Tina Marquis has served nearly three years on Boulder City Council and is seeking a second term. Her priorities include housing for families, addressing homelessness and public safety, strengthening wildfire resilience and ensuring accountable government.
Marquis ran in 2023 with endorsements from PLAN-Boulder County and Boulder Elevated, two political groups generally aligned with Boulder’s moderate Democrats. This year, she secured the endorsement of the Boulder Progressives, broadening her political support. If she again receives backing from the more moderate groups, she would be one of the few candidates with support across Boulder’s political factions.
The Boulder Progressives’ endorsement came in part because of Marquis’ vote against placing the creation of a Downtown Development Authority on the ballot. Marquis entered the meeting as the undecided swing vote and opposed advancing the measure, saying she wanted broader community support first. The decision may have cost her support in the business community while strengthening her standing among progressives. The Boulder Progressives later cited the vote in explaining its endorsement.
“It’s certainly the case that not all of her votes have been in alignment with our priorities, but some of her most significant votes have been the tiebreakers on things that I think really matter to progressives and to people in our community,” said Lisa Sweeney-Miran, a Boulder Progressives board member, citing the DDA vote and Marquis’ support for the transportation maintenance fee. She said the group was also swayed by Marquis’ “commitment to transparency and accountability” during her time on the council.
“One of our favorite things about Tina is that she’s very clear on the fact that she is not willing to make a decision on an issue that’s coming to a vote until the conclusion of public comment,” Sweeney-Miran said.
Marquis defines herself as “moderate to liberal” and says she sees less distinction between Boulder’s political advocacy groups than she did five years ago.
Marquis is generally seen as nonconfrontational. She has described herself as an introvert who does not like to interrupt people. She rarely takes the most polarized position on contentious issues facing the council and frequently votes with the majority when the council is divided. Her endorsers, including U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse and state Sen. Judy Amabile, describe her as detail-oriented and willing to take time to understand complex issues.
Before joining the city council, Marquis served for eight years on the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education, including four years as president. Her involvement in local politics began nearly 20 years ago, when she volunteered at her children’s elementary school, Foothill Elementary. She has also served on the district’s Accountability Committee and chaired the board of CU Boulder’s Conference on World Affairs. She has volunteered with the Democratic Women of Boulder County.
Marquis moved from New York City to Boulder in 2002 to start a family in a smaller city. Her family bought a home in Newlands in 2003, where she and her spouse raised two daughters. Marquis worked in marketing and sales before leaving the workforce to focus on raising her daughters and serving on the school board.
Occupation: City councilmember
Neighborhood: Newlands
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?
First, I have been listening to and working directly with the stakeholders involved for the last three years, including prospective buyers and renters, builders, architects, developers, lenders and the city’s affordable housing staff to understand the type of housing we need to create and the barriers to building them. Through the Boulder Comprehensive Planning update, we laid the ground work needed to create more middle-income housing, such as cottage courts, small houses and duplexes. Now, we need to change city processes that make it difficult and expensive to build middle-income housing, such as our permitting processes and when we collect fees. Finally, I support limited development in area III adjacent to current city limits, focusing on housing types similar to those in the Holiday and Dakota Ridge neighborhoods.
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 City Council unanimously adopted the Clutch report addressing homelessness over a year ago, and the city is steadily implementing the priorities in the plan. Just recently, the city recorded the lowest point-in-time count of unsheltered homeless since 2023, showing the strategy is working. I am supporting the 2027 budget allocations to continue this work, including the Downtown Ambassadors program, urban rangers and SAMPs, and implementing the Re-Imagine Policing plan. Simultaneously, the city is working with our non-profit partners to better coordinate services for people experiencing homelessness so they spend less time being homeless in our city. The lack of mental health resources statewide contributes to this problem. I serve on our Inter-Governmental Affairs committee and our legislative platform specifically identifies mental health resources as a top priority for the county and state.
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?
In short, our increase in revenue of a little over 2% isn’t keeping pace with our expenses. The city’s response to trim the budget is appropriate. However, it is likely that we’ll need another cut next year, so I hope we can move to multi-year budgeting and develop a long-term strategy to address shortfalls.
I am advocating for a Capital Improvement Advisory Panel comprised of staff, community members, and a council member that reviews our portfolio of physical assets, how we fund and prioritize maintenance and construction, and tracks changes to forecast budgets and timelines over the life of each asset. The school district has a similar committee used just for specific oversight of bonds that is successful in providing a clear understanding of how buildings are built and maintained in the district.
Flock: Would you end Boulder’s use of automated license plate readers, yes or no? Why or why not?
We have taken important measures to reduce the risk of Flock data being shared inappropriately, including severely limiting who can access our data, whether an employee or other agency, and shortening the time data is kept. However, I am very interested in alternatives to license plate readers while maintaining public safety. Additionally, I support the work the city initiated to review of all of the data we collect and how it might be shared, as LPR data isn’t the only opportunity to misuse personal data. This work is incredibly important and the City of Boulder is a leader in this area.
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?
Is the city doing enough to push Xcel Energy to prevent or limit wildfire-related power shutoffs? What more should it do?
Boulder should adopt an ordinance to ensure homes in the high risk wildfire urban interface are hardened. However, there are many homes that will harden their properties voluntarily, which should be our initial focus. I supported the council priority to create a new information and services hub, to help homeowners and homeowners associations find resources, materials and solutions to home hardening. A third of the homeowners surveyed haven’t hardened their homes simply because they didn’t know how to do it. We also need to ensure we have a good plan to provide risk assessments in target areas and track progress. Finally, I am hoping that wildfire mitigation can bring communities together, as we understand how hardening a home can help a neighbor’s home during a wildfire.
The city has a strong relationship with Xcel, but we continue to experience power outages with negative consequences for our businesses and residents. I support every option available to hold Xcel accountable for its role to provide reliable energy to the city of Boulder, including advocating for Community Choice Energy and developing microgrids, as well as its role to maintain our infrastructure to reduce ignition.
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?
In the short term, we need to make sure Sundance is a success. While it is only two weeks long, the city will benefit all year as we grow our creative economy. In addition, we can use our learnings from Sundance to support other large scale events, bringing new visitors to Boulder.
I am also excited about the redevelopment of the East bookend by the farmer’s market, including a year-round farmer’s market. By reusing our city-owned buildings, we have the potential to create a unique new area to add vibrancy to our downtown area. As mentioned previously, I am supporting funding to ensure the downtown and Hill areas along with our parks and bike paths are safe and inviting to visitors. Finally, the commercial vacancies continue to be an issue on the 2nd and 3rd floors. I have met with community members about how difficult it is to fill or convert these spaces and look forward to exploring new ideas this second term.
Closer: Imagine it is November 2027, one year after your election. What is one specific thing you will have accomplished?
I will have a working Capital Infrastructure Advisory Panel that serves to provide oversight of our capital projects and creates a shared understanding between the community, staff and council of what our needs are, how much it costs and how projects are funded.