If you’re a supporter of the county’s open space or ClimateSmart Loan programs and you didn’t vote, pat yourself on the back for enabling the failure of County Ballot Issues 1A and 1B. Both measures failed by small margins, largely due to a high conservative voter turnout in the city of Longmont.

About 34 percent of county voters who received a ballot returned those ballots. In Boulder, the turnout was only about 29 percent. In Longmont, it was approximately 41 percent.

If the turnout in Longmont had been similar to Boulder’s there would have been 5,490 fewer votes cast. According to unofficial results, the margin of defeat on County Ballot Issue 1A was only 2,568 votes; the difference was even narrower on 1B at 1,190 votes.

Yes, your lack of vote counted.

It’s no secret that voters find municipal elections to be boring. Typically revolving around ho-hum issues such as wastewater treatment, sales taxes and libraries, these odd-year elections don’t provoke our passions the way general elections often do. But municipal elections are arguably just as important as general elections, perhaps even more so, because the impact of municipal elections will be felt where we live.

Take the economic situation, for example. Wall Street execs land the nation in hot financial water, and Washington, D.C., hands them our money, ostensibly to limit the impact on average everyday Americans. By the end of the year, CEOs are taking home fat bonus checks, while most of us have to take on faith that bailing out billionaires was good for the country.

Closer to home, overwhelming voter support for the ClimateSmart Loan Program resulted in more than $6 million being dumped into our local economy through money that participants spent on energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements to their homes. Those improvements brought demonstrable and in some cases dramatic decreases in money being paid out to utility companies, money that stayed in the hands of local residential property owners. This financial shot in the arm was a boost to local construction and solar-energy companies at a time when the construction industry and even the solar industry were seeing hard times.

In contrast to the bailout and other dubious “stimulus” actions, ClimateSmart offered true local economic stimulus that was much easier to quantify and that brought relief to your towns, your neighbors and maybe even your own family.

Ballot Issue 1B would have authorized bonds of up to $85 million to continue funding for the ClimateSmart Loan Program. Thanks to those who supported the program—but did not take time to vote—we’ll have to wait till next November to secure that funding.

Fortunately, there’s still enough bonding authority left to see ClimateSmart through most of 2010.

“We will continue expanding the program using our current bonding authority of $40 million,” County Commissioner Will Toor told Boulder Weekly. “We have used up about $13 million and plan on a commercial round at $12 million in a few months. This will still leave another $15 million for residential rounds in 2010.”

Toor says the program will probably run out of bonding capacity in mid to late 2010, meaning that new loans will have to be put on hold until the November 2010 election.

“I think it is highly likely that there will be a ClimateSmart loan bonding issue on the 2010 ballot, with a strong well organized campaign like the 2008 election, and that the voters will support this next fall.”

Interestingly, voters in both Pitkin and Eagle counties voters approved loan programs modeled after ours. Further, the feds are announcing $80 million in seed funding to help communities start programs and have highlighted the ClimateSmart loan model as a key strategy for generating investment in clean energy nationwide. Ironic that that a program we launched and which brought our county so much attention internationally — Boulder County was the first local government body to enact a program like ClimateSmart on such a broad scale — was a program that we defeated this year.

What does all of this mean? It means that Boulder voters blew it when it came to defending their own interests at the polls this year. They let Longmont conservatives, who were highly motivated, to decide important issues on their behalf.

Think about that next time you can’t even take five minutes to fill out and stick a stamp on your mail-in ballot.