Brockett; current Council members Tara Winer, Tina Marquis, Nicole Speer, and Matt Benjamin; former Council members Jill Grano and Mark Wallach; and state Rep. Junie Joseph.