Progress
Updated July 26, 2025
Key: ✓ Completed ☐ In the works
Better housing choices combined with more resource-efficient land use
✓ End discriminatory limits on the number of people who can live together outside of traditional family relationships (ordinance 8651)
✓ Change zoning to legalize the conversion of many single-family homes near downtown and transit into duplexes, triplexes, and other infill middle housing, enabling the eventual creation of more than 15,000 additional units (ordinance 8666)
✓ Adopt a form-based code to enable the eventual construction of around 5,000 new additional in East Boulder (ordinance 8669)
✓ Eliminate parking and owner-occupancy requirements for accessory dwelling units (ordinance 8651)
✓ End Boulder’s cap on population growth (ordinance 8600)
✓ Establish a package of measures to cut red tape towards making housing and other development more accessible and affordable (ordinance 8622)
✓ Establish a package of measure to improve affordability, rights, and quality standards for residents living in mobile homes and manufactured housing (developed throughout 2024 and 2025, presented to council July 24, 2025)
☐ Eliminate minimum parking requirements for developers to enable more housing to be built and reduce the cost of housing that is built
☐ Reform on-street parking pricing and programs to better internalize the cost of driving to drivers and better maintain the use and usability of public right-of-ways
☐ Improve utilization of Boulder’s existing building stock for housing, including the use of the 1,000-4,000 homes that are empty most of the year
☐ Identify and pursue a next generation of measures to significantly increase the diversify of type and holistic resource-efficiency of Boulder’s housing stock
☐ Make the process of landmarking for historic preservation more explicitly supportive of city goals and considerate of opportunity costs
Better transportation choices
✓ Establish a goal of “access to opportunity” to guide transportation and land use planning in city code (ordinance 8702)
✓ Streamline community engagement processes for safety-enhancing transportation projects (resolution 1358)
✓ Approve the installation of a two-way protected bikeway plus road diet (four-to-three lane conversion) on Iris Avenue
✓ Approve the installation of a two-way protected bikeway plus road diet (four-to-three lane conversion) on North 30th Avenue (from Arapaho to Diagonal Plaza)
✓ Approve installation of red light enforcement cameras on twenty four intersections, including many state-owned roads (resolution 1342)
✓ Establish public reporting dashboard for serious injury and fatality traffic crashes (established 2024, available here)
☐ Meaningfully improve the usefulness and user experience of public transit, most importantly by increasing access to frequent transit¹
☐ Modernize Boulder’s whole-of-government approach to bike parking to effect meaningfully sustained fewer bike thefts and higher bike use²
☐ Establish a maintenance fee to assess at least $6,000,000 of costs of driving directly to drivers, incorporating higher costs for higher impacts
☐Strengthen citywide transportation demand management strategies
☐ Incorporate the topics of land use and transportation choices into the climate action plan, and use that to drive greater investment towards compact, walkable development
☐ Approve protected bikeways in both directions and other enhancements on Folsom Street
☐ Improve the experience of pedestrians and others outside cars in and around downtown and the civic area
Additional energy stewardship
✓ Adopt a new energy code requiring all-electric equipment in new buildings (ordinance 8629)
☐ Develop standards to ensure potential nee data centers meet the highest standards for sustainability and community benefit
Protection from fires and floods
✓ Approve flood mitigation to put 2,300 Boulderites and 1,100 homes out of harm’s way in a 100-year flood, the final step of approval by City Council after a ten-plus year process that began in the aftermath of the 2013 flood
☐ Harden new and existing structures against wildfire while maintaining the use of soils for vegetables and other vegetation providing important ecosystem services
Food security and sustainable natural lands
☐ Improve food security and access to plant-rich nutritious food in part by seeding the development of a year-round farmer’s market and public food hub
☐ Eliminate the use of pesticides and herbicides on school grounds in partnership with Boulder Valley School District
Water security
☐ Enact new standards for water conservation in landscaping
☐ Establish new collaborative approaches to reduce water demand regionally and statewide
Other inclusion to make our community stronger
✓ Triple council pay to 40% of the area’s median income for future election winners (city ballot initiative in 2024)
☐ Create a new program of support for the development of worker cooperatives
☐ Meaningfully increase Boulder’s minimum wage
☐ Comprehensively update Boulder’s approach to homelessness, with new data-driven commitments that meaningfully contribute to resolving homelessness and the surrounding dysfunctions
Good governance centered in climate-compatibility and wellbeing
✓ Integrate a standard assessment of climate, resilience, and sustainability into a note accompanying all staff proposals and other memo materials going to city council (established July 24, 2025)
☐ Defend Boulder against harms from federal cuts to science, jobs, investments, protections, and other assets for our community’s wellbeing³
☐ Integrate strong climate reasoning into city finance
☐ Make the city’s financial strategy more robust and resilient
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1 Transit improvements include: (1) Increase access to frequent transit service near where people live (i.e., 15-minute frequency from early morning until night within a 15-minute walk), (2) Increase the number of shelters and other amenities at transit stops, (3) Introduce convenient service to the statewide intercity bus network, Rocky Mountain National Park, and trailheads throughout Boulder’s nearby mountains, and (5) Undertake a meaningful evaluation of options to establish new transit service delivery models in the Boulder Valley that includes scenarios for creating a new local transit agency
2 Bike parking improvements include: (1) Facilitate the installation of high-quality bike parking within the landscape of existing buildings, with consideration of education, services facilitation, incentives, and targeted retroactive requirements, (2) Conduct a citywide assessment of needs to make bike parking accessible for all users and their uses, and (3) Initiate an infrastructure development program to fully and equitably meet those needs identified
3 Defending Boulder includes: (1) Document and speak out about harms threatening Boulder (such as these), (2) Resist through the courts illegal and inappropriate attempts to roll back protections and civil liberties, (3) Reform state law to allow Colorado to fill the hundreds of millions of dollars being eliminated from the state budget which is currently prevented by TABOR, and (4) Build a more cohesive, self-reliant community at home