[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: NLC Conference Report

[kohls at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Appelbaum, Matt

The NLC Congress of Cities conference which concluded yesterday was unusually busy for me, so before I forget here are some of the activities that might be of some interest:

*        We had the fourth and final meeting in the yearly cycle of the EENR (Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources) Policy Committee, of which I'm a vice chair.  At this meeting we adopt the changes to policy and the resolutions we've spent the prior year working on (and about which I've previously reported).  We also added a couple of last-minute resolutions, including one on the Keystone Oil Pipeline that (see below) turned out to be extraordinarily controversial.  We heard an interesting presentation from Lawrence Gumbiner, a deputy assistant secretary for sustainable development from the U.S. State Department, on preparations the U.S. is making for the Rio +20 UN conference on sustainable development (more on this below as well).

*        My other committee, the CityFutures Panel on Community and Regional Development (CRD) heard a presentation from an NLC staffer on building resilient neighborhoods, and NLC's ongoing efforts to gather information and create literature on the issues of housing, neighborhood stability, and cross-cutting partnerships.  CRD could be an interesting and useful committee, but is struggling to find its niche.

*        Although it hasn't been announced yet, I've been reappointed as vice chair of EENR, and would expect to be the chair next year.  I was also appointed as vice chair of CRD.  And I was convinced by the chair of the international council to apply for that group as well; I'll find out in a few weeks if I got appointed.

*        Several of my good friends from EENR were elected to the NLC Board of Directors, so I now know well a number of folks on the board, including the new president.

*        A group of about ten of us was chosen to meet with Mr. Gumbiner of the State Department to have a more detailed discussion of some of the innovative approaches our cities have been taking toward sustainability.  I also got to describe our visit to Stockholm (which the State Department sponsored), and how it gave the Europeans much better insight into all of the great work going on in the U.S., even if not much at all is happening at the national level.  Mr. Gumbiner was interested in having a similar presence at Rio +20, and we discussed how NLC and cities could be best involved.  Since Boulder was invited to Stockholm I doubt that we'll get chosen again for Rio, but we're certainly well known to both State and NLC as a premier example of a city with innovative and replicable sustainability policies and programs.

*        I've been serving on a new "regulation subcommittee" that has been having conference calls to discuss NLC's role in helping cities survive the onslaught of federal regulations, and trying to determine which regs NLC might best try to get "improved."  Committee members come from several of the NLC policy committees (such as EENR), and as I've noted before, there is some disagreement between EENR and the transportation and economic development committees on regulatory reform, with EENR wanting to generally ensure that environmental considerations are not weakened.  We met in person for the first time and had a good discussion about how to move forward.  I'd like to thank our city staff for providing me with a number of good examples of federal regs that need modification.

*        The NLC conference was split into four "virtual" conferences, one on "green cities."  I recommended the keynote speaker, Bob Berkebile, an internationally known architect who began building green long before most everyone else, and whose firm now specializes in rebuilding/designing not just buildings but entire neighborhoods and cities.  I got a chance to have a long chat with Bob and I'll put him in touch with city staff since he is looking for examples of cities that have premier sustainability programs.

*        I moderated a session on smart grid and electric vehicles.  This was well received, with three good speakers who introduced the concepts, described how electric vehicles are dependent on some sort of smart grid, and gave a real-world example of a city that is moving to implement some flavor of a smart grid.  The latter speaker was John Marks, Mayor of Tallahassee, whom I had met last year in Stockholm.  Tallahassee is a muni that runs both gas and electric, and they have begun by integrating gas, electric, and water service into the smart grid communications network.  They have plans to do much more, and I think they'll be an interesting city to watch.

*        Since Elizabeth Vasatka of our staff was presenting at a session on building codes, I attended that session, where her presentation was well received.  I should add that Liz Hansen also presented at a session on supporting small business that I couldn't attend, and I know from a number of comments that she also did a great job.  They also both staffed a booth that we were invited to create for the City Showcase program - we were chosen for our flexible rebate program -- and which was part of the larger exhibition hall.

*        Among other sessions I managed to attend, one was on measuring sustainability information, in particular regarding buildings.  One speaker from the Institute for Market Transformation (a colleague of his had spoken to EENR previously) spoke about their program, adopted by a number of cities, to use Energy Star ratings on commercial buildings and require disclosure.  I chatted with him later about this and how other cities are approaching this issue, and I think many of these ideas can form the basis of our upcoming look at some form of CECO in Boulder (our staff is also in contact with IMT, I believe).

*        Yet another committee I serve on has been looking at "livability," in particular the new program created by HUD/EPA/DOT.  I'm the NLC representative to a group that is being led by NARC (National Association of Regional Councils), and a session was held at the conference to get input from attendees on this issue.  The intent is to have NARC create a reference library of materials that will assist cities and counties as they implement the livability constructs, learning from what others have accomplished.

*        As usual there was a gathering of CML members, where I met a number of our colleagues.  I also chatted with Sam Mamet (CML Exec. Director) about a number of topics, notably municipalization and the role CML might play.  I ran into Doug Linkhart, who was recently appointed as Denver's Manager of Environmental Health, and we discussed how Boulder and Denver could work more closely on some issues, and Doug wanted to get in contact with our environmental staff; we also, of course, discussed municipalization.  And I met and chatted with Denver's lead person on intergovernmental affairs.

*        As a member of NLC "leadership," I got to attend a meeting of all of the chairs and vice chairs, where we presented our accomplishments for the year and discussed how to best move forward.  There is still much work to be done across committees, and I think that will be a focus in the coming year.

*        I've never before stayed at one of these conferences long enough to attend the closing session or the annual business meeting, but since I had a meeting on Saturday I decided to see what those events were like, and they turned out to be surprisingly interesting.  At the lunch, we had a rapid-fire presentation (even for this ex-New Yorker, I could barely keep up with him) from Ed Glaeser of Harvard on topics from his recent book, Triumph of the City.  I had read reviews of the book and based on the presentation would suggest that you take a look at it.

*        At the business meeting, I had the honor of presenting the report from EENR.  At this meeting, the member cities select the new NLC board and approve all of the policy recommendations.  Normally this is a rather perfunctory arrangement, but not this year.  There was considerable debate over some recommended changes to social security policy, and some recommendations were overturned.  EENR got into the act when the new resolution on the Keystone Pipeline was questioned.  We had carefully crafted the policy to neither support nor oppose the pipeline (this was a last-minute resolution due to the timing of the issue, which has been somewhat mooted by Obama's later statement that no decision will be made until 2013), but to simply have NLC work to ensure that environmental protections were fully considered.  However, some NLC members thought that went too far and - in a debate similar to the ones EENR has with transportation and economic development - that anything that might slow down this project was unacceptable.  I responded to those concerns with some brief remarks, expecting a further debate on the issue - but as often happens in such large meetings, the process was not well thought out and the leaders were taken by surprise at the opposition, and so there was no further discussion but we headed directly into a vote (on an issue that most in the audience probably knew little if anything about).  After a motion to kill the resolution failed, the process (oddly) called for a motion to support it, which appeared to fail as well - so a "weighted" vote was held, for the first time in nine years, apparently.  That passed, but not by the 2/3 margin required.  It was all interesting, if nothing else, but indicated some serious flaws in the process, and I'll soon be sending a letter to NLC leadership to that effect.  At any rate, a typically boring annual meeting was quite lively, even if a bit muddled.

OK - that's more than enough.  I realize much of this isn't terribly exciting, but if anything in particular interests you just let me know and I can probably provide more information.

--Matt