A Forever Obligation to the Airport is too Much
Boulder needs a long-term commitment to its airport, one serious enough to provide certainty for investors, businesses, and the broader airport community. I want to say that plainly upfront, because what follows is a dissent — and dissents can be misread. I am not arguing against the airport. I am arguing against permanently surrendering our legal right to ever make a different decision about it.
That distinction matters more than it may seem. “Indefinite” and “perpetuity” are not the same thing. Indefinite means no planned end. Perpetuity means forever. The norm for long-range planning and capital projects in Boulder is indefinite: our Civic Area investment, Alpine-Balsam, fire stations, Pearl Street.
These commitments have no specific planned ends, but they are not perpetual. We have always preserved the legal flexibility for future councils and future comprehensive plans to have options. Accepting the FAA’s 2022 grant covenants would eliminate that flexibility for this asset, permanently — and that goes far beyond anything we conventionally do.
On April 23, 2026, council voted 5-4 in a study session to authorize staff to pursue FAA funds that carry those covenants. Councilmembers Tina Marquis, Nicole Speer, and Mark Wallach joined me in voting against. Here is my case for why this decision was a mistake — and why it still can be corrected.
The right vehicle already exists
We have established practices for long-term planning that we use all the time with our buildings, districts, and major public facilities. Typically we look out 20 years, a horizon established in the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, which we update every decade and are in the process of finalizing right now. Things don’t end after 20 years, and planning within that horizon doesn’t imply the future stops there. Rather, we know that communities change: the people who live in them, the people who manage them, the economy, technology, and our understanding of good practice. So we purposefully give future administrations the space to reevaluate.
A 20-year airport commitment, through the BVCP or otherwise, would provide real certainty to investors and the airport community. It is the strongest commitment Boulder conventionally makes. It does not require signing away the rights of people who aren’t yet born — and the architects of the next BVCP in 2035, and in 2045 and 2055 after that, would still have a say in the matter. That is what I proposed.
Why the decision was wrong
1. We lack a clear policy process for this kind of commitment
This vote authorized something genuinely unprecedented: a permanent covenant on 174 acres of city-owned land, decided through a straw poll at a study session. We have no established public process for decisions of this kind and shouldn’t proceed without one.
Consider that we just completed the process of filing a lawsuit asking a federal court to confirm that Boulder had never knowingly agreed to operate the airport in perpetuity. Our central claim was that no reasonable party could have understood a $5,800 easement grant to carry an unlimited, forever obligation on 174 acres. That case was dismissed on procedural grounds, not on the merits. Now, with eyes open, we are being asked to enter precisely the commitment our lawsuit said we never made.
Consider also the logic extended. Will we accept funds for a recreation center in exchange for permanent private use of a pickleball court? Take open space money in exchange for a donor’s private trail forever? These are obvious overreaches, but the underlying legal structure is the same.
2. The community was never asked the right question
Boulder has debated the airport’s future for years, but that conversation never specifically addressed perpetuity: whether Boulder should permanently surrender its discretion over this land. That is a distinct question from whether we want the airport operating for the foreseeable future. Residents deserved the opportunity to weigh in on the actual terms.
3. Key financial questions remain unanswered
The grants under discussion would not just fund capital projects. They would compel Boulder to operate the airport indefinitely, even if that becomes economically untenable. Staff projects the airport fund going into deficit as soon as 2027, and proponents argued that forgoing FAA grants would cost roughly $600,000 per year from the general fund through 2040, about $8.4 million total. That pressure is real. But the FAA grants cover equipment and pavement projects in the $10-20 million range, capital funding we could likely find through other means.
CDOT grants carry no perpetual obligations; we received a $450,000 CDOT repaving grant this year alone. A strategy built on state and local sources, increased user fees, and Boulder’s potential as an electric aviation leader was never fully analyzed before the vote. This decision required a rigorous assessment of minimum costs compelled, what happens if the airport becomes economically unviable, and what our exposure looks like if we want to exit an arrangement the FAA holds us to forever. That work was not done.
4. The funding on offer doesn’t justify what we’re giving up
The FAA grants are real money, but funding we could plausibly find elsewhere. What we cannot find elsewhere is 174 acres of city-owned land three miles from downtown Boulder. Trading permanent property rights to that asset in exchange for a limited capital funding round has not been adequately justified, especially when the FAA bears no reciprocal obligation to fund the airport in perpetuity.
5. The Airport Neighborhood Campaign was left out of the loop
In 2024, the Airport Neighborhood Campaign gathered over 3,400 verified signatures and qualified a ballot measure. They stood down when the city filed its FAA lawsuit, deferring to the legal process in good faith. That lawsuit was dismissed and the city chose not to appeal. To my knowledge there has been no formal closing of the loop with those organizers since. They learned about Tuesday’s study session the same way the general public did: when it appeared on the agenda.
6. The cost of short-term thinking on long-term assets should be top of mind
One of the defining challenges of this council term has been confronting a deferred maintenance backlog accumulated over many years, the result of prior decision-making that didn’t account for what we were leaving to future administrations. The lesson should make us more cautious, not less, about open-ended obligations we cannot fully scope. Future BVCPs should retain real legal and contractual flexibility, not just theoretical political flexibility. We know how it feels when they don’t. We are living it right now.
7. A decision this consequential needed a real public process
Study sessions serve an important function, but they are not the appropriate venue for one of the most irreversible decisions in recent Boulder history. As Councilmember Wallach said during the meeting: “Continued operation without grants is temporary and can be changed. Applying for the FAA grants is permanent and forever.”
Responses to arguments made at the meeting
“Accepting FAA funds is the fiscally responsible thing to do.”
This logic runs backwards. The fiscally responsible answer to a short-term cash flow problem is not to permanently surrender property rights to 174 acres and agree to operate a service forever with no cost ceiling. That trades a finite near-term obligation for an infinite long-term one. If a homeowner facing a tight year signed over permanent rights to their property in exchange for a modest repair grant, we would not call that responsible stewardship. We’d call it a fire sale.
“Boulder uses perpetuity covenants all the time, with easements for example.”
Those are narrow encumbrances on specific parcels for right-of-way or utility access. They don’t compel the city to staff, fund, and operate a service forever. A permanent obligation to maintain and operate a major public facility on 174 acres, with no cost ceiling and no exit, is categorically different.
“We weren’t guaranteed to win the lawsuit anyway.”
True, and beside the point. Good governance isn’t about pursuing only sure things. It’s about doing the due diligence to preserve your options before foreclosing them permanently. The fact that we might have lost does not mean we should voluntarily concede the very thing we were litigating.
“We could always petition the FAA or Congress to release us later.”
This is not a serious planning assumption. Asking a federal agency to relinquish a binding covenant it just strengthened in 2022 is not a strategy. No prudent investor or city finance officer would treat that as a meaningful hedge. Notably, the 2022 tightening happened under the Biden administration, so a change in federal political winds is not the relief valve it might appear to be.
What comes next
The next step is a formal resolution before council that will capture the direction given at the study session. I ask that resolution includes explicit language directing staff to pursue perpetuity covenants only as a last resort, after exhausting every other practicable funding option. That is not an anti-airport position. It is the standard of due diligence this decision has always deserved — and the kind of stewardship Boulder expects of its public land.