


Please don’t give away Boulder’s civic use space
As I have been following the development of the Civic Use Pad by the St. Julien, one question keeps coming up: Why are we giving away the last piece of open space downtown?
Back in the early 2000s as the St. Julien was being proposed and built, the City of Boulder wisely put aside the space above the parking garage as dedicated for “community benefit.” Instead now the city is being asked to approve a 60,000 sq foot building with an 8,000 sq foot ballroom and 39 extended-stay hotel rooms. This will be 55-foot building, exceeding the zone’s height limit.
The plans submitted to the Planning Department call this “Community Use Space” but nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, there is no discernable space for the community — except nonprofits can rent it for a small discount. As far as I can tell, not a single nonprofit has come forward to support the expansion project.
Calling it “civic use space” or a “community benefit” is a sleight of hand and disingenuous at best.
It is unrealistic to expect that nothing will be built there, but this project is not it. It is the duty of the City Council and Planning Department to protect the Civic Use Pad space for the benefit of the entire community. The St. Julien should retain the original intent of the space to benefit all of Boulder.
Don’t give away our civic use space. Boulder can do much better.
— Jim Martin, Boulder
Reporter writes about City Council remotely
Twice now Camera reporter Amber Carlson has written about me, based, she told me, on watching the 12/19 Council meeting online. So she saw only what the video shows, not other activity in the room.
She contends the disruption started after I tried to read my comment. Everyone honest there knows the Zionists yelled and whistled during my speech, which is why I got angry. Now she apparently refuses to check what the City’s new laws about signs say. They say we must hold our signs.
I held mine on my feet as I polished up my speech with my hands, but Mayor Brockett tried to harass me into holding it with my hands. Instead of looking up the law, Carlson writes, “Ravitz said he did not believe he had broken any rule.” Laziness or introducing doubt about a violation?
The Camera for a year has refused to illuminate what we are protesting: 1. The City has $35 million invested in four companies that supply the “extermination” of Gaza, as Human Rights Watch calls it: Caterpillar, whose bulldozers have flattened hundreds of Palestinian villages and olive trees and buried American protester Rachel Corrie alive, Toyota, which supplies trucks and Microsoft and Cisco, which supply software to track and target civilians. 2. The City refuses to speak up for its sister city Nablus, which is regularly attacked by Israel. 3. Boulderites pay millions in federal taxes that fund the genocide, though polls and attendance at Council meetings show the vast majority are against it.
I believe that Council’s and the Camera’s motivation is kissing up by defecating down on us, in particular kissing up to Gov. Polis who smirked and giggled at protesters while promoting the Global Conference for Israel. Email me for sources or see them in the online Camera: eravitz@gmail.com.
— Evan Ravitz, Boulder
Editor’s note
The editorial in the Jan. 12 edition of the Camera inaccurately portrayed the city code’s rules for the City Council regarding foreign policy. The council can act on foreign policy when there is “sufficient time and resources” to “be allocated to assure a full presentation of the issue.”