Boulder, Colorado’s April 23 City Council study session on Boulder Municipal Airport is drawing new scrutiny after an outside legal memo questioned whether the city can use the session’s outcome to guide formal airport policy. The meeting ended with a 5-4 straw poll favoring continued airport operations and a path that could allow staff to pursue FAA grants, but city officials have since described the poll as nonbinding.
Memo Questions Meeting Outcome
“Certain actions taken by the Boulder City Council during its April 23, 2026, study session potentially present violations of the City’s own laws and the applicable Colorado Open Meetings Laws relating to the discussion of the Boulder Municipal Airport,” Ireland Stapleton Pryor & Pascoe wrote in a memo released by the Airport Neighborhood Campaign. “To avoid running afoul of the OML and risk exposing the City to potential litigation, the Council should avoid taking any action on decisions related to the Boulder Municipal Airport until the issue has been fully discussed in a properly noticed meeting, which is sufficiently open to the public.”
The memo argues the airport discussion went beyond general staff guidance because the council was being asked to weigh a long-term policy question. The April 23 meeting was held as a study session, a format that did not include public testimony, and the agenda only listed the item as an “Airport Discussion.” Several councilmembers also questioned during and after the session whether a decision of that scope should move forward without a public hearing.
FAA Grants Were Central To Discussion
The question before the council was framed as whether the airport should remain in operation indefinitely or whether the city should preserve a possible path to closure or reuse after 2040. That distinction was tied to FAA funding because the FAA has told Boulder that accepting new airport grants would carry grant assurances requiring continued airport operation in perpetuity.
During the April 23 session, Councilmember Ryan Schuchard asked whether the council should be considering its tolerance for those grant conditions as part of the discussion.
“It is accurate that taking new FAA grants come with grant assurances that run into perpetuity,” Boulder City Attorney Teresa Tate said during the meeting. “The reason for that is a little bit technical but boiled down that is accurate.”
Tate also said she had not yet researched whether accepting grant conditions of that kind would be a policy matter for the council or an operational matter for staff.
Boulder has a virtual special meeting and study session scheduled Thursday night, where the airport issue could return for further discussion. Schuchard has asked that any next step come back as a public hearing with a more complete record, including one option authorizing FAA funding and one preserving more local control while avoiding new FAA grants.
State Funding Clarified
Beyond federal grant discussions, in a May 27 letter, CDOT Aeronautics Director David Ulane also told Boulder that the city’s future airport safety and pavement maintenance projects remain eligible for state aviation grants, subject to state grant assurances and project useful-life limits. The letter said pavement maintenance projects carry a three-year obligation and that only land-acquisition funding from the Division of Aeronautics could obligate the airport indefinitely.
