[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: CML Policy Committee report

[kohls at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Appelbaum, Matt

Colleagues,

Yesterday there was a final meeting of the CML Policy Committee.  It was held as a webinar/conference call, which made for some rough going, but it mostly worked for the 40 or so attendees.

The agenda was consideration of proposals to modify CML's Policy Statement, which is a set of guiding policies for CML (like the sacrosanct "local control").  As you may remember (if you have a spectacularly good memory), we submitted 3 proposals, all related to transportation.

The first simply reworded an existing policy on "balanced transportation" to give alt. modes an equal footing with roads.  Rifle (which has become a somewhat unlikely ally) and Frisco submitted similar proposals.  Our version was accepted by the committee after some discussion.

The second was way more controversial.  This suggested change dealt with the current policy of supporting the constitutional requirement (although there seems to be some uncertainty about its scope) of having all highway trust fund (HUTF) revenues go toward roads, only.  I knew this wouldn't pass, so I suggested that we at least direct staff to examine this issue and bring it back to the Policy Committee in the fall.  Even that is quite a stretch for CML, but I got enough support to at least move it forward.  The committee understood that the whole issue of transpo financing needs more analysis, so we'll see where, if anywhere, this goes.

The final issue was more controversial yet.  It attempted to link transpo policy to the impacts of VMT and its relationship to land use.  Again, this clearly wasn't going to be passed, but the goal was to at least get this concept on the CML agenda for the first time - and like the above issue, we succeeded to some extent.  I suspect I'll work with CML staff on this, and try to create some options - a number of ideas were floated during a surprisingly, mostly non-negative discussion - for the fall Policy Committee meeting.

There were a number of other proposed changes that were discussed, most either noncontroversial or not terribly important.  An unfortunate loss was a proposal from Frisco that would have added "healthy stream flow levels" to a list of considerations regarding municipal water use.  It was a close vote, and I hope it comes back next year.

Policy changes need to be approved by the membership at the annual meeting in June.  I would hope that the first item will go through without much problem, although I suppose there could be some opposition.

My thanks again to Carl, Tracy, and Randall for doing most of the work in creating the three proposals.
--Matt