Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everybody. I'm so happy to be here. My name is Tara Weiner and I'm running for re election to Boulder City Council. I've been on council for five years and you know what? I love it. I know you don't believe it, but I really do love it. It's great. And one of the things I love about it is when I get to talk to constituents one on one and they tell me their issues, their problems, and I get to try to solve those problems. And one thing I do is give out my phone number at every single event. So here it is. Get ready. So 609-707-8385 and guess what people call me and they're really nice.
That's true.
What do I care about? Well, I do care about taking care of core responsibilities like open space, bike paths, rec centers, parks, public spaces, potholes, hence snow and ice removal. And oh, we need sales tax revenue so that we can take care of and pay for all the things that we love so much.
So, you know, I want us to remain relevant as a city and I want us to welcome new science, business and art ventures. And I want us to be dynamic and reduce red tape that drives people crazy, including all people and businesses. Am I right? Okay, we gotta get stuff done and remove that red tape. We also have a city of innovators. We have cherished new ideas, always cherish new ideas. And many of those ideas come from our constituents, like open space, like Pearl street, like our amazing bike infrastructure. And now Sundance. And soon the new Pearl Arts District at Boulder Junction and Wells. We are a city who cares. We will defend NCAR and we'll defend immigrants and we will take care of those with less.
So let's get excited a bit again about some of the new ideas that we have. For instance, starting a permanent farmers market where we can not only help farmers, but people can.
People can come and start new business ideas without having heavy overhead and also that'll bring people downtown once again.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: That was the voice of Tara Weiner, a two time incumbent seeking re election for Boulder City Council, introducing herself at a recent candidate forum.
Welcome to the Better Boulder Hearts and Minds podcast. It's election season and ballots go out early next month. So it's time to get to know your candidates. I think one of the most exciting things I get to do as a member of Better Boulder is to participate in the candidate endorsement process.
It's always interesting to get to know the candidates and to see who will garner the support needed for an endorsement.
The selection of Our endorsed slate requires two thirds of our board to vote in favor and this year we endorsed one mayoral candidate in seven City Council candidates.
This late 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.
And this was a heavy lift because there is a large field of candidates this time around.
But we didn't do all of the work for you because you will only get to vote for five City Council candidates.
So to help you get to know our endorsed candidates better, we are going to interview as many of them as we can in the next few weeks for the podcast. We will try to keep these episodes short and sweet so they are easier to get through and we hope you find them useful as you try to decide who to vote for.
To see our full list of candidates, please visit betterboulder.com and click elections Our first candidate in this series is Tara Weiner. We met on a Saturday morning and sat outside her house and talked for well over an hour, but only recorded about 20 minutes of it. We talked about why she's running for re election, the core arterial network, the municipal bond measure on the ballot, and responsible governance.
We hope you enjoyed this conversation with Tara Weiner. Tara, welcome to the Better Bolder, Hearts and Minds podcast.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: I'm so glad to be here.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: I'm so glad to have you kick off this series of interviews with our endorsed candidates. Congratulations on being endorsed by Better Boulder.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: It meant a lot to me.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Yeah, cool.
Well, so you're running for City Council again? Just maybe just give us a gestalt of why you're doing it and how it's going.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Well, the first reason I'm doing it is because I love the job.
There are parts that I don't love, but in general I think it's a great job for me.
I love to solve problems and there's always lots of problems to solve.
Also I love the people to people contact. So I give out my phone number because I actually want to hear somebody's opinion.
Sometimes if I don't agree with them, people get upset but I still want to hear it. And then sometimes I actually change my mind after a bit. After I really collected a lot of opinions and I, you know, I'm back and forth and I'll change my mind if something is more logical makes more sense to me.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: This is a theme that's come up in conversations about you. I've been on in a few conversations about you, which is you are amazingly accessible and thank you for being such a Good listener and for making yourself available.
It's kind of an amazing skill you have.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: You can edit this out, but my kids say you never listen. I mean, it's like I have a one second attention span and they're like, mom, focus, focus, focus.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: Yeah, but you show up and you, and you, you give feedback and you, you are listening, I can tell I am, yeah.
Okay, well maybe tell us something about you're running for re election and so you've been through the trenches and you've voted on a lot of things. What's something that you've worked on that you're particularly that you'd like to highlight for voters?
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Well, I love can, which is the core arterial network I've always been interested in. When I first started, I was on the Chautauqua Access Management plan, which tried to solve problems in parking up in Chautauqua. And I was just a regular old constituent when I got on that working group. But I was fascinated with the problems, municipal problems and how to solve them. And we started the, you know that little bus that goes up. I don't remember even what it's called.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: I think they call it the hop, even though it's.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: No, it's not the hop. It wasn't the hop. But anyway, what it was hop, the
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Chautauqua, something like that. Okay.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: It brought us up to. It brought people parked in place X and it brought them up to Chautauqua to alleviate some of the parking problems.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't need more parking at Chautauqua because it's like, you know. Yeah, there's a lot. And it's a park, it's a beautiful park anyway.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: But it was fascinating to listen to other people on that committee and what were their thoughts about it. That was for another time.
I won't discuss it now. But then CAN came along and CAN is the ultimate solver of problems. I mean, if you think about it, protected by. If you're a biker and a driver like me, I do both. And you look at baseline, baseline was a super wide road. It was so wide. And also people's feet on that road. I know because I go back and forth to pick up my grandchildren. Back and forth, back and forth. So I see it. And it's easy to do because the wider the lanes are, the more people want to speed. So one way to bring the speed down is to decrease the width of a lane. And it wasn't decreased by that much. And they were able to put this incredible protected bike lane on the side. Yeah, now they're still working on it. And it's. It's a little confusing when they have the poles and cones and construction. But I have a lot of confidence in our transportation department, which is amazing, that in the end it's going to be great. And if it isn't, they'll fix what other problems that there are. But I think that's a good example of working so that pedestrians feel more comfortable, drivers are good, and also bikers feel safe.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: What was your role in helping put that together? Just learning about it and then supporting it, or was there kind of more to it?
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Well, that was my first term.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: And Matt and Rachel, who are good friends of mine, brought it forward and it got like a nine to nothing vote.
So it was across the board.
In five years, I've learned all about the transportation Department, snow and ice removal, how much things cost, and I'm fascinated with the details of municipal government for some reason, and how to solve the little things that really bother people if possible.
But anyway, can is a big picture thing. So 30th street was impossible to ride on. It's just downright dangerous. And they're doing great things. But what I learned, and this is probably tldr, if you know what I mean, is the transportation department will have to fix a block or so of concrete, and then they'll take the opportunity to add a bike lane to it. So if you go to 30th street by Scott Carpenter park, you'll see their work, which is fantastic and also really creative.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: So, as you know, I've always cared also about bike underpasses, and those are looking a lot better.
They don't have to do with can. They do, but they don't have to do with cans. So sometimes I'll just ride around, make sure everything looks clean and there's not debris. That's some of the things I like to do in my free time.
But in general, I think the concept of can was probably the best thing that we did. I'm not saying that people aren't upset about this or that, but. But I try to ask people to think in the long run that if we don't want you to speed, there are certain measures that the transportation department can take that will slow people down.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Well, as someone who lived off a baseline up until this summer, I'm very happy with the improvements on baseline. It increased my feeling of safety and my increased use of baseline as a. I bike everywhere and increase my usage of that street and 30th, which expanded having those Two segments expanded my options for how to get places. And I just thank you, city for improving my life.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Well, that's right. It improves people life, people's lives. And also there's a part of 30th that's still very dangerous. So I'm looking at, you know, it. I will ride on it.
And so I'm really looking forward to the continued upgrading of 30th street and everything else we're going to do on Folsom and also on Iris, which is very contentious.
But my thing about Iris is that you cannot bike on Iris right now unless you. It's unsafe. It's very fast. The cars go so fast. And we. I think it's a great thing to work on it.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Without making this too much about me.
I live near Folsom and Iris, so I really care about it getting these two streets.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: But I'll tell you what I've noticed is if you do things that people honestly care about, like I am selfishly wanted baseline, because now I can go up to Safeway on my bike in like 10 minutes, faster than a car if I'm really, like, for sure. Yeah. If there's traffic, forget it. And there's, you know, there's a lot of construction out there. I'm like, right up.
So it's also all about me. Like, I wanted to have a better experience, too. And I notice if it's about somebody that they care about it, that is a great thing. So yay for you.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Okay, well, if I do nothing else in my life and I can make your life better, I'm happy about it.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Okay, cool.
One of the most interesting things that happened at the Better Boulder sponsored forum for the candidates, and it was also Open Boulder and Plan Boulder, I believe, was the question about the bond.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: It was interesting because all the incumbents said, yes, I support the bond, and all the new challengers said, no, I'm against the bond. And it was the most interesting part of the evening, in my opinion. And it was kind of like the most divisive. Like, a lot of the other questions were sort of softballs. People, people all agreeing with each other.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: And this one was like, very like, you got a lot of diversity of opinions on it.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: And I noticed that as well. Yeah.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Remind us what your position is on the bond.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Okay. So I'm going to give you the backstory. It's a great story. So if you edit everything else out, this is the backstory of the bond.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: So they tell us that the Buildings are falling apart, blah, blah, blah, you know, and we have to do something about it. So that's the difference between the incumbents who say yes, because we have to do something about this problem.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: When it first came up, I said $400 million. Forget it. I said, just split it to two. Just make it $200 million. Like, because there's a few reasons. First of all, that's a lot of property tax increase at a time where people are having a lot of trouble.
You know, there's inflation, there's stress on the businesses, and seniors bought a house for, I don't know, like they tell me, $30,000 that is now worth, like, $3 million. And that's a lot of property tax. And so I thought it was too much, So I said 200 million. But they did a survey.
You know how they do that when they're going to put out a bond? They ask people.
And people didn't like either.
It was below 50%. You know, what was it called, the poll?
[00:13:34] Speaker B: They didn't like not funding it. And they didn't like funding it.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: No, they didn't know it was a poll that they do for bond measures. And the 400 million came below 50%.
And the 200 million became slight. Came slightly less than even 400 million.
Yeah.
But it was low. And in work, when you do a ballot measure, if it pulls below 50%, actually 60%, you don't even put it on because you don't think it's going to pass. So I said, why are we even doing this, really? There is a government trust for municipal government. Trust is at a low right now.
So I couldn't visualize being the realist that I am that it was going to pass. I said, please, let's not do this. Let's just do the 200 million and let's just, like, narrow down the scope.
But I was the only council member that said to do that. And everybody said, well, it pulled slightly higher at 400 million, so let's go with that.
So I had no traction and no takers. And, you know, you have to get five, four other people. You have to get a majority of five on anything. So even though I mentioned it twice, I had two little rants on camera.
It didn't fly. So what happened was, this is real. True story. Right now we have the South Boulder Rec center people coming relentlessly, coming every two weeks to speak an open comment about how they want that lap pool. If we're going to have a bond measure, we've got to Put that lap pool in there. And bond measures tend to not have details.
So the bond measure language came and it said aquatic facilities or something. So then I said, well, that could be a shower.
What does that even mean, aquatic facilities?
I did my New York thing.
So then I said to the city staff at the actual council meeting, why can't you just put lap pool in there? So then you hear the roar from the crowd of yes.
And so Allie Rhodes, who's our director of parks, also a friend of mine came up and said, we can do that. I mean, at first I got pushback. Like, we need more community engagement is what somebody said on staff. And I said, what? We have so much community engagement on the South Pole Direct Center. I said, just put labpool in there.
So Ali said, okay.
So this first time this happened to me in my life that I suggested something and on the spot it was put in, I was pretty excited.
And then they asked me, what's your ballot language? Okay. In my life I've never given ballot language. So I was like.
And then Aaron had it. Because he's that smart.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: I depend on Aaron for a lot of things. And he gave the ballot language and they said yes to it and we approved it right there.
Incredible. So if people are going to say to me, do you support a 400 million dollar bond after I just had this incredible coup, I'm of course going to have to say yes. I'm not going to say no because I care about what the community cares about and they care about that lap pool.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: So whether or not it passes, it doesn't matter to me. Here's why. If it doesn't pass, we still need to do something. We just have to come back with ballot measure 2.0.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: And be more explicit about what we're going to spend it on and narrow the scope to what we really, really need.
And what else do we have to do? We have to gain back government trust.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: I will say that when you're talking about let's take out. Let's take governments versus business.
A government doesn't do things like thinking about profit ever. Because they're not. They don't have profit.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: So sometimes. So in this case at Alpine Balsam, for instance, they were the developer. Should a government be the developer? No. Because they don't watch costs as much as actual developers.
The first thing that happened that wasn't good was in 2019 when the council voted to reuse materials from the old hospital, which was so much more expensive than the other options.
But at that time, we had money and the environment was the top of the list of the most important things. And it still is, but in a different way. I'd say now we're more focused on making sure we don't have wildfires, preventing. It's more preventative now.
So decisions were made in the, I don't know, 11 years or so that Alpine Balsam has been in play and the next council just has the, you know, just has.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: What happened last time when you voted on that 2019?
[00:18:21] Speaker A: I wasn't on.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Oh, when that was voted on, was it seen as popular?
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: And I asked Bobby Yates, why did you do that? He said, I didn't vote for it. But in general, a lot of people did. A lot. Most of the council did vote for it, was very popular.
And so new councils take over from old councils and new administration also takes over from old administration. There is not even a world that. This started five years ago and Nuria got on and I got on.
So in the world of construction costs and inflation, things start to roll out of control.
Do you stop a project?
You can't control construction costs and inflation. We also have, you know, labor costs, which are much more expensive, and we want to give people fair wages.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: So what do you do? I mean, that's a great question.
The point is, is government and business make different decisions for different reasons.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
Okay.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Well, is that boring?
[00:19:23] Speaker B: No, I think this is. This has been really fun for me and I don't. I don't expect this video to go viral, but my hope is that the people who listen to it are like force multipliers.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: I'll tell you what I like. I do the amount of community participation and looking at Alpine Balsam, because they're not wrong that the cost got out of control.
I guess the question is now is what to do about it or how do you have it not happen again? If you're in business and you had something happen once, you're like, okay, that could have been an anomaly, but if it happens twice, this is a pattern, and then three times, then you shouldn't even be in business. You can't let things keep going wrong. So I think looking at Alpine Balsam and saying this happened, these are the mistakes, or these are the decision points where we could have made different decisions and try not to have that happen again would be great. I don't know that cities do that. And in our manage, you know, the city manager makes the decisions in a lot of this. That's a city manager form of government and do we want to change the form of government? Well, that's a whole nother story for another podcast for sure.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Thank you for tackling that subject that's on everyone's mind.
We're kind of gone 15 minutes, so maybe do you have anything else you want to share about what you want voters to know about you?
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Yes.
You know, my major in economics I very economically oriented, so I'll always talk about cost costs, fiduciary responsibility when it comes to the auditor. I think it's a great idea because it'll make us more focused on costs and it's the taxpayer's money after all, and I want to use it in the best way possible. But I also really care about people and what they think at the same time.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: And so if anybody's listening to this, I would say you have my number. But if you don't, everybody does. 609-70-783 and I welcome any discussion. If you want to call me, discuss things, just text me.
I would love that.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: That's amazing.
Thank you so much for running for your service and for giving it another go and for participating in the podcast. I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Better Boulder is a nonprofit political action committee that endorses candidates and ballot measures and develops and promotes policies that we believe will make Boulder more vibrant, livable and connected.
We are working hard to create and enhance sustainable, walkable neighborhoods and to champion well designed infill and redevelopment that reduces our impact on the climate, encourages less driving and keeps our community welcoming and economically thriving.
This podcast is not governed by a consensus driven approval process that carefully regulates messaging. Opinions expressed on this podcast are solely those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Better Boulder organization.
We hope you enjoy the diversity of opinions and perspectives and that these conversations spark improved dialogue in the community.
Please visit betterbolder.com for official positions on a wide variety of topics. While you are there, please consider donating money if you value our work.
This episode of the Better Bolder Hearts and Minds podcast was produced and edited by Philip Ogren.
