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Let's start with common ground: We didn't need Money Magazine to tell us that Louisville is a great place to live because it has a "small town" feel. We've known it; we've cherished it; and citizens have insisted that preservation of this "feel"—our character—deserves the highest priority. At some point, the small town feel is gone. No one would say Denver has a small town feel; no one would say Boulder has a small town feel.

No one knows the magic number at which the small town feel will be gone from Louisville, but one thing is certain: When it's gone, it's gone for good. We know what our character is as a city of 19,000. We do not know if we can retain it—likely, we can't—if we become a city of 23,000, or 24,000, or 25,000.

Does a thousand, or two thousand, or three thousand additional residents make a difference? Common sense says yes. Louisville is a landlocked city of about 7 square miles. How many thousands can be added into that box before each resident begins to notice the difference—in city services, the rec center and in just how long it takes to cross some of our already-too-busy streets?

Our new library is a good example. We voted for a new library because the current library was overcrowded. The new library is designed with the current population in mind, not 25,000 or more. If this city grows by a third or more, as the pro-growth council members would permit, we'd need a new library before the dust from building the new one settles.

Fallacy #4: "When I moved into Louisville, I was welcomed. We can't pull up the ladder once we're aboard."

One thing we need to get cleared up right away: Louisville is not an island. Or a gated city. Or a boat. No one is suggesting that Louisville "pull up the ladder" and prevent any non-Louisville person from moving into the city. Louisville has a history of welcoming any new resident, and new residents move into Louisville houses every day.

The "boat" analogy is a remarkably poor one. It confuses intentional, deliberate exclusion with a community recognition that, if the city grows more, it will lose the very qualities that make people want to move here. There are two options: either we as a community "let the market decide" how many people should live in Louisville, or we as a community must decide that there is a point at which, as the Planning Commission recognized, our population will have increased to a level that destroys our small-town character and causes "the typical maladies of urban life."

Louisville is at the crossroads when that decision must be made. When we make that decision, we would do well to remember there was a time when the City of Aurora had a population of 20,000. Either it made a conscious decision to become a large(er) city or, worse, it had no plan and simply grew with abandon. It can no longer claim to be a city with a small-town character.

All around us there are municipalities that have joined the race to grow. To what end, Louisville citizens have asked? Size matters, but not in the way ambitious cities think. Louisville has been the quiet part of a rapidly growing storm of growth in the metro area. Look at the maladies that growth has brought to the metro area. Compare those headaches with our quality of life.

We are surrounded by other communities—Lafayette, Superior, Broomfield, and so on. If we make a mistake and decide to re-join the growth race and we dig ourselves into a financial-housing hole, as former Council member John Leary has demonstrated, we can't "grow" ourselves out of the fiscal problem by adding more land.

Fallacy #5: "We need more houses so that Louisville can have more affordable housing. It's elitist not to build more affordable housing."

Affordable housing is a good idea. That's why Louisville has affordable housing. Very few people are opposed to it. But there are even fewer people—no one we know—who have come up with a viable way to make large numbers of good homes affordable in Boulder County.

Here's the problem. Even if it were possible to build an inexpensive house or condo in Boulder County, we all know that construction expenses are only a part of the problem. The bigger problem is the price of land. It has skyrocketed over the last 15 years in Boulder County. Let's say we could overcome those big problems and Louisville or some other Boulder County city could offer to a single person, couple or young family an affordable home. How would we keep that home affordable when that person, couple or young family is ready to move up? Would we prevent them from selling for the highest price the market would bear? If we didn't, the affordable home would be affordable for one family only. If we did, the family has no incentive to buy it in the first place because it wouldn't be able to capture the increased value; so it might think—correctly—that "buying" that affordable home is no different from renting: it was unable to realize any increased equity value.

The Boulder Daily Camera in an editorial recognized the problem of trying to make homes "affordable" in Boulder County:

Of course, "permanently affordable" housing, while immediately helpful, isn't always a long-range solution. Because owners are limited to 3 percent profit upon sale, they can't leverage ownership into a new or bigger home when their families grow, as can those who buy on the open market. Owners of permanently affordable homes aren't so much in the real estate game as watching from the sidelines.

Frankly, the city's efforts — its resources — may be too focused on those who could buy a home in another nearby market. Some affordable housing resources might be better used to subsidize rentals or transportation for the poorest residents, the backbone of the service economy.

Boulder's efforts to provide more affordable housing are admirable. But anyone who implies that we can escape the consequences of our growth policies and make a real difference in housing prices is talking politics, not reality.

It's hardly a question of "elitism." Like Boulder County did, Louisville surrounded itself with open space, which makes our city unique and imposes a kind of natural growth "cap." The effect? More people want to move to Louisville, but we can't—we won't—sell our open space to make more land for houses. As the Camera recognized, the economic laws of supply and demand predict that these "growth policies" will result in increases in home values and housing prices. We have two choices: make our city a less desirable place to live, or live with our "growth policies." Anything else is "talking politics, not reality."

But if we wanted to experiment with affordable housing ideas, why not build affordable homes on land already zoned for residential development instead of doing what the current Council is doing—rezoning revenue-producing commercial land to deficit-causing residential land?

Fallacy #6: "We need more growth to persuade regional retail stores to come."

Let's try to see things through the eyes of those using this fallacy to push for thousands more people in Louisville: if we have some growth, say 1% a year (what pro-growthers have proposed), regional retailers will see we're growing and want to build a store in Louisville. What's wrong with this belief?

To begin with, the belief isn't based on reality. Regional retailers, like Kohl's or Home Depot, typically do not depend on a single municipality (especially small municipalities) for its sales. That's why they're regional retailers: they draw customers from 10-15 miles away, according to Louisville's consultants. They do not choose to locate in a given municipality because they expect that municipality exclusively to generate their sales. For them, municipalities are less relevant than the large arterials. That's why regional retailers are located near highways, expressways and interstates. This is why the pro-growther's notion—that if Louisville could just have a small growth rate the regional retailers would flock here—is so unpersuasive. To be sure, the population and population growth may well be a factor for a regional retailer, the population it would consider is the "regional" population, not the particular small municipality in which it is choosing to build a store. Nor would any regional retailer be impressed with a small city in the region because the small city can tout a "1%" growth rate.

To see these concepts at work, we need look no further than Louisville. Most of Louisville's regional retailers—Sam's Club, Home Depot, etc.—located in Louisville when the city's growth rate was virtually non-existent.

Common sense tells us that many other characteristics of a region—e.g., the population of the region, the disposable income of the population and the absence or presence of competitiors—are more likely to influence a regional retailer's location decision than the single-digit growth rate of a specific municipality in the region. Given that regional retailers need an urban population of 250,000-400,000 to be successful, it is simply nonsensical for pro-growthers to believe that Louisville's ability to tout 1%, or even higher rates of growth, would even register with a regional retailer. In other words, we would lose our small-town character over the pro-growthers' fantasy of attracting a retional retailer if only we would risk losing our character.

At the end of the day, however, all growth must be viewed through the quality-of-life prism: as much as we may want all manner of regional retail stores to locate in Louisville, are we willing to sacrifice our quality of life and our character? If we could attract another three regional retail stores if we doubled in size and grew to 40,000, would we do it? The pro-growthers seem to believe they have the answer and the answer is yes. We doubt the community would make that devil's bargain. Our community values its quality of life and our small-town character too much. See the discussion on Fallacy #1.

Fallacy #7: "We need housing for 'empty nesters' and senior citizens."

Louisville currently has nearly 800 housing units already zoned (636 in North Louisville and 150 in Old Town), even if the Comp Plan had never been amended. These housing units were approved more than a decade ago.

If pro-growthers were interested only in building "empty nester" and "senior citizen" housing, it would be easy enough: use the nearly 800 units that already have been approved to build multi-family or ranch housing or patio homes.

There is no need to add thousands more residents to get "empty nester" and senior housing.