Town Board Meeting: February 24, 20208 min read
- Feb 27, 2020
- town meetings
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Hi neighbors! In Monday night’s Town Board Work Session and Meeting, we heard a presentation on the Downtown Superior construction progress and Sign Program; approved an agreement with ABCx2 Consultants for services around airport noise mitigation; approved an intergovernmental agreement with the Boulder County Sheriff’s office for law enforcement services; approved an agreement with Earth Green Fence to paint, stain, and maintain the town-owned fences; approved the 2020 OSAC Work Plan; and heard the final presentation for the Cultural Arts Master Plan. Ready to find out more on what happened? As usual, you may read this post in written form, or scroll to the bottom for a video recap.
Disclaimer: While I do my best to represent an honest and accurate portrayal of meetings and events, the following should be considered an editorial that represents one person’s interpretation of the meetings. At the request of my fellow Board members, I am keeping their points anonymous rather than trying to attribute my interpretation to them personally. For the most unbiased and complete information, I would encourage residents to watch the meeting video itself and draw their own conclusions – visit the town website at SuperiorColorado.gov for the official meeting video and meeting minutes. Finally, I’d also encourage you to check out EngagedCitizens.us, which is a fantastic free tool created by one of our own residents. Engaged Citizens includes a repository of agendas, documents, and meeting videos, and allows you to search within a video to jump to critical parts. I hope you find it as helpful as I do!
Item 2D – Public Comment
Monday’s Board meeting kicked off with public comment, in which a resident asked why the Superior Metro District funds can’t be used for undergrounding power lines in Original Town, and another resident expressed his concerns about letting Louisville take the lead in working with ABCx2 airport noise consultants. Finally, Superior Chamber of Commerce Executive Director TJ Sullivan announced that Tesla will be hosting their ribbon cutting and grand opening celebration this Thursday from 5pm-7pm, and that the Chamber is hosting a food and spare change drive this Saturday from 10am-2pm to benefit Coal Creek Meals on Wheels and Sister Carmen Ministries as part of the national Leap of Kindness Day.
Item 2E – Presentation – Downtown Superior Update and Sign Program
Bill Jencks of RC Superior attended to present an update on the construction in Downtown Superior; click here to view the presentation with maps of each block and the construction progress. It’s a great overview of what’s coming where and when! For the mixed use town core that we approved in December 2019, which many local residents are eagerly awaiting, RC Superior is currently working on permits, and is planning to start construction in the middle of this year.
Along with a designer, Mr. Jencks also shared the comprehensive sign plan for Downtown Superior – linked here. In addition to some natural rock signs with retailer logos, RC Superior is also contemplating a 90-foot tall sign along US-36 with a 20’x30′ LED screen (see rendering at right). This structure would again highlight the retailers in Downtown Superior, but also use the LED to alert people to events in Downtown Superior. Several members of the Board had concerns about this sign. I was not as concerned with it being a lighted LED sign – I like that it could periodically change so that events could be displayed rather than a static list of retailers (as long as it’s not actually changing and blinking every few seconds while people are looking at it). However, 90 feet of height and 600 square foot of LED is essentially a Jumbotron – which I don’t want either blocking the view of the mountains or making Superior look like an industrial area. I would like the developer to make this sign significantly smaller to be an aesthetic fit for our town.
Item 3 – Consent Agenda
Next, our Board passed consent agenda items A, C, and E – including meeting minutes, an intergovernmental agreement with Boulder County for a 2020 election polling center, and the appointment of David Weingarden to the CAPS committee.
I pulled 3B from the consent agenda – an agreement with ABCx2 Consultants for services around Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (RMMA) noise mitigation. I was really disappointed to see this contract note that one of ABCx2’s primary deliverables is to ensure that details around phase 1 recommendations are captured. This was a point I made repeatedly last year: that ABCx2 did not complete the work they promised, and that whenever we pushed on it (e.g., asking for a timeline, as detailed in the contract), they ignored the feedback. And now ABCx2 is asking for another contract and more money to complete the work they promised for last year’s contract? This year’s contract also states that Louisville will take point on coordination with ABCx2, which makes me even more concerned that the ABCx2 will not be responsive to Superior’s asks. When it came time to vote on the agreement, in spite of my misgivings, it passed 6-1. To the community, I would like to be clear that my vote against this contract in no way means I think this work is unnecessary; I strongly believe we need to be more proactive in working with RMMA to address the noise concerns.
Another member of the Board pulled item 3D, an amendment to the intergovernmental agreement with the Boulder County Sheriff’s office for law enforcement services, to ask about an incident in December 2018 where there was an armed robbery at Walgreens. While Walgreens is in Broomfield, it’s right on the Superior border, and many residents were upset that there was no alert / notification when the suspect had allegedly escaped into the Yarrow neighborhood of Rock Creek. Sergeant Chamberlin was at our meeting and told us that residents could sign up at boco911alert.com to be notified of emergency situations at chosen locations via phone, text, or email. The agreement passed unanimously.
Finally, a member of the Board pulled item 3F, an agreement with Earth Green Fence to paint, stain, and maintain the town-owned fences. The new Rock Creek HOA has indicated an appetite to change the paint color of the fences from their current yellow, so I agreed with the Board member who pulled the item that it might make more sense to hold off on this contract until a new paint color could potentially be selected and approved. While this might be a lengthy approval process, which requires at least 50% of HOA members to vote for a change, I think it would go a long way toward galvanizing residents if our Board would take a stand indicating that we would like to paint our 153,000 linear feet of fence another color. However, the Board voted 5-2 to approve this agreement as-is, with Mayor Pro Tem Mark Lacis and I as the dissenting votes.
Item 4 – Proposed Annual Work Plan from OSAC
Our Board asked representatives of each of our Advisory Committees to present their work plans for the year, for discussion and approval. At Monday’s Board meeting, we heard and approved the Open Space Advisory Committee (OSAC) work plan – linked here.
Item 5 – Cultural Arts Master Plan Presentation
The Town’s Cultural Arts and Public Spaces (CAPS) Committee has been working with urban planning and consultants Happy City since June 2019 to develop a Master Plan that creates a common vision for the role that arts, culture and creativity will play in the Town. Happy City’s Mitchell Reardon presented the Board with the final Cultural Arts Master Plan, which includes five big ideas for creative placemaking in Superior:
- Superior Art Path: A network of walking and cycling routes activated with public art installations and points of interest for arts and culture, the Art Path also serves to connect Superior’s neighborhoods, schools, parks and commercial centers.
- Mobility Freedom for All: Combine public art with transportation safety to create safer, more accessible streets for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike.
- Public Art: Implementing public art across Superior will strengthen the town’s identity while also creating more vibrant and attractive spaces for residents to gather and connect. The interventions proposed here will contribute to Colorado arts and culture while also boosting the town’s economic growth by attracting and retaining more visitors and residents.
- Events and Programming: Initiatives to support opportunities for Superior residents to connect and socialize. The recommendation is a direct outcome of residents’ desire to socialize and build meaningful relationships within their community.
- Elevation of Creative Capital: Intentionally support and boost the town’s creative sector, including local artists and creative businesses.
Each of the five big ideas has a detailed section of the Master Plan, describing what it is, the goals this idea would achieve, specific interventions / tactics, and a map indicating where it would make sense to implement. The Master Plan also includes a five year budget based on a funding assumption of $150,000 per year, as well as suggestions on sources for additional funding and potential future partnerships. Finally, I was happy to see that the Master Plan includes success metrics – after all, you can’t manage what you don’t measure!
The full Master Plan can be found here – it’s a good read! Thank you so much to the CAPS committee for shepherding this through the ideation process.
Wrap Up
Thank you so much for taking the time to read / listen to this recap – I hope it is helpful! Our Board is always open to hearing your comments, questions, and concerns – you may always email your feedback to townboard@superiorcolorado.gov, or to me specifically at lauras@superiorcolorado.gov. As a reminder, any messages sent to a government email are part of the public record and will have your name attached; if you feel the need to write in anonymously, you may always comment at the bottom of my blog post recaps.
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