{"id":15565,"date":"2015-10-11T15:39:32","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T21:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/?p=15565"},"modified":"2015-12-28T15:13:13","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T22:13:13","slug":"don-cote-east-boulder-needs-representation-on-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/?p=15565","title":{"rendered":"Don Cote, east Boulder needs representation on council"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Candidate<\/a>

Candidate Don Cote is pictured here with his grandson, Nick, and his wife Sara, after a spaghetti dinner at his grandson’s school. Cote has four grandchildren, with whom he enjoys spending time. (Photo courtesy Don Cote)<\/p><\/div>\n

Shortly after retiring from the federal government, Boulder City Council candidate Don Cote began volunteering to prepare taxes for senior citizens and low-income households.<\/p>\n

He begins taking classes in November to learn the new income tax rules and guidelines and then from January to April, he provides the free income tax service through the AARP TaxAide Program.<\/p>\n

Last year, the program that runs out of the West Boulder Senior Center filed taxes for 800 people, Cote says. He\u2019s been volunteering for the service for the past decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love it,\u201d says Cote, 75. \u201cAnd, I\u2019m good at it. I just love the feedback I hear from people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professionally, Cote, who has bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees in electrical engineering, worked for the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office for 15 years. He also worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service. He moved to Boulder 35 years ago to work for NOAA\u2019s Environmental Research Laboratories. Cote\u2019s task at the time was to get scientists acquainted with new technologies, switching from teletypes to computers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was stressful and exciting for the scientists at the time,\u201d Cote recalls. \u201cWe had taken a huge step with technology. It\u2019s hard to think of a time when offices didn\u2019t have computers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 1990\u2019s, Cote took a lead in integrating the Internet with the work that climate change scientists were performing. He worked to get different agencies to publish data sets online so that they could be available to the public, as well as other scientists. He was met with some resistance from scientists who had been working in silos and had exclusive access to their data.<\/p>\n

Cote became interested in running for City Council after he became opposed to the city\u2019s municipalization efforts. He is the founding member of See the Light, a group that opposes the city\u2019s efforts to form its own municipal energy utility. Cote argues that municipalization efforts are doomed to failure and will bring a high debt burden to the city. He believes his program management experience could be a benefit to the council.<\/p>\n

He believes the city would be better off investing in the purchase of renewable energy credits. Cote proposes a citizen\u2019s \u201cGreen Challenge\u201d initiative that could bring Boulder 50 percent green power by 2020 and 80 percent green power by 2050.<\/p>\n

As a resident of east Boulder, Cote says he and his neighbors are not represented on council.<\/p>\n

\u201cI resent not having representation on council,\u201d says Cote, who also says south Boulder and Gunbarrel go unrepresented. \u201cIt\u2019s been that way for the 35 years that I\u2019ve lived here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cote says he wants the council to change to a district system so that Boulder citizens, like himself, are better represented.<\/p>\n

He says the group that typically is elected to council is more tied to the university, while those in eastern Boulder have more ties to business. Issues such as student housing have little effect on Cote and his neighbors.<\/p>\n

Former Boulder City Council member Ken Wilson says he is endorsing Cote\u2019s campaign. Wilson first became acquainted with Cote through Cote\u2019s anti-municipalization efforts. Wilson says Cote has brought a \u201cthoughtful voice\u201d to the municipalization discussion and exploring alternatives to approaching climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he would be someone who could provide a different and needed perspective when it comes to municipalization,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n

Wilson also says that Cote could bring broader representation to Boulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe east side of Boulder has been under-represented for forever and that should probably change since the city has been growing more there,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n

Cote is married and has three children, Elizabeth, Jim and Joe; and four grandchildren. He and his wife Sara recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n

In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his grandchildren\u2014who go to school nearby and come over when school lets out. He also enjoys taking his family out for sushi on Pearl Street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly after retiring from the federal government, Boulder City Council candidate Don Cote began volunteering to prepare taxes for senior citizens and low-income households. He begins taking classes in November […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1211,"featured_media":15567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1120],"tags":[11,1108,1092,162,237],"class_list":["post-15565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2015-cc-candidates","tag-city-council","tag-east-boulder","tag-election-2015","tag-municipalization","tag-renewables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15565"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15570,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15565\/revisions\/15570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}