Boulder County has been governed by three commissioners for generations. That could change in November, when voters will decide whether to keep the commission as is or add two members.
Bob Yates helps lead Big Tent Boulder County, the group behind Ballot Question 200.
“We're looking for an opportunity to have greater representation of the people that live in-county,” Yates said.
He said a five-member commission would bring in more diverse perspectives and give residents better access to their elected officials.
County Commissioner Claire Levy has concerns about the proposal.
“I think the result would not be more representation for smaller communities,” she said. “I think the result would be a greater concentration of representation in Boulder and Longmont.”
Levy, who is in her second term on the Board of County Commissioners, said a larger group could make it harder to efficiently make decisions. She also cited the county’s budget challenges and argued taxpayer dollars would be better spent on county staff than elected officials.
“Right now, that budgetary impact of two additional full-time county commissioner salaries, benefits, retirement contributions, etc., would require us quite simply to lay off five, six people — I don't know how many,” she said. “That does not seem like a fair trade: two more elected officials and five or six people who are actually delivering for the people of Boulder County.”
Yates pushed back against those concerns. He noted that an expanded commission wouldn’t take office until 2029, giving the county time to plan.
“This is a three-year phase-in under state law,” he said. “I believe that the very small incremental cost of adding two county commissioners will more than pay for itself in better governance.”
If voters approve the expansion, they’ll also decide how representation would work via a second measure on the ballot: five geographic districts, or a mix of three districts and two seats elected countywide.
Brian Keegan, a computational social scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, expects rural voters to favor five districts, while those in population centers may lean toward a mix of seats.
“I'll be curious to see what the distribution of votes is, both, like, overall top line numbers, but as well as the distribution spatially, geographically around who supported different kinds of models,” Keegan said.
He prefers the three-district approach because it would allow him to vote for more than one commissioner.
Some Big Tent members, including Ward resident Masyn Moyer, think five districts would help bring more rural perspectives to the commission.
“To think that three districts and two at-large would not mean just more Boulderites is hard for me to imagine,” she said.
Moyer said mountain communities have unique challenges that aren’t adequately represented by the current county commission, such as lengthy power outages.
“We pack and freeze and hunt and can and put away food,” she said. “So, when we don’t have power for 13 days… that’s people losing six months’ worth of food, and that’s nothing to sneeze at when you come from very fixed incomes or little to no income at all.”
Ward was among the communities left without electricity for days during severe windstorms last December.
Moyer said she’s involved in efforts to promote candidates from mountain communities if the expansion moves forward.
Elsewhere in Colorado, Douglas County voters will similarly decide whether to expand their Board of County Commissioners this November.
