[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: CML Conference report

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Appelbaum, Matt

Colleagues - One final report, this one on the CML Conference that was held way back in June.  Suzanne, Tim, Carl, and I traveled together, staying for the two full conference days and one night.  As always, the main event was chatting with folks; we had numerous discussions with councilmembers from the Denver area, and I had an important chat with some people regarding the then-latest FasTracks updates.

I moderated a session on "Engaging your Residents," which provided some surprisingly good ideas, I thought.  It is interesting to note that Longmont has a staffer who concentrates on this, working with neighborhood organizations, etc.  I asked him how successful they are at getting minority/underrepresented neighborhoods/people involved, and, unfortunately, was told that there was still a long way to go.  It might be interesting, at some point, for the council to hear more about Longmont's programs.  The other speakers were from Commerce City and Wheat Ridge, where some interesting public outreach was also being done.  There was also some discussion here, and at the "mayors mingle" earlier, about getting younger folks involved in city affairs, along with some interesting ideas that maybe we should follow up on at some point (like having non-voting school-aged people be limited members of some city boards).

I also moderated a session on transit-oriented development.  Fort Collins, as you may know, is going to be implementing a terrific BRT (for which they just got a huge amount of federal funding); it's much shorter and simpler than what we want on US36, but it's still an excellent example of how to provide transit mobility.  We also heard from Dan Guimond (of EPS, which has worked with Boulder on numerous occasions), who spoke to the economics of TOD.

There were a few other moderately interesting sessions, a good talk from Gov. Hickenlooper, a rather interesting discussion between Sam Mamet and Mayor Hancock, and, as you know, an election for CML Board that Suzanne did her best to win but certainly set herself up for another attempt.

--Matt