Can Boulder Get Out of Its Own Way? with Aquiles La Grave

[00:00:00] Aquiles La Grave! We only met yesterday and we are recording the podcast today. As soon as we start talking, I think I said one thing we can do is podcast because that's why I get to know people. But also what you are doing and why you are doing it is of significant interest to me. So I am going to enjoy this conversation just like I enjoyed the one yesterday.

[00:00:24] So let's start by telling everyone the crazy thing that you are doing right now and then we'll get into who you are and everything else. But what is it you're doing that is so crazy? Well, I've thrown my hat in the ring to run for mayor of Boulder. Now, you may remember that in 2020, voters of Boulder made a very significant decision.

[00:00:48] And we decided that starting in the last election, our voters would have the opportunity to directly vote for mayor. Yep. So we and we did that once already. We did that. What was it two years ago? That's right. So we actually elected our first mayor who actually was was the mayor prior to it as well. But prior to that, he was elected by the city council is Aaron Brockner.

[00:01:18] Boulder is known as being very far to the left as a community. Independent Republican Boulder is kind of the tongue in cheek. We kind of invent our own laws here in Boulder. And it's part of what makes us a unique culture of vibrant culture is is it's got its own kind of political viewpoint.

[00:01:39] But a lot of us, myself included, have been frustrated by a lot of what's been going on politically in Boulder because because of the things we're going to talk about. So I assume because you're running for mayor in the city of Boulder that you you must be one of those kind of far left individuals that believe in everything the far left believes in. Is that fair to say?

[00:02:07] Right. You know, I don't generally enjoy putting ourselves into these tribes. And I think that's that's part of this. Part of what has gotten us here is the deep tribalism that that exists inside older politics today. I politics in general. I mean, it's not just boulders everywhere.

[00:02:30] It's like, are you on this team or that team? And if you're on that team, you know, it's like, you know, Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears. You know, you're on another team. So we kind of hate you. Well, we're football players, right? If you're Bears or Packers, you're a football player. Yeah, you want your team to win, but you're on this together and we're all in this together. We're all in this together as humans. We're all in this together as people who live in Boulder, people who live in Colorado, people who live in the U.S. and people who live in the world. And, you know, I agree with you.

[00:02:57] I mean, we like to put tags on people and say you're this or you're that. But what we need a lot more of is people talking to each other and listening to each other and finding common ground and identifying what makes for better outcomes for everyone. So, yeah, I like the way you answered that. Well, no. You're not going to be labeled. I think you're exactly right. You know, we tend to view ourselves through these fixed identity lenses.

[00:03:27] But what you're saying is exactly right. What you're saying is there is a much richer opportunity when you start placing compositional lenses on who we are as people. Sure, I'm a registered Democrat. I've been excited to serve at various conventions.

[00:03:48] Generally speaking, or precisely speaking, I've only ever supported Democratic candidates like Bennett in this past primary. I did once, actually last year, return a Republican ballot, which is a great story.

[00:04:10] Yes, during the March primary, I participated in the primary pivot movement, which you might remember was a movement by a lot of liberal voters at a time when the primary ballot in the Democratic Party was uncontested to return the other ballot and slow down the coronation of Donald Trump.

[00:04:37] So, in that instance, I actually did return a Republican ballot. Okay. So, describe that again. So, how did that slow down the coronation of Donald Trump? Yeah. So, semi-open states such as Colorado give both primary ballots to a lot of voters. Yep.

[00:05:01] So, the idea was to invite voters from the other side to participate in the Republican primary by voting for Nikki Haley instead of Donald Trump. Gotcha. All right. So, I was a Haley primary voter last year. Okay. So, that means you're probably registered as independent if you had a choice of both ballots or does everyone get a choice? No, that's right. Last year, that went out to independent voters. Yep. So, what's best for Boulder?

[00:05:30] So, you're running for mayor. We're going to talk about why you're running, but I think it has to do with something about what your beliefs are relative to what's best for Boulder. So, what do you think is best for Boulder as you look forward in time? What kind of things do you think Boulder should be doing, can be doing, should be doing less of, should be doing more of? Where are your beliefs? Listen, it comes down to adaptability.

[00:05:52] So, as we look at the range of possibilities, both for our community, our state, our country, and our world over the next coming years, it can go in a wide range of directions. We don't really know which direction it's going to go. So, it ultimately comes down to adaptability as a framework.

[00:06:15] I think the communities that are going to thrive over the next year, five years, over the next decade, are those that embrace adaptability as a governing framework. So, what does that mean? That means that we need to start investing in the capacity for our city government and our community to act and respond much more quickly and much more flexibly to the needs of our community.

[00:06:45] Well, what are the needs of our community that you think we aren't fully serving? Oh, man. We're facing a lot of challenges that we can turn into opportunity. Right now, Colorado has more people over 60 than people under 18. You said Colorado? Yes. All right. Well, let's stay focused on Boulder because you're running for the Boulder. Yeah. So, I was going to go into Boulder.

[00:07:12] We have a rapidly changing population in Boulder. We have lost over 3,600 students in the past few years. And we need to view those as not individual cases but canary in the coal mines. Boulder desperately needs, and I mean desperately needs, to be attracting young families and people who are coming into Boulder and remaining in Boulder and building lives in Boulder.

[00:07:39] So, if that's one of the biggest challenges, what do we need to do to make that happen? What you hear in Boulder is that the middle schools, the K-12, that there's declining enrollment. There's less students at those age groups.

[00:07:59] What I heard recently was that the population in Boulder has been relatively stable overall, but that the residents of Boulder, so non-students, has gone down from like 89,000 to 79,000, some statistic like that.

[00:08:18] So, we're actually losing population of those who live in Boulder, while at the same time, what I had understood, the student population at CU has grown to offset the decline otherwise. So, people are leaving Boulder. If you go on the east side of Boulder and look at all the beautiful offices, it's at least half vacancies.

[00:08:44] You go to Pearl Street, which is really vibrant still, but you look at the offices and stuff, huge vacancy rates. So, are those part of what you're wanting to address? No, those are precisely the symptoms of the larger issue that we need to start facing. So, I serve on the BVSD bond oversight committee where we oversee a $450 million infrastructure budget.

[00:09:13] And when voters of Boulder passed that bond measure, we had all sorts of ideas as to how we were going to invest that money in our schools. Instead, now we're talking about closing schools. So, that number, 3,600 students missing is precisely right. 30% vacancy. Oh, so when you were talking about kids missing, you were talking about not CU Boulder. You were talking about younger kids. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That's consistent. So, a lot.

[00:09:43] I misunderstood what you said earlier. So, when you said students, you mean kind of K through 12? No, I mean our grade school students. The students that signify that we have vibrant, growing families in Boulder. We're going to start closing elementary schools. And in a few years, that issue will move itself up into our middle schools and then into our high schools. It's a huge issue.

[00:10:12] At the same time, 30% vacancy rate on Pearl Street in our office spaces. And we have to wonder what can we start doing to reverse those trends or what are the things that are contributing to those trends. Something I'm really thinking about this week is the giant bailout that the city of Boulder is asking for,

[00:10:40] which council is likely to approve and send to voters in this fall election. The city of Boulder is going to be asking for a nearly half a billion dollar bailout after mismanaging facilities for half a decade under the purview of five of our nine council members.

[00:11:06] We have a infrastructure maintenance bill due of $400 million based on a facilities master plan, which was passed in 2021 and not adopted. Now, no one's getting in trouble for that. Well, they got reluctant. They got the opposite. Well, let's bring this up maybe a little bit of a level here.

[00:11:31] And we'll get into that a little bit more, but you're talking about declining population of younger families with younger children. That's why schools. I mean, Boulder is such a great place. I mean, doesn't everyone want to live in Boulder? It's a tech community. Doesn't every tech business want to have a presence in Boulder? Like how can Boulder be losing population? Yeah, apparently not. And we've made the circumstances and accessibility.

[00:12:02] Is it that they don't want to live here or you just start talking about or that they are discouraged from living here in other ways? I think we're discouraged from living here in other ways. I've yet to meet anyone in the region who doesn't have a desire of greater participation and belonging within Boulder.

[00:12:25] A lot of my friends have had to move to the L towns all around and are looking for opportunities to come back in. But we've discouraged people in many tangible ways. Our taxes are extremely high and we just keep adding on top of them. Accessibility for starter homes is nearly nonexistent. We've invested a lot on low income housing.

[00:12:54] But the question must be asked, what do the numbers show in terms of what we've gotten for it? Our public spaces are constantly criticized as places that young families do not feel safe and able to participate in. So across the system, you see all sorts of issues that add up to discouragement from families being able to participate here. Yeah, when I, you know, I love Boulder. I'm a bit of Boulder.

[00:13:24] I think Boulder is a great community. I think the diversity of Boulder is measured by maybe not, you know, when you look at ethnicity, you don't see the diversity that would be good to have more of. But you have diversity of people, a diversity of kind of how people think, how they behave. It's kind of a, I think it's an interesting community in that it represents a lot of different types of people with different types of background.

[00:13:54] Most of the people moved into Boulder. They didn't, they weren't born in Boulder. So I love Boulder for lots of reasons. Like anywhere, you know, you want your community to be better and better. But when I drive around Boulder or walk around Boulder, you know, love the fact that we have the open space. You know, don't think, you know, any of us are advocating for carving into open space. You know, I don't think people are clamoring for us to build high rises, you know.

[00:14:22] But everywhere you look, when you walk around Boulder, I can't help but notice there's places to build more living units that would be more accessible to everyday working people. It's all over the place. You see, you know, you see kind of, you know, old retail areas that aren't really being used for retail anymore. You see plots of land that, you know, are underdeveloped by a lot.

[00:14:47] Some of them have, you know, complexes on there that are, you know, 40 years old and kind of falling apart. So the notion that there is an opportunity to have a lot more housing in Boulder without needing to raise height limit and without encroaching on open space, that's just not true. There's lots of opportunities. Yet the pace of building in Boulder, you know, is extraordinarily low. Why is that?

[00:15:16] Well, there's a couple of reasons why that happens, right? So we are just finishing the comprehensive plan that sets out a lot of the visions of our community. Now, no plan means anything unless you can actualize it. And that's where we need to get really serious. Boulder has this history of setting great visions, but not quite meeting them.

[00:15:46] So we need to look at our land use. You are being a lot more politically correct today than you were yesterday in our casual conversation. Let's just be blunt. Let's just say what it is. I mean, it's really, really hard to build in Boulder. It's very expensive. There's a lot of headed costs that are put upon them. There's extraordinarily long timelines to get approvals. Oh, no. I was about to get spicy. Yeah. I was about to get spicy. Let's get spicy right now. No, no. Let's absolutely get spicy.

[00:16:12] We are doing everything we can to discourage people to build here. And why is that true, first of all? Or am I imagining that? But I have some firsthand experience now. And it's the added costs that we apply to any project that someone wants to develop in Boulder is gigantic. And the added timeline is measured not by an extra month or two or quarter or two.

[00:16:39] It's like something that can be done in six months takes three or four years to get through an approval process. No, you're exactly right. So our permitting times are absurdly long, right? You see cities like Topeka that can give you a permit inside of a day. City of Boulder average permit is 64 days. I know a business right now that came into Boulder recently.

[00:17:09] Amazing immigrant couple from Denver. They dreamt of opening a business up in Boulder. They did it. They're likely to be out of business before Boulder issues their permits, which is absolutely insane. I thought Boulder wanted the cost of living in Boulder to be more reasonable. I thought that's what Boulder City Council believes in and Boulder City believes in.

[00:17:38] Well, we say that, but our actions do the exact opposite. They do the exact opposite. Right. So when you think about our tax burden and what's coming just down the pike in the coming weeks, we made the CCRS tax permanent. We are carrying the $200 million library district tax, and we're about to put this $400 million tax on the ballot,

[00:18:07] which is going to increase the tax for a family living in Boulder under residence by about $400. And it gets even worse if you're a small business because they'll pay four times more on the same share of value at about $1,600. So we continue to put these burdens. Are we doing it? Is the city council endorsing these policies because they want to drive business out of it?

[00:18:37] Boulder? Is that their goal is to get rid of business from Boulder? Do they want to shut down Pearl Street and kind of make even for more vacancies? Because if that's their goal, they're doing a really good job. I mean, the numbers would show that it's certainly moving in that direction. No, I don't think there's a conspiracy here. I think there is a managerial experience gap. With confidence is maybe a shorter way of saying that. Is that what you're saying?

[00:19:06] That if their goal is to not do that and they're doing it, that speaks to competence, doesn't it? Or is that too explosive of a word? Well, I mean, I'm not going to call any of my future colleagues incompetent. That would not be... I don't mean to call them incompetent. It's the system's incompetent. Let's put it that way.

[00:19:24] I mean, if your goal is to have a vibrant Pearl Street and a vibrant Boulder and a vibrant community, if that's the goal, then we're failing at meeting that goal. Exactly right. Exactly right. And that's what got me out of bed to do this. You know, I didn't wake up one morning and say, I want to be mayor. I want to go... I want to torture myself by being mayor.

[00:19:47] Like you and like many of our neighbors, I've woken up over a consistent period of mornings going, what is happening? Right? So you use the word goal. And I think that's a fine word to actually access what the problem I believe actually is. What are the goals? Who's setting the goals? Who's communicating those goals? Who's tracking those goals? And who's holding the system accountable for delivery of those goals?

[00:20:17] The way I view our city council right now is they're overburdened by making choices that are presented to them by a system that is only producing bad outcomes. And so then you are in the unenviable position of having to choose between bad outcomes. And here's what council is not doing. Okay, well, why is that?

[00:20:43] Because isn't like the city council the leaders and isn't the mayor that we now elected and is head of city council? Isn't that a leadership position? So why are they the victims? I wouldn't put them as the victims. Well, you said that they're covered by the system. They're not doing half their job. You know, what we are finding ourselves in is two things.

[00:21:08] If you track the composition of council over time, over the past few decades, the compositional background of the people that we're sending to council has been changing pretty significantly. We had a lot more people with executive and managerial experience that we no longer have in council.

[00:21:25] A stride of that, a lot of the leaders from the 70s, 80s, and into the 90s who really shaped a vision around Boulder that empowered Boulder to produce the outcomes that it had in the past have turned over. Against that vacancy, you end up with a lot of well-meaning people. Honestly? They are well-meaning people. Yeah, I've met most of them and they are good people.

[00:21:53] This isn't like they're bad people, but they're – let me ask this. Do they want – does the city council, does the mayor, does the city council – do they want to see kind of those tech-type offices, not just on the east side, but the highest concentrations on the eastern part of Boulder? Do they want to see those kind of fill up with businesses and kind of growing companies? Is that something they want to see? I mean, it certainly would produce more tax revenue, which I know they want to buy more tax revenue.

[00:22:21] I think if you ask them, they would say, yes, we want to see that, but then the challenge is, what are you doing about it? Yeah. So, well, that was I going to get next to it. So, is it like, yeah, I guess that would be nice, but that's really not our job. We're just the – That's exactly – We're just the city council in the city. What do we have to do with that? Let's just raise taxes. Is it an easier way to raise more revenue than actually having to attract businesses in Boulder? That's exactly right.

[00:22:43] If I hear another council member tell me that we have a weak mayor system, I'm just – I'm going to lose it. I'm going to lose it because the reality is there are the things that by statute the council has to do. But there are the things that as a community we expect the council to do.

[00:23:11] We expect the council to be working together to express a vision, to be communicating that vision, and be the critical managerial interface between the stakeholders in this town, us residents, us business owners who pay into the system and who produce the budgets that they get to spend, and the city staff. And then there's the whole managerial accountability layer, right? Let's set OKRs, objectives and key results.

[00:23:40] If we are headed towards having our offices full, what does that look like? When will we know we got there? And how are we measuring that progress openly, transparently, and continuously in order to hold staff accountable? It's – you know, Charlie Munger was exactly right. It's a matter of incentives. Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett's partner in Berkshire Hathaway, and Charlie Munger –

[00:24:05] we always hear about Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, but Charlie Munger is independently – he's passed away recently at a very old age. But his wisdom in business, in a very common sense fashion, kind of, you know, aw shucks type of examples, it's been an inspiration for me and my career and many, many others. So that's for Charlie. Yeah, me too. I'm glad we share that. But I'll be paraphrasing Charlie here.

[00:24:35] Tell me what your incentives are, and I'll tell you the outcomes. Yes. Right? I got to believe that the staff of this city wants what anybody – what any reasonable person wants. They want to go in and they want to – Go into the office? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I got confused. You said the staff of the city, and you said go in. Yeah, yeah.

[00:25:04] I really set myself up for that one. Yeah, I know COVID's – Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. Because that one fires me up. We've been talking about – we've been talking about 30% vacancy in downtown and our downtown business is hurting. I talked about my friends who are struggling down there. And we talk about the city supposedly wanting to tackle this or having a responsibility to tackle this. We were talking about this yesterday.

[00:25:33] The city of Boulder is downtown Boulder's largest employer. Let me say that again. The city of Boulder is downtown Boulder's largest employer. Six years after the pandemic began, all of those employees are still working remote. The city of Boulder – Wait, what do you mean? Like one day a week?

[00:25:59] Well, they come in for meetings now and then. But generally speaking, most of the thousand folks – Wait, wait. So they certainly come into office on like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but they are remote on Friday. Like when you say – No, no. They're mostly remote. Really? Wait. But they have how many different – They're building a brand new like mecca office on one of the nicest pieces available in Boulder. Well, let's deconstruct that. Let's get there.

[00:26:33] All the vacancies. That new office is – What about a mile north of that? So you're talking about the new administrative campus, right? Oh, it's a campus. Yeah, it's a campus. It's beautiful, actually. I've been trying to buy it. It's got a nice water feature going right through it. Someone recently told me it's got a dock park inside, which is – Oh, well, that's great. Which is awesome.

[00:26:57] But the city of Boulder could decide to bring its 1,000 staff members back into the office, back into Boulder, to serve the residents of this town and to be in contact with them. Well, certainly they're going to do that if they're opening up this brand new campus with a dock park and a waterway and park facilities, big parking lot next to it. There's been no conversation about getting that done.

[00:27:22] And those 1,000 – and here's why those 1,000 employees would be really important. But what part of Boulder do most of those employees live in? Do they live in South Boulder, North Boulder? Most of them live outside of Boulder. So they don't live in Boulder. So most of our staff members – So they don't live in Boulder, they don't work in Boulder, and there's 1,000 of them? That's right. That's right. And we need to get them back.

[00:27:45] We need to get them back serving the city in person, experiencing the city in person, and contributing to the city in person. Just that change would produce another $5 to $10 million annually in economic activity on Pearl Street. And that's something that I, as mayor, would bring up the city manager and ask, why isn't that happening?

[00:28:13] What is standing in the way of us making that happen? Well, certainly the current mayor – And what benefit do we get of the current system of having folks who want to work for Boulder but don't want to participate in Boulder? Well, certainly the current city council and the current mayor are advocating for that. I mean, they certainly recognize the importance of employees of the city spending a lot of time in the city. Ideally, a lot of them living here, but certainly a lot of them spending their days here.

[00:28:42] I mean, how can they serve the community if they're remote from the community both during the day and at night? I mean, certainly the current city council is all over that. I've yet to see any proposal from council that calls for that or even questions it. How? You think they could even pass some kind of – I don't know, whatever they call them, ordinances? Couldn't they even pass them and say, we need people to come back into the office? They couldn't even just – they have to just be advocates. They could probably require that.

[00:29:12] There are many things our current council can be doing to advocate for staff to start meeting these challenges in different ways rather than be managing the declining outcomes of the city by not making those decisions. We're incredibly timid. Council is incredibly timid when it comes to its relationship with staff.

[00:29:38] And that needs to change because in many ways we've got a situation where the tail is wagging the dog. Yeah, and I've gotten to know the city manager a little bit over the last six months. It really strikes me as not just a nice person but an intelligent person, a competent person.

[00:30:01] We've had some private meetings together and she expresses kind of what I – I guess I had an expectation that she would be much more ambivalent about attracting businesses into Boulder and getting ahead of a lot of these things we're talking about. And she was the opposite. She seemed very enthusiastic about the need for Boulder to kind of get much more proactive about filling up these vacant – we're not talking about building new offices.

[00:30:28] I mean, we are – that's the last thing in the world anyone needs to worry about is the need to build more offices in and around Boulder. There's plenty of offices but getting people into offices but interrelated to that is getting more places for people to live so that – like if I was a – you know, I started Zale Group and we're going to talk about your history as well. You've got a fascinating history and I want to bring people into, you know, into like what you believe in first and then we'll talk about kind of your, you know,

[00:30:56] your back story which is fascinating. But I started Zale Group in Boulder on Pearl Street. And Zale Group, you know, we moved out of Boulder for a little while then we moved back in and we were – we had, you know, hundreds of people working on 29th Street Mall. That was our headquarter and offices there and the 29th Street Mall was super vibrant. We were – you know, had people there every day. Then I – you know, we were a public company. I took it public, sold the company and transitioned to a new CEO.

[00:31:24] And I don't think anyone in Boulder City Council or city – whoever the city manager was back then, I don't think they even knew that we were in the mall or if they did, they didn't know who we were or what we did. They didn't know me. They never reached out. And they certainly were transitioning to a new CEO. That new CEO was trying to say, should I be in Boulder or should I be in Denver? Because we also had an office in Denver. You know, the importance of getting the CEO to live in Boulder because if they did, Zale would still be in 29th Street Mall or maybe it would even be in downtown Boulder.

[00:31:53] Instead, the person picked South Denver and now you go to 29th Street Mall and it's not vibrant at all. There's no – all the offices Zale was in are empty. The new building they built there in that mall, which is beautiful, is empty. And I don't know, that's just like one microcosm of an example. Instead of the city saying, oh my gosh, you know, we got to like, you know, understand what Zale is. You know, they're so important to the 29th Street Mall and, you know, and oh my gosh, they're going through CEO transition.

[00:32:22] How do we make sure, you know, we don't lose Zale over it? It's like they didn't even know us were gone. Yeah. So – Yeah. And I think those of us who've started businesses in Boulder have a lot of those shared experiences. Oh, yeah. Of almost feeling unseen. Not even unappreciated, just not even seen for the contributions. We're not on the radar.

[00:32:51] Cold Quanta is a company that's a quantum company and it was started by a professor at CU. I'm actually having dinner with tonight. And they were headquartered in Boulder. At some point, they need to grow and they picked Louisville instead of Boulder. Now they're a public company with a lot of employees growing very quickly in Louisville, not in Boulder. Well, I remember – I don't know that they ever figured that one out either.

[00:33:21] I remember starting businesses in the region over the past 10 years being continuously approached by the economic development officer of those cities, pitching me on why I should headquarter that business in that city and willing to work with me on a range of incentives in terms of us making that investment in that community. Until very recently, that role hasn't even existed in Boulder.

[00:33:51] Did anybody in Boulder come to say at any point? No, never. Zero. I think we invited them and they wouldn't come. You know, it almost felt like they feel that we're the lucky ones by participating in Boulder. And in many ways, they are right. In many ways, we all want to invest in Boulder. And I actually started all those businesses and hosted them in Boulder. But our ability to be competitive – What do you want –

[00:34:21] We're going to get into your backstory in a second, but what do you want Boulder to be? Like if you had like, you know, the opportunity to define a vision for Boulder for the next five or ten years and know we could get on an execution track against that vision, what would that be? Yeah. We need to unleash our capacity once again. I think that's what attracts people to Boulder. Capacity for what? To get economically vibrant again, right?

[00:34:49] If we don't have that foundation of being able to provide pathways for every family to choose Boulder and to create a life in Boulder and to continuously invest in Boulder across generations, then we will become, demographically speaking, a museum in the next couple of decades. So right now is our inflection point to make that happen.

[00:35:19] Because you want younger families here. You want people in their 20s to want to be here. You want, you know, you want, you know, people who are in the aging population to stay here. You want the community to be vibrant. And, you know, your interest in businesses being here sounds like it's because that's a necessary part of it, being a vibrant community. A hundred percent.

[00:35:39] More accessible housing, living, you know, living expenses being more reasonable, you know, and, you know, the cumulative benefit, if you have a vibrant ecosystem is, you know, is going to, you know, it's going to pay the bills, right? You know, you get more businesses, more families, you know, schools have more kids to attend. You're also, you're not going to go backwards from a revenue standpoint. You're going to go upwards.

[00:36:06] Or we could just keep making it harder for people to live here and keep raising, you know, raising kind of taxes and other fees and make it more difficult to build, more expensive to live here. You know, I guess that's the track we're on now. That's the alternative. And we've got to flip it around. At a cultural level, we've become a city that likes to say no and here's why rather than yes and here's how. And it's hypocritical too, right?

[00:36:34] I mean, whether it's intentional or not to say that you believe in making Boulder more accessible to kind of people with, you know, lower incomes or kind of working class people, yet every policy you do makes it more expensive. Other than people who maybe you say, well, yeah, except for subsidized housing. That's our answer to the question of how we're looking out for, you know, for kind of, you know, certain, you know, certain category of those who you might want to live in Boulder.

[00:37:04] But by crowding out through, like, expensive regulations that create more expensive living conditions, by crowding out, you know, Boulder from all kinds of others who you'd love to have here. Young families, you know, people who are contributing to the workforce, people who, you know, who want to be here for kind of, you know, the retail activities of in and around Pearl Street.

[00:37:30] By having a set of policies that discourage the necessary ingredients for that to happen, it's just hypocritical. It's like if you want that to happen, don't you have to have the right policies, the right strategy, the right vision, the ability to execute against that? You absolutely do. And I think, you know, I think that's the gap. I don't think I wouldn't even go as far as saying it's hypocritical.

[00:37:58] I think it's unaware. I think they are focused on activity rather than progress. We've all seen this in our businesses. For those of us who've run businesses, it's very easy to get lost in the noise of individualized decision making unless you have a layer in your management that abstracts itself out and is tracking towards a vision.

[00:38:21] And it's tracking towards progress and is ensuring that the activity that's happening below the line aligns to the vision above the line because then the outcomes follow. That's what's missing in our governance right now. That's why we need that's that's that's why we need a new profile. We need leadership. That's why we need leadership, which we're going to get into that, too.

[00:38:43] So one more thing before we get to your backstory and and and this we've already talked about this a few times, but there's a bit of a light bulb that went off in my head that I guess I didn't fully realize. If the super majority of the people who work for the city. Don't live in the city and don't. Physically work in the city, at least not very often. Their best interest in the city is only.

[00:39:13] Tied to their paycheck, right? They're not living here. They're not spending time here. So folder is less interesting for people who live here. That's kind of lost on them or it's easy to get lost on them. That's not something they're experiencing. They're not experiencing because, you know, if it's true that the vast majority don't live here, if it's true that the vast majority of them don't come in here to work very often.

[00:39:37] Their community is Louisville or their community is Arvada or their community is Longmont or wherever they choose to live in. And all Boulder is is a paycheck. And it's kind of hard to get them emotionally connected to Boulder if they're not in Boulder during the day or during the night or on the weekends, except very occasionally. You're exactly right.

[00:40:01] And we have a crisis of empathy in terms of our staff with the city they serve. Empathy is a prerequisite in terms of high-functioning organizations actually delivering. Right. You can look at business case after business case.

[00:40:23] If somebody performing a function is not in direct relationship with the outcome of that function and those it serves, then it becomes purely transactional. And if they're not inspired, if they're not bought into a vision, if they're not bought into a purpose, you know, if they're not, you know, if it's not part of, you know, who they are. If you're in business, I mean, it took me a long time to figure this out as a business person because I kind of would overlook that stuff.

[00:40:53] But, you know, you want people to be authentically and emotionally committed to whatever the purpose of your entity is. 100%. If you don't have that, people are just mercenaries. They're like, okay, you know, how much do I get paid and what do I have to do to get paid? If they don't believe authentically, you know, in what, you know, you as an entity, you as an organization is trying to accomplish, then they lose their passion. They lose their awareness.

[00:41:22] They lose their commitment. And, yeah, it's kind of hard to create that, you know, with a workforce that neither lives in nor works in, you know, the geography that they're supposed to be serving. So let's come back to that. Let's go to you now. So how did you get to Boulder? What's your backstory? Oh, man. So my family and I landed in Boulder in 1995 as immigrants from Venezuela.

[00:41:49] As far as we know to this day, we were the only Venezuelan family in Boulder at the time. And, you know, the second half of the 90s for Venezuela was an interesting inflection point. That's a whole other story. Well, let's go there a little bit. What was Venezuela back then? You know, the Venezuela I knew growing up was a powerhouse, right?

[00:42:17] Huge concentration of natural wealth, not just oil, aluminum, gold, natural gas. And a lot of that wealth had been invested into the social capital. It had the highest rates of literacy in the world. It had the most educated per capita population in the world.

[00:42:40] It used to be that if, as a Venezuelan student, you get accepted to any tier one university worldwide, the government would fully pay and fund your tuition. For various reasons, there was a significant swing left with Hugo Chavez.

[00:43:09] And that created a... You said for whatever reason. What was the reason? You must have a little more knowledge there than you swung through there. Well, you know, somehow we made the decision that an army officer who had attempted a coup would be pardoning such a person

[00:43:33] and allowing him to run for government would be popular for the president in the mid-90s. There was a lot of social upheaval at the time that made the promises of what he came to call 21st century socialism.

[00:44:03] A lot of folks found attractive. And he sold it under a framework of a democratic transformation and democratic revolution. What Venezuela... What was the value prop that you remember in the Hugo Chavez? Like what... When he sold it to the population... He... He felt that a lot of the wealth had been concentrated in private enterprises.

[00:44:30] And he promised to nationalize and expropriate a lot of those businesses, which he went ahead... He went ahead and did. And what you saw over time... So he nationalized what kinds of businesses? Oh, all sorts of businesses. Oh, all sorts of businesses.

[00:44:48] Everything from ranches to food production, infrastructure type businesses were all nationalized. Venezuela had already had a nationalized oil business for a long time, PDVSA, which was the national oil company. And he went... As he went... As he went about that process, it became very cronyistic.

[00:45:18] Outputs started to collapse. And we started to suffer a loss of our most qualified and most educated professionals. We suffered a huge brain drain.

[00:45:35] Go to Houston today and you'll meet thousands of incredible Venezuelan engineers working across the energy... The energy infrastructure across the US. Long story short... Did they call it Democrat socialism or what word did they use? No, no. He called it 21st century socialism was kind of his term.

[00:46:06] But my family and I landed in Boulder after a huge change in circumstances facing housing and food insecurity. My mom's first job... What was the housing and food before this transformation in Venezuela? So before Hugo Chavez when you were talking about there was a thriving...

[00:46:32] Yeah, we went from living in a beautiful single-family home. But more generally speaking, how was the housing and food in Venezuela before the transition to Hugo Chavez versus the timeframe you're describing when you left? Was that... Was food and housing a problem prior to Hugo Chavez? No, not for us it wasn't.

[00:47:01] You know, we lived what you would have recognized as a upper middle-class experience most anywhere in the Western world. And we found ourselves in circumstances where we had to start over in Boulder.

[00:47:18] Now, what it looks like to start over as a first-generation immigrant anywhere in America is a story that would be unbelievable for most if so many of us hadn't lived it. But... What do you mean by that? Oh.

[00:47:38] Well, it's a story of having to learn a new culture, having to learn a new language, being an outsider within the social fabric, and so needing to expose yourself and participate. Did you have any English skills prior to getting here or did you...? Yeah, I mean, we spoke... My sister and I spoke about as much English as you would expect a middle school student to speak of any language that they're speaking.

[00:48:08] It makes for often humorous circumstances as you learn the language. But we had to participate, we had to prove ourselves, and we had to bring ourselves up. Um, now, in any of these stories, what I often talk about is the proposition that an immigrant family would find stability, um... Um, and...

[00:48:37] Approach the American dream is often a multi-generational story. You know, it would be my grandchildren or their children who would first have the opportunity to, uh, really start reaping some of the, uh, some of the value that... That, uh, my mother and myself... Certainly that was the case in my family. I mean, I, you know, my distance, you know, three generations prior to me came through Ellis Island as Italian...

[00:49:04] Well, actually Italian immigrants, there was one Polish, but three of the four grandparents, uh, were, uh, Italian, one was Polish, and it was, you know... They came over as very young kids, uh, and, uh, yeah, you know, factory workers, you know, store workers, uh, you know, scraping by to make a living. And then, you know, they have kids, and the kids, you know, maybe have a little bit of college, uh, some of them, not all of them. And then, and then the next generation, you know, so that kind of a classic pattern.

[00:49:34] That's right. It's a uniquely American story. Now, here's, here's the stunning thing that, that keeps me, uh, keeps me turning on this story. Uh, the idea that one out of the three of us would achieve the kind of economic and social acceleration within one generation. It's unlikely, but it happens. We often make movies, uh, about it on, on, on Prime, etc.

[00:50:05] Um, but the idea that all three of us would see that kind of acceleration inside of one generation... So tell us about each of the three stories. So your two siblings, your story, start with your siblings. Yeah, um, so, um, so I have a younger sister. She's actually asked for me not to foreground her too much.

[00:50:32] Um, uh, that's part of this journey, but I'll tell you that my sister's my hero. My younger sister is absolutely my hero, and I often become emotional. Um, she, she was, um, able to not just get her, um, her college education, but went on to, um, to get her PhD, uh, as a single mother.

[00:50:59] Uh, she then, how should I put this? Um, she then launched on an extraordinary career arc, uh, initially within, uh, within, uh, academia and then followed by, uh, working at Google at a very senior transformational level.

[00:51:23] And is now, um, and is now working in the, uh, global nonprofit sector, having impact on people and programs, uh, around the world. Uh, she's a mother of four. Um, she, um, she has supported my nephew through multiple fights of, uh, pediatric cancer. And she's got an amazing, loving family and community right here in Boulder. All of us live in Boulder.

[00:51:53] Uh, my mother, um, raised us, um, as a family that saw, uh, the opportunity in everything. She went on to, uh, she went on to create an incredible career at the National Center of Atmospheric Research as a, uh, as a translator.

[00:52:15] And then went on to, um, to, uh, to, found a, uh, nonprofit that invests in getting, um, getting, uh, our Latino communities more, um, more engaged in STEM education and environmentalism and exposing them to, uh, our amazing natural, uh, resources. She also lives in Boulder. Uh, we all have stable lives, homes, and families that we share with this community.

[00:52:45] Now that's unbelievable. Well, tell us about your journey. Uh, well, my journey was not dissimilar. I, I went to Boulder High School. Um, and, uh, after college, I, um, I sat around trying to figure out, uh, what I wanted to do. I, I found it somewhat hard, I'll be honest, as, uh, somebody who went, uh, to Naropa to study poetry,

[00:53:12] to figure out what, what the there, there was. Uh, and that led me to, to starting my first company when I was, uh, 23. Um, I don't know that I knew what the term startup was, but I started actually out of a, actually by a garage down in a Buckley Air Force base.

[00:53:33] And I was really interested, most of my career has played out at the intersection of, uh, of, uh, media and data. That is, how do I make, uh, communications more effective? And how do I open that impact to a broader set, um, of democratized, um, uh, users?

[00:53:59] So, our first company, we were doing that around, uh, around print media. Um, kind of my big moment was, uh, was helping with that effort within the, um, the, uh, first Obama campaign for, uh, for president. We were doing some interesting data segmentation work around that. Uh, the second business, which we started in Boulder with my friend Alex, it was a business called Brinzuka.

[00:54:28] They're still around, uh, and that opened up, uh, TV and programmatic advertising for small businesses, um, around the world. At the time, it used to be you needed to hire these agencies and have a lot of money, so only big businesses got to do it. We created the means for anyone, anywhere, um, to, um, to, uh, put the ad for their local business on a Monday Night Football for 50 bucks,

[00:54:56] which we, uh, which we thought was pretty punk rock, I'll be honest. Uh, but I'm a geek, so I think things like that are punk rock. Uh, most recently we started a, a business called Sphere Labs, and Sphere Labs is a holding company, um, that, that seeks to reverse the trend of social, uh, of digital isolationism. So, one of the things that we see and I know that we share is the value of human connection in person.

[00:55:25] And we've abstracted ourselves so far into being able to do everything behind the screen. We already talked about all these city workers who can, who can work from their, uh, from their spare bedroom down in a broom field or what have you. Um, how do we create businesses that encourage us to put down our screen and go back into our main streets and into our downtowns and invest in each other in person?

[00:55:53] So, um, that's, that's, that's what I've been doing for the past few years. Well, congratulations. I mean, to, for your whole family to overcome the adversity that you had to overcome and build kind of thriving lives for yourselves. I mean, that is, you know, that's the human dream. We, we, we like to brand it the American dream, but I think that probably is true across the world. It's just more accessible in some systems than other systems. Well, let's talk about that.

[00:56:20] Let's talk about that accessibility because it's the core of everything I'm doing and hope to do in this race. And once I get elected mayor unleashing in our community, um, all of those three stories, incredible and unique and valuable on their own as they are, were only made possible by one common element. And that common element was Boulder.

[00:56:47] I do not believe that if my family had landed anywhere other than Boulder in any other period than when we did, you would have seen the same range of outcomes. Uh, so what was it about Boulder? What was it about our family landing in Boulder in 1995? And what was it that we experienced? And is that possible now?

[00:57:11] Uh, I don't believe that if we landed today in Boulder, we would have that opportunity or we would even be very long for Boulder. Uh, and that really bothers me because right now somewhere in Boulder, there is a kid sleeping on the floor of a studio apartment, listening to their parents speak in hushed voices about money. Um, and I believe we really owe it to that kid to give it to the money.

[00:57:41] And I believe that I was a kid to give them the same experience or her, the same experience that I enjoyed when we landed here. There was no, there was no program in, in, in the city government at the time that said, well, when, when a family lands under these circumstances, follow the following checklist and connect them to the following programs. None of that existed.

[00:58:03] Every door we walked in, we presented a new and novel challenge for those who were trying to help us on the other side. And what we found was a community that was highly adaptable, whose built incentives were such that they wanted us to succeed. Yeah.

[00:58:22] And that, and that, and let me build on that a little bit because I do think that's something that makes Boulder unique and Colorado unique as well in that, uh, unlike I think most communities in the U.S. And maybe it's because, and maybe it's because a lot of people arrived here from elsewhere, people want to be helpful to each other. They want each other to succeed. You know, there's kind of this natural feeling here of, you know, we succeed together, you know, as opposed to it being competitive.

[00:58:50] You know, if you contrast that to say Silicon Valley, which you hear from people who spend a lot of time there is it's kind of, you know, I want to be successful and I want you not to be successful kind of vibe. You know, it's, it's a competition, uh, where you don't share ideas. You don't, you know, you don't build relationships across entities as easily. Uh, there's a lot more identity of like what startup who funded you here. And I think that's where people want to see each other kind of thrive culturally, community wise, uh, and business wise as well.

[00:59:20] Education wise there, there's, there's that, that strength we have of community that, that would be easy for us to take for granted, but it doesn't exist everywhere. I think it more uniquely exists in Colorado than most places and, and Boulder even more so. But we are losing that because of the divide in the community, the divide over like, you know, I'm in this camp and I think you're in that camp. So I'm going to treat you as if you're in a different camp or vice versa.

[00:59:46] And it's like, this is a small community and we should be rallying around each other and, and, you know, cherishing our differences, but, but building a lot more relationships with one another. Uh, so I want to make that comment. And then I want to make one more comment too. And, you know, it's one thing to have the programs, you know, we have programs to help others, but if you don't have a thriving ecosystem, the programs aren't going to solve the problem. Oh, right.

[01:00:10] You're almost better off not having programs, but having a thriving ecosystem because then the opportunities are more abundant and people can be fit into abundant opportunities. But the opposite of like, look at all of our bureaucratic programs that are designed with empathy to help all these people. But our office spaces are empty and people are moving out. It's too expensive to live here. I think the comment you made is you probably wouldn't even stay here.

[01:00:33] If you arrived now, you'd have to get out of Boulder because Boulder wouldn't have been a land of opportunity, you know, for a newly arriving family to be like, well, we need to go, you know, somewhere else. And it might only be 20 minutes outside of Boulder for God's sake and they feel like there's more opportunity. But I don't even think we have to choose, right? Well, we don't have to, but we're creating an environment right now. We're forcing ourselves to choose and we're choosing poorly. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:01:02] So, so great backstory. Early on, you talked about strong mayor and a lot of people in the comment that they're making a comment about a structural issue. Like there's something, you know, that's called a strong mayor system, something that's called a weak mayor system. But that's not what you're talking about. You're talking about leadership. That's a hundred percent. I think it's really interesting.

[01:01:25] And, you know, I'm, I announced a week ago and it's really interesting in seeing the reaction of so many people saying, ah, but we don't have a strong mayor system. So we can't, we can't do that. That's excuse. Uh, it's, it's, it's the endemic excuse that we see in terms of, uh, of not holding ourselves accountable and not leading.

[01:01:51] My campaign is not asking the mayor to do anything that the mayor does not currently have, not just the power, but the duty to exercise. And it's interesting to me. And the platform too. I mean, there's power, there's duty, but there's also like, uh, the mayor is, is, you know, is called the mayor for reason. The mayor has a platform. The mayor is called the mayor. The mayor, you know, can, uh, exercise. Yeah. Work at it.

[01:02:20] You gotta have good judgment, but you have a platform that's bigger than any other platform. It's bigger than the city management platform, certainly sit bigger than the other city council member. So, you know, if you apply leadership to that, you can accomplish a lot more, presumably, even if, you know, even if there isn't like some word in some document that says you have, you know, permission or authority to do this or do that. You can just apply your leadership as mayor. That's exactly right.

[01:02:47] And that's, that's what we hope this movement, uh, will begin. Again, this is a movement of leadership and of accountability. Uh, now let's go back to the 2020 vote, cause that gave, that gave the mayor something that the mayor has never had since 1917, um, at least.

[01:03:10] And we made a deal that we wanted the person who was our mayor to come to us every two years and make their case for, um, for leadership. In return, we're giving that person something incredibly powerful, which is a direct public mandate of leadership. Now the question for Aaron is what have you done with that mandate over the last two years?

[01:03:36] I'll tell you, if we were having an election for really nice guy and Aaron was running that election, I'd probably vote for him cause he is a really nice guy. And if the, like, if you were liking a really nice guy, you know, what do you, you know, what do you get my vote? Yeah, maybe it'd be, you know, there are other really nice guys running, but that's not what, you know, I'm looking for in a mayor.

[01:03:55] What I'm looking for is really strong leadership, really strong vision, someone who could get things done, someone who can, you know, navigate Boulder to overcome whatever challenges Boulder has, make it a greater place for everyone in Boulder. You know, I don't see much of that coming out of Aaron at all.

[01:04:13] Maybe it happens behind closed doors and, you know, underneath the scenes, but, you know, when I meet, he seems like a really low key guy, you know, someone who's gets along with, I'm sure with, you know, with other people in the political system. But I don't hear him express himself. I don't hear him say, you know what, we got some really challenges here in Boulder and we need to do something about it. We have a ton of vacancies in our office complexes.

[01:04:36] We, you know, our housing supply is, you know, is, you know, if anything shrinking, it's getting way too expensive here and we got to do everything we can to make it less expensive. We got to get, you know, city workers to, you know, be part of our Boulder community because if not, they should go work for whatever community that they live in. We need to help Pearl Street become even more vibrant and we need people to feel safe and secure. And, you know, and I'm the mayor and, you know, I'm going to help get us there.

[01:05:06] I don't hear any of that. You? No, I don't. Now, the question is why? You know, Aaron has been in city government for 12 years and he's asking for another two. That's. Is it just two years? Yeah, but he served as. I mean, is the election cycle for mayor just two years or is this. Yes. Yes. Every two years. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

[01:05:34] I thought it was just two years because of a transition, you know, to get to an off year and then be four years after. No, so I think we're all still getting used to the new system. Okay. Right? So council people get elected for four. The new system says the mayor's term is every two years, which would have been the cycle through which council would have been selecting a mayor internally. And I think that's good.

[01:05:59] I think we need that range of continuous accountability of somebody coming back to us every 18 months and saying, this is where I am. This is where we're going. Here's what's next. But when you think about it, it's a huge organizational design shift.

[01:06:22] So when the mayor was selected from among nine members of council who have a really hard time agreeing on anything, usually the output of that is going to be the least controversial person that everybody can agree on.

[01:06:46] I think all of the criticisms and observations you made of our current mayor are fair. But I think they're also the natural outcome of that system. Yeah, you're right about that. I agree with you because even with the mayor getting elected now, the rest of those who are in the inner circle politically would like the mayor to be low profile,

[01:07:14] easy to get along with, not challenging, kind of just stay in their lane and kind of, hey, if you could just behave the way we want you to behave, we'll be more comfortable with you. So you can see that, you know, Aaron's a good choice for if those people get to decide. They used to get to decide outright as city council members. But now they get to influence that because a lot of them are in the inner circle of where a lot of the votes typically come from.

[01:07:42] Yeah, and I think Boulder elections have kind of become that. They become the outcome of a very small subset of highly engaged, highly politically engaged individuals, you know, two to three hundred folks.

[01:08:04] And generally speaking, the way a Boulder election is run is a matter of who is most liked by those 300 people. And so they'll go out and they'll gather endorsements and. And. And they'll perform the election on the idea of he who has or she who has the most endorsement wins. That is the really exciting thing.

[01:08:33] Can I tell you the really exciting thing about this this year? Number one. It's only the second time we're directly electing a mayor. Last time there was kind of a French candidate who wasn't a member of council, but I would fairly say my candidacy is is is is the first credible candidacy for mayor by a person not currently serving in council.

[01:09:02] That in and of itself changes the conversation immensely because I think it has caused everyone around town to say, hey, wait a second. We can get leadership profiles for this city that don't follow that traditional council to mayor pipeline. But the second thing is you're about to see it play out over the next few months.

[01:09:26] You're going to see a deeply entrenched and politically well connected insider as Aaron is who served for 12 years. Run a campaign that is based.

[01:09:41] On an incredible number of endorsements by those politically connected individuals against a a business management profile candidate running. Well, yeah, but but to be fair, I mean, you're a lot more than a budget than that. I mean, you're you know, you're an immigrant. You're Hispanic. You move to Boulder.

[01:10:10] You have to rise yourself up and your family up from from a lot of adversity. You you have your mom was in in education government system. Your sister was part of that as well. So you've seen it all. I mean, you represent a broad swath of what Boulder is. It's not a narrow like if I was running, I'd just be like, you know, that silly business guy trying to like, you know, do something.

[01:10:39] But you're much more of a of a of a complete representation of what what Boulder really wants to have in terms of leadership. No, and I appreciate that. I was more talking about how it's going to be painted, generally speaking. They're definitely going to paint you as like, you know, as like whatever bad words they could come up with. You know, they might even call you a Republican. You know, oh, my gosh. A Republican running for mayor of Boulder. They already have.

[01:11:09] Last week was last week was last week was really interesting. I think somebody somebody heard about the fact that I participated in the primary pivot movement that we discussed it, that that movement to to deny Trump an easy path to to the nomination. And they're using that as some kind of proof that I'm something other than what I am.

[01:11:37] So, listen, that's politics. I expect I expect that the next few months are going to be pretty spicy. But the conversation I'm going to be interested in having is not name calling. It's not who likes me more. It's not. Did I go to this cocktail party instead of that cocktail party? How about if you're going to do what's good for Boulder? That's it. That is a hundred percent it. Boulder is a special place. But but we need it.

[01:12:07] We need young people to want to be in Boulder and families to want to be in Boulder and businesses and the tech community want to be in Boulder and be able to be in Boulder. And I just want to be able to be here. Listen, I believe we need to feel like we need you know, there's not you know, how much pride you feel when you have someone come visit you and you want to bring them to downtown Boulder and see it and go to a nice place to eat or just walk around the Pearl Street environment. I mean, we all feel pride if we see the, you know, the foothills right around us.

[01:12:37] Yet, you know, there's times where you feel like, oh, my gosh, can't we present ourselves a bit better? I mean, why is it why is it, you know, messy and dirty here? And why do we feel a bit unsafe? And shouldn't we, you know, shouldn't we have a way of of, you know, caring about everyone in Boulder? But but also, you know, feel, you know, not be afraid to ride our bikes underneath like an underpass. I went on a long walk. I think it was the day before yesterday.

[01:13:06] And, you know, and I went up. I walked under two or three underpasses in the, you know, late afternoon. And I literally felt like I was looking over my shoulders because it felt it felt unsafe. It certainly didn't feel, you know, it didn't feel clean down there. It felt like there was, you know, like it could use, you know, a good scrubbing and stuff. And I know, you know, part of it is because people are, you know, are struggling and we need to help people who are struggling.

[01:13:32] But we need to help them in a way where we also, you know, can be proud of like, you know, of going to a park and going to an open space and, you know, and riding on a bike path and things like that. I mean, you know, that's all part of making Boulder kind of be everything Boulder can be for everyone in Boulder. Well, let me build on that. First of all, I'm sorry that you had that experience. It's an experience that's become too common for many of us. I'm a bigger guy, so I could feel a little bit more safe than most.

[01:14:01] But, you know, if I thought of like my wife or one of our daughters kind of walk on their own in those environments, I mean, they legitimately would be right to feel unsafe. We need to recognize again that these spaces are critical safety infrastructure for our community. That serve a wide range of populations.

[01:14:25] There was a time when I was a young man where I didn't feel safe in the community complex in which we lived. And I found a sense of safety out in those spaces, out in downtown Boulder, out on the creek path, out in the library.

[01:14:44] It's very hard for me as a parent of a 13-year-old girl who's going to be starting her last year of middle school here shortly, allowing her into those spaces. And that is a loss that we need to recognize.

[01:15:05] There are folks out there who might be experiencing very tough circumstances at home and not ready to talk about it, who need to go out beyond their home to find safety in our public parks and in our public infrastructure.

[01:15:22] And if that's not accessible, if that's not welcoming, if that's not safe, then we are putting a lot of unseen voices in our community in real stress. So we need to regain those public spaces.

[01:15:41] But we don't do that by not having the folks who are responsible for planning out the vision of our community, not in our community, not experiencing and seeing it firsthand.

[01:15:59] And we don't do that when we extract the experiences of those employees when they come in to some North Boulder, west side of Broadway neighborhood inside some government dome that we spent $200 million on. While we accrued $400 million in backlog maintenance.

[01:16:28] And let's pivot back to that for a second. At a time when there's all kinds of vacant office buildings on top of the office. So if they need a new office building, how about going in one of those vacant, really nice ones? You know, it could be on Pearl Street. It could be just off Pearl Street. But do you really have to build yourself a brand new one? It's insane. It's absolutely insane. And now they want us, they want the residents of this town. To bail them out.

[01:16:51] To increase by $500 our residential property taxes on a median home. By increasing $1,600 in taxes for our small businesses, we're already struggling. You know, let's talk about, and we're just getting started in a conversation because I feel like we go a lot deeper in a lot of these areas. So I hope we do a follow-up podcast, maybe even at the Tulagi Fest.

[01:17:20] We're going to do a few podcasts that are in front of live audiences. Maybe even get a mic up there so people can come up there and talk. And if you're interested, we'd love to have you as one of the guests there. We've got a couple of people lined up. I'd love to get in front of an audience and start talking deeper policy. And by the way, can I just tell you, thank you and congratulations on bringing Tulagi back into the Boulder lexicon.

[01:17:48] It's been gone for far too long. Tulagi on the Hill. Tulagi on the Hill. I never had the good fortune of knowing about Tulagi on the Hill, even though I was here at the time frame. I was too busy doing whatever I was doing. But learned the legend of Tulagi on the Hill, and we took on the name to call our multi-day festival of bringing the community together

[01:18:11] to celebrate art, artists, culture, and more than anything, bringing people together and celebrate together, enjoy life and outdoors together. And start to kind of break down kind of barriers that exist, not just in our community, but in general. It kind of builds on the momentum of Sundance coming here to Boulder.

[01:18:33] Hopefully as part of kind of what I see as a big opportunity to kind of regain the positive momentum that should exist in Boulder in terms of making an increasingly vibrant and welcoming community for all. Let's talk about a big part of the Boulder community and one that has a big impact on elections and will have a big impact on the upcoming mayoral election, and that is CU Boulder College students.

[01:19:00] They typically have swung the elections, I think it's safe to say. I think the last election was probably swung in the favor of the people who got elected, including the mayor. It was a close election for mayor. It was a close election for the last couple of council seats. And it was probably, you know, a disproportional number of those who voted from the CU campus that voted for the people who turned out getting elected versus the other way around.

[01:19:30] I love college students. I love the energy. I love, you know, the new ideas. I love when they're naive because I'm like, man, I remember back when I was a college student and the world looked a certain way, and then you discover over time, you know, things are maybe not as simple as maybe they seem when you're in college or as black and white as maybe they seem when you're in college.

[01:19:51] And right now, you know, there's a lot of sentiment for college students that, you know, that is, you know, anti-capitalism, pro-social democracy or whatever they call it, democratic socialism. You know, there's this anti-AI mindset that is picking up momentum, which, you know, I talk about that a fair amount on podcasts.

[01:20:19] I get it because AI is a very real, you know, disruptor and one that, unlike many of the other disruptors, I think there is a legitimate case to be concerned about some of the long-term, you know, impacts of AI that might, you know, even be threatening to, you know, to the humankind journey itself. But having said that, if you're going to kind of have a chip on your shoulders AI and you're a young person,

[01:20:48] you're going to get so far behind so quickly, I don't know how you're going to recover. And I think those conversations need to be had, conversations about, yeah, I get that capitalism can, you know, can be a dirty word. But let's talk about, like, what makes for opportunities, you know, for people. Opportunities for people, you know, do come from having a vibrant kind of economic system that, yes, some people are rewarded because they're, you know, they're more successful in creating value for others.

[01:21:18] But that's what drives, you know, that's what drives not just opportunity for individuals. That's what drives, you know, people having more access to food, more access to shelter, more access to education, you know, across the world. And somehow there's, you know, my frustration is how do you have those conversations with college students? How do you get into a meaningful, fun, vibrant conversation and see you bolder students if you're listening to this

[01:21:47] or someone nudges you to listen to it? You know, I want to start getting on campus and getting you guys off campus and into the community and having more conversation about, you know, how do we, you know, make Boulder, how do we make Colorado an increasingly, you know, vibrant ecosystem for all? And we need college students to be on board with that, not fighting against that.

[01:22:09] Yeah, well, you start by recognizing where this generation of students is at, right? So first you've got to start by recognizing that the unemployment rate for 20-year-olds is two to three times higher than the national average. You extend that out and you're talking about 12, 15% unemployment and increasing.

[01:22:40] It gets even worse because of college degree holding 20-year-olds, 60% of them who are employed are underemployed in a job that did not require that degree. So then you start recognizing... And they get a ton of debt? This generation has the highest propensity of student debt. So that's a great point.

[01:23:10] So you add up all those stressors and you begin recognizing that for these young people, it feels as if the social contract has been breached in a very foundational way. I don't know if this is true or not true, but you also get the impression that they're also sitting in front of a lot of professors during their college experience who are telling them

[01:23:37] how bad, you know, capitalism is, how bad America is, how bad this is, how bad that is. I'm going to reject that, Dan. I don't know how true it is, but certainly it feels like there's a lot of what is being taught in college experiences by professors who have tenure and have been professors for a long period of time might not be consistent with how the real world works. You know, I...

[01:24:06] That's okay if you reject that. I participate in the CU community. Every year I take on a couple of cohorts of students to work at my company as part of their capstone projects.

[01:24:30] What I generally find up at CU is a vibrant community of critical thinkers who are questioning, and I think that's a lot of the value of post-secondary education. I think I haven't, or I've yet to experience kind of a very biased negative thinking of our

[01:24:55] community or country at CU, but that's my experience. I certainly have heard conversations around what you were talking about. But I think what's more important is if we recognize these historic stressors that this generation is experiencing now against the angst that in the next four years, a lot of

[01:25:20] the jobs that they are investing in will have drastically shifted is how are we engaging with those students in terms of having the conversation around what are the outcomes that we want for our community and how does their vote tie into those outcomes?

[01:25:44] Because I think if CU students are looking for a business climate in Boulder that is as bad as it is now or continues to decline, there is, there is, you can continue voting for the same and continue maintaining inertia. If you're looking to participate in a movement that will seek to create, to regenerate the vibrancy of

[01:26:12] Boulder and create pathways for you to create. But you're putting pathways to live here too. That's the pathway I'm talking about. A pathway to stay in Boulder and build a life in Boulder and be successful in Boulder. Then we need, then we need a change of pace and we need to have different conversations because there's, there's, there's, there's no more businesses that you can tax to death. You know, you're already doing it. Right.

[01:26:37] So I'm not sure where those pathways for young people to stay and remain in Boulder are from a jobs perspective. Then we have to talk about the housing perspective. What are, what, what are the pathways for you getting a starter home once you get that, that starting job and for your kids to have a, um, elementary school in your neighborhood, not

[01:27:04] one that you have to drive to because we went ahead and closed all those schools. And what is the social infrastructure around which all of this happens in our parks, in our freaks, in our, in our libraries, in our downtown? Yep. Let's talk about one other topic and then we'll wrap this up and continue hopefully in a couple weeks. And that is a point you made yesterday, which is a Boulder's role in the broader kind of community around Boulder.

[01:27:33] Uh, and why, you know, Boulder, you know, it's not just Boulder itself. It's Boulder as kind of part of a broader ecosystem and the importance role. I believe. And I think that the data supports that Boulder is the indispensable city in the front range. A, a, a strong Boulder means a strong front range. A weak Boulder means a weak front range.

[01:27:59] We are a community of just over a hundred thousand people that hosts a hundred thousand jobs. We produce $10 billion in payroll across the front range every year. 70%, uh, in the order of 70%, uh, of those payroll jobs exist outside of Boulder. So when the Boulder labor market suffers, the entire front range suffers.

[01:28:27] And when our tax revenues are such as they are, not, not, not contributing to their full potential, the entire region suffers. Boulder was after all, uh, the city that provided hundreds of millions of dollars for light rail that doesn't have light rail, right?

[01:28:49] Um, so, so I think there's a real conversation that we need to externalize around this election. Boulder elections are not just about Boulder. Boulder elections are about opportunity across the broader region and they deserve the broader region becoming more aware and more engaged. Right?

[01:29:12] Certainly they don't get to vote in our elections, but they should have much more focus as to what is happening in Boulder and what we are investing in. Um, because the idea that you get to sit in Broomfield or Lakewood or Urbana and have Schadenfreude about how much, uh, Boulder is stumbling. Is, is, is, is, is, is really bad business because those communities rely on us being successful.

[01:29:42] This is part of what makes Boulder a special place that we could play that leadership role, that we could benefit the broader communities around us. It should be part of our, our identity, part of our sense of purpose, part of our vision. Uh, it all kind of comes together and well, let's wrap this one up. Uh, this has been fascinating. Like I said, I just met you yesterday. Uh, our paths might've sort of crossed a little bit in the past. Certainly I've seen your name pop up before, but in terms of spending time together and

[01:30:10] getting to get to know each other, I'm so excited that, uh, not just that you're running for mayor, but that you're running with kind of the mindset that you have. I mean, we're not going to agree on everything and that's not important to me. What's important to me is that you want to lead, that you want to make a difference, that you have a, you know, a vision for Boulder, that you have a high bar that you want to see, uh, Boulder hold itself accountable to. And, and you're about the entire community, which I think is extraordinarily important.

[01:30:36] So super excited you're running and super excited to, uh, to do what I can to, uh, you know, support you, your name, getting out there and you meeting more and more people and telling them what you're going to do for them. I look forward to the next few months and thank you for your, uh, partnership, Dan. I really appreciate it. All right. Good deal. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bear Roars. Check out Stretch, the new song from Dan Caruso with music by Jason Mendelsohn, available now on all streaming services.

[01:31:06] If you enjoyed the episode, please like and subscribe on your listening platform. This podcast was produced by Loud Bear Productions and edited by Hannah Schmetzer with support from Kendall Weinberg, Alex Kim and Gibson Seagert.