Happy holidays, Superior! 2019 has flown by, and while I’m not quite ready for it to be over, I am looking forward to the new goals and challenges ahead in 2020. Have you started thinking about your new year’s resolutions yet? Making (and keeping) those is always enjoyable to me, but I’m also excited to get a few more items ticked off my list this year before I completely shift forward to next year.

This morning, I hosted November’s First Friday at 1500 Coalton Road along with Trustee Sandie Hammerly and Trustee Neal Shah. 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 hope it is still 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 December First Friday include:

• Downtown Superior: Several residents from Downtown Superior attended to express thoughts and concerns about Monday’s development application for blocks 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and parcel K (for which we opened a public hearing at our November 18 meeting). The bulk of the discussion focused on the developer’s request for a zoning change to potentially allow live-work units. You can read overviews of the proposal here and here in the staff cover memo (or read all 200+ pages of the documents on our agenda here), and I encouraged residents to share their opinions with the Board by emailing them by Sunday at 12pm to townboard@superiorcolorado.gov (copy phyllish@superiorcolorado.gov to ensure your comments are included in the public record), or coming to the meeting. I would just ask that if you come in person to the meeting, you provide new commentary rather than reading a print out of the email you sent (I promise, we read the emails!), since any public comment made during a meeting takes away from the time we have as a Board for discussion / deliberation.
• Snow Removal: A resident stated that “Superior does the best job of anyone in the universe of clearing the roads and sidewalks.” Wow, thanks for that feedback! However, the crosswalks and bus stops are never cleared, which makes pedestrian travel difficult. Another resident mentioned that the snow made it impossible to get into the new Oerman-Roche trailhead. I’ve passed this feedback onto our Town Manager for future storms. (Update: Manager Magley let me know that “Our first priority is to clear the roads, which can block these areas, but we always go back and clear them once the storm has passed. Give the amount of snow we had the access drive for the trailhead was not a high priority, with smaller storms this will get done.”)
• Crossing Marshall Road: Several residents raised another concern with the pedestrian crossing on Marshall Road at Second Ave; they have a group that walks from Original Town to Louisville three days a week, and find it to be very dangerous and inconvenient. About a year ago, I went out with this group and saw what they were talking about – there is a cut in the median that allows for a pedestrian refuge, but there is no crosswalk striping, no light, and perhaps most strangely, the grass is not cut / sloped / stepped so you kind of have to scramble up the embankment on the shopping center side (while hoping you can do it fast enough to not get hit by a car). I am hoping this can be addressed and will also bringing it up next week in my one-on-one with the Town Manager.
• Hodgson-Harris Reservoir: A resident of Saddlebrooke expressed concerns about the Parq at Rock Creek development on the Zaharias property – that we’ve spent a lot of effort preserving wildlife on the reservoir and that development could negate that work. Since I can’t discuss a pending application, I’d like to instead remind everyone about the development projects page linked from our town website, which can tell you the latest status of each application as well as provide materials for you to peruse.
• Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport noise: Finally, a resident mentioned that the Louisville City Council seems to be moving forward with re-hiring ABCx2 as our airport consultants, and asked whether the Superior Town Board has signed an agreement to contract with them again. As per the original contract ABCx2 drew up, a key deliverable was “Work plans detailing specific tasks, stakeholder roles and responsibilities and timeline for implementation.” This major deliverable has not been completed / provided to the Town, and as I’ve stated publicly and also written before, I do not believe we should be paying any additional money to ABCx2 until they complete the contract we have already signed with them. However, while we were on the topic of the airport, this morning, RMMA updated their “Fly Quiet” program (details here, and brochure here), and issued a press release explaining that they did this “to lessen the impact of aircraft activity on adjacent neighborhoods”. I’m really thrilled with this development – in my opinion, a simple reminder to everyone to be more neighborly is always a good starting point to conflict resolution.

Hope to see you at next month’s First Friday! If you have thoughts on these or other topics, I would encourage you to attend our next meeting on Monday December 9th at Town Hall and speak up in public comment, or email the full Board at townboard@superiorcolorado.gov.