A few hours after raising his right hand, swearing to faithfully serve his community to the best of his ability, Longmont’s new Ward 2 city council member Matthew Popkin addressed a room packed with his constituents.
“Hello, Ward 2,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you all.”
Laughter sizzled in the chamber, a pleasant break from the drone of what would turn into a three-hour hearing on a controversial development plan in Popkin’s new precinct.
Despite the glaring crowd, the new council member was poised — if it weren’t for a few miscues on speaking order, you would never know it was his first night on the dais.
Popkin is in a unique position. He’s starting an appointed term with only 10 months left in a city he’s called home for less than four years. And yet, the 33-year old is unphased, and while there’s a lot to catch up on, Popkin says he’s ready.
“When you're drinking out of a fire hose, everything feels a little bit overwhelming at first,” Popkin told Boulder Weekly. “There’s a lot to learn, and as a municipal city nerd like myself this is really exciting, but it’s still overwhelming.”
City nerd is a title Popkin wears proudly and has rightfully earned. By day, he spends his time as a program manager for the think tank Rocky Mountain Institute, traveling the country to advise cities and towns on how to plan for and fund a sustainable energy transition. After a quick costume change, he would play the part of commissioner on Longmont’s Planning and Zoning board — until he retired this role for a seat on city council.
Popkin is “fascinated” by the systems that our cities are built on: utilities, transportation, housing — an infatuation he recognizes is not common for people in their 30s.
“I think too often people at my age or or around my age don't think about how much of this impacts your life,” he says. “The median age of Longmont is 40; over half the population is under 40. I represent everyone in Ward 2, but I also hope I can bring a little bit of a breath of fresh energy.”
Piano Man
Popkin is new to public office — he did have an unsuccessful go at a council seat in College Park, Maryland, while in grad school — but his comfort in front of an impassioned crowd that first night in the council chambers isn’t surprising.
“I'm a pianist” and a vocalist, Popkin says. “I've been playing the piano for just about 30 years. I do a casual piano bar around town in a few places.”
The Maryland-born showman was raised on a steady diet of piano rock ballads from Elton John and Billy Joel, and when he and his wife moved to Longmont in 2021, his love for music is what helped him build community.
“This isn't a credential for city council, but I'm part of the mug club of Shoes and Brews,” a Longmont running store with a joint taproom. “[I] set up a kind of a recurring piano bar there that we call Blues and Brews, usually once a month,” Popkin says, where he plays song requests from bar patrons. “We've been doing that now for about a year and a half, and that's just been a lot of fun.”
As with his duties as a city council member to learn a bit about everything, Popkin takes his arsenal of juke box hits seriously. If he’s getting requests he doesn’t know, he adds it to his never-ending Spotify playlist of “songs to learn” and commits to giving the people what they want to hear, from Jethro Tull to everyone’s favorite pop girlies.
“There's so many different styles and genres out there,” he says. “I got a lot more Taylor Swift requests in the last year than I usually did, so I started learning a few Taylor Swift songs.”
Small-town guy
Popkin is a fresh face in Longmont, but the reasons he landed here are the same for Longmonters who have called this city home for a lifetime.
“The moment you leave Lafayette or you leave Boulder, you're driving through mostly farmland or extremely rural neighborhoods for a while, and then you hit Longmont,” he says. “It is this small, cozy town, and we fell in love with that, literally, the first time we drove here.”
“Our first meal was a picnic at Sandstone Ranch with some cheese we got from Cheese Importers, and we just sat down, and we're trying to digest, literally and figuratively, where we were.”
Despite its small-town charm, Longmont — sitting at roughly 99,000 residents — is growing fast and may soon overtake Boulder (106,000 residents) as the largest city in the county.
Still, Longmont maintains that fairly compact feel, Popkin says. Open space access, clear community investment evident in the city-owned internet service Next Light, and a commitment to redevelop areas like the abandoned sugar mill into a modern neighborhood hub, are what struck him.
How Longmont continues to grow is one of Popkin’s top priorities. He was a witness to rapid expansion in his hometown of Rockville, Maryland, and sees parallels in these two burgeoning communities.
“I'm almost having déjà vu here, where I've seen what happens when we build thoughtfully, and it works really well in some places,” he says. “I've also seen when that isn't as managed.”
There’s only so much Popkin can do in 10 months, he says. For now, he’s focused on having conversations. From Creekside to Old Town to his own neighborhood in Southmoor Park, where he lives with his wife, dog and four chickens, he hopes to understand what people need.
“I haven't lived in every neighborhood, nor has anyone else,” he says, “And so, you know, just making sure that I understand what they're dealing with and what would be helpful for them, small or large.
“My goal here is to earn people's trust, and if that is an uphill battle, I'm ready for it.”