Ryan Schuchard has served nearly three years on Boulder City Council and is seeking a second term. His priorities include reducing the cost of living, strengthening climate resilience and making city government more effective. 

Schuchard has been endorsed by the Boulder Progressives for a second time. The group described him as a “climate leader” “who has championed reliable transit, wildfire protection, and workers’ wages.” 

Schuchard generally votes with the council’s progressive bloc. He voted to raise Boulder’s minimum wage, supported preserving scheduled raises for tipped workers and opposes the city’s use of automated license plate readers without public consent. He also opposed creating a Downtown Development Authority that would have redirected future tax-revenue growth toward downtown investments. Schuchard was one of three councilmembers, along with Taishya Adams and former Councilmember Lauren Folkerts, who supported reconsidering Boulder’s investment policies to potentially exclude more weapons manufacturers amid residents’ calls for divestment over the war in Gaza.

Schuchard is well-liked by his fellow councilmembers. He has secured endorsements from every current councilmember except Adams, who has not endorsed any incumbent candidates, as well as former councilmembers Mark Wallach and Folkerts. His endorsers also include prominent Democrats such as U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, Rep. Joe Neguse and state Rep. Junie Joseph, as well as local environmental and progressive advocates.

Climate policy and transportation are central to Schuchard’s campaign and council record. He co-authored the council’s current workplan priority on wildfire with Councilmember Rob Kaplan. Before joining the council, he served on Boulder’s Transportation Advisory Board, where he advocated for expanding the city’s protected bikeway network. On the council, he has pushed officials to accelerate street-safety projects, supported the Iris Avenue redesign and backed a transportation maintenance fee to fund streets, sidewalks, paths and bridges.

Schuchard has linked housing and parking policies to reducing car dependence, framed safer bike infrastructure as both a climate strategy and a public-safety measure, and argued that city spending should make it easier for residents to travel without a car. His approach reflects his broader vision of Boulder as a place where driving is optional rather than necessary.

Schuchard is the founder of Moreworks, a consulting firm that works with local governments on transportation and climate policy. He began his career in 2002 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan. He later worked as associate director of climate and energy at Business for Social Responsibility, which advises businesses on sustainable practices. In 2015, he founded Innovative Mobility to advance transportation electrification in California.

Schuchard is originally from southern Oregon. He and his wife moved to Boulder in 2019 to live a “car-light lifestyle” near the Rocky Mountains. They have two daughters.

Occupation: Climate resilience professional

Neighborhood: Old North Boulder

Rent or own?: Own

Age: 49

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?

Use the city’s tools of municipal code, city-owned land, and intergovernmental partnerships to reduce barriers to the whole experience of building and living in middle-income housing.

I led on access-focused reform in the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, built around 15-minute neighborhoods, which enables Boulder to rewrite Title 9, the code that turns plans into homes. This council also legalized duplexes, triplexes, and cottage courts, directly opening the door to more than 15,000 homes.

Priorities:

  1. Legalize and finance a large new stock of diverse middle housing types. Align Title 9 with the new BVCP, dropping mandatory minimum lot sizes and allowing lot-splitting by right. Develop better ADU financing tools.
  2. Tackle underlying cost drivers. Make development review more predictable. Where we develop public land like Area III, use its land value to support deed-restricted middle-income homes.
  3. Reduce the cost of “place” by managing for people’s whole living experience. Integrate walkability and frequent nearby transit into land use planning, so a home delivers more value for what people pay. Explore evidence-based programming with BVSD and others to learn from residents’ real experiences, from families with kids to teachers and police officers, and adapt.

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?

The innovation Boulder needs is the discipline to stay with the fundamentals that are working.

I advocated for refreshing Boulder’s homelessness strategy, which we did through the Clutch report, the first update since 2017. It follows national best practices, including Housing First, coordinated entry that matches people to the right help, and shared data to track results. I also supported the new day center, which is moving services out of Central Park, and thanks to staff and providers, point-in-time counts show two straight years of reductions.

Priorities:

  1. Strengthen what’s working. Keep investing in proven tools, including permanent supportive housing and vouchers, diversion and reunification, the Building Home peer-support program, CARE non-police crisis response, Safe and Managed Public Spaces, and eviction prevention.
  2. Partner on pressures beyond city limits. Work with the county and state on forces that make staying housed harder, including ICE actions, hungry kids, older adults losing benefits, LGBTQ rights on the state ballot, and climate shocks.
  3. Protect proven funding. Direct every dollar to strategies with results, especially with federal cuts and another state shortfall of more than $1 billion expected in 2027. Report outcomes publicly.

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?

Like towns across the country, Boulder faces a waterfall of aging buildings from the 1960s–1980s boom, plus headwinds from shrinking state budgets to an adversarial federal government, and the answer is becoming financially strong enough to weather them.

Boulder has prepared better than most. My council built on robust work by past councils, including the 2021 Facilities Master Plan, which set a best-practice strategy to budget every year for maintenance and plan for replacements like HVAC. On the Long-Term Financial Strategy committee, I helped create Boulder’s first durably funded pavement program. Now the next council must build on ours.

Priorities:

  1. Keep implementing the Facilities Master Plan. Continue consolidating buildings. Establish a council committee on citywide facilities. Pass the $400 million bond to fix 15 failing facilities.
  2. Strengthen our finances on four fronts. Build a bigger cushion, make city services work for people, grow local partners, and hold big decisions to a high bar. See my newsletter, “How to Make Boulder Financially Strong.”
  3. Rebalance revenue. Shift from sales tax toward property tax, with relief so most households other than the highest-income ones pay no more. Support repealing TABOR statewide.

Flock: Would you end Boulder’s use of automated license plate readers, yes or no? Why or why not?

Yes, I would end Boulder’s use of automated license plate readers, because our safety depends on public trust, and mass surveillance without the community’s consent erodes it.

I’ve been a leading council voice to stop Boulder’s use of Flock and similar cameras, and I’ve named them as a budget item ripe for cutting. I also support Boulder’s work as a sanctuary city, which these cameras put at risk.

Priorities:

  1. Adopt a moratorium on ALPRs. Stop using Flock and similar cameras now, and put the savings toward other services with public value in a tight budget.
  2. Require explicit council approval. Make any use of ALPRs or other cloud-based, networked surveillance technology subject to a council vote after a full public process. Set enforceable limits on how data is shared and kept, guarding against federal intrusion and misuse documented elsewhere, including for immigration enforcement.
  3. Create dedicated oversight. Form a council committee or task force to oversee surveillance technology and make recommendations to the full council. Keep supporting our police with effective tools residents can trust.

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, in a targeted, phased way, with requirements informed by the most effective strategies and the resources to implement them equitably.

I supported expanding hardening rules from 4,600 to more than 16,000 properties and co-led the 2026 workplan item on a cost-benefit analysis and home hardening hub. I’m hardening my own home in stages.

Priorities:

  1. Create a comprehensive roadmap. Address Boulder’s roughly 50,000 properties, prioritizing strategies by risk reduction, cost, and urgency. Build a self-propelling program, where homeowners and service providers drive much of the work on their own, so progress doesn’t stall after an initial push. Ground this adaptation work in our broader climate initiatives.
  2. Make hardening achievable and affordable. Expand assessments into technical assistance. Establish standards and a contractor-to-city reporting workflow for affordable, single-transaction services. Resolve owners’ sticking points. Use the city’s convening power to cut costs, like aggregating demand for noncombustible fencing and organizing neighborhood-wide vegetation management. Help residents get low-interest loans. Create mechanisms so investments and support also reach renters’ homes, prioritizing assistance by need.
  3. Start with the highest-risk areas. Phase in requirements for existing homes and HOAs, beginning with vegetation management and debris removal. Incorporate landscapes that also conserve water and provide shade and cooling.

Is the city doing enough to push Xcel Energy to prevent or limit wildfire-related power shutoffs? What more should it do?

No. Xcel is responsible for reliable service, and the city has limited authority over many decisions behind it. But the city has its own tools of investment, policy, and partnership, and a duty to its community, so it must lead toward a more dependable, sustainable energy system as grid stress grows.

I led council’s January statement of expectations for Xcel and helped launch this year’s power resilience workplan. Xcel’s recent data showed Boulder’s outages lasted 20 times longer than in 2023.

Priorities:

  1. Protect those with the most at stake. Map vulnerable facilities and hard-hit groups with Xcel, and plan with community partners.
  2. Build smart backup power. Deploy batteries at every scale, from homes to neighborhood resilience centers to our urban core, as technology improves.
  3. Make outages shorter and more precise. Pursue state laws and rules that require and reward targeted shutoffs, equipment upgrades, and enough crews to surge where needed.
  4. Strengthen our negotiating position. Explore what a regional municipal utility or other provider could look like, so Boulder has options.
  5. Hold Xcel accountable. Enforce our franchise agreement and publish a performance dashboard. Create a council committee or task force to lead with greater rigor and focus.

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?

Downtown’s struggles reflect a nationwide pattern of vacancies, aging buildings, and high costs, and Boulder needs a multifaceted approach to adapt downtown to a world it wasn’t built for.

This term, I’ve worked to strengthen city finances, pressed for a citywide customer service hub, and led council’s push on Xcel outages that hurt downtown businesses. I’ve also deepened collaboration with CU and co-led council’s bicycle security priority.

Priorities:

  1. Fill empty storefronts. Allow and drive more housing downtown through Title 9 reform, since it’s one of our most important places for homes, and nearby residents fuel the downtown economy and 15-minute neighborhoods. Develop an evidence-based vacancy plan and a restaurant vitality effort. Ease paths to worker cooperatives.
  2. Make downtown a place people want to be. Invest in a safe, clean, secure-by-design public realm. Expand activation like common consumption and public-benefit amenities catalyzed by Sundance. Build public restrooms and drinking fountains, and pilot a transit circulator.
  3. Make the city easy to work with. Conduct a fee reasonableness review and speed permitting. Back the Customer Experience effort so owners get clear answers fast. Continue to hold office hours downtown every Thursday at the Main Library cafe.

Closer: Imagine it is November 2027, one year after your election. What is one specific thing you will have accomplished?

By November 2027, Boulder will be on track to end damage from power shutoffs while protecting us from wildfire in a timely, cost-effective way. A council task force will drive a public power roadmap, with a plan for battery backup reaching critical sites. An ecosystem of affordable hardening services will protect properties in single transactions. This builds on my work holding Xcel accountable for reliable power and co-developing our wildfire hardening priority.