The Erie Town Council on Tuesday voted 4-1 to endorse a ballot initiative for November’s election that could increase the number of Boulder County commissioners from three to five.

Mayor Andrew Moore voted to sign a resolution expressing support for the ballot measure, joined by Councilmembers John Mortellaro, Anil Pesaramelli and Brian O’Connor.

Councilmember Emily Baer voted against the resolution. Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Bell and Councilmember Dan Hoback were absent from this week’s council meeting.

“I’ve never been for growing government or spending more money for government, but representation is critical,” Mortellaro said before voting, adding: “Our county is so diverse.”

With the current structure in Boulder County, two commissioners equals a quorum, generally preventing more than one commissioner from talking about county business outside of meetings announced beforehand to the public.

Moore got involved “pretty early in the campaign,” he said of the move to add more county commissioners — what he called a “bipartisan effort.”

“One of my own frustrations with three commissioners is I can never talk to more than one at a time, because of the open meeting laws,” Moore added.

One dissent

With her dissenting vote, Councilmember Baer said she would prefer for the town’s council to “not take a position” on the measure, just as neighboring councils in Lafayette and Louisville have not.

Among her concerns about adding commissioners, Baer said, is the potential impact to the county’s already-tight budget. She also questioned whether more commissioners would provide better and more diverse representation for voters, as proponents of the measure claim.

In 2020, voters elected Marta Loachamin, who said she is Boulder County’s first Latina commissioner.

In a February opinion piece submitted to Boulder Reporting Lab, current Boulder County Commissioners Loachamin and Claire Levy, and former Commissioners Elise Jones, Deb Gardner and Will Toor, asked voters not to support an increase in commissioners.

“While no doubt well-intentioned, we believe this idea is unnecessary, expensive and will result in less effective county decision-making,” they wrote.

“Five commissioners elected by district would fracture existing communities of color across two districts, potentially diluting votes in order to have 66,000 residents per district,” their piece adds.

‘We have been listening’

The Boulder County clerk’s office in early August validated that a petition to bring the measure to the ballot had enough signatures.

If the measure were to be approved by voters, a five-member board of commissioners wouldn’t be seated for a few years, Tina Mueh, an organizer for the group Big Tent BoCo, told the Erie Town Council on Tuesday.

Big Tent BoCo’s effort to “almost double” the county’s commissioners started about a year and a half ago, according to Mueh.

“We have been listening to people in our rural mountains, farmers in the east, people in unincorporated Boulder County, people in all the small jurisdictions, people in Niwot, people in Lyons, Louisville, Lafayette, all the places that feel underrepresented in the structure that currently exists,” she said.

Three votes on the board, Mueh said, allows for one commissioner to be “a swing vote” for any given decision — which, she added, is “not democratic.”

It’s been nearly a decade and a half since voters in Colorado last approved the expansion of a county’s board of commissioners from three to five members. In addition to the Boulder County question, Douglas County will also have a commissioner expansion question on the November ballot.

In both counties, a second question will ask voters how they would want those commissioners to be elected — by a vote of five distinct districts or a combination of district and at-large voting across three districts.

Erie’s council members on Tuesday evening did not discuss preference for either of those options.