This article first appeared in the Boulder Weekly.

The local food shift is gaining significant traction in Boulder County, growing well beyond the euphoric early adopter stage into early majority territory. It is unfolding so rapidly and so unpredictably that it could well be called a revolution.

If it hasn’t already, the issue of local food is about to land on the desks of public officials and political candidates, perhaps even in unexpected ways. One candidate, aware of this shift, contacted Transition Colorado and requested “talking points” on this important issue. What follows here is a very preliminary and incomplete briefing intended to help all officials and candidates quickly bone up on some of the major issues and prepare to deal with the challenges that are coming their way.

Since our current food-related laws and policies were created — and most public officials were elected or appointed — long before the local food shift began to take hold, familiarity with these issues could be crucial not only to candidates’ political future, but also the well-being of the communities they serve.

Roots of the local food shift

The essence of this nascent movement is food localization — shifting from the globalized, industrialized food system on which we all are dependent for our food needs to a resilient and self-reliant locally based food supply system, where communities are able to provision their own essential food needs by relying on bio-intensive production methods that restore soil, rekindle connection with the land and rebuild community.

The upcoming EAT LOCAL! Week (Aug. 27 through Sept. 4), organized by Boulder-based Transition Colorado, could be seen as an early cultural expression of the local food shift in Boulder County, combining a community celebration of local food and farming, an experiential connection with the local culture that is emerging around local food, and the recognition of new food and farming enterprises that may presage a new era in the local economy.

What it all portends is that many people in Boulder County are making the local food shift in earnest.

The significant benefits of food localization are well known and worth repeating:

Health: Returning to a seasonal, mostly organic local diet will significantly improve the health of our communities, especially our children, and dramatically reduce health care costs.

Environment: Shrinking our “foodshed,” which now stretches around the globe, will not only reduce food-miles, but bio-intensive cultivation methods will also sequester carbon in the soil, making food localization one of the most effective approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Economy: Rebuilding our local food system is one of the most important strategies for strengthening our local economy; food localization can create new jobs and generate hundreds of millions in new economic activity.

It should be said that this local food shift is not the reincarnation of the “back to the land” movement, nor a nostalgic return to an imagined past. While the movement occasionally draws upon ancient and even indigenous knowledge, its roots are much more recent.

Demand for access

For many, the local food shift appears to have emerged spontaneously over the past several years from a demand among our citizens for increased access to fresh, organic, healthy food grown close to where we live, preferably by people we know and trust — maybe even by ourselves. It was what we wanted for our children, for our families, for our own bodies and for our own well-being.

Inspired and informed by authors and speakers like Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, Joel Salatin and Will Allen, and jarred awake by such films as Food Inc. and The World According to Monsanto, many people saw something new appearing in our troubled society, an inspiring cultural shift. Long before anyone was calling it a movement, there was something wholesome about this local food shift. And there was a strong undercurrent of joyfulness, even fun, as we began to rediscover our connection with land and neighbors and food.

Preparing locally for the global food crisis

However, from the very beginning the movement was more deeply guided by an underlying but often unspoken realization that it was imperative for our communities to learn how to feed themselves again; that it was necessary to begin to wean our communities from dependence on globalized industrialized food systems; that it was necessary to reclaim our food sovereignty and develop resilience and self-reliance in our food supply at the community level.

The reasons for these necessities are essential to understand.

This perspective will be new to and/or denied by many local residents, but these are the core dynamics:

A convergence of global crises — inevitable fossil fuel depletion (aka “peak oil”), compounding effects of climate change, and unstable shrinking global economies — is likely to disrupt the global food supply in unexpectedly devastating ways.

A thorough analysis of these factors leads to an inescapable conclusion that the growing global food crisis will soon land in our own communities — yes, even in Boulder County.

Therefore, it is now essential (and unavoidable) to shift quickly from a globalized/industrialized food system to one that is far more local, far more human-labor-intensive, and far less dependent on fossil fuels for fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides and herbicides — as well as for processing, storage, cooling, heating and transportation.

Each person will want to do his or her own corroborating homework, of course, but once each of us grasps these dynamics, we will realize that there is little choice but to rapidly localize our food system to the maximum extent possible. The critical issues are: How long will it take us collectively to recognize this? And how long will it take us to respond at the scale that will be needed?

A tale of two cultures

Public officials will discover that some of their constituents are not happy about the prospects for food localization and may consider it a threat to their way of life. On the simpler side, some residents adamantly oppose having small agricultural operations in their neighborhoods, even if it’s rural, complaining of sights, sounds and smells that they consider unpleasant and fear will reduce their property values.

Meanwhile, the most vehement proponents of conventional farming — sounding like the agricultural equivalent of the Tea Party — charge that the move towards local and organic food production amounts to nothing less than a form of neocolonialism, complaining, “You’re trying to shove ‘organic’ down our throats.” Export commodity farmers (who receive substantial federal subsidies) claim that for local government to support local organic food production (which is completely unsubsidized) is unfair and are pressuring current county commissioners to curb their apparent enthusiasm for food localization.

There is a profound culture clash taking place here, often driven more by emotion than reason.

This conflict can be witnessed firsthand in the spectacular if slow-moving drama currently unfolding around the controversy over the use of genetically modified crops on county-owned open space land.

It’s worth noting that “conventional” or “traditional” agriculture has only been around since World War II, largely the result of big chemical companies persuading farmers to become dependent on fossil fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. The methods and technologies of the so-called Green Revolution may have temporarily increased crop yields, but they have also unleashed a storm of unintended consequences including soil degradation, massive environmental pollution, reduced biodiversity, an epidemic of food allergies and other food-related diseases, and ever-greater dependence on fossil fuels, fossil water and agrochemicals.

Such industrialized agriculture is destined to go through a radical shift, because it is a profoundly unsustainable system that contributes a significant percentage of our greenhouse gas emissions — as much as 31 percent, if the whole system of processing and transportation is included. It’s heavily dependent on fossil fuels for fuel, artificial fertilizers, chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics and global shipping. Conventional agriculture will inevitably transition to a more bio-intensive system, one that is largely organic (though not necessarily certified).

Barriers to localization

Sadly, there are many barriers to increased food localization, and elected officials may be asked to shape policies and regulations to ease them:

The lack of a local food infrastructure — for processing, storage, distribution and marketing — is one of the main reasons why less than 2 percent of the total amount of food we consume in Boulder County (a whopping $947 million in 2010) is actually grown here.

There is a significant shortage of qualified young farmers, even to meet the current mandate to have just 10 percent of the county’s open space land devoted to food production for local consumption.

Farmland is extremely expensive in Boulder County, making the cost of entry for new farmers very high. Financing is often very difficult to obtain.

Limited infrastructure, particularly in processing and distribution, means that many local growers and ranchers do not have ready access to potential markets for their products.

Adequate labor is also problematic. Commodity agriculture has largely supplanted human farm labor with heavy machinery. But organic speciality-crop agriculture is highly labor-intensive.

In addition, many farmers consider existing land use codes to be one of the greatest limiting factors to increased food production and farm business diversification. Those seeking approval for season-extending greenhouses and hoop houses (even root cellars), residences on farmland, and agri-tourism often run into a buzzsaw of onerous regulations and bureaucratic paperwork that leaves them in despair.

‘Slow Money’ and the local food shift

The recent arrival of the Slow Money approach to food localization — based on Woody Tasch’s extraordinary book, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered — turns out to be one of the key enablers of the local food shift: new forms of local investment “that catalyze the transition from a commerce of extraction and consumption to a commerce of preservation and restoration.” This means, especially, investing in local farming and in the enterprises that are needed to support a healthy food and farming system.

Slow Money is all about “Restorative Economics,” following the core principles of carrying capacity, cultural and biological diversity, sense of place, care of the commons and nonviolence. This may be one of the most significant economic visions to land on this planet in recent decades.

One of the goals of Slow Money is that over the next 10 years one million Americans will invest 1 percent of their assets in local food systems. As a result, new food-related enterprises are beginning to emerge in Boulder County, fueled by Slow Money investments in the form of microloans and joint ventures. Some of these initiatives will be unveiled at an investors briefing during EAT LOCAL! Week on Sept. 1, and Slow Money founder Woody Tasch will be a keynote speaker that evening.

Attendance at these events could be very important and meaningful to a political candidate’s constituents.

What we need to know about GMOs

For some, the burgeoning local food shift is a direct response to the nightmarish takeover and corruption of our food supply by big agribusiness. For a nation founded in the name of freedom and equality, it is painfully ironic that we have unwittingly allowed major corporations to undermine our food sovereignty and food security.

There are complex and controversial issues here. But for now, consider that at the very moment that the local food shift seems like it’s beginning to take hold, global forces of the biotech industry and big industrial agriculture are making bold moves to gain pervasive control over our food supply through genetic engineering. We’re no longer just talking about GMO sugarbeets, feed corn, soybeans and cotton. Monsanto has recently announced the advent of GMO sweet corn, the first consumer product actually developed by Monsanto.

A recent article in Fast Company tells the tale: “Up until now, the company’s GM crops have only been available in processed foods — in other words, in little bits and pieces. But now Monsanto is making a move into the consumer market with GM sweet corn, which will be found in a supermarket produce bin or farmers’ market near you starting this fall.”

Monsanto cucumbers and other table vegetables are reportedly soon on the way. They’ve also announced plans to introduce an Omega3producing GMO soybean that produces “fake fish oil.”

The mantra of big industrial ag and biotech is “We must feed the world,” and it’s repeated endlessly by many a “conventional” farmer. The irony of this is that it is largely industrial-scale agriculture that has made possible the dramatic rise in human population over the past 150 years or so, to the point that we are now clearly in population overshoot. The more we attempt to “feed the world,” the bigger that human world gets and the more impossible it is to feed. This is a recipe for global disaster, yet this is precisely the direction that big agribusiness is taking us. There is a name for this: madness.

This mindless drive for growth must come to an end, and it will. But will it mean the end of a way of farming for many conventional farmers? Yes, of course it will. The idea that farmers can grow whatever they want to grow, using whatever methods or technology they choose, and then sell their products anywhere they want or can is an artifact of an era that produced devastating long-term climate change and the greatest planetary extinction of species in 60 million years.

However, it is important to recognize that our conventional farmers are not to blame. They are actually victims of the very system that is driving us all over the cliff.

Here’s the bottom line on GMOs, from widely read French columnist Siv O’Neall: “The greatest threat to the future of food production in the world is the introduction of genetically engineered foods from the biotech industry. Contrary to their mendacious propagandized promises of solving the problem of world hunger through the so-called second green revolution, the biotech companies are instead in the process of destroying the world’s ecosystems, and thus the natural food chains and life cycles. Their goal is certainly not to solve any problem at all, but instead to fill the corporate coffers with the profits from selling their dangerous products to countries with already high mortality rates from malnutrition and starvation.”

Eat Local Week is happening now. For a schedule of events, click here.

“We, the People” was the theme and the oft-repeated refrain of a rousing speech delivered by former Green Party President candidate David Cobb at the Unity Church on Saturday in Boulder. In town to lay the groundwork for the nationwide “Move to Amend” campaign, Cobb’s talk was part history lesson and part call to arms. Appealing to our fundamental patriotic roots, his call to action: to reclaim our power as the people, as laid out so clearly in the United States Constitution, to build the democracy that our country was founded on but has never actually realized.

The main targets of his talk were the “unelected and unaccountable corporate CEOs” now making decisions that rule our lives—from whether we will eat genetically modified organisms to the ecological integrity of the Gulf of Mexico to often who is elected to higher office. These corporations were recently given the right of personhood, and thereby unlimited spending in elections in the name of free speech, in last year’s Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling.

Cobb’s talk first took us back to grade school civics class (Howard Zinn style), to educate us on the history of corporations (derived from the Latin corpus, meaning “to give body to”). The first corporations were good things in his mind, dating back to the Roman Republic as a mechanism to voluntarily funnel private capital into the building of public goods (e.g., the Roman road and aqueduct system, universities, hospitals). But during the age of colonial conquest, corporations became instruments to legalize the pillage of countries around the world for Europe’s gain (remember the East India Trading Company?). Reminding us that the 13 original U.S. colonies were actually corporations, Cobb asserted that the American Revolution was a rebellion of citizens against illegitimate rule of all kinds—both the King of England and corporate rule.

Enter the United States Constitution with its seminal first three words—“We, the People”—a phrase that still evokes patriotic shivers. We, the people, with certain unalienable rights, come together as free and sovereign people to create a government. All power resides with the people, except that which we delegate to the government to perform duties on our behalf. It is worth repeating: the government is subordinate to the people; people have rights, the government has duties.  Per Cobb, the Supreme Court’s ruling declaring that corporations now have the “rights of personhood” turns our entire constitutional framework on its head.  Because a corporation is a creation of government, like the state that issues its charter, to conclude that it should be treated the same way as those who created it is a total subversion of our founding charter as a nation.

Further, it is worth noting that in the early days of the Union, it took an act of the legislature to establish a corporation, which could only be established for the purpose of fulfilling an unmet public need, and which were considered temporary mechanisms (dissolving after 10-20 years) to be closely monitored and regulated. This is in stark contrast to the situation today, Cobb notes, where it takes $50 and filling out paperwork to establish a new corporation, which may or may not be for a public good, but which now has been given rights to personhood like you and me.

Of course, the problem with the Constitution is that at the time of its writing, only about 5-7% of the populace were considered “persons” in the eyes of the law—namely, white, property-owning, Protestant men over the age of 21. Never mind the rights of Native Americans, slaves, women, the poor, and so on—the rights of which had to be fought and bled for, often over the opinions of the Supreme Court at the time. Per Howard Zinn, the history of our nation could be summarized as the struggle of different peoples over time to be recognized as “persons” in the eyes of the law. So not only has the Supreme Court been wrong before, but in Citizens United, it is wrong again.

And so Cobb issued a call to action: it is time for us—We, the People—to channel our righteous anger and do something about it. Hence, the new effort called Move to Amend, which is mounting a nationwide push to amend our Constitution to reverse the Citizens United decision. Councilman Macon Cowles has proposed that Boulder join this national movement by placing a referendum for the effort on the local ballot, an issue that will be discussed at an upcoming council meeting in June.

Some may argue that Boulder should just mind its local business. Yet the integrity of our elections and our national constitution is surely something relevant to all levels of government and all peoples of this nation. Amending the Constitution or getting the Supreme Court to reverse itself (as it did in Brown v. Board of Education to outlaw Jim Crow laws) is no small feat. But as citizens around the globe rise up in the name of democracy in this Arab Spring, Cobb urged us to be no less bold. And to not forget the American Revolution.

For more information, go to:

• Move to Amend (http://movetoamend.org/)
• Colorado Move To Amend, the Colorado chapter of the national effort (http://www.democracyunincorporated.com/)
• Boulder Weekly’s excellent coverage of the issue at: http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-5626-we-the-corporations.html

The Fair Elections Now Act for Congressional Campaigns

In March 2009, the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 752 and H.R. 1826) was introduced in the Senate by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and in the House of Representatives by Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and Walter Jones, Jr. (R-N.C.). The bill would allow candidates for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to run for office without relying on large contributions, big money bundlers, and donations from lobbyists. Participating candidates would be freed from constant fundraising.

Senator Michael Bennet and Representatives Jared Polis and Betsy Markey have all signed on as co-sponsors of the Fair Elections Now Act. Senator Mark Udall has not added his name as of Labor Day.

House members may have the chance to vote for HR 1826, the Fair Elections Now Act, in September or October. The League of Women Voters hopes constituents will urge all Colorado Representatives to support bringing the bill to the floor for a vote and to vote yes when it does come to the floor.

Background Information on the Fair Elections Now Act

Different terms, besides Fair Elections Now, have been used to describe publicly financed campaigns: Clean Elections, Fair Elections, Clean Money, Clean Campaigns, Publicly Financed Campaigns, and Voter Owned Elections.

In order to qualify for Fair Elections funding, candidates would raise a large number of small contributions from their constituents.  Contributions are limited to $100. Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives would have to collect at least 1500 contributions from people in their district and raise a total of $50,000 in order to qualify.  For U.S. Senate Candidates, the minimum number of required contributions equals 2000 plus 500 times the number of congressional districts in the state. The total contributions for Senate candidates must equal at least 10% of the Fair Elections funding for the primary. A Colorado Senate Candidate’s minimum would be 5500 contributions, and the amount raised at least $120,000.

Qualified candidates would receive Fair Elections funding in the primary, and, if they win, in the general election at a level to run a competitive campaign. Qualified House candidates receive $900,000 in Fair Elections funding split 40% for the primary and 60% for the general election. Qualified Senate candidates receive $1.25 million plus another $250,000 per congressional district in their state. The funding is also split 40% for the primary and 60% for the general election.

Qualified candidates would also be eligible to receive additional matching Fair Elections funds if they continued to raise small donations from within their state. Donations of $100 or less, beyond the number of donations required for qualification, from in-state contributors would be matched from the Fair Elections Fund at a rate of four to one. The maximum Fair Elections funds a candidate can receive is limited to three times the initial allocation for the primary and again for the general election.

Fair Elections helps offset the high cost of media. Participating candidates receive a 20% reduction from the lowest broadcast rates, and media vouchers are allocated based on office and population.

The cost of Fair Elections for Senate races would be paid for by a small fee on large government contracts. The cost for House races would come from 10% of the revenues generated through the auction of unused broadcast spectrum.

Boulder’s Campaign Finance Ordinance, similar to FEN

In 1999, voters in Boulder passed the Campaign Finance Initiative which is very similar to the Fair Elections Now Act. Its purpose is to assure the public that (1) excessive campaign costs and large contributions do not cause corruption or the appearance of corruption in the election process; (2) large contributions will not be used to buy political access or to influence the political process; and (3) access to large amounts of money will not be a requirement for participation in the political process.

This ordinance limits contributions to a candidate from any person to $100. The city will provide matching funds up to 50% of the expenditure limit (15 cents per registered voter) to any city council candidate who (1) raises at least 10% of the expenditure limit from individual contributors (no more than $25 of each contribution may be counted toward the 10%); (2) agrees to limit expenditures to 15 cents per registered voter; (3) agrees to contribute no more than 20% of the expenditures from the candidate’s own money. The ordinance also deals with independent expenditures and enforcement.

The initiative process began in 1997 when, in a special election, Tom Eldridge as a candidate raised over $40,000. It was a wake-up call to several citizens as well as the League. A committee was formed which included Sue Anderson and Pat Johnson from the League as well as former Council member Allyn Feinberg and soon-to-be Mayor, Mark Ruzzin. In the next City Council election in November 1997, the committee asked all the candidates to sign a pledge to voluntarily limit the contributions they would accept and to limit their expenditures. Half of the candidates signed the pledge, and three of those candidates won seats on the city council.  This exercise proved that a candidate who had broad support in the community could get elected without spending a large amount of money.

The committee decided that it could not monitor campaigns forever; there would need to be a city ordinance. The next six months were spent drafting the initiative.  Pete Maysmith from CO Common Cause acted as an advisor to the committee.  With the help of members of the League of Women Voters of Boulder Valley as well as Common Cause, the required number of signatures was gathered on the initiative petition by early June. The initiative was certified to be on the ballot in November 1999; it passed with over 60% of the vote.

The resulting ordinance has been very successful. At each League-sponsored City Council candidate forum, candidates are asked if they have agreed to abide by the spending limits and why. Many candidates have agreed to the limits and like not having to spend their time raising money.  Some candidates have said that without public funds they could not have run for City Council. Because the ordinance requires candidates to demonstrate broad based community support, some candidates who would have liked to accept public funds did not qualify.  Over the years, many of the candidates who chose not to take city money for their campaigns still agreed to abide by the spending limit set by the ordinance. In the 2009 election, six of the thirteen candidates agreed to the spending limits and accepted city matching funds. Three of these six candidates were elected to the City Council.

For more information on publicly financed campaigns go to the League of Women Voters of Boulder County website, www.lwvbc.org and click on Publicly Financed Campaigns.

Submitted to the Blue Line by the League of Women Voters of Boulder County, September 2010

We are on the threshold of the most significant opportunity to help level the political playing field since two-thirds of Colorado’s men voted to amend our state’s constitution to give women the right to vote in 1893. Initiative #53, which is titled Colorado Citizen-Funded Campaigns (CCFC), is a proposed amendment to Colorado’s Constitution that would allow any qualified citizen who volunteers to accept the rules and regulations set forth in Initiative 53, to run for a state-wide office such as governor, treasurer or the general assembly, with public money set aside for this purpose from a $5 to $10 tax on all personal income tax forms each tax year.

Colorado Citizen-Funded Campaigns would help level the playing field by reducing the influence of private and special interest money from determining who runs a competitive campaign, who gets elected, and what bills are introduced and passed in our legislature. CCFC would make it possible, for the first time in Colorado’s history, for a CCFC qualified candidate to receive an amount equal to the average of what it took to win a competitive campaign in their district over the past two campaign cycles. Up to now, such candidates have had little or no opportunity to participate in, let alone win, a competitive campaign in our campaign environment.

Colorado Citizen-Funded Campaigns would dramatically reduce the amount of time currently required to raise the funds necessary to run a competitive campaign. It would effectively stop the never ending money chase for those candidates who volunteer to run their campaigns as CCFC candidates. Such candidates would qualify by obtaining the number of $5 contributions and signatures specified in Initiative #53 for the type of office for which they propose to run, after which they would be allocated the amount of money required to run a competitive campaign for that office in their district.

A CCFC candidate would have more time to spend talking with constituents about their problems, concerns, and needs. And since such a candidate would not be dependent on any other sources for the funds necessary to run a competitive campaign, he or she can more readily become an effective leader and voice not only for his or her constituents but for efforts to unite Coloradans in the major programs and policy changes that are desperately needed to resolve the escalating budget, economic, and social crises that characterize our state.

How do we cross this threshold? Sign one of the petitions being circulated across our State. We need over 100K signatures by July 5. Urge your friends and neighbors to sign a petition. Volunteer to circulate the petitions. Call us (303 665-9718 or 303 988-2729) and we will provide you with the necessary materials and training to help you do this. This is a grass roots, non-partisan effort! Please join our efforts to make Colorado the fourth state in the nation to cross this threshold!

Currently, the mayor in Boulder is chosen by a majority of the council and so by design starts off at least with the support of the majority. But a directly elected mayor will likely be whoever is given the most campaign money. They may not have the support of the council, and could easily end up in a power struggle with the city manager.

A ward or district system pretty much guarantees a splintering of interests, less real diversity, and will dissuade many qualified candidates from running.

Direct election of the mayor will lead to all sorts of problems:

The current system, with the mayor elected by council, reinforces the limited nature of that position in the city manager form of government. It also ensures that the mayor has the support of a majority of the council, which could easily not be the case if the mayor were directly elected.

A separate mayoral race will inevitably turn into a polarized, two-candidate race. The development interests would pick their candidate and shower him or her with money. And the rest of us would then be foolish to split our votes between two more civic minded candidates. This will lead to huge sums of money being spent on the campaigns, and campaign finance reform will disappear.

A directly elected mayor may try to elevate his or her stature by virtue of having been elected mayor. This could exacerbate the potentially incestuous relationship between the mayor and the city manager, or it could create huge tension if they compete for power. Whichever of these occurs, it will create serious problems for the mayor, for the manager, and for the council. It is an ongoing problem in cities that have directly elected mayors in a city manager form of government.

A directly elected mayor won’t necessarily even be the person with the most votes in the election, unless all other council members are from wards and none run at large. And clearly a directly elected mayor is most likely to be the person who can get the money interests behind them; only by luck would that be the best person.

The proposal may be to pick the mayor according to who gets the most votes, but using the current at-large voting system. But getting the most votes is not an indication of being the voters’ first choice. One candidate could get everyone’s fifth vote, and another candidate could get a few less votes but their votes were all first-choice votes. This latter person is clearly the preferred choice.

Ward systems have a multiplicity of problems and are a bad idea for Boulder:

Most of the issues that the city council deals with relate to the well-being of the entire community. Council passes a budget for the entire city; it appoints board and commission members for the entire city; it makes important policy decisions about land use, water, public safety and public services, etc., for the entire city.  Very few of the issues on which council acts are tied only to one neighborhood’s interests. Therefore, representation by wards would not provide any benefit on the majority of the issues before city council.

On those matters that particularly affect different neighborhoods, the ward approach falsely assumes that those within a geographic areas have unified interests.  The fact that this is not so has been evidenced many times – disputes over designation as a historic district; conflicts about traffic circles, opposing views about house size restrictions and development in general, and so on.  There is no reason to conclude that one individual elected from a particular area is representative of all the different viewpoints. Even if it were true that neighborhoods could be effectively represented by one person, even eight districts would not be nearly sufficient to give an effective voice to the many different and diverse neighborhoods in Boulder.

Even more to the point, under the current system, if one council member’s actions only benefit his or her own neighborhood and do not serve the interests of the rest of the city, voters can defeat that candidate at the next election.  But under a district or ward system, council members need not concern themselves with the interests of the rest of the city.

And, by the same token, the rest of council would be less likely to want to address that neighborhood’s concerns, since there would be no votes to gain.

Worse, if there is a conflict between the interests of the city as a whole and the interests of a particular neighborhood, district representatives could be penalized by their constituents if they do not place the interests of their districts above the interests of the city as a whole. This is exactly the opposite of how a government should run. However, it would appeal to the “What’s in it for me?” crowd. In contrast, under the present system, neighborhood concerns that warrant action become the concern of the entire community and are addressed in a way that balances all of the competing interests. And the entire city knows which city council members voted which way.

Ward systems deprive voters of choice and power and force out good candidates:

Instead of getting to vote for all nine seats as voters do currently, under a ward or district system, a voter would only get to vote for a minority of the seats. Also, currently, a person who gets the second-most votes still gets a four year term; under the ward system, coming in second doesn’t get anything, so good people will have less interest in running. And citizens could be limited to voting for the lesser of two evils, or have no choice at all.

Unless there is a runoff procedure or preference voting, all these races will be two person contests. Here’s why: Say that the ward is split 65/35 in favor of strong growth management, and there are a number of good growth management candidates and one developer running. Then all but one of the growth management candidates will have to drop out, because otherwise they know that staying in the race would lead to the developer getting a plurality of votes, even if it was only 35%. Worse, they may be forced to decide ahead of time among themselves to avoid a situation where there are three or more candidates and it’s too late for some to to withdraw from the ballot.

Because of this, in a ward system or with a directly elected mayor, all the races will likely turn out to be one-on-one, with the person with the most money likely to win. Think of who will run for mayor; it will only be someone with huge personal resources or supported by an organization with huge resources. Campaigns would be more likely to become negative since candidates would have an identified opponent.

The level of participation in council elections varies hugely between areas. So at least some of the wards are likely to have very low voter turnout, which means that the votes of those in high participation areas count less than those in low participation areas. Also this makes those low turn out areas vulnerable to a small interest group campaign or GOTV efforts by moneyed interest groups.

Because of the smaller number of voters in each district, it would be easier for a single-issue or a “stealth” candidate to be elected to City Council by appealing to a small group of people who feel strongly about a particular issue, rather than having to appeal to the whole community.

In a ward or district system, incumbents are harder to oust. For example, our BVSD school board is districted, and many times there are uncontested seats and occasionally even a seat for which no one is running. Neighboring communities (Broomfield and Louisville for example) have frequently had uncontested district seats, and even one district seat that no one ran for at all.

Interestingly, the BVSD provided a great example of the problems of districts. Some years ago the Broomfield representative pushed for selling central Boulder’s older schools. No doubt she was representing her district’s interests as best as she knew how, but it points out the obvious conflicts that can occur.

Wards and directly elected mayor will lead to creation of political parties and gerrymandering:

The inevitable effect of these kinds of changes will be to force all candidates, whether running for a district, at-large, or for mayor, to pick among themselves who should run for a particular seat, denying voters the ability to choose. Then, this requirement to “choose or lose” will end up with the creation of political parties and secret caucuses within the City. This will produce “machine” politics, exactly what we have always tried to avoid here in Boulder. The division of the City of Boulder into districts is also likely to result in log rolling, vote trading, and pork-barrel politics among districts. We do not need this form of cronyism.

Then, of course, there is the issue of gerrymandering in deciding district boundaries, even if the staff does the leg work. It is simply impossible to avoid this kind of manipulation, as there is no good value-free way to set these boundaries. And given the weak Charter provision in Section 13 about council directing staff (the majority determines the punishment), the process will be dirty to start with and only get worse over time. Boulder will then end up being subjected to lawsuits over the boundaries, just as happened at the Legislature.

Cities with districts or wards have many problems:

Many cities along the Front Range elect their City Council members from districts. But how many Boulder residents would prefer to live in other Front Range cities with their lack of identity, ongoing sprawl, lack of planning to protect views, lack of effective public transportation, and lack of open space?  Such unpleasantness can be a result of city council members who focus on the interests of their districts rather than the issues of the city at large.

There is no agreement about the right way to define “equal” districts or to identify the frequency of redistricting among Front Range cities:  Louisville requires equality in “population” and requires adjustment of boundaries by vote of a majority of the entire city council; Fort Collins requires equality in “registered voters” and requires adjustment of boundaries before every regular election; Broomfield requires equality in “numbers of voters” and requires adjustment of boundaries at least once every ten years or before an election; Longmont requires equality in “qualified electors” and requires adjustment of boundaries at least every ten years or before an election.

In the 2001 elections for example, wards in Longmont, Louisville and Broomfield had candidates who ran unopposed, demonstrating the difficulty in recruiting candidates from each district, much less qualified candidates.  Voters in those wards did not have any choice in the election.

In summary, we should stick to our current system:

At-large elections strengthen the feeling of unity in Boulder and minimize local conflicts. The Boulder City Council reflects the interests of the City as a whole because voters throughout the City elect its members, and city council members have generally had a citywide perspective, whether elected from Gunbarrel, Table Mesa, the Hill, or North Boulder.

In Boulder’s at-large electoral system, voters have a choice in the election of all members of City Council, and our current system draws the best candidates in the City no matter where they may live. Why would we want to change?