Mark Wallach and Ryan Schuchard: We must fix Boulder’s aging infrastructure
This commentary is by Mark Wallach and Ryan Schuchard, members of the Boulder City Council who serve on the council’s Long-Term Financial Strategies Committee. They are writing in their individual capacities.
The day of reckoning has finally come. After many years of inadequately funding the city’s portfolio of buildings that house its various departments and provide services for the community, we are now faced with the dilemma of how to properly maintain them in an environment of financial shortage.
The city’s portfolio of 75 buildings that house our departments has collectively come to an advanced stage of life and requires immediate attention. Ten buildings are more than 65 years old, and the entire portfolio requires renovation or replacement.
A number of factors make this a challenging task. Our economy is heavily reliant on sales taxes, yet those revenues have plateaued. Meanwhile, federal and state funding for various services has declined, putting more financial pressure on the city. And finally, a substantial percentage of the city’s budget consists of single-purpose dedicated funds. In fact, 56% of our sales tax revenue is allocated to such single-purpose funding. Across the Front Range, only Aspen exceeds our use of dedicated funds, and this structure limits our flexibility to respond to emerging concerns.
How did we get here? Well, our current situation is not an uncommon one for municipalities. Infrastructure spending is often the stepchild of budgetary decisions, routinely prioritized after new programs and services. City councils like to make the lives of their residents better, and that often means elevating spending for projects that have visible results in the near term over investments to keep buildings and other physical assets in first-rate condition over time.
Are past city councils to blame? No, ALL city councils, including the current one, are responsible. No one gets a pass. But this council, this city manager and this staff have begun to move in a different direction, one that recognizes the fundamental importance of bringing our many buildings up to modern standards, and keeping them that way into the future.
Our needs are extensive. We have heard from hundreds of South Boulder residents about their desire for a new facility that maintains all of the amenities of the current facility. But those needs do not exist in a vacuum. We have fire stations that are currently in terrible condition — some occupy residential homes — and need replacement. Our Public Safety Building (the main police station) is well past its useful life and must be replaced if we are to have a modern, effective and motivated police force.
Across the city’s 75-building portfolio, deferred maintenance is widespread. Of those 75, 15 have the most critical needs for renovation or replacement. These include all three recreation centers, city hall and, most significantly, the Public Safety Building, which is in the worst shape of any building in the city’s portfolio. These five buildings together represent just under 50% of all requests for maintenance service across the entire portfolio. Each requires substantial investment. And, as noted earlier, we have six firehouses that desperately require modernization. (We have identified funding for two of them.) At a time when we are all focused on wildfire resilience, what could be a more important investment than modern, properly equipped fire stations?
Thankfully, last year the community voted to permanently extend the Community, Culture, Resilience and Safety tax to provide additional funds for infrastructure projects. This was an important first step. But as the council has been informed by staff, this will not be enough. Our infrastructure needs now exceed $500 million, against which we have identified funding for $100 million. The balance represents $400 million of unfunded capital expenditure needs of this city.
At the same time, Boulder’s provision of services — and our need to manage new issues and concerns — has grown over the last decade. Our modern budget reflects our efforts to address wildfire resilience, services to address the needs of the homeless population and public safety concerns, among many others. These expenditures are far greater than they used to be.
In Samuel Beckett’s classic play, “Waiting for Godot,” the first line is the statement “Nothing to be done,” describing the futility of changing the apocalyptic environment in which the characters find themselves. However, the Boulder City Council does not have the luxury of giving in to that sense of despair. We have a significant problem and something must be done.
Accordingly, the city is looking at a number of measures to address the situation. The first is to change the way we deal with infrastructure, and no longer bury the costs of maintenance behind other programs and priorities. Maintaining our infrastructure is a primary responsibility of government, and we need to properly carry out that responsibility, even if doing so impacts other programs and activities. We can no longer take the easy way out; the costs of infrastructure maintenance must be prominent in the management of our budget. Kicking the can down the road is no longer a viable policy for this community.
In addition, the city is also looking at revenue-enhancing measures to assist us in this endeavor. Yes, that may mean tax measures as well. No one likes it (we certainly do not), but sometimes there is little choice. On some social media platforms, it is not uncommon to hear people suggest that if only we would cut X% of our staff, we would have plenty of money. This is nonsense. We are talking about $400 million. Cutting staff positions would have no material impact on the funding of our infrastructure needs. This is not the time or place to review the tax measures under consideration; we are merely arguing that renovated recreation centers do not magically appear: They must be paid for, and we do not have hidden sources of revenue to make that happen.
Finally, we must continue to support the transition to an outcomes-based budgeting process in order to make our investments more transparent and provide more accountability for results. Better control over existing costs is imperative. We must support those services that give us the best bang for the buck and identify and curtail those that are ineffective. This transition to doing more with less is in process and must continue as we move forward.
This is a difficult community conversation, but a necessary one. As much as it is our obligation to provide the programs that assist so many members of the community, it is equally our responsibility to maintain the physical assets that make it possible to deliver those services. How we do this, and at what cost, will be perhaps the most important discussion we will have in the coming year.
Read more Sanitas Brewing closed. Its co-founder is opening a new Boulder brewery in the same space.
