infrastructure
Has there ever been a topic more boring, yet more important, than maintaining the City’s infrastructure? It was boring in 2019, when I first ran for City Council. It was boring in 2021, when I ran for reelection. And it is still boring today, and still of critical importance.
The City of Boulder has more than $300MM in unfunded infrastructure needs, including road and bridge maintenance (how do you like our potholes?), our need to renovate our rec centers, the need to refresh the Pearl Street Mall, to build two new firehouses (we still have firehouses located in single-family residential structures, to which I say, you have got to be kidding), to bring other structures up to standard to meet our environmental goals, and on and on. And any city that fails to adequately maintain its infrastructure is simply asking for long-term trouble; once you fall too far behind, you can never catch up.
That is why I am a very strong advocate for a permanent extension of the Community, Culture, Resilience and Safety sales and use tax (“CCRS”) of .30% Terrible name, but critical to Boulder’s future. And this is not a new tax, it is merely an extension of the current tax. 90% of the proceeds go towards infrastructure projects, 10% towards arts and non-profit funding. This extension will raise $13-15MM/year (inclusive of the arts and non-profit funding) and that cash flow can be leveraged to issue bonds for larger projects.
This is a must-have approval for the City of Boulder; many critical projects can only be funded through this mechanism, and these are projects we truly need to maintain Boulder as the first-class city it has always been.