Boulder volunteers launch campaign to pass utility tax

It's not an easy concept to distill into a campaign slogan:

The city of Boulder plans to let its 20-year franchise agreement with Xcel Energy expire, which means the city will no longer collect its $4 million franchise fee from Xcel (which is actually paid by Xcel's Boulder customers), which means the city will have to cut some basic services unless voters pass a utility tax on Xcel for $4 million (which will also likely be paid by customers).

And those are just the details. The big picture has to do more with the city's options for using more energy from renewable sources and less from burning fossil fuels.

Fitting those concepts onto a yard sign -- and making sure that yard sign has a chance of convincing Boulder residents to vote for the utility tax -- is the challenge that's recently been taken on by a dedicated group of volunteers who have launched the "Yes on 3B" campaign.

"It's taken quite a while to get to this point. We had to say, 'How do we make this into three short sentences?'" said Ken Regelson, a renewable energy advocate and owner of fivestarconsultants.com. "We're getting better at it -- we're getting the short little pithy points that we need."

The campaign's posters and signs will have the slogan "Boulder's next step: Yes on 3B" across the background of a sun and a wind turbine. The idea, Regelson said, is to draw attention to Boulder's history of being on the cutting edge of environmental commitment. Boulder residents helped craft Xcel's now-successful Windsource program, lobbied for Colorado's Amendment 37 -- which created a renewable energy standard for the state -- passed a carbon tax and committed to meeting the Kyoto Protocol.

"This is the next step -- the next thing to do in a logical progression to a much cleaner energy future," Regelson said.

Issue 3B ended up being put on the ballot for this fall after a long negotiation between the city of Boulder and Xcel Energy over a renewed franchise agreement broke down this summer. The franchise expires at the end of the year, and to renew it, Boulder voters would have to approve a new contract.

For more than a year, city staffers met with Xcel to try to hammer out a franchise that would -- through a related side agreement -- shift Boulder's energy supply to a greater percentage of renewable energy. But ultimately, the City Council was not satisfied with the results of the negotiations, and the council members voted not to put the franchise agreement on the ballot.

Instead, the council decided to put a five-year utility tax on the ballot that would replace the revenue that the city will lose when the franchise expires. The five-year limit sets a timeline for the city to decide what to do next, which could include starting a municipal utility or continuing to negotiate with Xcel.

But even though the utility tax would be nearly revenue-neutral, campaign organizers are carefully considering how the word "tax" could affect the campaign.

"There's been challenges surrounding the word 'tax.' For many people, that's just a no-no," said Karey Christ-Janer, who has worked in marketing for 25 years and who agreed to design the "Yes on 3B" materials pro bono. "So we started giving it the moniker 'replacement tax.'"

The campaign team also struggled with whether to focus the campaign solely on the fact that, if passed, 3B would keep the city from making more budget cuts, or whether to expand the campaign's message to include renewable energy. Passing 3B wouldn't directly support the city's use of renewable energy, but it would offer the city the opportunity to pursue more renewable energy in the future.

"We struggled with that. At first, we thought we should really just keep the messaging about the replacement tax," Christ-Janer said. "But then we thought, 'None of us would be working our backsides off to try and get this done if we weren't passionate about renewable energy. That's what's going to capture the imagination of the Boulder voter.'"

No matter how the campaign phrases the message, Regelson said he's confident that Boulder residents will vote 'yes' if they're educated on the issue.

"People in this town -- they get it," he said. "And that's incredibly encouraging."

Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 or sniderl@dailycamera.com.