Steve Durian, Boulder County's Director of Public Works

Steve Durian, Boulder County's Director of Public Works since August 2023, plays a crucial role in overseeing the county's infrastructure projects. Durian's expertise and passion for his work are evident, as he was excited to interview for the position when it was advertised.

With prior experience at the City of Boulder from 2000 to 2006 and continued ties to the area through property ownership and other connections, Durian is excited to navigate the intricacies of Boulder County's infrastructure landscape.

As Public Works Director, Durian thrives on the complexity of his role. He said, "I am good at seeing the big picture and enjoy the overlapping of the political and technical side."

Under his leadership, the Boulder County Public Works Department, formerly known as the Transportation Department, manages a diverse range of services, including Building Services, Fleet Services, Resource Conservation, Road Maintenance, and Transportation Engineering.

His biggest learning curve has been the self-supporting Resource Conservation Division, a multifaceted entity that includes composting, a recycling center (on 63rd Street), a hazardous materials management facility, and trash and hauling.

One of the significant challenges Durian faces has been the subdivision roads throughout the county, which have minimal maintenance coverage as established by a change to the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan (BCCP) in the early 1990s.

Currently, the county performs snow removal, pothole patching, roadway crack sealing, and patching for local access roadways, i.e., subdivision and homeowners association roads. But it does not perform mill or overlay replacements.

There is history involved with this issue as there are 150 miles of paved roads in more than 100 subdivisions in unincorporated Boulder County, serving approximately 10,600 properties. Many of these subdivision roads are in poor condition because they are over 15 years old and have never been resurfaced or repaired.

The history includes a working group that started in 2009 to advise on how best to address the deterioration of the subdivision roads, a subdivision survey completed with 2000 responses, and a proposed Public Improvement District ballot issue, which was defeated at the ballot box in 2013.

The next attempts were followed by an attempt to establish a Subdivision Paving Local Improvement District, which a Boulder District Court judge invalidated in 2014. This culminated in a lawsuit in 2014 filed by subdivision property owners, which was dismissed by a senior District Court judge, whose decision was upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals. The Colorado Supreme Court opted not to hear the appeal in 2016.

Fast forward to April 2024, Durian said, "It is all about money and we need to generate dollars, which could include options such as putting a tax in place and earmarking that tax for paving subdivisions, paying for subdivision maintenance using property taxes from the impacted subdivisions, creating a utility fund generated by fees, or creating a taxing district, which Burgundy Park did the summer of 2019 with the county paying 30% of the costs. It is a lot of work to put together a Public Improvement District, specific to an area and you need someone to lead the charge."

Durian said, "You can think about equity, meaning if you have a benefit, it should be paid by those who receive the benefit. Or do you think about an inequitable situation where individuals pay a tax, but the benefit is reaped by a select minority? Even if a funding solution is found, with more than 100 subdivisions, the backlog could potentially take 20 years to catch up. This is calculated based on a yearly production rate of rehabilitating five subdivisions."

The Boulder County Commissioners will soon complete a telephone poll survey to gauge residents' appetite for an equitable property tax-based funding mechanism.

In addition to tackling the subdivision challenge, Durian envisions initiatives for Boulder County's future. These include future radar photo speed enforcement, the Commissioners' interest in increasing the electrification of all county buildings and its fleet of vehicles, and directing efforts to locate an ideal composting site with convenient access yet secluded from residential zones. In two weeks, a Request for Proposal is going out to the consulting community to study the feasibility of a composting facility.

Durian said, "Our goals are to be good stewards of the environment and advocates for energy efficiency, food waste reduction, composting, greenhouse gas reduction, and road safety. People who travel through Boulder County should have the safest roadways in the county."