In the final days before Election Day, Boulder City Council candidates have been making their last appeals to voters, many of them the old-fashioned way, by going door to door.
Boulder Reporting Lab joined incumbents Nicole Speer, Matt Benjamin and Mark Wallach on their rounds, not to hear campaign pitches — familiar appeals to pragmatism and thoughtful governance — but to listen to what voters themselves had to say. The three represent a range of Boulder’s political factions and endorsements, and their conversations offered a window into what issues residents are thinking about most.
While 11 candidates are on the ballot, much of this year’s rhetoric has centered on a potential ideological shift, as two candidates with more moderate endorsements, Rob Kaplan and Jenny Robins, attempt to unseat more progressive incumbents Speer and Lauren Folkerts.
There’s no one defining issue this year, in part because there’s no resident-led ballot measure to shape the campaign around a single debate — like 2023’s Safe Zones measure on homelessness. That’s made it harder to tease out clear dividing lines. But our reporting and candidate questionnaires show differences on several concrete issues, including homelessness response and the city’s camping ban, bike infrastructure, whether to require wildfire hardening for existing homes, and how to set Boulder’s tipped minimum wage.
Much like council itself, residents seemed to agree on the problems, if not the solutions. Some voiced concerns about Boulder’s traffic, its environmental policy and development — both in favor of it and against it. But the themes that surfaced most often were housing affordability and homelessness.
‘What about housing?’
“What about housing?” one resident asked. “That’s why people can’t live here. How do we make that work?”
Another resident told a canvasser for Nicole Speer that she was angry about the lack of affordable housing in Boulder. The volunteer directed her to the city’s affordable housing dashboard, which shows nearly 4,100 units in Boulder are permanently affordable — about 8.6% — with the goal of reaching 15% by 2035.
“I think she was just really glad to know that actually affordable housing is being built in Boulder,” the volunteer said later.
A few residents also expressed concerns about schools potentially closing or losing money as enrollment declines — a trend the Boulder Valley School District has partly attributed to high housing costs, and one some hope could improve if the city became more affordable for families.
Others connected housing issues to traffic concerns — but came to opposite conclusions. About 60% of Boulder’s workforce lives outside of the city, and many commute in daily. As they spoke with candidates or canvassers, some residents wondered whether building more housing would allow more people to live closer to their jobs. Others feared it would only bring more cars and preferred to keep the city small.
Homelessness
If housing was one half of the conversation, homelessness was the other. As they went door to door, the three incumbents often found themselves discussing how the city should respond, and they don’t all fully agree. Speer has said the city shouldn’t enforce its camping ban when the shelter is full, for instance, while Benjamin and Wallach say it should, except in cases of extreme weather. But all three voiced a shared frustration about not having enough money to fully address the problem, particularly from the state and federal government.
“It’s an intractable problem,” Benjamin told one resident. “It’s an issue that, at the end of the day, the federal government has ignored, our state has ignored, even our county is ignoring. And so it’s really been left to cities to shoulder the burden for what is a regional, state and federal challenge.”
Residents, too, were divided on what the city should do.
Comments often reflected personal experiences: Someone who had worked in homelessness services had a different perspective than someone who recounted an incident with an unhoused person downtown that had scared them, for instance.
One woman worried about how the city would support the All Roads homeless shelter in the face of county budget cuts. Another voiced safety concerns about homeless people who can’t get treatment for drug addiction and asked about inpatient treatment — which is relatively limited in Boulder and across the state, particularly for people who rely on Medicaid. A third expressed concern for unhoused people while adding that it was hard when “you don’t feel like you can go to some of our beautiful areas in Boulder” and feel safe.
Neighborhood differences
Candidates said concerns varied by location. South Boulder residents were more likely to mention repairing the South Boulder Rec Center, wildfire mitigation and challenging development of CU South for flood protection and university housing. Residents along Iris often brought up the Iris Fields sale or Iris Avenue redevelopment. In North Boulder, people living near All Roads were more likely to voice concerns about the shelter, while those living in lower-income neighborhoods often raised affordable housing.
And while some Boulder voters had strong opinions on local issues, others said they voted for candidates because a trusted friend told them to, or simply because they shared something personal in common.
Perhaps the most welcome feedback came when Councilmember Wallach met one resident at his door.
“I have no problems. City’s great, man,” the resident told Wallach. “I don’t think I’d change anything.”
“I very rarely, if ever, hear this,” Wallach said, smiling. “You’ve made me a very happy man.”
