Max Lord is throwing his hard hat into the Boulder City Council race.
Lord, 32, owns the residential and commercial construction company Hammer and Driver. After attending council meetings, Lord realized he would be qualified to serve on the council and that his perspective as a builder would help guide the city on infrastructure matters.
Chief among those is what he says is too much red tape in the city’s land use code.
“Can we use vacant retail space on the northeastern side of town and flip that into a child care facility?” said Lord, who also thinks his background will help the city with wildfire protection measures. “The land use code is going to subject you to a long list of permits and what might take years in order for you to get that business going.”
Lord, who is from the Finger Lakes region of New York, moved to Boulder 14 years ago for school. He was a physics student at CU and worked for the university, which allowed him to work in spaces such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Through his experience, Lord said he’s privy to issues that businesses and residents face. He tied that into mental health and drug abuse issues.
“When we’re talking about mental health and addiction, we don’t have a proper detox center. And when I talk to businesses, homeowners, they’re worried about people who are smoking meth on Pearl Street. Let’s call it what it is,” Lord said. “And that’s not the same sort of homeless person that’s fallen on hard times. Those people need boarding houses and hostels. But we do have a drug problem in the city, and I don’t think we have the adequate resources to handle it.”
Unlike other candidates, Lord thinks the Clutch Consulting report on homelessness was “a waste of money” and that the city spent money on a report that has a “roundabout way of saying we’re going to put people on buses out of here.”
He acknowledged that finding housing for the homeless is important but thinks the city should instead focus on treatment.
Additionally, Lord said that he wants to use more protections for renters and showed interest in having some form of rent control. As an avid cyclist, he also supports the core arterial network. He thinks protecting cyclists is important, though he recognizes that the city’s finances are tight.
“I do think that we need to be harder on people that are abusing vacant retail space, basically corporate entities that are creating a false scarcity in the market,” Lord said.
Lord is one of 11 people running for the four open seats on the Boulder City Council. Incumbents Nicole Speer, Matt Benjamin, Mark Wallach and Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts are running for re-election. The challengers are Lord, real estate consultant Jenny Robins, ex-fire rescue captain Rob Kaplan, social advocate Rachel Rose Isaacson, auction manager Montserrat Palacios, and activists Rob Smoke and Aaron Stone.