Elected Official Spotlight: Boulder City Councilmember Tara Winer 

“Why is Boulder’s business community important to me”  

Boulder’s business community is made up of people and people are important to me. I enjoy meeting with business owners, managers, and employees. Your concerns should be my concerns. A healthy local business community adds not just a tax base, but vibrancy, excitement, income diversity and racial diversity, all important elements of a “cool city”. 

My grandparents and my parents had small businesses in New York. My husband, myself, and my daughters are all in the business sector. My daughter Jennifer is the Boulder/ Network director of Women Who Code. My daughter Lexi is the chair of the Louisville Revitalization Commission. 

My daughter Stephanie is on the City of Boulder Downtown Management Commission. (Can’t a mother boast?) As you can see, our family is dedicated to the economic vitality of Boulder County.   

Bringing my learned business wisdom, practicality, and common sense into my job as City Council member has helped me understand the complexity of issues. My mind is trained to think about unintended consequences, and I try to weight them in all city council decisions. 

Are there really any simple solutions to our specific issues in Boulder? No, but if we can find solutions that the majority of stakeholders are relatively satisfied with, we have succeeded.  Working together to solve problems is what I try to do every day. 

Currently, my focus for Boulder’s economic vitality is increasing safety for our businesses and their employees, reducing theft and property crime, expanding the labor pool by providing incentives and housing diversity, decreasing wait times for permits. Finding ways to increase affordability for new and minority owned businesses and creating a welcoming business community, fostering equity and inclusion, making spaces for BIPOC and women owned businesses are also some of my top priorities.