Tonight, the Longmont City Council will select a replacement for Council member Marcia Martin, concluding the process initiated by her resignation after seven years of honorable service.
While Longmont is a wonderful place to live and work, we have challenges that need to be addressed. The remaining six council members carry the heavy responsibility of selecting the people’s representative for them, but I hope they also recognize the opportunity this presents.
As a matter of principle, it must be possible for the average Longmont household to afford to buy or rent the average Longmont home — without government or familial assistance. It must be just as safe to travel by foot or bike as in a car. And we must find a way to do this while respecting the boundaries of the Longmont Planning Area so that we can continue to breathe clean air and drink clean water.
This appointment is an opportunity to elevate a leader with practical, innovative ideas for how to solve these problems. These were the issues that former councilwoman Martin was passionate about and had expertise in, and council owes it to themselves to find someone who can do the same.
Fortunately, there is a lot of room to be innovative in Longmont. While the council has been making some progress on the cost of living, most of what elected officials have done has been to do more of what they were already doing. This has yielded some dividends — like the restored financial and operational capabilities of the Longmont Housing Authority (LHA), and the increased construction of deed restricted affordable housing in Longmont — but these efforts can’t help people who don’t win a lottery to get into a deed-restricted home.
The problem is huge, and it cannot be fixed with government subsidies alone. Longmont’s most recent Housing Needs Assessment estimates that the city needs 14,000 more affordable homes — just for the people who already live here. While I admire the good work of the LHA, a simple calculation shows that building 14,000 affordable homes would cost many billions of dollars.
We need a leader who believes positive change is possible. We need to change the system that defines what housing gets built in Longmont, where it goes and how it is financed. We need to bring down the cost of those homes by reducing the amount of land that they occupy, and ensure that they are not burdened by the costs of paving new roads, digging new sewers, and running new electricity transmission lines. We need to do it in a way that helps people understand why change is happening, how it makes their lives better and implements it in a way that doesn’t make their lives worse.
We need to challenge the assumptions of Longmont’s transportation system. Out of the right side of our mouths — and in our city engineering standards — we assume that people will always travel using a personal automobile. In 2024, we invested $30 million making sure they could do so. Out of the left side of our mouths we proclaim a desire to reduce traffic and be a great place to raise children — but with no comparable financial commitment.
This tension is untenable, and we need leadership that will do the hard work of implementing our values — not just signaling them. It’s time for Longmont to go all-in on the nascent Vision Zero initiative so that children can once again walk and bike to school safely — and make friends and social connections. The alternative is to continue as we are, with the kids resorting to the internet for routine socialization and their parents being prisoners to their kids' transportation needs.
We need to provide options for people to do the things they need to do without owning a car. This is for the sake of reducing traffic, but also because the cost of car ownership is about 15% of the median Longmont household’s income.
Finally, the person council selects must commit to running for a full term in this year’s election. Unlike others, I am not opposed to the appointment process. It would not be good stewardship of taxpayer funds to spend $200,000 to fill a seat for nine months. The appointee should intend to run for re-election because none of Longmont’s problems are simple enough to be solved in a calendar year. They need to be willing to stay the course.
And while previous experience serving on city council is nice, there are many other ways for people to be involved in Longmont’s governance. A person without the baggage of previous council service might enable them to see opportunities to implement the practical innovation we need.
Shakeel Dalal is a Longmont Ward 2 resident and the co-president of LAUNCH Longmont Housing, an organization advocating for housing affordability for average Longmonters.
This opinion does not necessarily represent the views of Boulder Weekly.
Want a different take? Read Gary Hodge's piece on the appointment process, "Longmont lost control of the process"