Council braces for new attack on land deals, pay

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2002 | 9:40 a.m.

Two long-standing disputes about development of city land and pay for elected officials go another round at Boulder City ballot boxes Sept. 3.

Both primary election questions are the result of petitions led by residents who say they are disgruntled with the way City Hall manages to sidestep meaningful reform.

City officials counter that the initiatives, if passed, would deprive city officials of deserved pay and diminish, if not outright kill, the city's ability to court new business and raise revenue.

The land initiative, Question 2, asks that all leases of more than 1 acre of city-owned land for more than 10 years go to a public vote.

In many ways, it is an extension of a land initiative passed in 1997 that prohibited the city from selling more than 1 acre without a public vote, said Vaughn Reuther, who spearheaded the land initiative petition.

The idea, Reuther said, was to give residents a voice in determining how the city develops its more than 180 square miles of mostly undeveloped desert.

After the 1997 law was enacted, the city avoided that public process by negotiating several long-term leases of city-owned land, most notably for a power plant in the El Dorado Valley and a high-roller golf course in the River Mountains.

"The city opens various loopholes, and we go along and try to close them behind them," Reuther said. "I'm not sure we're at the end of the path, but we're at least at the next step of a continuing path."

The initiative on council pay, Question 1, is a nearly identical repeat of a question on the June 2001 ballot that sought to prevent council members from receiving raises without first standing for re-election. It also would have eliminated monthly auto and health benefits.

The initiative won 60 percent of the vote, but it wasn't enacted because a City Council-backed initiative with similar provisions for raises, but no elimination of benefits, won 70 percent of the vote.

Former Councilman Bill Smith says he decided to go back to voters this Sept. 3 after the state attorney general's office and a District Court judge upheld City Attorney Dave Olsen's opinion that only the council-backed initiative could be enacted according to state election law.

If passed this time around, council members would continue to receive their base pay of $11,026 per year and be allowed reimbursements for travel expenses. But they would lose $450 in monthly auto benefits and a monthly health insurance benefit worth $500, amounting to $11,200 each year. Their compensation would effectively be halved.

"What they have done in fact is double their salary without calling (it) that," Smith said. "If this passes, then the council salary will be what it says it is."

Smith said his initiative would also remove a last loophole that allows council members to receive raises without standing for re-election even if they no longer can vote on their own raises. As unlikely as that is, Smith says it's worth getting on the books.

After all, Smith said, the City Council in June 2000 approved mid-term raises for two council members and the mayor even though the city had always followed state law in the past, requiring council members to win re-election before receiving raises. The raises were eventually revoked by a referendum vote in the spring of 2001.

In the months leading up to the June 2001 election, council members spoke loudly against the proposed cuts to auto and medical benefits. An ad hoc committee also launched an advertising campaign in the local newspaper with pitches by council members describing their heavy workloads. This year, however, they have been mostly silent and no money has been spent campaigning against Smith's initiative.

Still, Olsen said the cut to pay would be unfair.

"For approximately the last 30 years they've been receiving an auto and medical insurance benefit," Olsen said.

As for the land initiative, city officials have spoken loudly and often against it. Existing leases bring the city close to $3 million annually in revenues, much of which have gone to adding trees and new landscaping.

If new leases are required to go for a public vote, City Manager John Sullard has said, there will be no new leases. Businesses will go elsewhere to avoid the delays of the political process and the expense of a campaign.

Olsen was critical of the initiative.

"We're really too small to afford the level of services we enjoy now. And it's the damn leases that make them possible," he said. "If that initiative passes, (then) clean, green Boulder City will be dirty brown Boulder City like it was five years ago."