The Boulder City Council this week set a pared-down policy agenda for the coming year, constrained in part by an unusually short one-year council term and the city’s preparations for the Sundance Film Festival in January 2027.
The council’s six priorities include bike theft prevention, wildfire mitigation support, potential changes to the tipped minimum wage, updates to the city’s sister city policy, improving electric grid resilience and simplifying the city’s land-use code.
The retreat at the Municipal Services Center opened with a message from City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde, who said city staff are already busy preparing for Sundance and updating the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, a long-range land-use document that guides planning decisions in the city and parts of the county.
“We’ve got a full plate ahead in a one-year term,” Rivera-Vandermyde told councilmembers before they turned to their list of new priorities.
Further constraining the agenda is the council’s one-year term ahead of the 2026 election, in which five seats, including mayor, are up for grabs. Council terms are typically two years.
Bike theft
Alastair McNiven, chief of staff for the Boulder Police Department, said the police department is already working to drive down bike thefts. This work includes encouraging people to register their bikes on Bike Index and conducting “bait bike” operations, in which officers place bicycles with tracking devices across town to identify theft suspects. He said bike thefts dropped 33% in 2025 from the prior year.
Additional work the council is interested in includes ensuring better bike racks are installed around town. Many bike racks, such as the grid-style rack, make it difficult for riders to lock a bike frame securely. Councilmembers want to see more U-shaped bike racks instead.
McNiven said making bike theft a council priority means the police department would dedicate additional staff time and resources to bike theft reduction, including expanded bait bike operations and signage in high-theft areas.
Wildfire mitigation support
The city council wants the city to create a webpage that consolidates information and resources for homeowners seeking to harden their properties against wildfire. City staff were already working on such a resource, but making it an official priority means councilmembers will have an opportunity to weigh in.
Councilmembers also requested a cost-benefit analysis of potential wildfire mitigation measures that Boulder could implement, such as home hardening mandates, incentives, different types of firebreaks and fuel management. The goal of this summary is to inform future policymaking.
The council last year passed an ordinance requiring new developments in the wildland-urban interface to meet wildfire standards, including prohibiting flammable materials within five feet of a home. Councilmembers have debated whether to apply those rules to existing properties, and several campaigned for city council on that issue.
However, the council did not add such an ordinance to its 2026 agenda. City officials have said retroactive rules would have legal implications and require additional staffing for enforcement.
Tip credit
Councilmembers are interested in exploring whether to increase the tip credit for the city’s local minimum wage. This would mean employers could pay a lower base wage as long as tips bring total earnings up to the city minimum.
In 2024, the council voted unanimously to set a local minimum wage above the state minimum. A state law that took effect in 2026 allows cities to adjust the tip credit. Raising the tip credit does not lower the legal minimum wage, but it can reduce total pay for workers who already earn above that threshold with tips.
Labor groups have argued that raising the tip credit is a pay cut. Supporters view it as necessary for businesses struggling with rising labor costs. Councilmembers interested in raising the tip credit framed it as an economic vitality issue. A vote on whether to raise the tip credit would likely be contentious.
Power resilience
During the December 2025 windstorm, Xcel Energy cut power to thousands of customers in Boulder, the second such planned shutoff since 2024. This was intended to prevent downed lines from sparking a wildfire. Other outages occurred after high winds damaged utility infrastructure.
The outages fueled concerns about how fragile the electrical grid is and why Xcel is not doing more to invest in undergrounding lines, hardening infrastructure or building microgrids that are less reliant on feeder lines.
Councilmembers said they want to better understand what Xcel is doing to make the grid more resilient and what steps the city could take.
Sister cities
Councilmembers described the existing sister-cities resolution as outdated, partially because it lacks clear audit processes for annual reports and has no mechanism for retiring inactive sister cities. By making this a priority, city staff members could draft a resolution that clarifies these processes.
Title IX
Title IX is the city’s land-use code. Councilmembers raised concerns about decades of layered amendments that make it complex and inconsistent. The goal of making this a priority is to lay the groundwork for a future overhaul so that it’s more user-friendly and internally consistent. Such a change would make development projects easier and potentially faster. The overhaul could take two years, according to city officials.
Cutting room floor
Councilmembers nixed many of their proposed priorities for 2026, because city officials are already working on them. This includes disaster scenario planning, a transit strategy with Boulder County, assessing the city’s housing needs and considering a vacancy tax ballot measure for 2026.
Other ideas were dropped after city officials told councilmembers they lack the capacity to take on the work. This includes updating the form-based code for East Boulder. The form-based code guides the design of developments and is intended to move them through the city review process more quickly. Some Planning Board members have said this code does not do enough to prevent monolithic buildings. City officials said such an update could take two years.
Another key priority among boards and commissions was addressing commercial vacancies, now at roughly 30% downtown. City officials said creating a formal program to address this issue would require slowing down other economic development work, such as the creation of a potential metropolitan district.
Similarly, the council did not make reviewing the city’s snow-plowing policy a priority. City officials said community engagement around the issue would be a heavy lift. And Rivera-Vandermyde said some of the city employees who would be devoted to this work are also preparing for the Sundance. The festival is expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors, creating parking and other transportation-related challenges. Transportation Director Blythe Bailey said the work on a plowing policy could not be done in one year.
An emerging issue is the community’s concerns over the city’s contract with Flock, an automatic license plate reader company that has faced pushback over privacy concerns and data sharing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Boulder Reporting Lab has been covering the issue.) The company’s contract with the city is up in spring 2026.
City Attorney Teresa Tate told councilmembers there is a distinction between operational and policy matters, and that if the council were to act on an operational matter, such as a contract negotiation, it could violate the city charter. Councilmember Taishya Adams argued that the council has authority over “strategic direction and oversight,” and therefore should be involved in the contract renewal.
The issue did not make the priority list. Rivera-Vandermyde said city officials could instead brief councilmembers twice this year with a presentation from the police department, municipal court, police monitor and, potentially, the Police Oversight Panel.