Jamillah Richmond is a first-time candidate for Boulder City Council running on a platform of climate justice, community-driven government, affordable housing and supporting workers and small businesses.
Richmond is the co-founder of Education Without Oppression, a nonprofit launched in 2025 to “expose and dismantle racist, discriminatory practices in public schools.” She also works as a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant and is pursuing her doctorate in Leadership for Change at Fielding Graduate University. She previously worked in project management and customer service.
Richmond describes herself as a community advocate who has worked with unhoused residents and helped immigrant families obtain medical resources. She serves on the city’s Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Community Assembly, the Boulder Valley School District Accountability Committee, and the Parents of Color Council, which she co-founded. She is also board chair at Haven Ridge, which provides services to unhoused women, transgender adults and children.
Her work with the Parents of Color Council has focused on racial disparities in student discipline. Richmond has urged BVSD to acknowledge racism as a cause of those disparities and consider whether students were defending themselves when responding to bullying.
Richmond’s advocacy has also drawn her into contentious disputes over race, bullying and discipline. In 2023, BVSD reached separate settlements with Richmond and another family over a conflict involving their children, admitting no wrongdoing in either case.
Richmond was involved in another legal dispute in 2025 after an employee at William Oliver’s Publick House in Lafayette threatened to call police during a disagreement over food she said was unsafe. Richmond sued the restaurant’s owners, alleging racial discrimination, negligence and outrageous conduct. The business paid her to settle the case without admitting liability.
Richmond serves on the Boulder Progressives board. She entered the race after its endorsement process ended, but the group is supporting her campaign, saying she is “passionate about education, affordable housing, a more accountable city government, and meaningful police oversight.” After completing its evaluation, the organization extended a full endorsement to Richmond on Sept. 12.
Richmond moved to Boulder in 2019 and is raising her 13-year-old daughter in affordable housing in Martin Acres.
Occupation: Diversity and education consultant
Neighborhood: Martin Acres
Rent or own?: Rent
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?
The state and the city have made many zoning changes that should allow for denser housing near mass transit stations. The first thing I would do is open the planning reserve for additional development for a neighborhood of similar scope and scale to the Holiday or Palo Park neighborhoods. I would also ask the city to prioritize housing features that families desire – like three bedroom townhomes and detached single family homes. Some of the plans called for planning reserver call for nearly one-fifth to be reserved for green space and parks. I would challenge that assumption – as the planning reserve is surrounded on three sides by open space. Additionally, the city needs to make it easier for people to subdivide their properties, including making it legal to construct non-single family home structures. This is necessary in order to create a market where people can attain smaller, affordable property and begin building equity. Ultimately, greater density is the key to creating more abundant housing options that are attainable for middle-income earners.
To make it easier to build, we of course need to change our zoning and land use codes. We need to make it easier to permit homes, and empower developers and prospective residents to construct homes without onerous obstacles. To do this, I would like to see the city work with developers to create incentives for the construction of for-sale middle-income units, as opposed to the existing fee-in-lieu approach used currently.
In the long term, I think it is important that the city develop a long term plan to self-build deed restricted middle income housing that allows ownership opportunities for middle income families.
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?
One of the best ways to combat homelessness is to keep people housed. There is no one perfect policy approach that can adequately reduce homelessness, because homelessness is a systemic challenge, requiring a systemic, holistic approach.
First, we need to reduce service duplication, as we have several organizations in Boulder doing similar work. For example, the Emergency Family Assistance Association (EFAA), provides services like emergency rental assistance, but so too does Boulder’s Eviction Prevention and Rental Assistance Services (EPRAS). The challenge is that both of these service providers can not provide services to everyone who needs them, only those who qualify, leaving a broad swathe of Boulderites unable to access the financial and supportive services they need at scale.
More than this, Boulder needs front-end interventions that help people remain housed and solvent before they fall into homelessness. Cash assistance programs, like Elevate Boulder, should be resurrected, acknowledging that Boulder faces a roughly $6.3M budget shortfall in 2027.
At the same time, front-end interventions cannot be decoupled from interventions to support people currently experiencing homelessness, which the city is pursuing with limited success. Those interventions cannot be pursued solely by the Boulder Police Department. BPD officers are not social workers.
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?
For many years, Boulder was able to rely on a steady, growing stream of sales tax revenue, largely generated by visitors. The increasing popularity of ecommerce, along with consolidation of commercial real estate and related increase in commercial rent, and general economic tightening has led to a situation where sales taxes are no longer a robust and growing revenue stream. At the same time, costs to deliver public services have increased.
We need to help Boulderites understand that the continued vibrancy of our city’s public amenities, like the historic and well-loved Spruce Pool, whose funding is uncertain under the proposed 2027 budget, depends on our ability to levy appropriate taxes on private and commercial property owners. Property taxes in Boulder lag far behind our peer cities in other states, and, indeed, are some of the lowest in the nation on a per mil basis. That has allowed a situation where wealthy individuals are able to treat Boulder real estate like a bank without investing in our common good or the Boulder community.
Additionally, it is important for City Council to maintain tight reins on the government to ensure that we are continually finding ways to be opportunistic, entrepreneurial, and find efficiencies where possible.
Flock: Would you end Boulder’s use of automated license plate readers, yes or no? Why or why not?
Yes, I would end the use of automated license plate readers like Flock Safety. I would also decline to explore any further contracts with firms like Flock Safety that use AI technology to surveil or monitor drivers.
I would do this because public safety should not be put in the hands of the private sector and companies that track and collect citizens’ data. I oppose this technology not only because of data privacy concerns, but also because of disproportionality in the way this technology is wielded against under-resourced communities. For example, data from some communities shows that Flock cameras are disproportionately concentrated in Black communities and high poverty areas.
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, Boulder should adopt a home-hardening ordinance for homeowners and HOAs in high-risk areas. Wildfires pose an existential threat to Boulder and Front Range communities, and though retroactive home-hardening presents real challenges for homeowners, it should be a priority for our city. To socialize this among Boulder’s residents, home hardening should be understood as a communal effort; the safer your neighbor’s home, the safer your home is, and vice versa.
Specific requirements should include clearing brush and highly flammable vegetation within eight feet of homes, closing off exposed eaves and vents, replacing wooden fences and decks with non-combustible materials, ensuring trees do not overhang on buildings, and using non-flammable roofing materials. The city should also advocate for the replacement of single-pane windows, both as a fire mitigation strategy, and as an energy efficiency upgrade for homeowners. This should come with an incentive program from the city to make it affordable for homeowners to update their properties. These upgrades should be pursued mindfully, with an emphasis on not harming Boulder’s urban tree canopy, to the extent possible.
Is the city doing enough to push Xcel Energy to prevent or limit wildfire-related power shutoffs? What more should it do?
I think the city can do more to push Xcel to do its part to mitigate wildfire-related power shutoffs, and hold the utility accountable to its customers, rather than its investors. I am glad to see the city is hosting a joint forum later in October, but forums alone are not enough.
Xcel must inform businesses and ratepayers well in advance of power shutoffs, and provide accurate projections for when power will be restored. If the utility will not cover ratepayers’ expenses related to power outages like spoiled food or lost revenue, it should pay Boulder to help retrofit people’s homes and small businesses with things like generators and balcony solar panels to help them withstand power shutoffs.
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?
One policy change I would advocate for on Council to help businesses stay open and reduce commercial vacancies is a commercial vacancy tax. Similar to Ballot issue 2J, the Residential Vacancy Excise Tax, this tax would be levied against commercial landlords whose properties are unoccupied for 183 days or more, and could be assessed at as little as $4 per square foot of vacant space. The tax would apply to vacant commercial spaces over 400 square feet, and would increase yearly, at 1.5x, 2.0x, and 3.0x, or for as long as properties remain empty.
This tax would accomplish two things: first, it would incentivize commercial landlords to fill their spaces with tenants, helping revitalize Boulder’s downtown and bring much needed sales tax revenue, and would also help lower rents for existing tenants, as more tenants paying rent could offset landlords’ need to increase rents in the first place. It is important to acknowledge, however, that without rent control, landlords can still raise rents, making this tax helpful, but not guaranteed to keep commercial rents low.
Closer: Imagine it is November 2027, one year after your election. What is one specific thing you will have accomplished?
One year from Election Day, I want to have specifically maintained consistency across my policy commitments. This is not to say I will not change my mind or evolve on issues, but that my commitment to my guiding values of equity, inclusion, and human dignity will not falter. If I maintain moral consistency in my judgments and decisions, I will be able to approach Boulder’s challenges with a coherent world view that will not change depending upon the audience or stakeholders I am in front of.
Instead, I will be able to take Boulder as it is and work with my Council colleagues to create a community where everyone can thrive.