guest opinion: This year's election is rightfully about public safety
Daily Camera, Guest Opinion - October 17, 2023
This election feels different. With violent crimes on the rise, with the Pearl Street Mall becoming a problematic place to visit even during the daytime, and with bikers, runners and walkers often harassed when they use the Boulder Creek path, I believe there is a general feeling that public safety in
Boulder is at an all-time low, accompanied by a rising frustration at government’s inability or unwillingness to address the problem.
For too long, some in the community have equated this concern with an illiberal, anti-homeless attitude, and that enforcement of our laws, such as the camping ban, arises from a place of hatred for the unhoused. Their solution for more crime is always more spending on social services and
affordable housing, never on the enforcement of our existing laws, or imposing consequences for illegal behavior. This, despite the fact that the budget for our Housing and Human Services department is in excess of $40 million per year, and despite the fact that Boulder Housing Partners, our city’s housing authority, is the largest residential landlord in Boulder, with a portfolio of more than 1,500 affordable units and almost 800 more in the pipeline. And we are in the process of establishing a day shelter to better connect the unhoused with services. Our social services efforts are quite substantial and growing.
But this year, every indication is that the issue of public safety has risen to be the most prominent concern of the electorate, including our community’s businesses. I think that is a good thing. I have long argued that the primary, most fundamental responsibility of any government is to keep its citizens safe. Spend all you want on other programs; none of it will effectively create a better city if people do not feel safe in their homes, in their parks and on their streets.
The facile mantra is that we should not criminalize homelessness. Of course we should not; but does that mean we should not criminalize crime? Do physical assaults and home invasions not call for some consequences? Or are we simply in a place where the residents of Boulder are collateral damage when thefts, assaults and worse are perpetrated upon them?
Let’s be clear: The frustrations of this community do not come from a place of hatred for those who have fallen on hard times, even those who are acting under the influence of drugs or mental illness. They are frustrations with a state of affairs in which clearly impaired and dangerous individuals cannot be removed from our streets and do not seem to suffer any consequences for activities that are demonstrably harmful to the safety of the remainder of the community.
The NAACP of Oakland said it best. In a statement deploring the surge in crime, and lack of enforcement of laws in that city, they wrote the following: “There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city.”
That is clearly correct; what is astonishing is that there are people in Boulder who do not recognize the wisdom of those words. And all of those programs intended to address homelessness? They are paid for in significant part by the sales taxes of residents and visitors (the latter contribute 40% of all city sales taxes). What happens when those sales taxes diminish because Boulder becomes an inhospitable place to visit, to dine, to live? And if you believe that the word is not spreading to the outside world about our public safety failures, you are not firmly tethered to reality. Each negative incident experienced by our guests and our residents is a story that radiates far and wide, diminishing our reputation as among the best cities in which to live.
That is why a number of our candidates for City Council and mayor this year have made public safety a primary concern of their platforms. People want to hear an honest recognition of the conditions in which we find ourselves, and concrete proposals for alleviating them. I will be voting for those candidates, and I hope you will as well. Do your homework and vote accordingly.
There has not been a more important election in Boulder since I first moved here in 2014. A very wise former colleague of mine liked to say — not always jokingly — that “Boulder gets the Council that it deserves.” I hope that this will be the year that Boulder gets the Council that it needs.