When Boulder City Councilmembers met last month to set priorities, limiting flammable landscaping and building materials to protect residents and their homes was one of them.
But when city staff followed up last week to confirm these priorities, they proposed a timeline for wildfire resilience that some councilmembers felt didn’t reflect urgency.
“I was a little disappointed to see that we were looking at ordinance changes with respect to fire resilience in quarter four of 2025,” Councilmember Mark Wallach said.
Councilmembers want to amend the city’s zoning and building codes to discourage landscaping with highly flammable plants, such as junipers and mulch, which are also among the most common landscaping choices in Boulder. The council’s push was in part driven by the Marshall Fire, where flames jumped from house to house due to wooden fences and vegetation in neighborhoods, which enabled the fire to spread rapidly. Brian Oliver, Boulder’s wildland fire chief, has long suggested that it isn’t a matter of if but when a wildfire will occur within Boulder city limits.
Wallach emphasized this urgency, suggesting the city take interim steps to prevent Boulder residents from making fire-risky landscaping choices before 2025.
“We don’t have to solve the entire fire resilience issue,” Wallach said. “We can take a step. I would urge us to do that.”
Councilmember Tina Marquis raised the idea of narrowing the scope of vegetation regulation to areas that would provide the most benefit, potentially making such regulations easier to implement in the near term.
“I’m wondering if we want to think about a prioritization for those areas that are within 800 meters of the wildland urban interface,” she said, referring to neighborhoods abutting Boulder’s flammable open spaces. “It seems like we’ll get a lot more benefit in a certain area than making it a city-wide effort at the onset.”
At the meeting, Assistant City Manager Pam Davis informed the council that when staff present the updated Community Wildfire Protection Plan later this month, new community education and incentive programs will encourage residents to choose firewise vegetation, providing an alternative to potential regulations that would mandate these changes.
Oliver told Boulder Reporting Lab that he’s glad the conversation is happening.
“I see it as a win that we are having the conversation,” he said. “The gears of government grind pretty slow, and in this case, it is not a bad thing. I think our staff and leadership want to get it right without putting undue hardship onto our community.”
In the spirit of getting it right, Councilmember Lauren Folkerts agreed with Wallach that vegetation management should be “somewhat streamlined, at least for the initial steps,” but stressed that nuances shouldn’t be overlooked in favor of quick regulations. She highlighted flood resilience as an additional consideration alongside fire mitigation.
“There’s a lot of different kinds of resiliency in the landscape,” she said. “How are we balancing these complicated issues?”
While ideally Boulder would already be fire-hardened, Oliver said real progress takes time. The upside of recent unfortunate wildfire events, including close calls, is that Boulder residents are more receptive to regulations that strengthen homes and neighborhoods against wildfires.
“I don’t know that something like this would have had any traction before now,” Oliver said. “I think the timing is right.”
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