Hello, neighbors! Today was a beautiful day, and I was thrilled to kick it off co-hosting April’s First Friday with Trustee Sandie Hammerly. As First Fridays are casual in nature, and we often break into simultaneous discussions of different topics on the two sides of the table, it’s tough for me to fully recap the discussion. However, I thought it would be useful for me to give a short rundown of the topics I heard, which can help provide a pulse of the town.

Topics discussed at April’s First Friday include:

• The future gondola connecting Superior Town Center to Rock Creek: April Fool’s 🙂
• Rocky Mountain Stewardship Council: At our Board meeting on Monday April 8, we’ll be discussing a resolution being brought before the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council to oppose oil and gas operations at Rocky Flats; several residents asked questions around the positions of both sides.
• Pavilion in Purple Park: A resident asked why the roof was being taken off – presumably for some kind of repair, but it’s only a year and a half old. Trustee Sandie Hammerly contacted Parks Director Patrick Hammerly, and learned that roofs throughout town are being replaced due to hail damage, which was covered by an insurance claim.
• Rocky Mountain Airport: More noise concerns were raised about RMMA, since a 737 and a 757 flew over homes last week. Resident Laurie Muir suggested that other residents use FlightAware.com to look up offending plane tail numbers (use airport code BJC for Broomfield/JeffCo Airport), and submit complaints via this form on the JeffCo website.
• Speeds on Yarrow Circle and Rock Creek Circle: A resident expressed concerns about speeds coming down Yarrow Circle toward Rock Creek Circle, and I let him know that Rock Creek Circle, at least, is under consideration for traffic calming measures. This was discussed at the Transportation & Safety Committee Meeting on Monday April 1st, where we also talked about formalizing our process to implement traffic calming in various areas. Stay tuned for more details on this!
• Construction hours for Lanterns Lane: Resident Suzanne Devenny had concerns about Lanterns Lane development occurring as early as 7am. I confirmed with Town Manager Matt Magley that construction is acceptable beginning at 7am, but if anyone is aware of construction happening earlier, it should be reported to the town.
• Future of Tesla dealership: With Tesla financial difficulties in the news, there were concerns about the service center they are building on McCaslin – will that still open? We received an update just this week that Tesla remains fully committed to opening the store this summer.
• North Pool: Resident and Rock Creek Flyers Coach Jen Koschmann raised concerns about the fee increase (from $4000 to $6000) to have the North pool opened off-season for private groups. The Flyers were unable to afford this increase, and so another swim group chose to rent the pool instead. Pulling up the fee schedule (linked here) approved in our budget discussions last year, I noticed that while we charge different rates for residents and non-residents for hourly rentals, our fee is the same for both groups for monthly rentals – something we may want to consider addressing in the future. Later in the day, our Board was assured by Town Staff that the agreement with the other swim group is not displacing the Flyers in any way, and has been made in agreement with their Board.
• Population growth: A resident asked if there is any kind of limit on how big the population of Superior can become, limiting development accordingly; he pointed out that other communities have parking issues as a result of high density. While we do not have a limit on population per se, we do have minimum requirements for how much parking there should be for different zoning areas; for residential development, the parking space minimums are tied to dwelling size. We also have height limits based on zoning, so you don’t have to worry about Manhattan-sized skyscrapers popping up! Trustee Hammerly also pointed out that any development in Superior needs to have 40% open space (note that’s not capital Open Space). You can view our Town Design Guidelines here.

Hope to see you at next month’s First Friday! In the meantime, our next Town Board Meeting is Monday April 8th, and we also have a Town Board Retreat coming up on Monday April 15th. If you have thoughts on these or other topics, I would encourage you to attend the Meeting at Town Hall and speak up in public comment, or email the full Board at townboard@superiorcolorado.gov.