Aaron Brockett is seeking another term as Boulder’s mayor. He is running on what he describes as his record of expanding housing opportunities, addressing homelessness, strengthening climate resilience and confronting the city’s budget challenges.
Brockett has served as mayor since 2021, after serving six years as a councilmember. His fellow councilmembers selected him for the mayoral role in 2021, and in 2023 he narrowly won Boulder’s first direct mayoral election. If reelected, this would be his last term under city term limits.
Brockett has been endorsed by the Boulder Progressives and most of his fellow councilmembers. The exceptions are Taishya Adams, who is challenging him for mayor, and Rob Kaplan. His endorsers also include state Sen. Judy Amabile, state Rep. Junie Joseph and Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty.
Brockett is generally aligned with the council’s progressive majority, particularly on housing. During his tenure, the council loosened restrictions on accessory dwelling units, made it easier to build duplexes and triplexes, allowed more housing near downtown and along transit corridors, eliminated minimum parking requirements and repealed occupancy limits. Brockett wants to continue expanding “missing middle” housing and creating more neighborhoods where residents can meet their daily needs without driving.
His leadership style is rooted in trust in city staff and the council-manager form of government. Unlike challengers calling for a more assertive mayor, Brockett generally describes the role as guiding the council, presiding over meetings and building on work already underway.
That approach was tested during a turbulent council term. Meetings were repeatedly disrupted by protests over the war in Gaza, prompting Brockett to call at least 19 recesses. The council eventually shortened open comment, prioritized infrequent speakers and stopped showing public commenters during meeting broadcasts. Brockett has said he would have implemented those changes sooner. He also points with pride to council meetings ending earlier than they once did, arguing that councilmembers make better decisions when meetings do not stretch late into the night.
This year, the council also faced criticism for informally deciding to keep Boulder Municipal Airport open without first holding a public hearing. Brockett later said that, if given another opportunity, he would have scheduled a formal hearing and given councilmembers more time to discuss the issue at the outset.
Before becoming mayor, Brockett served on the Boulder Planning Board from 2011 to 2015, including two years as chair. He was elected to the city council in 2015. In 2022, Brockett unsuccessfully sought appointment to a vacant seat in the Colorado House of Representatives.
Brockett and his wife, Cherry Anderson, previously ran a software development firm together.
He grew up in Sewanee, Tennessee, and moved to Boulder in 2003. The couple lives in the Wild Sage cohousing community in North Boulder’s Holiday neighborhood and have two children.
Occupation: Mayor
Neighborhood: Holiday
Rent or own?: Own
Answers to questionnaire:
Affordable housing: Market-rate homes are out of reach for many teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters. What would you do to create more housing these middle-income residents can afford? What regulations, if any, would you change to lower the cost of building or renovating homes?
I support additional rezonings to allow for denser housing along transit corridors. The data shows that most of the new apartments built in the last few years are affordable to people making around the Area Median Income, so we should continue to allow and encourage more of those to be built. Allowing for more middle-missing housing types can help allow for housing affordable to middle-income households — the Holiday Neighborhood where I live is a great example of that approach being successful. But the high price of land in Boulder makes middle-income ownership housing to build, which is why I support moving forward with the annexation of the Area III Planning Reserve. Given the lower land prices there, if done right, annexing that land would result in the construction of many hundreds of middle-income affordable ownership housing.
Homelessness: What is one approach Boulder has not tried, or has not tried at scale, to address homelessness that you would bring to the council, and how should the city pay for it?
We have made huge progress in creating permanent supportive housing over the last few years, with over 200 units in city limits at present, and homelessness in the city has dropped almost 50% in the last few years. But one area where we have an enormous gap is in providing substance use recovery support as well as mental health assistance. The city has helped create one sober living home in town, which is great, but there is a need for many more. I support major increases in substance abuse recovery beds. The biggest challenge with that is how to fund them. The city definitely doesn’t have the resources to create them on our own, so I would look to partnering with private non-profits, Boulder County and the State of Colorado, as well as for grants from the Federal government. While fiscal times are tough at all levels of government, we should look for all opportunities to address this critical need.
Governance: Boulder is entering its third straight year of budget cuts while facing a roughly $400 million backlog of major facility needs. How do you assess the problem, and what specific spending, revenue or management changes would you support?
We need to catch up on the facility backlog as our police and firefighters are working in buildings that make it difficult to do their jobs effectively, and our aging rec centers — South Boulder Rec in particular — need large renovations or replacement to continue providing the services the community expects. If the bond on the ballot this fall is unsuccessful we’ll need to go back to the drawing board and work with the community to determine a new, shorter list of facility priorities that we can accomplish in the next few years. I’m also supportive of having a performance auditor that works with and potentially reports to City Council to look for ways we can improve fiscal efficiencies in the city organization.
Flock: Would you end Boulder’s use of automated license plate readers, yes or no? Why or why not?
I wouldn’t end them unilaterally, but ALPR’s have justifiably come under significant scrutiny over data privacy issues. We have added many safeguards to the system to make sure data is only shared for legitimate reasons, that only the minimum amount of data is kept and for a short period of time, and that data is shared only with a small percentage of Colorado law enforcement agencies and never with the Federal government. To address community concerns, I support the city manager’s plan to have a community conversation on the topic in the early part of 2027 and make a decision with the community about whether to continue or end ALPR use. I also support state legislation mandating additional safeguards and guardrails on their use.
Wildfire: Should Boulder adopt an ordinance requiring owners of existing homes and homeowners associations in high-risk areas to harden their properties against wildfire, yes or no? If yes, what should it require?
Yes, we should. We need to build on the new Wildland Urban Interface building code that we passed earlier this year by mandating some pragmatic wildfire hardening in the WUI zones, with a priority of course on Zone 1, followed by Zone 2. Those requirements should be phased in carefully though to make sure they’re doable from a practical standpoint, including minimizing the loss of mature vegetation (other then junipers, those probably do just need to go), and from a financial standpoint, meaning that we need to make sure there are grant funds available to lower income households and those on fixed incomes.
Is the city doing enough to push Xcel Energy to prevent or limit wildfire-related power shutoffs? What more should it do?
We are already pushing Xcel hard using all of the tools at our disposal, including intervening with their regulatory body the Public Utilities Commission, something no other city in Colorado does other than Denver. We have achieved some major victories, including securing hundreds of millions of dollars for undergrounding major power lines around Boulder, which will make the scope of any future public safety power shutoffs much smaller. We have also used our in-depth knowledge of the city’s electrical grid to work with Xcel to prioritize the most effective areas for future undergrounding. And, we communicate with them regularly to make clear the need to update and improve their energy infrastructure where it is failing.
Local businesses and downtown: Many local businesses, especially downtown, are struggling with rising costs and stagnating sales. What city policy would you change to help businesses stay open and reduce commercial vacancies, and what would you do to bring more customers downtown?
We need to make permitting easier in the city for many common needs, including tenant finishes and commercial to residential conversions. We should also offer city economic vitality grants to small businesses to help them get into empty retail spaces they might not otherwise be able to afford, as well as look at reducing fees for items like outdoor dining.
Closer: Imagine it is November 2027, one year after your election. What is one specific thing you will have accomplished?
We passed an important wildfire protection ordinance that requires people in the WUI zones 1 and 2 to take manageable but impactful wildfire hardening steps on their properties. Within a few years, this will mean the city as a whole will be substantially safer from the risk of a major wildfire. And one other bonus item, I’m incredibly proud of how successful the Sundance Film Festival was in its first year in Boulder!