As I wrote in February, keeping Boulder green isn’t easy and the Boulder City Council Eco-Police still need to keep “Two Men and a Truck” employed. Since then Boulder has been busy paving their Smart-Reg Prescriptive Pathway to sustainable economic and political control. Smart-Regs is being billed as a greenhouse reduction program by using a point based system to determine if rental properties are worthy of the “Al Gore Seal of Approval.” If a landlord’s property can not accumulate >100 points, upgrades will have to be made. According to Daily Camera, Councilman Matt Appelbaum mentions that:
“All the sectors have to contribute, or else we’ll never get there” on climate change, he said. “We have to do something.”
What “something” does is take landlords and nearly 20,00 renters down a road of costs ranging from estimates of 17.7 to 35 million dollars.
The total estimated investment to upgrade all rental properties in the city is $17.7 million. But opponents of the measure, including the Boulder Area Rental Housing Association, say the total cost to property owners could top $35 million.
Why does Boulder want to impose these costs on so many of it’s residents? To help achieve their Climate Action Plan goals which consists of ridding the air of the stuff we exhale and plant’s feed on.
The City of Boulder has adopted a Climate Action Plan to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 23 percent (to 7 percent below 1990 levels) by 2012.
Why is the Boulder City Council so worried? Because a bureaucratic agency of the Federal government said CO2 is a health and safety hazard and we know the EPA is never wrong.
Federal case law defines greenhouse gas emissions as a public health hazard— a 2007 Supreme Court ruling authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases as a significant threat to human health.
Boulder would implement the Smart-Reg program by adding 42 changes and additions to the existing housing and rental codes covering everything to include the kitchen sink.
A kitchen sink shall be no smaller than 20 inches by 16 inches, with a minimum uniform depth of 6 inches and a maximum uniform depth of 20 inches.
Thank goodness. If there was one thing I was worried about, it was that the Boulder City Council would not cover the size of kitchen sinks. God knows how much greenhouse gases have been needlessly emitted by improperly sized sinks.
Through a extremely confusing PDF listing a variety of charts, property owners (with the gracious assistance of Boulder’s Eco-Police) will be able to determine how many points their rental properties earn. Here are some examples:
- Heat Pump=1 Point
- Programmable Thermostat=1 Point
- Whole House Fan=2 Points
- %100 CFL lighting=7 Points
- Energy Star Washing Machine=2 Points but those don’t count against the 100 points since that is related to water conservation for which each landlord will need 2 points as well. Confused? Good, that’s just the way they like it.
- Innovative Practice=Discretionary Points as this would be entirely up to the City Council’s all-knowing discretion. (rumor has it bonus points are added if the applicant brings in proof of seeing and/or reading any Al Gore global warming hypemedia)
Let’s just say property owners have a lot of points to accumulate in order to reach the magic “100 point” level. However, as the Daily Camera reported, Boulder’s own Kara Mertz, the Local Environmental Action Division manager for the city thinks most homes are already %50 of the way there.
She called the proposal “achievable and reasonable” and said most homes would already sit in the 50-point range of the 100-point scale being proposed
I doubt that burdening nearly 20,000 rental dwellings with a slew of new rules, fees, and regulations is “reasonable” but it certainly is “achievable.” With the threat of fines and withholding rental licenses over landlords, anything is possible.
Now you’re probably wondering how is Boulder going to pay for all this enforcement since the Boulder City Council itself estimates these costs to exceed $157,000 for 2010 alone. Never fear as Boulder has significant experience extracting money from it’s residents for it’s numerous nanny-state programs. Using this experience they are proposing…wait for it…new and increased fees for landords which will total an increase of at least $274 per rental unit. This is in a addition to the $2000 to $3000 dollars in energy efficiency upgrades that each rental unit may need for point upgrades.
Boulder also anticipates reducing energy use through it’s Education and Assistance Programs. The primary focus of these programs will be “… to encourage behavior change.” Apparently, a good portion of Boulder’s greenhouse gases are caused by inappropriate behavior by Boulder renters. Shame on you Boulder renters. It’s time to get with the program.
What else does this mean for the thousands of renters in Boulder in addition to behavior modification? Increases in rent of course. Anyone with half a brain (obligatory Boulder City Council exception) knows that rent will increase substantially to cover these costs but as the city council has said, “all sectors have to contribute.”
The Boulder Planning Board will take up the proposed SmartRegs on Thursday night. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. in the City Council chambers at the Boulder Municipal Building, 1777 Broadway.
If I were one of the 19,600 renters in Boulder, I would make this meeting a priority or you will pay for it…literally.
ColoradoFreedom.net – painfully examining the latest Boulder City Council antics so you don’t have to.
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