Neighborhood Caucus Representation Changes

Guy Burgess represents the South Boulder Neighborhood Caucus and is charged with representing the area west of Broadway and South of Table Mesa Dr. At the June 9 Open Space Board of Trustees meeting he was selected as the new South Boulder neighborhood representative to replace Scott Gordon who resigned. At the same meeting, Shelley Dunbar was selected to replace Art Schwadron as the Central neighborhood representative. Ned Patton continued as the North Neighborhood representative. Both Shelley and Guy have been attending CCG meetings from the beginning as Art's and Scott's alternates and are "up to speed" on the Group's deliberations.

At this point, one of our first tasks is to do what we can to address the many criticisms that have been raised about the way in which the neighborhood caucus (and the CCG, more generally) involves its constituents in the process through which the CCG ultimately develops, evaluates, revises, formally proposes, and then ultimately decides whether or not to endorse specific suggestions for improving the Western TSA. Much of the recent controversy stemmed from ambiguities and misunderstandings about this process (which is still evolving within the CCG and is likely to undergo a few more mid-course corrections).

Our goal, in setting up this website is to provide a more efficient and transparent process through which Boulder neighbors can keep abreast of what's being considered, offer their reactions pro and con, and ultimately make recommendations about which proposals your representatives should support.

In setting up this process, it's imperative that we be as efficient as possible. As volunteers, we get very little support from OSMP for implementing a surprisingly large and complex public participation program. The website that we have developed provides neighborhood residents with a lot more opportunities to influence the process. And, it keeps the workload for the representatives within manageable levels.