BOULDER – A test vote taken during the Boulder City Council meeting Thursday night revealed that city leaders may not have used the language of some Voting measures related to the possible closure of Boulder Municipal Airport, which are scheduled to go before voters in November.

This summer, two separate but complementary petitions – “Repurpose Our Runways” and “Runways to Neighborhoods” – received enough signatures to appear on the November ballot.

Over the past few weeks, city staff and leaders of the Airport Neighborhood Campaign, which organized the successful petition drive, have been negotiating minor changes to the wording of these ballot proposals. The Boulder City Council has the option of adopting these changes or putting the proposals to the vote as is. Six of the nine council members voted for the latter option in a test vote on Thursday.

A hearing on the matter, which was to be followed by a vote, was postponed Thursday to a meeting scheduled for September 5.

If voters pass the Repurpose Our Runways and Runways to Neighborhoods Act, it essentially means that Boulder Municipal Airport (BDU) will have to close in 2041 when the city’s obligations to the Federal Aviation Administration expire. After closure, the measures require the airport lands to be used for new housing units, 50% of which will be designated as below-market affordable housing.

The negotiated changes to the ballot language – which, if approved by Boulder officials next month, would become “council-initiated ballot measures” rather than citizen-initiated measures – should add some flexibility to the measures’ implementation and administration, said Boulder Deputy City Attorney Erin Poe.

“The requirement to provide at least 50% affordable housing will be changed to a ‘basic desired outcome'” rather than a specific target, she said.

In addition, a new subsection was added to explain the intent to “repurpose the site to meet the housing needs identified at the time of redevelopment.” This subsection also allows for “future community needs to be addressed through another ballot measure,” Poe said.

Laura Kaplan, a lead organizer of the Airport Neighborhood Campaign and a member of Boulder’s planning committee, said, “With time, with some distance and with additional conversations, sometimes you can make a good thing even better.”

She said the ANC was “happy to support the alternative measure if that was the will” of the Boulder City Council.

Several Boulder City Council members stressed Thursday that whichever path they ultimately choose — keeping the original ballot wording or opting for the amended version — does not necessarily mean the board is endorsing the shutdown plan. Rather, the board is simply following established procedures to allow voters to decide BDU’s fate in November.

The idea of ​​closing the airport, which sits on about 180 acres of city-owned land between residential neighborhoods and business parks in east Boulder, is controversial. Housing activists argue that the move would provide a unique opportunity to provide below-market housing for middle-class workers who can’t afford a home costing $1 million or more and aren’t eligible for traditional public housing. Airport supporters, however, say closing it would be shortsighted and would result in a costly legal battle with the government.

This legal dispute has already begun. At the end of July the city sued the FAAwhich has made it clear to city employees and officials that it will not support a decommissioning plan for BDU.

“In August 2023, city officials met with the FAA to discuss, among other things, the city’s desire to close and repurpose the airport,” Boulder’s lawsuit states. “The FAA indicated that it was unwilling to release the city from its grant guarantee obligations and claimed that those grant guarantee obligations would be in perpetuity.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which awarded the city grants in 1959, 1963 and 1977 to purchase a total of approximately 44 acres of land on the airport site, takes the position that acceptance of these grants obligates the city to continue operating the airport indefinitely.

The city recognizes that certain FAA grants come with a 20-year commitment to continue airport operations. In preparation for a decision to close Boulder Municipal Airport, the city stopped accepting federal grants in 2021. That means, Boulder’s lawsuit alleges, the city will be allowed to close the airport in 2041.

Aviation and business associations, including the Boulder Chamber, oppose the shutdown of BDU.

“The potential chaos that the complications surrounding this citizen initiative can create for our community, as we have already seen, could lead to endless litigation and administrative complications,” Boulder Chamber CEO John Tayer told BizWest on Friday. “That is another reason why we oppose this citizen initiative and hope that voters will ultimately agree with us in this position.”

Opponents of the closure also argue that requiring the airport site to serve a specific purpose – in this case, residential development – circumvents Boulder’s traditional land use review and approval process.

“The debate the City Council had last night is symptomatic of the challenges faced when taking citizen initiatives on land use management issues that are better handled through staff analysis and careful review by our elected leadership,” Tayer said.