Hello Friends,

Ballots are here, and Boulder voters have a lot to decide.

This year, we will elect a mayor and five members of City Council from a crowded field of candidates. We will also vote on several significant local ballot measures involving taxes, city debt, recreation and public-safety facilities, firefighter collective bargaining and more.

My goal with this guide is simple: give you useful information, make some of the complicated issues easier to understand, and help you make your own decisions.

Campaign season brings plenty of promises. I wanted to try something a little different.

Instead of asking City Council candidates broad questions about what they believe or what they hope to accomplish, I gave them 10 actual decisions that came before Boulder City Council during the past year.

Then I asked a very simple question: Had you been sitting on Council, would you have voted YES or NO?

These weren't hypothetical policy questions. Councilmembers actually had to cast these votes.

The issues included the Affordable Housing Impact Fee, Transportation Maintenance Fee, Williams Village II redevelopment, Arapahoe rezoning, the Area III Planning Reserve study, metropolitan districts, the Residential Vacancy Excise Tax, Downtown Development Authority, the $400 million Recreation and Safety Bond, and the sale of the city-owned property at 2121 Broadway.

With five incumbents running for reelection, Tara Winer, Tina Marquis, Ryan Schuchard, Aaron Brockett and Tayisha Adams, you don't have to wonder how they would have voted. We have their actual votes.

For the challengers, I asked them to make the same decision Council had to make: YES or NO on the motion that was actually before Council.

Candidates who did not return the questionnaire are identified as No Response.

I think the result gives us an interesting way to compare candidates based on specific decisions rather than campaign language alone.