Boulder to ask voters for $214 million debt limit to buy Xcel system – Boulder Daily Camera.
That debt limit is not intended to represent Boulder’s estimates of the actual acquisition costs — city officials hinted they believe those costs will be lower — and it explicitly does not include possible stranded costs, which Xcel Energy says Boulder will owe if it forms a municipal utility. (emphasis added)
From the first comment, srhaymes:
I was at the City Council meeting which went past 1:00 AM. What the Boulder Daily Camera fails to report is that Senior Assistant City Attorney Kathy Haddock said that the condemnation costs for the muni will be the highest in Colorado’s history and 3 times higher than any other previous condemnation in Colorado.
The $214 price tag for the muni that City Council passed does not included the stranded costs, separation costs, and however many years of legal costs. It is an incomplete figure. The City Attorney’s PowerPoint presentation to City Council stated that too high of a cost could result in lower voter approval.
As the cost of the muni continues to go up, voter support for the muni continues to go down.
The City of Boulder cannot be trusted on the true cost of the muni.
Steve
Although Boulder deserves their own muni, the headaches that come with it and the promises that won’t be kept, it’s beginning to appear that the “common Boulderite” is now realizes that it’s a “bridge too far”.
As much as I’d like to believe that the “common boulderite” is waking up to the reality of the muni, I know from experience that the comments to articles in the Camera is not a reflection of what the “common boulderite” thinks when it comes to election results. IIRC, srhaymes is an engineer with NREL who knows a lot about alternative energy generation, and has followed the muni issue closely for a long time. He’s a valuable source of information, but most people in Boulder (and I’d probably include everyone on City Council in saying this) don’t know a tenth as much as he does about this issue. The downside is he’s in the minority. If Boulder votes the way he thinks we should, it’ll be by pure coincidence.