Children in North Boulder’s Wildwood neighborhood have been playing on the same wooden playset for more than 40 years. Parents say the swings aren’t safe: The slats are rotting and children are getting splinters.
But when the 32-home homeowner association tried to replace it, they say they ran into such a bureaucratic buzzsaw from the city that they ultimately abandoned the project — and still have an unsafe playset 16 months later with no resolution. Wildwood is bounded by Redwood, Sumac, Riverside and 15th Streets.
In September 2022, the Wildwood HOA budgeted $11,000 for a new modern playset, plus another $1,500 for delivery and installation. They raised $3,500 from a GoFundMe campaign among their neighbors. Initially told by the city to expect about 10% of the cost to cover the permitting process, the HOA set aside another $1,500.
Then they learned they needed a full land survey of their small community park, plus involvement from a structural engineer and a general contractor before they could even submit their plans to the Boulder Planning & Development Services Department.
The total cost for a small community playset ballooned to nearly $30,000 — roughly $11,000 for the playset, $1,500 for installation, $1,500 for city permitting fees, plus an estimated $4,000 for a land survey and up to $10,000 to hire a general contractor, said Cat Andreas, who spearheaded a three-person HOA committee.
“We are extremely frustrated and weary,” Andreas said. “We just wanted to replace something that was not safe with something that is safe. … This community is not full of millionaires. We can’t double the cost and still be okay.”
Brad Mueller, director of Boulder’s Planning and Development Services Department, said Wildwood HOA’s key mistake lay in not realizing that the playset qualifies as a commercial structure because it is in a common area accessible to anyone, so it needed to meet higher standards than the same playset would in a private backyard.
Andreas disputes the characterization as commercial. “Our HOA is private property, not public, and it seems that the city is treating it as public property,” she said. “Errant six-year-olds could just as easily wander into someone’s backyard or front yard and avail themselves of a play structure” that requires no permits to install.
Although there is no fence surrounding the HOA play area, there are private property signs. “That should be sufficient. No one should be trespassing on private property.”
She said every contact with the planning department was difficult. For example, Andreas said it took an “incredibly long time” and emails with three different zoning department staffers even to learn definitively that they needed to obtain a permit.
Former Boulder Mayor Matt Appelbaum used to live in the Wildwood subdivision and still owns a rental house there. He said he has mixed feelings. While he thinks the city requirement for a land survey costing about $4,000 was “a little silly” because the small park can easily be eyeballed, he questioned where a line might be drawn as projects get bigger. “The city doesn’t like gray lines,” he commented.
However, Appelbaum supports the planning department mandating a structural engineer and a general contractor. “It’s all about safety,” he said. “We live in an area with 100-plus mile-an-hour winds. You don’t want the playset blowing down the block” if the installation didn’t take wind into account.
Andreas said the HOA would have been glad to work with a structural engineer to make sure the playset could handle local wind loads, but couldn’t stretch their budget to fund both the land survey and general contractor.
And, she pointed out in answer to Appelbaum, wind loads in the communal play area are the same as any single-family private properties that don’t need permits for playsets.
Andreas said the HOA committee was left feeling overmatched and overwhelmed. It isn’t alone. The City of Boulder’s planning department has long been beset with allegations such as far too much bureaucracy, understaffing, complicated rules and processes, an approval process that is way too slow, and confusion among non-professionals — like the HOA — about navigating its complexities.
Last year, excessive delays in securing a city building permit contributed to the closure of Fresh Thyme’s Bodega, according to its owner. Another coffee shop owner faced over 400 days for permit approval on Pearl Street, incurring tens of thousands in unexpected costs.
In fact, Boulder is known for its slow development process, said Danica Powell, owner and founder of Trestle Strategy Group, a local real estate strategy and planning firm that specializes in walking large clients through the planning quagmire.
“They have never made it easy here,” she said. “Our regulations are incredibly complex.”
Jonathan Singer, senior director of policy for the Boulder Chamber, remarked that “everyone agrees there is a problem. It is just too complicated and getting in the way of things large and small,” which he attributes in part to some past city councils having a slow-growth bent.
“The intent at times has been almost to slow down growth. If the system doesn’t work then, is that a bug or a feature?” he said.
Contractors contacted by Boulder Reporting Lab all requested anonymity for fear the city could retaliate by slow-walking their projects. As one remarked, “I need to feed my children, and there are people down there [in the planning department] who might make it harder.” Whether those concerns are warranted, they are pervasive.
Several lamented the gone “high-touch” days when they could simply walk into the department and get a quick answer to a vexing question. That might save weeks of back-and-forth emailing, they said, and therefore save dollars for the builder or homeowner who is perhaps paying rent while waiting for project approval. The problem, several said, has gradually worsened over the years but accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Powell agreed, remarking that not having an easily accessible, staffed customer service center just creates additional stress. “The city thinks automating it is good, but it complicates the system,” she said. Residents need a physical customer service center, she believes, because they “don’t want to wait 48 hours for an email. They just want to talk with someone. That’s a big missing piece.”
A builder with 25 years of background added, “The biggest problem remains that their current service model doesn’t allow applicants to talk directly to a knowledgeable person at the city.”
That reflects the Wildwood HOA’s experience, conducted over weeks exclusively through email. Andreas found that particularly frustrating. “I’m just a civilian mom,” she said. “I’m just earnestly trying to follow the rules and get complete information. I never got it.”
One contractor, with 30 years’ experience, thinks the planning system is “set up to be confrontational,” resulting in city planners who sincerely want to help feeling stymied by the process as well. “There are sharp differences between the quality of the people there and the quality of the service.”
More responsiveness also is needed to the private sector, which has money and time on the line, according to another contractor. “Just a 10-minute phone or in-person conversation might save a second round of comments, and each round can add maybe six weeks of time.”
‘A long history’ of slow reviews, but some changes coming
Some changes are coming, however, according to Mueller, the department’s director. He was hired in June 2022 at least partially to bring that change. The newly elected city council could also set improving the permitting process as one of its top priorities for the year.
Singer said that Mueller seems committed to change and hired new staffers who are “actually passionate about creating new efficiency” in their roles.
“Now we have leverage to say that you need to deliver. Don’t just tell me. Show me,” he said.
Mueller acknowledged some of the overall complaints, saying “there is a long history of the city not meeting its performance standards in turnaround and review times,” although he believes he is making progress.
He attributed much of the recent problems to staffing shortages during Covid, a problem that afflicted governmental agencies across the country, and locally bogged down a staff truncated by about 10 percent.
The city is “very sensitive” to builder concerns around time and money, but must balance that against its responsibility for safety and quality of life, Mueller said.
To help speed up the process, he said, Boulder hired eight new planning department staffers last year, bringing the overall department size to 92.
Additionally, the department hired an outside company to help clear backlogged building planning review cases, said Mueller, and is keeping that company on retainer to work as needed. He said that over the last nine months, the department is “much, much closer to meeting our performance standards.”
Despite the common complaint about getting fast, direct answers from staffers, Mueller said staffing a help desk is “not an efficient use” of “very experienced professionals” who would need to be constantly available.
Rather, the department will continue its move to electronic help via a portal and emails that he expects will become more responsive over time, plus encouraging contractors to set times for personal appointments. Expanding electronic systems was a “very deliberate effort” that has shown positive benefits, “and I have encouraged and supported that.”
The director thinks that within another year or so, planning and development ought to be running more smoothly, noting that his staff and the city council are all committed to the changes.
For the Wildwood HOA, however, city planning improvements might not make a difference because a new playset is still considered a commercial structure and there’s no effort underway to change that. Andreas said they hope to stabilize their old playset enough to make it safe for the neighborhood children. If not, they will just have to tear it down, leaving children with no place to play.
Oh this isn’t new. I am on the board of an HOA in central Boulder. Almost a decade ago we looked at building covered bike parking by converting a parking spot that had become too small for a car because the trunk of a nearby tree had started to grow into it.
Residents had the idea that covering the bicycle parking there would help them ride more in the winter months. One resident was even a contractor and offered to build it for free. The board agreed and we were all excited, but then… we ran into the city planning department.
We went in to meet with the city and were told that to build any structure, even an open shed or “bikeport”, we would have to go through the site review process, get a new survey, go before planning board, etc. Even for a simple shed, we could have lived with getting an engineer’s stamp. No such luck. But the planners did helpfully suggest we could install unwieldy prefab bike lockers, albeit at 10x the cost and which would provide far fewer bicycle spots due to their size.
We dropped the project. The bicycle parking remains uncovered, and as a result remains mostly unused in the winter. At least we haven’t cut down the tree and restored the car parking spot.
Bad planning like this perpetuates the need for winter car travel, and defeats the city’s broader city goals of reducing its carbon footprint. It’s kind of like the trend to eschew off-street multi-use paths in favor of “protected bike lanes” that are nearly impossible to clear of snow, and thus turn into empty ice skating rinks for a third of the year. We just aren’t going to get reach those goals without the left and right hands of the city working together, instead of against each other.
Pretty much every contractor who comes to our house, such as electricians, plumbers, and other installers tells us some special requirement from City of Boulder. They say Boulder is the pickiest, most difficult city to deal with.
I know contractors who refuse to take work within the City of Boulder because their system is so incredibly dysfunctional and expensive. They have more than enough work outside City jurisdiction.
Tim wrote, “It’s kind of like the trend to eschew off-street multi-use paths in favor of ‘protected bike lanes’ …” Neither the city nor bicycle and pedestrian advocates have eschewed off-street paths. We all recognize that Boulder’s network of off-street paths is fantastic, one of our greatest assets. I like to brag that when combined with Denver’s path system (they are connected), we have the biggest, best bike path system in North America. But Boulder’s paths do not provide adequate north-south connectivity. So we need Folsom and 30th St. to have protected bike lanes to fill that need. Baseline fulfills similar need, insufficient east-west connectivity in that area of the city. Like, how do you ride from CU campus to Safeway without that Baseline protected bike lane?
As someone who rides in all four seasons, I disagree. Protected bike lanes are more difficult to keep clear of snow and ice than the unprotected ones were. They make particularly little sense on those east-west corridors where the eastbound protected lane is on the south side of the street and shaded by fences and buildings from the sun. While on north-south corridors they do make a little more sense, off-street multi-use paths would be a considerable improvement to either.
To me, it makes no sense to advocate for more bad planning to fix previous bad planning (ie the lack of off-street north-south multi-use paths). So I stand by my point. The city won’t ever achieve its transportation and climate goals if people continue to advocate for more bad planning that ignores the fact that we have winter conditions for roughly a third of the year.
That’s just as true of the Transportation Dept’s choosing protected bike lanes over off-street bike paths as it is of the PDS (Planning) Dept’s making it virtually impossible to build covered bike parking.
How do you ride from old north Boulder (areas around North Boulder Park) to anywhere else in town?
Depends where you are? If you’re up the hill (above 6th) use 4th or the surface streets to connect you to downtown bikepaths…if lower, use the 9th St. path then Balsam to get you to 13th or any where else…I find it pretty good. Both my boys grew up riding to and from school. The crosswalks on Broadway are a good place for kids to get accustomed to crossing safely…
Time for city staffers (and the rest of us!) to come to a long-overdue realization: the use of Internet-based communications does not necessarily make local matters easier or faster. In fact, it prolongs dialogues, fosters misunderstandings, and overly complicates processes. In an MIT study, a phone conversation between two people can settle on terms and come to a decision in just ten minutes where it would take three hours in emails. And that’s not counting the time taken to wait for replies, which can last for weeks. Or the possibility that the email never got through — according to the ITU, something like 14 percent never reach the intended recipient.
I suspect this bias that electronic communications work better is generational and can easily refuted by study, even the kind of trials you can run in the office.
I’m not always an advocate of the City dropping deeper into their ‘public participation’ mode, but this question of functionality and efficiency of the Planning Departments review strikes me as a case where they would benefit from feedback prior to making ‘improvements’ to the system. It seems as though Covid provided an opportunity for Staff to drop farther behind the curtain and they have taken that and run. In my experience I’ve seen the culture at the City change dramatically for the worst over the past 20+ years…I understand some of that (people have not been nice, and Staff gets abused) but we need not only good people, but good process to revamp that condition. I agree that the “no growth” political mindset has doubled down on using an overly complex planning process as a tool to limit growth, but that has led to a condition where it has added significantly to the cost for average Boulderites to complete what should be simple and in many cases over-the-counter permitting processes. It’s costing not only the commercial interests, but also residential clients (and as noted…we’re not all millionaires) way too much to navigate this City’s regulatory structure. It’s a clear sign of disfunction when residents or contractors are afraid of giving feedback to the regulatory structure…I’m guessing that’s an unfounded fear.
So the new director came in 2022 and doesn’t expect much in changes for another 2 years? It takes 4 years? How is this acceptable?
The permitting process in for construction of residential or commercial buildings in Boulder is not just bad it borders on irresponsible and neglectful management on the part of city administrators and elected officials. It directly results in excessive delays and significant cost increases. Moreover it promotes the ever growing trend towards non-permitted structures by frustrated citizens.
When members of the City Council and their staff cry out over the lack of affordable housing none seem to understand that a big part of this problem has to do with the arcane programs and supporting electronic procedures adopted by Boulder’s Planning Department. Here is a challenge for any willing City Council Member.
See if you can successfully complete all the necessary forms including a simple set of drawings for remodeling part of your house that includes minor plumbing and electrical work. This is to be done without the services of an architect familiar with dealing with the city. Once complete see how long it takes for a response and the time you will have to spend in a re-submission.
The Covid excuse for delays and inability to communicate directly with clients is no longer acceptable.
Ask any Contractor (off-the-record) or local citizen who has built or remodeled a home in Boulder how they view the process.
Ditto on Paul Prentiss’ comments. I suggest the City get a group of involved and interested residents (commercial contractors, business people, homeowners, architects, and residential contractors) to give some input into just how much additional cost is involved. To his point of driving residents ‘underground’ for small projects…I’m guessing it’s probably worse than 50/50 compliance due to cost and complexity…
Adversarial doesn’t even begin to describe our and our neighbors experience with the Boulder Planning Department. It is: “if you have to ask, the answer is no and will remain so despite the many thousands of dollars you need to submit with your plans…NEXT”