The Boulder City Council voted against considering a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war on Feb. 15. The informal vote followed weeks of public comments during council meetings, where chambers were filled with people holding signs, cheering and clapping in support of their peers, and booing those with opposing views. Disruptions during some meetings led to council recesses.
Councilmember Matt Benjamin requested the informal “nod of five” vote on whether to open a process for the resolution, stating, “We owe the community a decision one way or the other.”
Councilmembers Taishya Adams and Lauren Folkerts voted to open a process for a Gaza resolution. Mayor Aaron Brockett, Mayor Pro Tem Nicole Speer, and Councilmembers Benjamin, Tina Marquis, Ryan Schuchard, Mark Wallach and Tara Winer were generally opposed. (Marquis was the only councilmember who did not weigh in on the discussion.)
Previously, some councilmembers referred to a city code provision that limits council action on foreign issues in explaining their opposition to a resolution. The provision states, “Council shall not act on a foreign policy or national policy issue on which no prior official city policy has been established by the council or the people unless sufficient time and resources can be allocated to assure a full presentation of the issue.”
Speer suggested on Thursday that council make it a priority to revisit its policy on international issues.
“Nothing about the world in which our community is situated is going to get easier with time,” Speer said. “If we don’t have a way to help lead our community through international conflicts, I fear we and future councils will be facing these issues with increasing frequency.”
Beyond city code, several councilmembers who opposed a resolution process said they wanted to focus on local matters.
“We have so many huge problems right here in our town of Boulder, Colorado, dozens of people living out on our streets, people dying in traffic violence on a regular basis,” Brockett said. There are “any number of major local problems and issues where the nine of us can have a very direct and immediate impact. And I feel that that is what we need to focus on as a council,” he added.
“As Mayor Brockett pointed out, we have people dying right now in this community,” Benjamin said. “A lot of them,” he added, before referencing the homeless and formerly homeless people who died in Boulder County last year. He said he was worried about choosing conflicts and wars to weigh in on. “How do we define what is the threshold? How do we define when we do it, how we do it, how often we do it?”
Winer said she was elected to address municipal problems. “Even after Oct. 7, people did not come up to me and asked my opinion on the Middle East,” she said. “They wanted to know what are we going to do as a city council to make a difference in climate change, to do something about people experiencing homelessness and mental illness.”
Wallach made a similar point. “If you make a list of the 10 most important issues in Boulder — and that list can change from person to person — but pick 10. We have solved none of them,” he said. “We have made progress. We have made improvements, but we’ve solved none of them.”
Shuchard described the issue as “impossibly challenging.” He said he believes council could decide to take on a resolution process, despite the city code provision, but said it is ill-resourced for the task.
“My challenge is starting a project that I really am concerned that we’re not resourced … to do in a way that would not threaten to exacerbate tensions,” he said. “I would just like to remind you — or underline — that you have a city council here that’s being paid for something like a handful of hours a week, that’s being expected to make transformational progress on” various issues.
In voting for considering a resolution, Adams said Boulder’s voice, collectively, matters.
“Yes,” she said, mentioning Wallach, “we have a lot on our plate around housing, around transportation, around how homelessness and … how our climate, all of these things are interconnected. I didn’t move to Boulder to be in a bubble. I moved here to be a leader. I moved here because we’re audacious.”
“I do not want to be on record as I agree with this,” she said after the nod of five failed.
Folkerts said she believed the decision not to weigh in is a “cowardly” one.
“It may be convenient in this moment for us to use council rules as a shield to avoid weighing in on international issues,” she said. “But it is not right. It is a cowardly action that fails both our community members and shirks the responsibility that comes with the platform and the power our community has given us.”
During Thursday’s public comment period before the vote, around 15 people addressed the council, with roughly two-thirds in support of a ceasefire resolution. The council recessed following shouts of “shame on you” after the vote.
Meanwhile, a planned declaration against antisemitism and Islamophobia was postponed for further community input, the city announced in a community listserv before the meeting.
Frankly, I wish Council would do less more often.
Foreign policy matters are clearly an issue for Congress, not Council, and kudos to the majority of them for pointing this out.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of potholes that need fixing. We have a road infrastructure that is inadequate to evacuate our residents in case of wildfire or flood. We have building and zoning codes mired in poor planning from the 70s. We have a failure to plan for, zone, and fund treatment institutions to house the mentally ill and drug addicted, and as a result our local government tries to house them in existing residential apartment buildings among the working class renters who make this town function–a failed policy which leads to harassment and violence, particularly against women. We have a working class that has fled to safer suburbs and struggle to commute in from farther and farther outside the city, and local governments that do little to nothing to provide year-round viable alternatives to driving.
Thanks to Matt B. for bringing this forward. There is truth in what everyone had to say, and council is in a no-win position with anything they would decide on this if they were to vote on a resolution. People are afraid to talk about this. In my opinion, a cease fire should happen and will protect hundreds of thousands of lives that are being lost due to the horrific actions of a few. This is a large scale humanitarian crisis and we should not avert our eyes. However, I feel even less conflicted about the unprovoked, one-sided attack from Russia on Ukraine (although most activists who demand a cease fire in Gaza don’t seem to care much about that war). Should city council be expected to weigh in on Ukraine too? What effect will that have in either case? How much time should city council spend on dissecting the pros and cons of wars thousands of miles from the US?
I think Boulder citizens can say whatever they want to whomever they want and Boulder City Council should stick to the job of running the city of Boulder.