[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Update on meetings/conferences from Matt

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Appelbaum, Matt

Colleagues – Here’s an update on some of the meetings and conferences I’ve recently attended.  As always, if you would like more information on anything please just let me know.
 
Colorado Water Summit: Held in Lone Tree March 4.  I was invited to speak on a moderated panel entitled “Current and Long-Term Municipal and Local Community Water Needs.”  I’ve been involved with a Metro Mayors committee looking
 at the new (draft) Colorado Water Plan, and I commented on its progress and my concerns.  I met with Boulder’s water staff to learn about our issues.  The entire (very large) draft plan can be found here:
http://coloradowaterplan.com and a very good article about the Plan was just printed in the Sunday Denver Post, here:

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_27798660/colorados-water-plan-close-but-not-there-yet
  
Focus 2015, A Forum of Communities for Urban Sustainability, held at the French Embassy in DC prior to the NLC conference.  I had worked with them in getting NLC involved, and was one of about a dozen US city representatives. 

The forum was organized as one of a number of meetings the French government is having as a lead-in to COP 21, which will be held in Paris in December. 

Many French and American cities spoke about their sustainability efforts in the categories of Transportation/Land Use, Energy, Water and Waste, Resiliency, Urban Policy, and Methods and Finance.  I was invited to speak at three sessions:
1) how to be successful in the energy transition, at which I obviously described our muni efforts; 
1) energy efficiency in buildings, at which I talked about our building codes, Energy Smart and Smart Regs; and 
3) how to strengthen infrastructure system resiliency,
 at which I described our preparations for flood, drought, and fire, and focused on the 2013 floods.
 
At several of the plenary sessions the issues of land use and need to intensify uses in urban areas was repeatedly noted.  It was also interesting to note that everyone – even some at high levels of government – assumes that COP 21 will again provide little tangible results from countries, and thus is it essential that cities step up and play an important role.  ICLEI is also involved in this, as are some other organizations Boulder belongs to (like USDN, the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, whose director I met and spoke with at some length), and NLC, which will very likely be sending a delegation to COP 21 (I’m trying to be part of that group).
 
National League of Cities (NLC) Congressional City Conference, also held in DC as always.  As an NLC Board member, I attended the legislative committee meeting at which we discussed the various agendas of the policy committees for 2015.  I’ve previously noted much concern about how these policy committees (like EENR -energy/environment – and TIS –transportation/infrastructure, on which Macon serves) would be treated in 2015 and beyond.  I’m still concerned about this, since there continue to be efforts to “rein in” the committees and make them more answerable to the Board, but the legislative committee, at least, supported the committee work programs.
 
I also attended the EENR meeting, and they will largely focus on water issues this year (affordability, impacts of climate change, financing, etc.).  I know that TIS had a rather awful meeting, but Macon can say more about that.  NLC continues
 to focus on Marketplace Fairness, transportation reauthorization, immigration, protecting municipal bonds, and some other good issues.  I also attended a couple of meetings of the University Communities Council, on whose steering committee I sit.
 
I moderated – in the true sense of asking questions – a panel on climate change, which included a panelist from the French Embassy who ran the Focus 2015 forum.  And I served on a panel that discussed the “sharing economy”; while the others mostly focused on companies like Uber and Lyft, I of course spoke about short-term rentals.  This session was well-attended as many cities are facing similar issues, and there were quite a few questions about our proposed approach.  The main event of the conference was an appearance by the President (first time at an NLC conference since Clinton), but quite a few cabinet secretaries also spoke.
 
US36 Mayors and Commissioners Coalition (MCC), lobbying trip to DC.  This was the annual visit, and as always we made the rounds of Colorado’s entire congressional delegation, and also spoke with staff of some key committees as well as the federal highways and railways agencies.  Our main issues included: completion of US36 BRT; asking for help in getting a TIGER grant for bus-on-shoulder on the now-unidirectional managed lane segment along I-25; “fixing” the definition of BRT so that our non-exclusive lanes (such as on US36 and certainly along arterials) could compete for certain federal grants; making it easier to create quiet zones; reauthorization of the transportation bill with increased funding.  I think we made our case well and will likely get support on several of these issues, notably the TIGER application.  And we learned about some opportunities for federal funding that perhaps will provide some new funding possibilities.  As usual, the goal was to remind people about our projects and issues so that when the time comes for requesting their support or following up on specific items we’ll be remembered as a strong coalition that made a good case for our mobility needs.
 
 
Eco:nomics conference put on by the Wall Street Journal, held in Santa Barbara last week.  I was invited to this unusual (at least for us) meeting to speak on a panel on urban sustainability issues, with my specific issue being the muni effort.  All of the panel sessions were moderated by WSJ reporters, and they and the audience asked questions.  While I did indeed speak about the muni, I was also asked about the fracking debate in Colorado, and commented on some broader sustainability/energy issues as well along with my co-panelist, who is the chief sustainability officer from L.A.
 
This was a rather exclusive affair, with CEOs and leaders from energy companies and some environmental groups.  I think it’s safe to say that most of the speakers – while generally agreeing that the energy industry is undergoing fairly
 rapid change and that renewables are getting cost-competitive – still felt that coal isn’t going away and that the big utilities need to stay that way in order to maintain a reliable system.  There were a couple of smaller breakout sessions, and I purposely chose to attend two that focused on the utility business.  One was moderated by the CEO of American Electric Power, the other by the CEO of PG&E.  The former seemed more open to the idea of changes to the utility business, but the latter, even when questioned
by me a couple of times, didn’t want to really entertain any serious concept of change.
 
We also heard from former EPA head Lisa Jackson, who now is the sustainability officer at Apple; can’t say I was impressed with their proud efforts at greening their US operations since those produce all of 2% of their total emissions.  However, the current EPA head Gina McCarthy was, as always, terrific in defending the agency’s efforts and their new mercury and carbon rules for power plants, both of which are under considerable legal and congressional attack.
 
Along the way, I stopped in Santa Monica to see a councilmember friend of mine (who also serves with me on ICLEI’s regional executive committee).  She arranged to have some sustainability staff meet with us; I have some materials from them that I’ll leave in the council office.  We chatted about growth, housing, homelessness, transportation, etc., and it should be no surprise at all that pretty much all of the concerns/debates/challenges/controversies and general upset are quite similar to those in Boulder.  They are, however, getting a true light-rail line shortly that will connect their downtown to downtown L.A.  Santa Monica is surrounded by L.A. (well, even L.A. can’t figure out how to annex the ocean
) and is seemingly more urban than Boulder, but is also more rental
but they have rent control, although it is effectively controlled by the state and has its problems.  Their main GHG emissions come from transportation and they’re working on that, although I think it’s safe to say we’re doing more (except for that light-rail!).
 
In a related note, while at Focus 2015 and the NLC conference, I chatted briefly with the mayor and a councilmember from Palo Alto.  The mayor is one of the new “residentialists” who took control with the goal of slowing/stopping growth, and the councilmember isn’t.  I intend to follow up when I get a chance.  I also chatted at length with my friend and NLC Board colleague who has long been on the council in Mountain View, where the no/slow-growthers did not take over the council, although – of course – the issues are much the same.  Both Palo Alto and Mountain View are smaller than Boulder but with (I believe) far more in-commuting and jobs, and are obviously in the midst of a high-tech boom.
 
At the end of the meeting I spent some time with Arial Calonne, Boulder’s ex-city attorney and now doing that job for Santa Barbara.  We had a similar conversation, and although Santa Barbara is quite different in that it’s not part of a metro area, they share many if not most of our issues and are – of course – debating growth issues.  More interestingly, perhaps, is that due to a California (not federal) law they are just switching to a district council system from an all at-large system in order to provide for two Latino seats in a city that is, somewhat surprisingly to me, 37% Latino.  And then I had the delight of driving back to the airport on a Friday afternoon; don’t try this in L.A.!