Council Connects

"Dear Government, Pay me for my losses. Inside Amendment 74"
https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2018/09/20/colorado-amendment-74-takings-just-compensation-regulation/

Let's Go Colorado, supporting what is now Proposition 100, has a revamped campaign website
http://letsgocolorado.com/

Summary of interesting article on participation in public hearings:
WHO IS THE PUBLIC IN PUBLIC MEETINGS?
A Strong Towns article entitled Who is the Public at Public Meetings? recognizes the value and necessity of public participation while taking a critical look at the mechanisms we have in place for such participation may be providing a, “distorted picture of what those with a real stake in a place actually need or want.” Referring to a new study from Boston University that confirms what many believe: “that the public that shows up, doesn’t look that much like the whole public, in terms of either their demographics or their attitudes.” They reached these conclusions by compiling and analyzing a database of 3,327 public comments from planning and zoning board meetings, from 97 municipalities, from 2015 to 2017. The looked at sentiment and topics covered, checked for voter status, demographic characteristics, and political affiliation. Route Fifty summarized the study this way:
Women made up 43 percent of commenters, while making up 51 percent of people in the voter file, indicating that men were over-represented among commenters. The average commenter age was 58, while in the overall voter file it was 50.
While older and male community members were more likely to make comments, age and gender were not good predictors of whether a person would be for or against new development.
Assessing homeownership was more difficult. But the researchers did match 85 individuals who participated in meetings in the town of Arlington with property deed data. Although 39 percent of the town rents housing, just 22 percent of meeting participants were renters.
It found that opposition to new housing construction was strong among meeting participants even in places that showed support for affordable housing measures when voting in elections….
They later added that “while voters in these towns supported affordable housing construction in the abstract, a significant majority of those who attended development meetings opposed the development of specific project proposals.”
Among their findings were that 63 percent of all comments analyzed were in opposition to proposed housing development, while only about 14.6 percent were in support.
Opposition was common across party lines, with only 19 percent of Democrats and just shy of 13 percent of Republicans backing the housing proposals they weighed in on.

These findings and the authors do not suggest scrapping public hearings as a necessary and useful engagement mechanism for stakeholders. But they do mean that elected officials need to take what they hear at these sessions with a grain of salt, and try to be aware of who is not represented in the room and what their interests might be. The public hearing should be only one of the sources of input and information among many.

9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that banning the homeless from sleeping on the streets is unconstitutional unless there are free, unrestricted beds available for them. The ruling is dispositive in the neighboring 9th circuit and could be persuasive to our 10th Circuit. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/us/-homeless-sleeping-on-street-ruling.html

An article about the Single Track Sidewalk meeting and issue:
https://www.singletracks.com/blog/trail-advocacy/singletrack-sidewalks-proposal-in-golden-colorado-faces-resistance/

A thoughtful analysis, with the headline "The Bipartisan Cry of Not in My Backyard"
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/upshot/home-ownership-nimby-bipartisan.html

The most powerful community engagement I've ever heard of -- a medieval tool of Channel Island residents A Guernsey resident recently activated Clameur de Haro to protest against the narrowing of a road which she feels would endanger pedestrians and motorists. She raised the clameur by kneeling, calling for help, stating "Haro! Haro! Haro! A l’aide, mon prince, on me fait tort” (translated as “Come to my aid, my prince, for someone does me wrong") and reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Norman French. Fully enforceable, it means the construction work must stop until a court decides the case. Just a thought on a Thursday night without a council meeting.

Metro Mayors Communication:


CONSENSUS ADOPTED: MMC SUPPORT FOR AMENDMENTS Y & Z

In accordance with our consensus process,
this resolution of support was adopted
by consensus of the Metro Mayors Caucus on August 13.
Download the adopted Resolution

Original consensus question email sent August 2 below.


MAYORS,
Fair Maps Colorado: Yes on Y & Z presented at the full Metro Mayors Caucus meeting on Wednesday, August 1st. [T]he measures. . . enjoyed the unanimous support of the Colorado General Assembly which has referred them for voter consideration on the November ballot. To pass, these amendments must each garner at least 55% of the vote.
In short, the measures seek to preclude partisan gerrymandering of Colorado's Congressional Districts (Amendment Y) and Legislative Districts (Amendment Z) through:
the creation of independent commissions to oversee map drawing
specification of clear and consistent map drawing criteria that rely upon existing federal voting rights criteria and protect communities of interest - including jurisdictional bounderies (city and county)
limits on the role of partisans and courts in the map drawing process
establishing ethical and transparency guidelines
Fair Maps Colorado has garnered support from both sides of the aisle and organizations statewide some of whom seldom agree on anything. .

METRO MAYORS CAUCUS

At yesterday’s Metro Mayors Full Caucus Meeting ,we were joined by Kevin Reidy the State’s Water Conservation Specialist from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, Peter Pollak the Manager of Western Programs and a 25 year city planner from Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Matthew Mulica a Policy Facilitator from Keystone Policy Center Their presentation focused on the importance of integrating water and land use in order to close our projected 500,000-600,000 acre foot supply gap in 2050 and the locally developed tools and strategies that elected officials and their staff can use to conduct scenario planning and identify the best solutions for their own communities. Let me know if you would like a copy of their excellent presentation.
Also, electeds and staff were strongly encouraged CML’s upcoming workshop on August 23 -- also on the integration of water saving and land-use planning. Workshop info is on the CML website.

National Night Out in Parfet Park - August 7, 5-8 pm. As I mentioned at an earlier city council meeting a generous resident has again donated digital gun safes as raffle prizes. The police department will provide Council with a separate table to distribute tickets to the safes and other informational items (plus free gun locks). I know some are out of town, but please let me know by email if you'll be able to help -- and what time you would like to be there. Thanks for participating in this great opportunity to emphasize our child safety message.

From Herb Atchison about Westminster's moratorium on development:
Dear Colleagues and Friends:

I'm reaching out to you today to provide information on an important recent development in the City of Westminster.

Monday night, Westminster City Council voted unanimously to approve a 12-month moratorium on new applications for development in the area of the city generally north of 92nd Avenue to help address critical sanitary sewer capacity constraints. The moratorium went into effect at noon, Tuesday July 24th.

Last month, when capacity issues first arose, the city announced it was expediting improvements in the Big Dry Creek basin, which has seen sewer flows increase by 40 percent since 2008. The moratorium will allow the city time to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the Big Dry Creek basin system and address the design parameters, construction timeline and service delivery for the entire affected area.

Like many of our neighboring municipalities, we have quickly approached the time when we need to address our aging and outdated infrastructure. We had plans in place to address this, but the pace of development, and in many cases the changing face of development (more restaurants, more multi-family), have forced us to move more quickly than we had planned.

As we work our way through this, we continue to emphasize that our city is indeed still open for business.� In fact, our two major redevelopment projects, Downtown Westminster and Westminster Station, are not impacted by the moratorium.

We also are emphasizing to our residents that the sewer system continues to perform up to standards and will do so as we bring improvements online.

The folks from the CO Department of Local Affairs, State Demography Office were in attendance at CML sharing information about their new Community Profile webpage that lets you download customized reports or data files for any municipality. You can check it out at https://demography.dola.colorado.gov/community-profiles. And here is a link to Golden's profile: https://goo.gl/rLgpTU.

At the CML conference yesterday, I attended a very lively discussion in a standing room only session hosted by CIRSA on the role of City Councils in dealing with workplace harassment. I was surprised at the very large number of Colorado municipalities that have experienced problems with harassment. Key takeaways: (1) A National Academy of Science report recently concluded that the best predictor of harassment is organizational climate. Organizational climate for a municipalities starts at the top with elected leaders. (2) EEOC studies have shown that workplaces are more likely to have harassment problems when they have certain characteristics, including power disparities, high-value personnel (like elected officials), and they involve customer service and client satisfaction. Thus, there is a high chance for harassment problems in municipalities. (3) It is critically important for municipalities to adopt anti-harassment policies that set expectations for City Council, employees, vendors, contractors, citizens, and volunteers. These policies should include a flexible process for surfacing complaints and protecting against retribution. These policies should address the harassment behaviors that are corrosive to the organization, but that fall below legal definitions for civil liability. (4) CIRSA regularly advises cities on harassment issues and meets with Councils in executive session to help impress upon them the importance of setting the appropriate tone at the top of the municipal organization.

At CML listen to Ken Feldman on Broadband & related communication & utilities issues: my take, the FCC as appointed by the current Administration, is writing code to take away Local Control 🤨. Bottom line: consult with Ken before we act just like we have been doing.

At CML listen to Ken Feldman on Broadband & related communication & utilities issues: my take, the FCC as appointed by the current Administration, is writing code to take away Local Control 🤨

A Note from the Colorado Municipal League Conference:

Transportation & Mobility in the Future (And not to distant future)
Driverless vehicles - we will choose to buy mobility rather than vehicles in the near future, noted Rutt Bridges, futurist and founder of the Bighorn Institute (Disclaimer: I'm an alumni of the Bighorn Institute). The automobile industry sees the future even if some of us don't as they are investing millions and millions of dollars into autonomous vehicle technology. Furthermore, Google (Waymo) and others are investing in this technology "big time". Rutt's book, Our Driverless Future: Heaven or Hell, provides great insight on the whole topic. Both Casey Brown and I bought the Kindle edition. I believe we need to work to address the gap between the autonomous vehicle future and our current efforts to get people where they want to go. I urge our Sustainability Board to make this a focus area as it will help address the impact of current approaches to travel - from congestion, to air pollution to road maintenance to just name a few.

Radon is definitely a silent killer in our Golden and across Colorado. Please read, act & encourage others to act!

Review of Radon Facts

· View the 1-minute Radon Aware video at https://youtu.be/dLWbFcTcA9I.

Radon Exposure is a Concern across the State
•The entire Front Range – not just the mountains or foothills – has high potential for indoor radon concentrations to be at or above 4 picoCuries per liter (pCi/L) of air. (https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/colorado-radon-zones)
•Results from almost 18,000 radon tests in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson Counties show that over 50% of homes have elevated radon concentrations – higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended action level of 4 pCi/L. (https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/understanding-radon)



Radon Causes Cancer

The North American Residential Radon Studies, a pooling of residential radon studies conducted in North America, concluded that:
•Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States for both men and women.
•Although most lung cancer deaths are attributable to tobacco usage, secondary causes of lung cancer are important because of the magnitude of lung cancer incidence and its poor survival rate.
•After cigarette smoking, prolonged residential radon exposure is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the general population. (Field, R. William. "A Review of Residential Radon Case-Control Epidemiologic Studies Performed in the United States." Reviews on Environmental Health 16.3 (2001): 151-67. Print)

An invitation to a Denver event from National Complete Streets Coalition i
Join Emiko Atherton, Director of the National Complete Streets Coalition, and Ben Stone, Director of Arts & Culture at Smart Growth America, for our first-ever Intersections Meet-Up. We're using the energy and momentum from the Intersections conference to continue the conversation about the nexus between Complete Streets, creative placemaking, and designing culturally relevant places.
Date: June 14, 2018
Time: 6-8 pm
Location: 1050 17th Street, Suite A200, Denver, Colorado 80265-2016
This event is free to participants thanks to the generous support of Stantec.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intersections-meet-up-denver-tickets-46372505412

A thoughtful article on why growing, traffic-clogged Nashville rejected a sales-tax proposal for transit.
https://www.wired.com/story/nashville-transit-referendum-vote-plan/

Another correction -- "near" not need. Sorry for filling up your inboxes. Happy Memorial Day, all