About FairFAR.org
FairFAR.org is a citizens’ organization that works to ensure that the City of Boulder Council and staff uphold basic democratic principles of fairness, transparency in government and equity in legislation. Our successes include pressuring the City and the International Code Council, Inc., to make all of the proposed SmartRegs legislation publicly accessible online and at the public library, having a moderating effect on the 2009 house size limits ordinance by developing an online FAR calculator and publicizing biases in the city’s own analyses of the problem and the proposed remedies, and helping to elect centrists and fair-minded, moderate progressives to the Boulder City Council.
From our humble beginnings as a small group of homeowners concerned about the unintended consequences of the restrictions on house sizes (also known as the Floor Area Ratio [FAR] or Neighborhood Compatibility/Pops and Scrapes ordinance), we’ve now grown into a electronic network of numerous concerned citizens who review, discuss and analyze in detail any of the city’s proposed legislation that affects homeowners. (We don’t apologize for the length or in-depth nature of our posts–we are policy wonks.)
Today the FAR in our name now stands for far-sightedness, in the sense that we investigate and raise the unintended consequences of city ordinances that other, more traditional citizen pressure groups in the city have typically overlooked. Our steering committee includes members of the Boulder community who have grown up here and have a keen understanding of how the city has changed, for the worse and the better. The goals we are committed to include: fairness and open government; keeping Boulder livable while making it more walkable and more dense in appropriate neighborhoods and areas; sensible, family-friendly housing policies; wise and judicious environmental stewardship; open public access to our parks, open space trails and lands; and high-quality public school programs.
We want to encourage you to join FairFAR.org so that we can have you on our email distribution list. Because we try to work hard to resolve potential problems with the city before action is imminent, we rarely send out email updates and when we do they are either informative or calls-to-action. So we promise not to clutter your inbox with spam.
FairFAR.org’s origins (first published June 7th, 2009):
In late May 2009 two old friends from Boulder High School reconnected over lunch. As someone else who had also grown up here but only recently moved back and purchased a small home on a small lot, Chris Grasso had been experiencing the same frustrations with the Boulder City Council’s proposed FAR ordinances that Tim Rohrer had. We found common ground in that neither us were ideologically opposed to any regulation on this matter per se, but we both felt that the direction in which Council is moving is both far too extreme for us as ordinary homeowners who simply want to eventually expand our own homes. So we agreed to organize a grassroots citizens’ group, research our options, and start a website to provide a place for the opposition to these proposals to discuss their failings.
We’re also collecting contact information from those of you who would like to be contacted in the event that a petition drive is needed to remedy the situation should Council pass a poorly thought out and overly restrictive FAR proposal. Please register for our website and make sure to fill out the Extra Information section of your user profile. That should provide us with the basic information we will need to contact you when and if that time comes.
Thanks very much for your support. We’re not taking donations, but we could definitely use volunteers. Most of all, please attend and comment at the upcoming City Council meetings. And don’t forget you can call and email council members directly