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Is the Jeff Bridges running for State Treasurer? Jeff Bridges? No, sadly. I'm sorry. Like the dude for State Treasurer. Don't get pulled out. Well. That'd be hilarious. Happy Friday, frequency listeners. I'm your host, Shay Castle, and today is our final bit of election content. If you've been following along all month, hopefully you are very well informed about what's on your ballot. If not, you're in luck. We'll be going over everything on Boulder Ballots in around 15 minutes. This is not meant to be an in-depth exploration. We already did that. You can find links to all our episodes and printed materials in the show notes. If you've already voted, send this to a friend who hasn't. Your voice is so important, especially on the local level. Tune in next Friday for results and some light post-election analysis. We're mixing things up and shifting headlines to Friday when more votes will be counted. On Wednesday, we'll have a spooky report from the Mountaineers, Tyler Hickman, about some local spirits and the people who put them to rest. But first, your boulder ballot. Set your timers, let's dive in. I wasn't gonna cover any of the state level candidates. I am independent, but I'm just voting straight down because the Republicans are crazy horrible. So if they get less crazy, perhaps I shall vote for them again, but I don't see that happening. There are some great resources on state and federal candidates from the Colorado Sun and CPR. We are starting with RTD District O. We've got Jack Rosenthal, a transit advocate and frequent RTD writer. He's helped write a state law improving information and access and advocated for the airport bus to Longmont. Jack is part of a group of newcomers challenging incumbents and establishment candidates for seats on the RTD board. In this case, that's Audrey Debarros, a career transportation policy expert and the CEO of Commuting Solutions. Both Audrey and Jack are based in Louisville. Jack wants to grow ridership and expand special event services, like buses to Broncos games. While Audrey wants to focus on improving reliability and restoring trust in RTD through better governance and responsible spending. Boulder Mayor is the next one. So this is ranked choice. So you can vote for up to six because there's six candidates. You don't have to. So the advice for ranked choice is like vote for who you like and who you can live with. Don't vote for anyone you don't like, because your vote will go to them. To save time, I'm not going into all six candidates. You can find that information in the show notes or the frequencies Instagram. Instead, we're going to talk about Boulder's political parties and who they endorsed. So in Boulder, the three parties are basically Democratic Socialist Left, Boulder Progressive Center Left, Plan Boulder, which is like still center but more conservative on things like housing and things like that. The Democratic Socialist, or DSA, endorsed City Council member Taisha Adams as the first pick, and current mayor Aaron Brockett as the second. Boulder Progressives endorsed Aaron Brockett first and Taisha Adams second. Plan Boulder endorsed outside challenger Achillehes Lagrov first, Taisha Adams second, and CU student Jameson JMO Goldstein third. One quick note on Achilles. He has spent more money than anyone else in the campaign. He gave 8,000 of his own dollars to his own campaign and gave $10,000 to another campaign. So he's like boo-poo box, man. For Boulder City Council, you can pick up to five. In the interest of time, we'll cover endorsements and some demographic info, plus candidates' take on controversial license plate reading cameras and the company who runs them. Flock. So DSA is endorsing Jamila Richmond. She is the only candidate who lives in Boulder Housing Partners Housing. Affordable housing. She's a single mom, she's the only black candidate. She works for BHP as well. She does like programming for their communities. Sam Fuqua, he's a journalist from K U N C. His platform is like housing, but like for families, which is also Tina Marquis, who's an incumbent. That's her jam too. So yeah, DSA is Jamila Sam, Ryan Schuhhardt, he's a big like transportation guy. He's not currently on council too. And Jill Grano, who's previously been on council. She left to work for Nagoose. She's a housing expert. And her whole thing, she used to be very like supply side. Now she's like, the market's not gonna provide the housing we want. So we have to do supply and something else, like control to get the housing that we want. DSA was neutral on Tina Marquis, who's big on family housing. She's an incumbent as well. And they're also neutral on Rachel Rose Isaacson, who is barista at Walmart Cafe. She's also one of only two renters, her and Jim Miller, the other. She's endorsed by Boulder Progressives, so she's kind of center ish. But she, the big divide this time, is like, how is the city spending our money? So there's the candidates who are like, we need to tighten up austerity, hire an auditor, and then the candidates who are like, yeah, we're doing that. You just gotta give us more time. And Rachel is, even though she's more progressive, she has joined the very concerned about city budget stuff. So Plan Boulder, which is the center conservative folks, they endorse David Martis. They also endorsed Ryan Jameson, who you might have seen his ads on social. He's like all over the place. He's a cybersecurity guy. So those are the kind of change candidates. And then they're also backing Tina Marquis, Tara Winer, who's currently on council. And again, conservative and boulder is like pro-policing and things like anti-growth, things like that. It's not like MAGA. So mayor candidates on flaw. Taisha and Achille both said they would get rid of it completely. Aaron was like, let's talk about it in the community more. He was a little more tempered on it. For our city council, the only three people who didn't say remove them completely were Tina, Tara, and Scott Rendelman. Everyone else is like, yeah, get rid of her. Onto the judges. There were 13 on my ballot. I used a great guide from the Boulder subreddit, which I'll link to in the show notes. One addition to that resource that was left out, Court of Appeals judge Catherine Lum was on the court that overturned the convictions of the paramedics who injected a deadly dose of ketamine to Elijah McLean, a 19-year-old black resident of Aurora in a highly publicized 2019 case. For the purposes of this episode, this is what I had to say to my friends filling out their ballots. For judges, my real high level is that they never get voted out. It doesn't f matter. So you can vote yes, vote no. My one friend Jack votes no on everyone because it never matters. But if you want to know about them, I have information on them. Alright, state, you ready? Again, we can knock this out quickly. Advanced Colorado, a conservative political action committee who has not disclosed its donors, sponsored amendments 81 through 86, plus propositions 132 and 136. If that's not your vibe, those are easy, no votes. If you'd like more information, the Colorado Sun and CPR News did wonderful deep dives on each of those ballot questions. Okay, so that brings us to Amendment 87. This will do a graduated income tax. And then it's spelled out on your ballot: if you make under $500,000 a year, your taxes will go down. If you make more than that, they'll go up. And also the evidence that they will leave the state is not true. Like Massachusetts did this, and the wealthy people in the businesses stayed. So Colorado is only one of 11 states that doesn't do a graduation income tax. So yeah. Proposition NN, this is another really big one. It basically will take your taper refund for the rest of time, though. Although they only get you only get them about half the time. So Prop NN will take the taper refund and put it to K-12 education and childcare. But only for 10 years. So in a half to 10 years, they get like a percentage increase every year, and the rest of it goes to the general government budget. Okay, now we're to the ones about the anti-trans stuff. They sponsored three ballot measures: 133, 134, and 135. Two of those are anti-trans. 133 sounds good because it's about human trafficking, but it's a sneaky anti-abortion thing. Because if you take a minor to another state for an abortion, that could be considered human trafficking. You would be given life in prison for that. So don't vote for that one. I don't tell people how to vote, but don't fucking vote for that one. And also the groups that advocate for victims of sexual violence are against this because it's sneaky and not for them. So please don't vote for that one. That gets us to 137, the last of the state measures. This is again another tabor refund thing. Lots of folks, outdoor folks, very into that, and environmental folks, which totally makes sense. The only arguments I hear against it are like, as a government reporter, when you take money and allocate it to certain things, it leaves less wiggle room for the rest of the budget. Still with me? Just seven things left, starting with Boulder County ballot issue 1A. This is a child care tax. It's a property tax. So you will only pay it if you are a homeowner or a business lessee, like a small business. However, I will say that the business community is backing this unusually because childcare is a huge issue and really expensive. And this will provide tuition assistance for low and middle-income families, expand the amount of spots there are, and help retain teachers, which there is huge turnover in daycare. It is $80 a year for a home worth half a million. So if your home is worth less, you pay less than $80 a year. Older county questions 200 and 201 are related about whether to go from three county commissioners to five and who they should represent. The arguments to do it are like we've had three since 1861. Our county is big and has a lot more going on for it than it did in 1861. Also, when you only need two people to agree to pass a policy, you might not get the best policy. Arguments against it are it will cost a little bit, a little over 300,000. That's less than a percent of the overall budget. The other part of the commissioners is do you want them all to be in their own districts? Right now we have three and they each have to come from one of the districts. If we add two, we can go to five districts, or we can add two at large, meaning they serve the whole county. The arguments here are districts could provide a little more representation, could, but won't necessarily for like the mountain area or the eastern plains. Because right now the commissioners come from where the most voters are. Um Longmont and Boulder are together make up what two-thirds of the county population. And so we if we add at large, it's likely that Boulder and Longmont will get extra, you know, but basically you'll get three commissioners on there. But I will say this is like a House of Representatives versus Senate thing. Do you want geographical representation? Or do you want like one vote, one person representation? Most people live in Boulder and Longmont. Should they get more say? We're down to the last four Boulder measures, then we'll quickly discuss front-range passenger rail to close things out. Okay, 2J. This is the vacancy tax. If you have a house that is empty for more than six months a year, this is a tax on that. It's between $4,000 and $7,000 a year. So some of the arguments are like for it, are like, hey, these people aren't contributing to sales tax or living here. And like there are an estimated 4,000 plus empty homes in Boulder, which is a which is a lot. That's almost 10% of the stock. The arguments against it are it might not change that much because it's not that much of money. And if you have a three and a half million dollar house, are you even gonna notice seven grand? They also aren't sure how they're gonna enforce it yet, which I ask about. So those are unanswered questions. Other places have done this and raised a bit of money. So they think it could raise six million dollars a year, which is also the size of our budget gap currently. So but again, it's all about enforcement. All right, 2K. This is a really big controversial one. This is a pretty large property tax increase, and this is to pay for infrastructure. Yeah, it's like the South Boulder Wreck Center needs replaced, two of our fire stations need expanded because they can't fit modern vehicles in them. Police need a new headquarters. Uh man, I have so many notes on this one. First, tell you how much it costs, because that's important. Okay, so it's $400 a year on a home worth a million. The big thing is it will also have cost commercial properties to small businesses. It will cost them three to four times that, which is why the business community is against that. This is one I know a lot about because I've watched the city government for so long. For a long time, like decades, they didn't build into the budget, a city budget, like, hey, we have to take care of our buildings. It was just like every department had their little budget and they could spend it however they wanted, and they didn't ever spend it on taking care of buildings. In 2011, they were like, hey, we need to do something about this. And they were like, we have a $700 million backlog, which today would be over a billion dollars. So they're like, hey, let's do a big tax for this. And then citizens were like, Absolutely not. Here's $50 million. So the backlog continued. So they have passed several infrastructure taxes since then, and they have gotten the backlog down to $500 million, which is about half what it should be today. They've spent like a few hundred million on it. All our buildings are really old, like 50 plus years on average, very rough shape. And now the city does build maintenance into its budget, but they only started doing that in like 2021. And it doesn't take care of the backlog. So the arguments for it are like it's only gonna get more expensive. We have to take care of this because for years we didn't. The arguments against it are like this way too much money. You're not being careful and thoughtful with our money anyway. It will crush businesses because it's because the landlords pass that directly on to them. It's built into their rent. And some people say, like, hey, our town is shrinking, our tax base is shrinking, we're gonna have to do less. And this is just it. This is just the consequence of our own actions coming to bite us in the ass. Alright. 2L should firefighters be able to unionize and collectively bargain. The police get to. 2M is the last one. Should the city be able to borrow more money? This is related to 2K because they want to borrow money. Right now, it's capped at 3% of assessed value. They want to take it to 3% of market value, which is not unheard of. Lots of cities do that. However, on the con side, it is like a huge increase all at once. It goes from a few hundred million dollars to like over a billion dollars. Here's former city councilman Sam Weaver explaining 2M at a rally against 2K earlier this month.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

So I believe what council did was look around and say, what are other communities doing? And other communities have 3% of actual value, which I think is also in the statutory city rules at the state level. But there's nothing that says we have to follow other people when they jump off of bridges. And so I think it is irresponsible to say we're going to change from assess to actual valuation without having a discussion of how much money does that mean and how much could we change it so that it's not such a big jump. 10x jump in a pack which has been in place for 30 years. What the hell do they need to raise it by 10x for?

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Ballot issue 7A, the Front Range Passenger Rail District, is the very last thing on your ballot. The most important thing to know is that a starter train has already been funded using the fast tracks tax Boulderites have been paying for over 20 years. Three trips a day are already financed. 7A would increase service to 10 trips a day and expand the route to Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Here's Front Range Passenger Rail District Manager Sal Pace to explain.

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And the full bill contemplates 10 round trips per day as well as transformative stations and station areas. That sales tax will probably be in about the range of a third of a penny for every purchase.

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That third of a penny equals 33 cents per $100 on everything you buy in the district, including online. There are planned stops in Boulder, Longmont, and Louisville. You can learn more by listening to our front range train episode. Find it at the link in our show notes. This has been your 2026 ballot presentation. Yeah, that's what I need to take about. It was a group effort. Thank you so much. Wow. The smartest. I'm so tired. Thanks for coming along with me on this very long election season. The clips you heard were taken from a ballot party I hosted with some friends and a read through I did with another friend. I'm gonna leave them all unnamed, but I am so grateful to every one of them. And to you for listening.