Every year, the policy advisory group for the Boulder Chamber, our Community Affairs Council, hosts a Holiday Party with invited elected civic officials. Even more importantly, as I offered in my brief remarks, is the foundation of our most productive work together: a friendship built on mutual respect.
But, to be clear, I also know our business leaders have a pretty strong track record regarding the impacts of government policies on our businesses and the economy. I reflect on the battle over keeping West Pearl closed to traffic following the initial pandemic period. Our restaurants and retailers said it was having a terrible impact on their businesses.
Or maybe you remember the Boulder Chamber opposing efforts to municipalize our electric system. We said it would be too costly and difficult a path toward achieving our clean energy and service reliability goals. Government policies have unpredictable ramifications.
More to the point, they often have predictable ramifications, but clues, evidence and worthy input was missed or, too often, dismissed. Worse, they can be disastrous for impacted individuals and businesses consider the lost restaurants โ along with the tax revenue and jobs โ that might have survived on West Pearl.
We are, therefore, grateful when a City Council majority truly hears the voice of our business community โ our concerns and suggestions for a better path forward โ and either reverses course or, better yet, avoids going over the policy cliff. We have some very consequential issues on the table for our community in When businesses tell us that forcing them to marry their expansion with another small commercial space will be incompatible with their operations or that mandated housing will replace important industry investment opportunities, we need our elected leaders to truly hear and process these concerns.
