Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Good afternoon, everybody. It's wonderful to be here with you. My name is Aaron Brockett.
[00:00:04] Speaker C: I'm the mayor of the city of
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Boulder and I'm running for re election. I've been the mayor for five years and on the city Council for six years before that. And in that time we've accomplished a lot that I'm proud of, a lot of it with the people that are here in this room. For example, we've created thousands of housing units, but more importantly, hundreds and hundreds of permanently affordable housing units. And I see Betsy Martins in the
[00:00:25] Speaker C: room who is the former director of
[00:00:26] Speaker B: bhp, our greatest partner in that work. We've worked on climate and sustainability. We've built a better transit and transportation system.
[00:00:35] Speaker C: We've kept.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: We've made our residents safer. An example of that work was when we passed our sanctuary city ordinances after Trump was elected the first time. Something I collaborated with then Mayor Suzanne Jones on.
We've also passed an assault weapons ban not once, but twice. Hat tip to Giograno for initiating that the first time around and and hat tip to Rachel Friend for coordinating the efforts with the other cities in the county the second time around. So we do what we can to keep our residents safe. And I've also led with community engagement. Over the last 11 years, I've met with hundreds of local groups, from students to nonprofits, the universities, and I built deep relationships that I use to collaborate with and convene gatherings when we have to deal with the common problems that we all face.
But there's still more work left to do. And if you all will elect me to another two year term, I promise to collaboratively come together with council members, city staff and the community to solve the problems that still remain in front of us. Because when we work together, Boulder's better.
[00:01:39] Speaker D: Thank you.
That was the voice of Aaron Brockett, a candidate for mayor of Boulder, introducing himself at a recent forum.
Welcome to the Better Boulder Hearts and Minds podcast. It's election season. Ballots will be mailed soon and it's time to get to know your candidates. We hope you are enjoying this series of Better Boulder endorsed candidates.
The selection of our endorsed slate requires 2/3 of our board to vote in favor. And this year we endorsed one mayoral candidate, Aaron Brockett, and seven city council candidates.
This slate is the result of numerous one on one conversations in person, interviews in front of the entire board, lively discussions and multiple rounds of voting. To see our full list of candidates, please visit betterboulder.com and click elections.
Our third candidate interview in this series is with Aaron Brockett, who is running for mayor. We met on a Monday evening at the Wild Sage Community center in the Holiday neighborhood. There were children running about and doors opening and closing, but hopefully most of that is minimized here.
We talked about his accomplishments as mayor, housing, transportation, the city budget, the Alpine Balsam project, the bond measure, and the role of mayor, among other subjects. We hope you enjoyed this conversation with Aaron Brockett.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Aaron, welcome to the Better Boulder Hearts and Minds podcast. Thanks for being here.
[00:03:16] Speaker C: It's great to be here, Phil. Thanks for having me.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: You bet.
Recently when we spoke, we had a really interesting conversation. I had asked you about the fact that as mayor, you get to travel about and meet interesting people and represent Bowler as a. There's kind of an honorary aspect to being the mayor. And I asked you if you had met anyone particularly interesting along the way. And you told me a really fascinating story. So I thought it'd be fun to just kick off this interview with. With that story.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for the question. So one of the things that I love about Boulder is our sister city program.
And we actually have 11 sister cities.
And one of the ones that we approved while I was on city council is with Kathmandu in Nepal.
And I love our local Nepalese community. I meet with them regularly, go to different events all the time. So there was an opportunity to travel to Nepal. My wife and I a couple years ago went with our dear friend Narayan Shrestha, who helped start the sister city. So we traveled to Nepal and went to Kathmandu and then signed documents reaffirming the sister city relationship with the then mayor of Kathmandu. And his name is Balanshaw.
And he's incredibly popular in Nepal and was very popular as the mayor of Kathmandu. But since then there's been a whole Gen Z revolution over there. He's a very young man, like 35, I think, something right now.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: And he's into hip hop or something.
[00:04:42] Speaker C: And he actually is a hip hop performer.
[00:04:44] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:04:45] Speaker C: And, you know, swept into office as mayor. And then there was this whole Gen Z revolution that kind of overthrew the old guard. And then there were new elections that brought in a wave of younger people, including Balan Shah as the new prime minister. Well, so our former mayor that I sat down with and shook his hand and Sunday is now the prime minister of Nepal, which is just incredibly cool.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: That's very cool. You got to, I think showed me
[00:05:10] Speaker C: a picture of you and him.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Is that, is that right?
[00:05:13] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:05:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. We got picture together. It was in the local news.
Super exciting. And of course, now our hearts are with Nepal during their time of trouble. They had the horrific floods there. And so we've had a couple fundraisers to raise money to help the folks that are affected. But our ties with Nepal and Kathmandu run really deep now.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Okay, pop quiz. I'm going to put you on the spot. Okay. Can you name all the other 10 sister cities?
[00:05:39] Speaker C: Let's see. I'm doing. Okay, so Kathmandu in Nepal and Lhasa in Tibet and Yamagata in Japan.
Dushande of course in Tajikistan, Yas in Cuba, montane Mexico, Halaha in Nicaragua, Kissimu in Kenya, Vinitia in Ukraine is our newest one. And then Ramat Hanev in Israel and Nablus in the West Bank, Palestine.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Wow. Oh, nicely, nicely done for chaos.
So that's very cool. Okay, well, so let's shift to the elect the mayoral race.
So you've been mayor for five years?
[00:06:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:27] Speaker D: Great.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: I wonder if you'd like to just give us a overview of some of the things you're proud of, what you've accomplished as mayor.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, thanks for that. I mean, we've really gotten so much done over the last five years that I'm really proud of. A lot of it has been in housing.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:45] Speaker C: So we have adus allowable by right now.
We eliminated parking requirements last year. We've made it so that you, when you do a new development, you can have more units that are smaller so that they're inherently more affordable with that smaller size.
You know, we've enabled additional development along transit corridors. We've passed the eastmiller subcommittee plan, which allows for a whole new kind of area of mixed use development over there, often along transit corridors.
We've enabled duplexes and triplexes in certain parts of town, duplexes along transit corridors. So we've really added all kinds of new alternatives for housing options across the city.
So that's going to be part of it. But let me also talk about transportation because we've been adding protected bike lanes in a lot of places, creating plans for new ones and other ones. But we issued that a $23 million Safe Streets for All grant from the federal government that I helped procure.
So we have new protected intersections at 30th and Colorado and Colorado and 28th Street.
We've got bus rapid transit under construction right now between Boulder and Longmont. It's a hassle for the moment, but it's going to be amazing when it's done. We've got the funding for starter bus rapid transit service along East Arapaho and of course, the Front Range passenger rail. The Cocoa Train is on its way and so we're going to have construction on that start pretty soon too.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Oh, cool. So I. Were you involved with the Coco Train and making that happen?
[00:08:13] Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, a huge group effort, but yes, I did play a role in securing the funding and helping move those planes forward.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: And then while we're talking about things that we're excited about, we got to mention the Sundance Film Festival, of course, coming on 2027. Another group effort, but one that I'm proud to have played a role in.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: You might get to meet some interesting people. When that happens, you never know.
[00:08:35] Speaker C: We're all going to get to meet some interesting people. Like.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:08:38] Speaker C: Boulder in January is going to transformed. It's going to be so extraordinary, so much fun.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: I.
I saw that the, the call for volunteers is out and I've got that email tucked away. I hope to be involved in some way.
[00:08:53] Speaker C: Oh yeah, volunteering will be a lot of fun.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Cool.
I wanted to understand the parking minimums just a bit better. This is park. These are parking minimums across the city.
And, and they mostly apply to new developments because I, I assume existing developments already have the parking that they needed or were mandated, but I suppose they could go back and retrofit some of that space if they wanted.
[00:09:18] Speaker C: That's right. Actually, we used to have this incredibly complicated formula for our shopping centers. Like different types of retail had different parking requirements. So as they changed tenants out, they'd have to redo their parking calculations, they'd have to create new parking spots, or they'd have to turn a business down because it had too high of a parking requirement for the parking that they had. So of course, all of that is gone now. You can just swap tenants out without working through your parking calculations. But while applying to new development, it also means, like, let's say there's an older development that has a huge parking lot and they're like, you know what? Let's turn half of that into some housing or a mixed use development. Like, then, you know, assuming they comply with the other codes, they wouldn't have to worry about parking as a reason.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Is parking in Title ix?
[00:10:03] Speaker C: It is, yeah. Title nine of our land use code.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.
I know there's been a lot of talk about Title ix. Maybe we don't need to do a deep dive on that, but I was just kind of like when you said it's one less step when you want to swap tenants out to consider what type of business and how much parking is required for that type of business.
It feels like one of those things where you're throwing less dirt into the cogs.
There's been a lot of complaining lately about over the years about how slow the process is and how it slows people down.
[00:10:42] Speaker C: Absolutely. And one of the other things that I'm proud of is a few years ago at one of our council retreats, I said to city staff, hey, if you run into something as you're doing your job that prevents you from helping people to do good things that they want to do, and it requires a code change, just make a list of those and come back to us and we'll just approve those changes, assuming they make sense. And they have brought back four big omnibus code simplification packages since then that have cut red tape and make our processes easier to navigate at every turn. So while there's still plenty of room to go to make Boulder more business friendly and easy to work with from a primitive standpoint, we've actually taken enormous strides over the last few years.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Wonderful.
Anything else along those lines that. That you wanted to highlight?
[00:11:27] Speaker C: And those are some of the. The top ones. So I'm interested what other questions you have, but sure.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Well, so I know a lot of people's minds are issues around governance and community trust, and that's kind of surfaced by the bond measure and by what was the other thing I was thinking about? The Alpine balsam all of a sudden became everyone's top priority to talk about.
So I'm just kind of curious, what's your read on the gestalt of the city and what should be worried about or what should be giving us confidence in our city government?
[00:12:10] Speaker C: Yeah, there's been a lot of focus on transparency in government recently, which I really appreciate because we're all better off when people know the exact workings of government. Right. And so we've definitely taken some additional steps in that direction.
So our new budget is.
Has a lot of great detailed data in it. It has summaries and it has deep dives and has a transparency portal. Like you can dive really deep into the budget to look at all the various specifics. And so we've been fielding a lot of questions from folks about that. There's a lot of good information about that.
And then on Alpine Balsam, there were justifiably a lot of questions about like, okay, this is a big project going for a long time, like, what's the total cost? What have been the steps that have been followed and admittedly took A little while. But the city staff put together this really beautiful storyboard online storyboard of all the different steps in the Alpine Balsam process. You know, what is costing how much and how we got there. And so you can now go through the whole 11 year history, 12 year history of that project and learn exactly what it took and what it involves. Because people have been taking some top line numbers and saying, oh, that many city employees for that much money, that's too much. But there's all this infrastructure for affordable housing. It's going to be the largest affordable housing project in the city's history. There's this really important flood mitigation project there that's going to keep a whole bunch of people and their property safe from flooding in that area as well as at a beautiful neighborhood amenity, you know, so there's these multiple purposes to that project and explains it really well. So I'm glad that we've been able to get to that level of transparency and we'll, we'll keep working on that for other projects as well.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Cool. I haven't paged through that. I, I should and I think I will.
I feel like a lot of people have, you know, just kind of looked at the numbers in a really coarse way and basically just said, oh, there must have been a lot of mistakes made along the way and what a mess. And I'm kind of just hearing you talk about it makes me think I should go back and read this and see if I shouldn't be excited about it instead of concerned about how our government operates.
[00:14:19] Speaker C: And the thing is that while the project is expensive, it's also going to serve the community for many decades. Like this is a future proof building, it's high quality. And while that does involve some significant upfront expense, when you look at the perspective of fish 50 or 100 years, which is the time frame we need to be looking at for a city government, it's going to save the city a huge amount of money compared to the aging, failing facilities that the city is in right now.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Well, I can't help but think that kind of segues into maybe talking about the bond measure a bit because I feel like that's a big aspect of taking care of maintenance today is cheaper than taking care of it 10 years from now usually.
[00:15:01] Speaker C: That's right. And so we're seeing some really eye popping numbers for these construction projects. And so people are often just looking at a top line number and going like, how could that cost so much? The city must be doing something wrong. But construction Costs are incredibly high these days because what we've been seeing over the last few years, coming out of COVID during COVID and coming out of it, is that construction cost inflation has been running much higher than the standard rate of inflation.
And so every year that we wait to get ahead of these maintenance and facility needs means that we're falling further behind.
And so while the bond is a big ask, the reason why it's a big ask is that it would allow us to catch up and stop falling further behind.
And so if it gets approved, it'll be a fiscally prudent move for the long term, and the city will be able to stay on top of its facilities. If it doesn't pass, we'll go back to the drawing board to look at something else. But. But every year that we wait to address these needs means that it's going to cost more in the long term.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Would it be safe to say that the interest we pay on any bonds that we take out is cheaper than the inflationary rate of construction costs?
[00:16:11] Speaker C: That's exactly what we're seeing. Right. So that we do fall literally further behind with every year that we wait because you would pay less and she's got to die sooner.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: I had assumed it was mostly just because deferred maintenance is more expensive.
Just generally speaking, because the maintenance, repair, remediation ends up being bigger.
[00:16:31] Speaker C: That's a big part of it. But also that differentiation between the construction cost inflation is important too.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Okay, well, thank you for explaining that.
Adjacent to the bond measure and the alpine balsam issue is just the budget, the city budget. And I wonder if there's. There's various concerns about how, how big it's getting and whether it's all necessary. I wonder if you could just give us a thumbnail defense of what, what the budget is and your role in helping shape that.
[00:17:07] Speaker C: Right. Well, the way that it's set up is the city manager proposes a budget and then city council is responsible for approving it. So we're going through that approval process in the next few weeks. So we're looking very carefully at the city manager's proposals. They seem generally sound. We may make some changes. We'll see how those, those public hearings go.
But one thing that I think is helpful to point out is that there has been.
People wonder if maybe the city's budget is going up much faster than it should be. And you know, we have a lot of dedicated funds, like the utility funding can only be used. The utility revenue can only be used for utility purposes, like so Those are separate categories, their enterprises, as they're called.
So the general fund is the area of our city funding that we have the most control over.
And the general fund, since 2019, so since before COVID has been going up just over 3% a year. And in that same time period, inflation has been like 3.3% per year. So the kind of core of the budget that we have the most control over has actually been growing slower than inflation.
And, you know, the last couple of years, we've had to take cost cutting measures, so we have been reducing budgetary amounts a little bit. So I just want to reassure everybody out there that, you know, we remain laser focused on the amount of funding necessary to provide the services that are core and important to our residents, but that we are also staying at reasonable amounts of increases for our budget over the years.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Okay, so I wanted to circle back to affordable housing. It seems like a ton of affordable housing has been built over the last 10 years, and there's a bunch coming online right now. I'm just kind of curious to hear what the state of that is and what's in the pipeline.
[00:18:55] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for that question, because I get excited talking about affordable housing. You know, I live in the holiday neighborhood, and there's 40% of the holiday neighborhoods, affordable housing. It's so livable. And there's such a wide range of fascinating folks who live here because of that.
And so we've been creating a lot of affordable housing over the last few years through our partners, Boulder Housing Partners, also Thistle, Element Properties and others.
And so we've been able to do that through our inclusionary housing program, primarily. So that means 25% of all new affordable housing has to be affordable or pays into cash in lieu, which, in which case we actually get even more. More affordable housing than we would if people put it on site. So we get a mix of on site and then cash and lieu that funds developments by BHP and others.
And so there have been close to 200 units a year of new units that have come online the last few years.
And I recently figured out a statistic that I'm really excited about, which is over the last eight years or so, the 35% of all new housing units in the city Boulder, have been permanently affordable.
And that number, as far as we can tell, is the highest in the entire country.
[00:20:07] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:20:07] Speaker C: So while the need is still great, we got to keep working on it on a per capita basis, percentage basis, we seem to be doing as well or better than anybody else right now.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Okay. Well, we have A few things figured out. Even if it's not.
It seems like it's never quite enough. But good for us.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: There's a lot of need left. But, yes, we're making some good progress.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Okay, well, so maybe one last question about just the role as mayor. I know that maybe a lot of listeners don't know that we have a weak mayor system where. And a strong executive in the city manager. And I. I think. I think. I don't think of you as weak.
[00:20:46] Speaker C: But, you know, the technical term.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: That's what they call it.
[00:20:49] Speaker C: The technical term is a council manager form of government.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:52] Speaker C: But I accept Leekmere's law. It's fine.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: No, that's. That's a phrase I've heard. I knew. I don't know if it's a pejorative or not, but. Yeah. Anyways, just. Maybe just outline for our listeners what.
What you see the role of mayor as and. And how it should evolve or what
[00:21:08] Speaker C: you like about it. Yeah. So with our council manager system, the city manager is the executive of the city right there. They're the head of the executive branch of government, and the mayor is the head of the legislative branch at the city council.
And so that means that I don't go around ordering people what to do. You see movies where the mayor's yelling at the police chief or whatever. Like, that's not my job.
And so, you know, I work with the city council. I'm one vote of nine. And we work together very closely on developing the policies for the city. So we pass the ordinances that then become the laws for the city of Boulder. And in conjunction with the community and city staff, we determine the best path forward from a policy and legislative standpoint. But then as mayor, then I'm also the liaison with city staff. And so I work very closely with the city manager, with the city attorney, and our directors to figure out the best path forward for the city. And then you have this ceremonial role as well. So if there's a visiting delegation, I'm the one that goes and greets them.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: You've got a pair of oversized scissors.
[00:22:14] Speaker C: Oversized scissors, Yeah. I borrow other people's, but yes, I'm very good with a pair of scissors, a ribbon cutting.
And then, you know, when there are issues that come up, press calls and things like that. And it also means that when there are tragedies like the horrific firebombing on Pearl street last year, then, you know, it's your role as the leader of the city to speak at memorials and address the community in Those times of pain and suffering as well.
And then it's just also a public facing role. So I get invitations from schools and universities to come visit all the time. Nonprofits, small businesses. So one of my favorite things to do is to get out into the community and talk to people. And particularly with young people. That's really my favorite thing.
There's nothing really better than walking into a third grade classroom as the mayor of Boulder and be like, ask me all your questions and let's talk.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: And you can explain Civics 101 to them and Cool.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly. And they have amazingly good questions.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Yeah. You also get to be on niche podcasts from time to time.
[00:23:18] Speaker C: It's just pretty neat, which I've enjoyed. Yeah, there's this guy, Philip Okran, who does a really good one I've been on a couple times. It's actually my third talk.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Well, I'll have to cut that out. This is actually the first time on this podcast.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: Okay, you're right.
Third time I've spoken with you.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right on the podcast. Well, congratulations on your endorsement from Better Builder and I wish you all the best in your in your campaign this fall. And, and good luck getting to the finish line.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: I appreciate it, Philip. I appreciate the endorsement very much. It means a lot to me and excited to continue to work together.
[00:23:52] Speaker E: Great.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[00:23:54] Speaker E: Thank you.
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This episode of the Better Bolder Hearts and Minds podcast was produced and edited by Philip Ogren.
