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City presents wildfire home‑hardening hub and prioritization plan ahead of council briefings
Summary
City staff outlined a two‑task wildfire resilience project on July 8: an action‑oriented home‑hardening hub (soft launch planned for September) and a programmatic prioritization process that distills 130+ projects into 26 programs and identifies tier‑1 priorities and WUI sections. Staff will brief council Aug. 27 and report in November.
City staff presented a coordinated two-task wildfire-resilience project to the Open Space Board of Trustees on July 8, describing an outreach and action hub for home hardening and a prioritization process that will help focus city efforts and council attention.
Task 1 — home-hardening hub: Jamie Barker, public‑information officer for Boulder Fire Rescue, outlined an online wildfire hub designed to convert assessments into concrete action. Planned features include instructional videos, community testimonials, a high‑impact project list organized by price point, weekend projects, talking points for insurance and neighborhood conversations, and links to existing tools such as Headwater Economics’ "Built for Wildfire" calculator rather than building a new cost‑estimation app from scratch. Staff plans a soft launch toward September to gather user feedback and refine materials.
Task 2 — inventory, prioritization and metrics: Brian Hanicker described work to inventory more than 130 planned or active wildfire‑related projects, distill them into roughly 26 programs, and use a pairwise ranking survey among staff and peer experts to identify tier‑1 programs for near‑term focus. Staff proposes a geographic lens that divides the western WUI edge into roughly 10–11 sections. For each section staff will evaluate a mix of treatments — home hardening, fuel breaks, grazing, prescribed fire and cross‑boundary coordination — and develop measurable outcomes (for example, a percentage of homes in high‑risk classes hardened to a base standard by a target year).
Why this matters: The work is tied to a council retreat priority; staff said the immediate goal is to prepare a concise list of tier‑1 programs and metrics for council to consider so council can allocate attention and resources rather than being presented 130+ project pages. Staff plans a council virtual study session Aug. 27 and a final council briefing in November.
Trustee questions and feedback: Trustees asked about how OSMP actions connect to built‑environment interventions, cost and equity considerations, the relationship between private‑property incentive programs (grants or block‑scale contracting) and open‑space fuel work, and whether scientific advisory input was being incorporated. Jamie and Brian said the hub and prioritization will continue to incorporate subject‑matter experts, that some programs will be tiered for immediate metric development, and that staff will present a clearer set of tier‑one projects and the metrics needed to justify any additional resourcing.
Next steps: Staff will refine the hub materials, test them with community groups, finalize tier‑one program recommendations and metrics, and bring the package to council Aug. 27 (study session) and November for final discussion. Staff emphasized that planning occurs in parallel with ongoing ground operations already funded and underway.
