[BoulderCouncilHotline] NLC City Summit

[Appelbaum, Matt]

Colleagues: A final report, this one regarding the National League of Cities conference in Charlotte, NC that I just attended along with Bob Yates.  I served on NLC's Board of Directors for three years, and Bob last year joined the EENR (Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources) Policy Committee that I had been on for six years.  Some interesting sessions included:

-- I spoke on a panel titled "Building and Preserving Affordable Housing in Strong Markets," which was well-attended by a very engaged audience representing the many cities that share some of our problems with the high cost of housing.  We got many comments that the presentation was extremely helpful as many cities are just starting to understand this issue and explore potential approaches for dealing with it - and thus the policies and tools that Boulder has been implementing were of considerable interest.  Big thanks to Jeff Yegian, who provided me with an initial outline and also spent time with me talking through the key issues.  I think a number of the attendees will be accessing our housing toolkit and other materials on the city's website.

-- At a meeting of the University Communities Council that both Bob and I attended, there was a very thoughtful discussion from representatives of university cities (including the mayor of Charlottesville, VA) on the difficult topic of first amendment and free speech issues on campus.

-- A session on connected vehicles described several pilot projects underway to connect cars and trucks to roadway sensors in order to reduce congestion and improve safety.  Clearly this technology will be coming in the near future and will be integrated into autonomous vehicles, but there is still much work to be done - and expensive infrastructure to be built - to better understand its potential.

-- And Bob and I represented Boulder at the Digital Cities Survey Awards reception, where we picked up Boulder's second-place award for cities in our size category.

--Matt
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