As a result of a 4-4 Boulder City Council vote, a proposal to create a downtown development authority to help reinvigorate the Pearl Street Mall and University Hill districts will not be sent to area voters in November.
A tie vote — the body now has only eight members after the abrupt resignation of Mark Wallach last month after he cast the sole no vote on the acceptance of federal funding for the Boulder Municipal Airport — cannot move a measure forward, effectively killing DDA ballot measure.
The concept of establishing a DDA — an organization that would be tasked with guiding business-vitality and infrastructure-investment efforts in a downtown that’s yet to be fully revived from the economic turmoil of the COVID-19 era — may not be dead forever; Mayor Aaron Brockett brought forth a successful motion late in Thursday’s meeting directing Boulder staff to continue exploring ways to create a DDA.
The split vote is a blow to the Boulder business groups that argued in favor of a DDA. Such districts “are a proven tool for revitalizing distressed urban zones,” Boulder Chamber CEO John Tayer wrote this week in a column for BizWest. “Just ask Fort Collins, Longmont and myriad other local communities that successfully deployed their own DDAs and reauthorized them once their initial terms expired.”
Boulder City Councilmember Nicole Speer noted that opponents of Boulder’s DDA proposal included both Boulder Progressives and PLAN-Boulder County, strange bedfellows that typically fall on opposite sides of city policy fights.
Speer said she’s “never seen in my five years on council anything like the level of opposition that we’ve been seeing to the DDA.”
Concerns from the anti-DDA contingent often centered on oversight of DDA leadership and decision-making and the prospect of tax dollars being diverted from public services to businesses during a time when city coffers are already strained.
DDA skeptics have also questioned whether the results of a November ballot initiative on the issue would represent the will of the community since the measure would have been decided exclusively by an estimated 2,500 electors who own or lease commercial and residential properties inside district boundaries.
Under the DDA framework proposed by Boulder staffers, the authority would have had an initial 30-year lifespan and options for two 20-year extensions.
While the proposed DDA would have eventually stood on its own and been governed by an independent board of directors, city staff and consultants would have helped get the new organization on its feet during the first couple of years, Boulder officials were told by staff in March.
A host of other Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado communities — Greeley, Longmont, Loveland and Fort Collins, for example — already have DDAs, which tend to differ from general improvement districts (several Boulder commercial areas have used GIDs over the past 50 years) because they are “authorized to capture and reinvest incremental growth in property and sales tax revenue through TIF,” or tax-increment financing, a March memo from staff to City Council said. TIF revenues are generated by new growth and development that occurs within a DDA district.
As envisioned by Boulder staff, additional DDA funding would have come from a new mill levy, sales-tax increments and parking revenue.
