Last Tuesday, nearly 100 people gathered in Boulder’s Central Park to receive food, clothing and other necessities for daily life. Feet Forward, a local nonprofit organization, has been organizing these distributions for years to support homeless people.  “Folks are accustomed to securing services in a particular spot,” Leanne Wheeler, interim executive director of Feet Forward, told Boulder Reporting Lab, referring to Central Park. “That spot has been safe.”  Other organizations also operate out of Central Park. Second Baptist Church hands out clothes, shoes and books on Tuesdays ..read more

A group of Boulder County public employees has filed for a union election, citing job security, turnover and work-life balance as reasons. The county employs over 2,000 people. “Boulder County workers continue to show up fearlessly for the community through natural disasters, the pandemic, the opioid epidemic, and the affordable housing crisis. We fight daily for racial equity, accessibility, and more robust services for residents,” said Brianna Barber, an organizing committee member with the Boulder County Employees Union, in a news release this week. The workers are represented by Communica ..read more

A Boulder County District Court judge has paused a lawsuit challenging the City of Boulder’s camping ban while the U.S. Supreme Court considers a similar civil rights case stemming from Grants Pass, Oregon. The ruling from the nation’s highest court could have major implications for how cities across the country respond to encampments in public spaces amid rising homelessness.  The Boulder lawsuit seeks to halt enforcement of an ordinance that allows city officers to ticket homeless people for sleeping in public spaces when shelter is not accessible.  The case, filed by the ACLU of ..read more

Should a world-famous climbing route on Longs Peak, towering over 200,000 acres of designated wilderness in Rocky Mountain National Park, be subject to removal? According to a new National Park Service climbing management guideline, the answer is yes.   The National Park Service guideline now defines permanent climbing gear as illegal “installations,” raising concerns among climbing advocates. They believe this could trigger the removal of historic crags, like the Diamond on Longs Peak, and make it too difficult to create new, safe climbing opportunities in wilderness areas.  T ..read more

Boulder’s Planning Board has approved a proposal to build 45 furnished efficiency-living apartments at 2206 Pearl Street near the city’s downtown.  The project is among the first of its kind, given the size of the apartments and the limited vehicle parking. It is also an early test case of new and proposed housing policies in the City of Boulder to encourage more housing density.  The developer, stok Investment Group, a real estate firm with offices in Boulder, seeks to build 300-square-foot apartments equipped with robotic furniture to optimize limited space. For example, the bed c ..read more

Last spring, Vicki Burrichter came across a Rolling Stone story, and it stuck with her. The article, titled “How a High School Mariachi Team Triumphed in Uvalde,” included a photo of a teen musician dressed in bordeaux-colored mariachi trajes, violin in hand. The young musicians from Uvalde High School, pictured throughout, had made history last year by becoming the school’s first group to compete at the state level in Texas’s annual interscholastic mariachi festival. Featured in the story was a “tireless teacher” who motivated these students, initially reluctant to commit to the demandi ..read more

The City of Boulder’s hearing on the new energy code update was postponed from its original date in April to May, allowing the Boulder City Council to address Xcel Energy’s power outages on April 6 and 7. The update, still scheduled to take effect on July 1 of this year, prohibits the use of gas in all new residential buildings and most commercial buildings, with limited exceptions for facilities like laboratories and commercial kitchens. This gas ban follows the lead of many cities across the country in phasing out fossil fuels. Yet with Xcel’s recent outage, some have wondered about this up ..read more

Members of the Boulder City Council on Thursday told representatives from Xcel Energy that the utility should reimburse customers for financial losses incurred during the planned power outage earlier this month. The utility cut off power to about 55,000 customers to try to prevent high winds from damaging a powerline and sparking a wildfire.  The April 18 meeting was the first time the entire council was able to question the utility since the power outage, which began on April 6 and lasted nearly three days for some city residents.  Councilmembers used the meeting largely to request ..read more

The City of Boulder has finalized a legal settlement with Joslynn Montoya, a deaf woman who alleged in May 2022 that city police officers discriminated against her in part by not using American Sign Language to communicate effectively. Officers temporarily took custody of her two children due in part to a miscommunication, the lawsuit alleged. Under the settlement, the city agreed to pay $75,000 to Montoya and the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, a disability rights advocacy organization based in Denver that was also a plaintiff in the case. The city admits no wrongdoing and has denied ma ..read more

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday, April 17, held a public hearing as part of an investigation into how Xcel Energy handled its planned outages during the April 6-7 windstorm. The utility cut off power to about 55,000 customers to prevent a downed powerline from sparking a wildfire. During the meeting, officials from Boulder County and the City of Boulder emphasized different perspectives on the outage. Boulder County Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann said the county is still recovering from the Dec. 30, 2021, Marshall Fire. She said communications regarding the planned outage ..read more