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ADAPT OUR COMMUNITY TO A CHANGING WORLD IT WASN'T BUILT FOR 4. Establish a council task force to minimize the occurrences and impacts of Xcel's power outages. After Xcel's April 2024 shutoff cut power to 55,000 customers across the Front Range, this council adopted Boulder's first accountability framework for Xcel, then made power resilience a 2026 council priority. Today, total outage time is about twenty times what it was a few years ago, and neither Xcel nor the city has a roadmap to restore reliability. ☐ Idea: Form a council-level task force to drive a public roadmap for fewer and shorter outages. It would assess who is hit hardest, pursue state policy that rewards reliability, enforce our franchise, expand backup like neighborhood batteries, and develop new generation and partnership options. 5. Grow the wildfire hardening services ecosystem. This council expanded Boulder’s wildfire risk zone, where new homes and remodels must meet fire-resistant standards, from about 4,600 properties to more than 16,000, and commissioned a cost-benefit study of options to scale up community-wide protection. But those standards apply only to new projects, about 1,000 homes have had a detailed assessment, and just a small minority have been documented as significantly hardened. So the whole community remains at risk. On a high-wind day, fire can spread from home to home across Boulder’s roughly 50,000 private properties, turning scattered ignitions into a community-wide conflagration. And the scale of work ahead is immense. ☐ Idea: Build a citywide network of hardening providers offering easy, affordable services that quickly turn parcel-level action into community-wide protection, with a focus on the best value for public dollars. A coordinating role would add up individual action to set and track annual community hardening targets. 6. Continue to improve the public realm for everyone. This council approved traffic safety cameras at 24 intersections, added more than 60 pedestrian pushbuttons, installed proven treatments like protected intersections and safer turns that encourage caution and eye contact, and lit underpasses at night, keeping our traffic fatality rate about a quarter of the national average. This council also prioritized secure bike parking, and in 2025 police reported crime down nearly 10 percent in almost every category, with bike thefts down about a third. Still, many crossings, curb ramps, and signals don't yet work well for people with limited mobility or vision, bike parking falls short of demand, and getting around downtown without a car isn't always easy. ☐ Idea: Keep making it safer and easier for people of all ages and abilities to get where they need to go, with accessible crossings, curb ramps, and signals, more secure bike parking, and a possible downtown bus circulator, timed so Sundance upgrades serve residents for years to come. 7. Sharpen our pencils on solutions for vacant storefronts. Pandemic lockdowns drove vacancies up downtown and on University Hill. This council made improving these and other commercial areas a priority. Key questions remain. What’s the role of building owners and investors and what will move them? Is there a case for public spending in private buildings and arrangements? What controls will ensure such public spending delivers intended results? What tools besides funding are available? ☐ Idea: Convene a broad-based group representing the whole community and objective experts to build consensus on the best mix of public investments and policies to reduce chronic vacancies. It would compare public amenities, private inducements, and non-spending measures like permitting and fee reform, with strong governance standards for any public dollars. The solution would represent a broad-based agreement on how to make commitments to rise the tide for our whole community.
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