It's election season and ballots go out early next month and so it's time to get to know your candidates.  I think one of the most exciting things I get to do as a member of Better Boulder is to participate in the candidate endorsement process.  It's always interesting to get to know the candidates and to see who will garner the support needed for an endorsement.  The selection of our endorsed slate requires two thirds of our board to vote in favor and this year we endorsed one mayoral candidate and seven city council candidates.  This slate is the result of numerous one-on-one conversations, in-person interviews in front of the entire board, lively discussions, and multiple rounds of voting.  And this was a heavy lift because there is a large field of candidates this time around.  But we didn't do all of the work for you because you will only get to vote for five city council candidates.  So, to help you get to know our endorsed candidates better, we are going to interview as many of them as we can in the next few weeks for the podcast.  We will try to keep these episodes short and sweet so they are easier to get through and we hope you find them useful as you try to decide who to vote for.  To see our full list of candidates, please visit betterboulder.com and click "Elections".

Our second candidate in this series is Jamillah Richmond.  We met on a Sunday morning and sat in a beautiful garden that she helped create called the Giving Grove Food Forest at Tantra Lake.  We talked about why she's running for city council, the voices that go unheard in our communities, how she learned Spanish and other languages, and the municipal bond measure on the ballot, among others.  We hope you enjoy this conversation with Jamillah Richmond. 

It's election season and ballots go out early next month and so it's time to get to know your candidates.  I think one of the most exciting things I get to do as a member of Better Boulder is to participate in the candidate endorsement process.  It's always interesting to get to know the candidates and to see who will garner the support needed for an endorsement.  The selection of our endorsed slate requires two thirds of our board to vote in favor and this year we endorsed one mayoral candidate and seven city council candidates.  This slate is the result of numerous one-on-one conversations, in-person interviews in front of the entire board, lively discussions, and multiple rounds of voting.  And this was a heavy lift because there is a large field of candidates this time around.  But we didn't do all of the work for you because you will only get to vote for five city council candidates.  So, to help you get to know our endorsed candidates better, we are going to interview as many of them as we can in the next few weeks for the podcast.  We will try to keep these episodes short and sweet so they are easier to get through and we hope you find them useful as you try to decide who to vote for.  To see our full list of candidates, please visit betterboulder.com and click "Elections".

Our first candidate in this series is Tara Winer.  We met on a Saturday morning and sat outside her house and talked for well over an hour but only recorded about 20 minutes of it.  We talked about why she's running for re-election, the Core Arterial Network, the municipal bond measure on the ballot, and responsible governance.  We hope you enjoy this conversation with Tara Winer. 

Did you know that RTD is governed by a 15-member board of directors that are publicly elected?  If you live in Boulder, Niwot, Superior, or Louisville, or anywhere in Boulder County west of Boulder then you probably live in RTD Director District O.  Elections for these positions are often uncontested and sleepy affairs with little attention given to them. However, this year we have the good fortune of having two excellent candidates campaigning for your vote.  The two candidates are Audrey DeBarros, who is the executive director of Communing Solutions a regional transportation management organization that serves the Northwest Metro Area including Boulder and Jack Rosenthal who is a daily RTD rider and a data driven technologist. On Monday, July 27th, Better Boulder in partnership with Community Cycles hosted a live candidate forum for RTD Director District O featuring both candidates.  The forum began with opening statements from both candidates which was followed by Q&A on a variety of RTD related topics.  Please note that Community Cycles as a 501c3 does not endorse candidates.  Better Boulder, on the other hand, is a 501c6 and frequently endorses candidates and ballot measures.  However, at the time of this forum and subsequent release of this episode, Better Boulder has not endorsed either candidate.  Please visit betterboulder.com later this fall for a complete list of endorsed candidates and ballot measures.   Sue Prant who was featured on this podcast in episode 2 was the MC for the evening and read the questions.  The first part of the forum featured prepared questions that the candidates were provided ahead of time and the second part of the forum feature questions submitted by audience members.  We hope you enjoy this live recording of the RTD Director District O candidate forum. 

For episode 3, I sat down with two Better Boulder members Betsey Martens and David Ensign to talk about housing.  Betsey is the president of the Boulder Housing Partners Foundation's board of directors and has spent her career in various roles advocating for affordable housing and building community.  David is a long time Boulder resident, community volunteer, local politics junkie, and former planning board member.  We sat down in David's dining room and talked about Boulder Housing Partners, affordable housing, missing middle housing, and talked about ways to make our community more inclusive and resilient.  Betsey and David were driving forces behind a missing middle housing event that Better Boulder hosted early this year and helped create an event report named Creating Middle-Income Housing: Ideas into Action which you can find at betterboulder.com. 

For episode 2, I sat down with Sue Prant at Community Cycles where she is the executive director to talk about her organization, Community Cycles, and their work in the community to promote riding bicycles and improving cycling infrastructure in Boulder in addition to their involvement with making Walk and Bike Month a success.  We also talked about transportation improvements happening in Boulder and teens on e-bikes.

In this first episode I sat down with Scott Rodwin at his office in downtown Boulder where he works as an architect.  Scott is obsessed with sustainability in the built environment and is a leader in green design in Colorado and is an active board member of Better Boulder.  We talked about why it's so difficult to build attainable housing and build great places in Boulder. Along the way we also talked about construction defect legislation, ADUs, the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, and Title 9, among others.