FROM The Boulder Bulletin/June 2026
This would seem like a good problem to have. Over the course of several decades, the
City of Boulder has amassed a portfolio of 80 buildings around town, worth a total of about one
billion dollars. Many of them are falling apart.
The dozens of structures owned by the city include necessary municipal facilities, like
fire stations and police headquarters. But there are also some unusual holdings that came into the
city’s hands through accidents of history, such as a large Victorian house on University Hill
which the city bought in 1979 to host Parks & Rec programs, but which the city now leases to
the nonprofit Women’s Wilderness.
The city owns seven public parking garages, and a handful of buildings used to provide
water utilities. Five of the structures owned by the city are library buildings, which the city leases
to the Boulder Library District, now a separate government entity.
The condition of the city’s properties varies widely. With more than half of the structures
built before 1970, city staff estimates that the deferred maintenance on their buildings totals more
than $500 million. Staff has identified funding for only about $100 million of this, leaving a
$400 million gap.
Having $1 billion in real estate with $400 million in unfunded deferred maintenance is
like owning a $1 million house with $400,000 in needed repairs but no income to cover the costs.
Where would you even begin?
The failing city building which has attracted the most attention recently is the South
Boulder Recreation Center. One of three recreation centers operated by Boulder, city staff
estimates that the cost to replace it will be between $30 and $65 million, depending on what
amenities are included in the new building. The two other city rec centers are not far behind,
each needing $60 and $80 million in renovations over the next few years.
Boulder’s public safety facilities are likewise in poor shape. Half of Boulder’s eight fire
stations need an additional $10 million each to maintain them. But city staff says that the
building that’s in the worst condition is the 50-year-old Public Safety Center on 33rd Street,
which houses the emergency dispatch operations and the police department, and which will need
$100 million for renovation or replacement.
Of course, many of the city’s 80 buildings simply need to be disposed of. Some have
surpassed their economic useful lives, and it makes no sense to renovate them. At least three of
the city buildings are slated to be demolished after the municipal employees who work in them
relocate next year to the new city office building at the site of the former BCH hospital complex
at Broadway and Alpine (how much that is costing to build is a topic for a separate discussion).
©2026, Bob Yates. All rights reserved.
Other municipal buildings will be sold or otherwise disposed of, including the Atrium
Building at 13th and Canyon, which the Farmers Market aspires to convert into a year-round
market hall.
The city will also need to decide what to do with a dozen buildings that it owns but leases
to others at below-market rates, including the library buildings, the Pottery Lab, Chautauqua
Dining Hall, and the BMoCA building. The city manager has declared that the city no longer
wishes to be a landlord. Some of the leased buildings could probably follow the path of the Dairy
Arts Center building, which the city had been leasing to the nonprofit for $1 per year for more
than 25 years, before selling the facility to the arts organization last year.
You might ask how the city got into this hole, facing $400 million in unfunded
infrastructure deficiencies. It’s like how someone goes bankrupt: Slowly, then all at once.
Indeed, the decline in the condition of city infrastructure has been growing for many
years. In 2008, a city blue-ribbon commission forecasted that the city’s expenses over the
following two decades would outstrip its revenues. They were right.
In 2011, four years before I was first elected to city council, I co-chaired a 16-member
residents’ committee appointed by the city manager to somehow allocate $49 million in expected
city bond revenues across $700 million in municipal capital needs. We did the best we could with
what we had.
Fifteen years later, the current city council finds itself in the same pickle: Too many needs
and not enough money. So, they’ll do what city councils in every city must do: Prioritize. They’ll
apply their understanding of community values to fund some things and abandon others. Do we
need eight fire stations, or will six or seven do? Is three the right number of recreation centers?
How about two? Why not four?
And invariably, rather than simply slicing the pie thinner, city council will consider
increasing the size of the pie by growing the city’s revenue and therefore its capacity to pay for
more things. Council did just that in mid-May, instructing city staff to investigate several
potential tax increases for this fall’s ballot, including:
• A permanent property tax increase that would add an annual $86 per $1 million in
home value ($338 per year for each $1 million in commercial property value).
• Municipal debt limit increases, including a temporary property tax increase to pay for
it.
• A special property tax for homes that are not lived in by owners—or rented out to
tenants—at least half of the year.
City council authorized city staff to survey the community’s feelings on each tax
increase, with the poll results to be published at the end of this month, in preparation for
council’s decision which measures to put on the fall ballot.
©2026, Bob Yates. All rights reserved.
Having read tens of thousands of constituent emails during my eight years on city
council, I can predict what many people will say: (a) Give me the municipal service I want; and
(b) tax someone other than me to pay for it.
That might sound cynical. But it’s human nature to satisfy our needs while sacrificing as
little as possible. In that respect, the relationship between residents and their city government is
inherently adversarial. Residents want things the city can’t provide. And not everyone wants the
same things.
City council members get to be professional disappointers, making zero-sum tradeoffs:
Every dollar spent on Thing One is a dollar that can’t be spent on Thing Two. So, we’re going to
have to get along with fewer things. And maybe a rec center or a fire station gets closed, with the
resulting impacts on services. In the Happiest City in America, people might have to accept
being a little less happy.