Thirteen candidates are running for five open seats on the Boulder City Council in this year’s local elections with three incumbents vying to retain their seats.
Voting is mail-in ballot only and registration is closed, but registered voters can turn in their ballots as late as 7 p.m. on Tuesday, according to the Boulder County Clerk Web site.
Several City Council issues directly affecting the CU community include new construction developments and the university’s relationship with the city, said Seth Brigham, a former CU student and City Council candidate.
“The most recent incident of the proposed building on Grandview showed how tense and uncooperative relations are between … CU and the City Council,” Brigham said.
The development on Grandview has been a point of contention between City Council and the university, which is not bound by the city’s regulations.
“The City of Boulder needs to prioritize efforts to build stronger relationships with Boulder Valley School District and CU Boulder,” candidate KC Becker said on her campaign Web site. “Being part of the university’s growth discussion in a constructive way joins the two communities, instead of reducing Boulder to serve merely as a host city for the institution.”
Twenty-year-old Katy Steinfort, a junior art major, says she believes that local elections affect CU students, even if they don’t vote.
“I think most people don’t pay attention to [local elections] because they’re not well publicized,” Steinfort said. “The City Council will be making decisions that affect everyone in Boulder, which is why it’s a detriment to them that they haven’t built a good relationship with the university.”
Several council candidates address the relationship between CU and the city in their campaigns, including Jyotsna Raj whose Web site says she would like to establish regular meetings to build cooperation with the university.
“[CU] keeps our economy stable and the city intellectually vibrant,” Raj said.
The campaigns for City Council address an array of other issues on their election Web site, with central topics of environmental sustainability, affordable housing and renting, and the budget gap between spending and tax revenues, as well as issues like the revitalization of the University Hill area.
Candidate Fenno Hoffman says that the City Council can affect CU students through other issues like off-campus entertainment, and also adds that the impact of local elections stretches beyond the city’s limits.
“If [students] give a shit about this planet, they should vote wherever they live for candidates that are trying to solve the problems of sprawl, address climate change, build inclusive neighborhoods and have an eye on the future,” Hoffman said.
Four ballot questions will be voted on this year, including an extension on a 0.15 percent sales tax and a measure to increase the housing excise tax on new development for nonresidential development.
Some students said they had no idea that the election was even occurring let alone the ballot issues involved.
“I don’t know shit about it and I don’t really care — a bunch of hippies,” said senior humanities major Spencer Schwartz.
For more information on the City Council candidates and the 2009 election visit the City of Boulder Web site.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Noah Wanebo at Noah.wanebo@colorado.edu.
