This commentary is by Nicole Speer, a current Boulder City Councilmember and longtime member of the council’s Financial Strategy Committee, writing in her individual capacity, and Mark Wallach, a former City Councilmember who served on the committee from 2021 to 2026.
Across the U.S., mid-century public buildings are reaching the end of their lifespans at the same time. Colorado communities are dealing with it too; Longmont’s 2026 public safety bond measure will partly address $76 million in one-time capital and facility needs. Boulder is in that same wave, no matter how exceptional some former elected officials and council candidates imagine our city to be.
Our recreation centers, fire stations and public safety facilities are outdated and failing, and they cost more and more every year to maintain. The bond measure on Boulder’s November ballot aims to address the same facilities reality that cities across the country are facing. It is not glamorous, ideological, frivolous or nefarious. It is key to a fiscally responsible, well-governed and safe community.
It is a troubling and dangerous time when former elected officials or board members of political organizations who have chaired capital committees, approved municipal budgets and overseen public projects choose to misrepresent how municipal finance works. Too much is at risk in 2026 for us to accept this as normal behavior for people in positions of power and influence.
Given how far the public conversation about this measure has drifted from the facts, let’s start with a quick reality check:
The city’s 2021 Facilities Master Plan assessed all 75 of the city’s buildings. The findings were stark:
- The average building is 47 years old.
- More than half were built before 1970.
- Seven are over 95 years old.
- The city carries $55 million in deferred maintenance.
- It will cost $372 million to keep failing buildings open through 2050, with no upgrades.
These failing buildings pose safety risks in an era of wildfires, floods and deadly public attacks. They threaten the future of beloved community amenities like the South Boulder Recreation Center. They also show up in the daily lives of the city’s workers:
- Firefighters sleep in rooms with windows that no longer seal, letting in water and cold air.
- Public safety personnel try to keep up with modern emergencies from a building with malfunctioning, decades-old equipment and leaks so frequent they risk mold.
- Recreation staff manage facilities with deteriorating walls, failing mechanical systems, frequent closures and inaccessible layouts.
- Utilities crews repair equipment that is decades past its lifespan, while the facilities department contracts out repairs because our old buildings can’t accommodate modern vehicles.
Two recent opinion pieces, one by former councilmember KC Becker and another by Open Boulder board member Terri Brncic, simply deny these realities and argue that Boulder cannot be trusted with capital investments because the city’s processes are flawed, its estimates are vague, or its accounting is suspect. These claims sound alarming. They are also inaccurate.
Becker incorrectly claims this measure gives council a “blank check” for spending, despite years of debate at council meetings, board and commission meetings, and a specific list of projects published on the city’s website: rebuilding the South Boulder Recreation Center, renovating North Boulder’s Recreation Center, constructing a modern public safety and emergency communications facility, upgrading fire stations, and addressing long-deferred needs at the Municipal Services Center and Penfield Tate II Municipal Building. This is a case study in the modern tendency to opine on an important topic without doing a modicum of basic research.
Likewise, the claim that the city “hasn’t produced real cost estimates” for the proposed projects ignores the detailed, publicly available building condition assessments, lifecycle cost projections and preliminary cost ranges for each project. These early conceptual estimates can’t be final construction numbers — that is not how real-world construction works. Anyone who claims knowledge of municipal finance without understanding this basic fact has a gondola to sell you.
Construction costs change over time in any project, and this is especially true in large public infrastructure projects because the costs of materials like concrete and of skilled labor increase faster than inflation. Once individual projects are authorized, scoped, designed, and competitively bid, we will have final numbers. Estimates that enable flexibility are a safeguard for taxpayers, not a loophole.
Brncic also argues that because the city could not instantly satisfy her demand for a single compiled table summarizing 12 years of spending on the multi-phase Alpine-Balsam redevelopment, voters cannot trust the city with any capital project. This is not a reasonable standard. Alpine-Balsam includes land acquisition, demolition, flood mitigation, site infrastructure, multiple buildings and future housing phases. These components were approved in different years, funded through different local, state and federal sources, and tracked in different systems — exactly as they are in every city.
That the city asked for time to compile this information is not evidence of mismanagement. It shows a complex project being documented responsibly in a time when staff capacity is strained. Brncic appears to believe she is uniquely entitled to receive voluminous information on this project, even though staff’s current focus must be on preparing the 2027 budget. Perhaps council can move funding from wildfire mitigation to add staff dedicated solely to her future information requests.
More importantly, Alpine-Balsam is not a warning about capital investment. It is a warning about what happens when a city inherits aging buildings and tries to modernize them to current standards. The city purchased the site in 2015 after the hospital closed, in part because neighbors wanted the city to guide the area’s future, rather than a private developer. Renovating a 1960s medical office building to meet today’s accessibility, energy, safety and workplace requirements is expensive. Pretending otherwise does not make the costs go away.
Becker’s nostalgia for the 2011 bond process is equally misplaced. That relatively small 2011 bond focused on a narrow set of renovation projects. The 2026 bond addresses a $400 million maintenance backlog across 15 buildings, some of which need full replacement. The scale is different, and the process differs because the problem differs. Over the past five years, the city has held public meetings, published extensive materials, conducted polling to understand voter priorities and referred the measure in open session. Public engagement did not disappear; it was elongated to reflect the scope and complexity of our more-than-50 year facilities backlog.
Capital projects cost money, and none of us want to pay more in taxes. Those are both facts. But it is also a fact that there is a cost of failing to invest in the recreation centers, fire stations, emergency communications systems and public facilities we all rely on: Our city’s workers will leave for communities like Longmont that are willing to invest in their safety; more families and older adults will move to cities that provide modern amenities like pools and recreation centers; and our shrinking revenues will increasingly be consumed by repairs, leaving minimal funds to mitigate the increasing economic, climate and social risks we face.
We will all pay for this bond one way or another.
This November’s question is simple: Will we face the facts, invest in the infrastructure we need, and work together to build a city that we and future generations can rely on? Or will we let misinformation lull us into believing that the cost of doing nothing is free?
It’s “funny” how whenever someone in Boulder is opposed to important work that would benefit the community they have to resort to misdirection and deception. At least the CU South flood mitigation opponents were honest enough to say they just didn’t want the project, even if the “practical” justifications were a sleight of hand. People who don’t want to spend money on needed maintenance and construction can’t really admit that, so instead they have to pretend that government budgeting and contracting is like going to the supermarket.
You are right that there are a lot of people who don’t actually want to spend money on, for example, a new police building especially at an unidentified location with a lack of clarity on what police upgrades it could include. And you’re right some people don’t want to spend $30million for the municipal building when there have been a lot of upgrades or fixes there are the year. But I also think that there are a lot of people who are willing to vote for a maintenance bond measure. With this one, though, there aren’t enough controls in place (what will buildings will get prioritized in what order, what cost controls are in place to make sure that department stays within a budget, and are there going to be investments in new buildings that we don’t have a plan to maintain) and there was a lack of explanation (PRAB asked for more information about what it would take to do maintenance versus demolition at SBRC, but they were told that wasn’t on the table). So some residents, I think quite fairly don’t want something this large, at this time, done this way. That’s the voter’s prerogative.
I’m no financial genius, but I think the long-term capital expenditure planning is backwards. The City owns assets that they can’t afford to maintain, so they allow them to fall into disrepair. The City then seeks to borrow the money to refurbish the assets, only to repay those loans with interest, from future tax collections, leading to a shortage of money to maintain those assets in the future, and starting the whole cycle over again.
If the City could not afford to maintain the assets in the past, how could they do it in the future while repaying the loans and interest?
The City is living beyond its means, and needs to prioritize its assets and dispose of the rest.
You don’t have to be a financial genius, neighbor! In fact, that’s what they’re doing. The Alpine redevelopment centralizes the staff from around ten different buildings that they’re selling/deconstructing and letting go of.
And why has the City failed to set aside money annually for the capital expenditures Speer describes when the Facilities Master Plan was adopted in 2021? This City administration has failed to set aside funds for the very capital expenditures Speer writes about.
I agree with a lot of what’s in your piece and yet after reading it, I’m still a hard NO on passing this tax increase. It’s not that I don’t believe that we will ultimately need to address these issues, and more that I have little confidence that the city has really vetted the estimates, gotten public input to evaluate options and figured out how to manage this ambitious project. In other words, it’s a no confidence vote on city management and the City Council. As you correctly pointed out, this problem has been growing exponentially over a number of years. And how exactly has the city addressed this liability as it was blossoming? By adding bike lanes? By giving tax benefits to demanding companies and film festivals to move to Boulder? By continually throwing money at Housing First strategies when its success rate was questionable? Over the last decade, the City Council has made choices to put other projects ahead of keeping the infrastructure in good shape. Now that it can no longer be ignored, you are demanding the voters approve the one option they are given to fix this mess and you are giving us no time to understand why this is the best option. And people do look at the other big development investment that the city is undertaking, the Alpine-Balsam campus, to affirm that the city is up to taking on this big project. Unfortunately, when people look at how it’s going, it doesn’t appear that it’s going so well. So please understand that many of us would like the ability to understand where the $400M number came from, what other options did you consider and reject, is there a guarantee that this tax increase will be reversed when the project is completed, how will the funds be deployed and what steps are built in to make sure that it’s managed successfully. And you have to take the time to explain it to us in a way that we can understand it. And then we’d like to listen to us and take our input into account. Do that and I’ll vote Yes.
Yes!!!!
IF it is true that the City of Boulder has a 50 year maintenance backlog, what has the City been doing with money allocated for maintenance for the last 50 years? THr majority of homes in Boulder are older than 50 years and owners have been maintaining and upgrading them all along. Why has the City “deferred” this work?
I appreciate this thoughtful take on the ballot measure, especially its rebuttal of arguments against it that are rooted in outdated or inaccurate information. It’s difficult for taxpayers to discern the true merits of any given proposal, but reflexively rejecting an idea because it doesn’t adhere to some theoretical standard of “best accounting practices” seems disingenuous at best. There seems to be a condescending attitude toward current city management that is at the core of many of the arguments against the ballot measure. That condescension seems unwarranted and is, frankly, offensive.
I don’t think the criticism of the ballot measure is based on theoretical disagreements. And my criticism isn’t intended to be condescending to staff at all. I think the process was flawed and that there hasn’t been enough vetting or disclosure or presentation of trade-offs. The 2021 Facilities Master Plan lists deferred maintenance. But it doesn’t say we need, for example, a $170million replacement. The bond doesn’t promise that that will be the budget, or that one project won’t “bump” another if there are overruns. I’d like to know more about what we are getting for that amount. There just wasn’t enough opportunity for community to see the trade-offs of various proposals and make an educated decision themselves. I’ll add that if this bond measure is funded Boulder will have $1billion in debt, with a whole lot more needed for deferred maintenance b/c this one only funds 15 buildings. That’s a whole lot of debt without addressing a lot of the other needs.
As someone else here said, I agree with a lot of what’s in this piece and yet I’m still a no on passing this tax increase.
If this was to pass, how much effort would be going into decarbonization? How would this get us closer to our climate goals? There is some mention of this, but the lack of details are concerning given the price tag. If I was confident that some real work was going to be done in this area, I’d feel much better about it.
Lastly, this feels like an opportunity to rebuke the city management which is something that the council seems unwilling to do.
The condescending attitude toward city management is because that management has ignored their responsibility to maintain facilities until such reaches a crisis point. Then they expect approval of a huge bond issue to fix the problem on the basis of trust. Such trust is built or in this case eroded slowly. Work with the voters to rebuild that trust, not rebut their opinions.
The NO sentiment is a vote of no confidence in city leadership. Your priorities are skewed. There is no transparency and people have lost whatever trust they may have had. I would suggest you immediately redirect planned funding for the Civic Center redesign for starters. The ambitious redesign phase 10 years ago significantly damaged the appeal of the entire area and now you want to inflict more stupidity. I get that you have highly paid staff who need to implement long range plans in order to justify their existence, but then they make these big messes. This is just one glaring example of skewed and misplaced priorities driven by staff and rubber stamped by city council.
Talk about misinformation. Going after private citizens as a City Council member for questioning how taxpayer money is being spent is abhorrent. A few important corrections to the opinion piece by Nicole Speer and former Council member Mark Wallach, whose writing I generally appreciate, but who I believe gets this one wrong.
First, the Pavilion was not some 1960s hospital office building. It was built in 1993 and was presented when Alpine Balsam was purchased as a relatively modern office building that would not require extensive renovation. The scope grew dramatically, ultimately producing what is essentially a shiny Class A municipal office building.
Second, the city did not fully understand the extent of deconstruction and site work required when this project was originally pitched.
The same context matters with flood mitigation. Much of that work was necessary to make the site, including the residential parcels, developable. A private developer building housing there would also have needed to address those flood constraints. It is misleading to treat all of that spending as a separate public benefit justifying the cost of the municipal project.
The city’s own numbers now put the total Alpine Balsam cost, including financing, at approximately $368M. After deducting the approximately $14.5M affordable-housing reimbursement and roughly $9.5M expected from selling the market-rate housing parcels, taxpayers are still left with an extraordinary investment approaching $3,000 per square foot ALL IN when measured against the 117,000 square feet of municipal office space.
There were multiple off-ramps and decision points where Council should have had complete financial information.
I know because I spent five years on Planning Board and repeatedly asked what Alpine Balsam was actually going to cost. I could not get a complete answer. Planning Board didn’t have purview over the project’s full financials. Council did. Staff should have been tracking and clearly presenting the all-in cost at every major decision point.
That is exactly why the proposed $400M bond should concern taxpayers.
Yes, Boulder has deferred capital needs, and those may justify a bond. But before asking for another $400M, the city needs detailed project estimates, stronger financial controls and a much more aggressive examination of its own staffing, spending, redundancies and priorities.
Look at the proposed public safety facility: approximately $170M before financing. With its proportional share of bond financing costs, taxpayers could ultimately spend roughly $270M on a single building.
Meanwhile, Boulder County recently purchased an existing 40,000-square-foot office building at 2525 28th Street on 1.4 acres for about $14.4M, roughly $355 per square foot. And are doing. modest renovation to it. Much more fiscally prudent.
These comparisons aren’t “misinformation.” They’re exactly the questions taxpayers should be asking.
No private owner would accept a project where the true all-in cost became clear only after years of escalating commitments. Taxpayers shouldn’t either.
Before Boulder asks residents for another $400M, show us that the lessons of Alpine Balsam have been learned: scrutinize costs, prioritize needs, provide credible all-in estimates and put financial controls in place before asking taxpayers for more money.
Thank you, Jorge, for your detailed response. I agree with your analysis, and it is indeed concerning that Mr. Wallach and Ms. Speer continue to attack taxpayers who either want more information or disagree with their position. Mr. Wallach was on Council when the 2021 Facilities Master Plan was adopted. The plan recommended a 2%-4% CRV (Current Replacement Value) budget for building maintenance. Council, however, decided only to fund maintenance for the newest buildings or those that had been recently renovated. I believe that was two buildings. So, they turned their back on the other 76 buildings. Of course, now, it is an urgent need! Where has Council been in annual budget discussions? Evidently, maintenance wasn’t a priority. They’d prefer to chase the copper penny (Alpine-Balsam at $368 Million, new police building at $170 Million, etc.)
City council says it needs to rebuild trust with residents. Then two of its own — one sitting councilmember, one former one – spend several paragraphs mocking the residents trying to help them do it.
Here’s what actually happened. In June, I asked the city – with copy to all city council members – to provide two pieces of information: how much we have spent on Alpine-Balsam, and where the money is coming from. It took four months and a CORA request to find out that we will spend $366 million on this project. Either the city council legitimately didn’t know the largest capital project in Boulder history was going to cost $366 million – and didn’t think they had a fiduciary responsibility to find out – or they knew and didn’t say anything. Pick one. Neither is a great pitch for handing over $400 million more.
The authors suggest my questions cost the city time it should have spent on wildfire mitigation. That’s an obvious deflection. A basic accounting of the city’s largest capital project shouldn’t take four months and a records request to produce – it should already be sitting in a drawer, ready to go. The fact that it wasn’t is the problem, not the fact that I asked.
The authors also accuse us of spreading misinformation. I’d push back on that word. What we had was a lack of information — theirs, not ours. The fix for that isn’t lecturing residents for asking. It’s more transparency, not less.
None of this means Boulder shouldn’t invest in aging fire stations and rec centers. It means the opposite: the need is real enough to deserve a rigorous, transparent process for evaluating it so we ensure we get the necessary buy-in — not a public shaming of the people asking for one.
If the purpose of this piece is, as the headline says, to bring “facts” to this debate, then give us those facts with enough depth to answer the questions residents are actually asking.
Where did the $400 million number come from? What assumptions underlie the individual project estimates? What alternatives were considered and rejected? What cost controls are and will be in place? What happens if one project runs over budget? How will projects be prioritized? How will these new and renovated facilities be maintained so we are not back here again? And what lessons have been learned from Alpine-Balsam thus far?
Those are not frivolous questions, and they are not evidence that residents have failed to do their homework. They are exactly the questions people should be asking before authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars in additional public debt, particularly when the city already had $260.8 million in bonded debt at the end of 2024.
The appropriate response should be obvious to two people with this much experience in public service, and it is appalling that it apparently is not.
This is what the response should have been:
“We hear your frustration. We should have made this information easier to find and understand. Here are the numbers. Here is the data behind them. Here are the assumptions. Here are the alternatives we considered. Here is what we know, what remains uncertain, and how we will control costs and report back to the public.”
And then keep explaining it. Again and again if necessary, until residents can reasonably understand the proposal and make an informed decision.
When information is complex, scattered, difficult to find or simply unavailable, an information void develops. People naturally keep asking questions, digging for answers and trying to piece together the picture themselves. The responsibility of public officials is to fill that void with clear, timely, verifiable information.
Instead, Speer and Wallach describe one critic as opining “without doing a modicum of basic research,” say another “appears to believe she is uniquely entitled” to information, and then sarcastically suggest diverting wildfire-mitigation funding to deal with her future requests.
That is insulting and mocking. They should know better. Those residents deserve an apology.
And where is Mayor Aaron Brockett in this discussion? He supports the bond. Does he agree with this tone and with this characterization of residents who are asking legitimate questions? If not, I would like to hear him say so.
Facts should be able to withstand questions. Residents asking those questions should not be ridiculed for doing so.
The elephant in the room is still the deferred maintenance over years. I am willing to vote for very specific projects — like a new fire station, a new police station, funding for Spruce pool, re-do of South Boulder Rec center….SPECIFIC. Lumping all into one does give council a “blank check”. To gin some respect and trust, council should look at why our city manager got a raise and the police didn’t; why we have 6 community engagement positions and 32 marketing positions…and there are plenty more that could be trimmed. This is fiscal responsibility. The city is not serving its citizens. The budget is bloated and an independent audit (which I heard rumors is “illegal” in Boulder???) is very much needed.