HOW TO ENFORCE BOULDER’S OCCUPANCY LIMITS
The Boulder City Council gave first approval to an ordinance that would outline how to enforce the city’s residence occupancy limits.
If approved, the ordinance would mandate that property owners post legal occupancy rules on properties and rental license applications. The maximum occupancy for unrelated tenants in Boulder is three or four people, depending on zoning.
It would also raise excess occupancy fines to $500 for a first offence, and $750 for a second offence.
Here are some other ways to enforce the occupancy limit of unrelated tenants that Boulder City Council rejected:
In what was called the “Mayor Night-light” plan, Mayor Matt Appelbaum would count residents by kissing each person goodnight and tucking them into their beds. Sources say he’d be singing, “Hush, Little Baby,” and holding a flashlight to his face, and he’d smell like fresh brownies.
Another plan involved right-sizing people’s bedrooms, so that it would be physically impossible to fit more than three residents in a home. In this plan, the city would split bedrooms in two and turn one half into a bike lane.
Another plan involved intense, daily blood and semen testing administered by Chip, the CU mascot, to make sure residents in multi-person units are related.
Another plan involved orchestrating city-wide arranged marriages, while another involved mandatory surgery to inject Boulder’s single residents with dog DNA so that they wouldn’t technically be human and subject to the housing requirement.
It is worth noting that a two-year long study session is being done on the “Chip” plan.
RICE, POTATOES AND … GLUTEN?
As it turns out, Americans are still confused about the wheat protein gluten despite the mass marketing of gluten-free products plastered all over grocery stores and restaurants. According to a recently released survey by NSF International, only 35 percent of Americans can correctly identify gluten while 47 percent think the protein is found in rice and another 34 percent think gluten is found in potatoes. Nope.
News flash: Gluten is not a starch of the weight-gaining variety that Dr. Atkins warned us of several decades ago.
Gluten is, however, found in some, but not all grains, including wheat, rye and barley as well as in every day consumables such as soy-sauce, salad dressing and beer. This is noteworthy given half the survey participants didn’t think so.
Add this to the fact that 46 percent of Americans say their first step in identifying gluten-free products is looking at the ingredients label and saying, “Ehh, that looks like it could be gluten-y.”
So basically we have half the population attempting to eat gluten-free by incorrectly identifying what gluten is and then consuming products accordingly.
Stop jumping on the latest food-craze train, America. Let’s not be Mean Girls’ famous moron Karen Smith (“Is butter a carb?”) Do your research before throwing out half your pantry. Granted, while some do have real medical reasons to be running from bread, most of the rest of us are fine. Go eat a hamburger with a white bun alongside battered French fries dipped in ranch dressing all washed down by a delicious hefeweizen. We promise, you’ll feel great.
