Hi neighbors! In Monday night’s Town Board Meeting, we heard a presentation from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office regarding the shooting incident on 8/30; issued a resolution to join the ICLEI Race to Zero and commit to a 63% reduction in emissions by 2030 and a 100% reduction in emissions by 2050; heard a presentation on the Boulder County Co-Responder Team; interviewed resident Amanda Vaughan for potential appointment to the Planning Commission; discussed the closure of McCaslin Road from 9/20-10/8; agreed to send our landscaping / snow removal contract out for rebid; and reopened a public hearing to consider a final development plan (FDP) from Ranch Capital and Remington Homes for Blocks 26 and 27 in Downtown Superior. Ready to find out more on what happened? As usual, you may read this post in written form, subscribe to the Laura for Superior podcast, 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. At the request of my fellow Board members, I am not attributing any points to them. For the most unbiased and complete information, I encourage residents to watch the meeting video and draw their own conclusions – visit the town website at SuperiorColorado.gov for the official meeting video and meeting minutes.

Item 2E – Public Comment

During public comment, resident Gladys Forshee spoke up about alleged double billing of Xcel charges due to the project to move Original Town power lines underground. Resident Brad Walker attended to provide his perspective on Monday’s Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport community noise roundtable.

Item 2F1 – Presentation – Boulder County Sheriff’s Office Report on 8/30 Shooting Incident

Next, we heard a presentation from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office regarding the shooting incident on August 30, 2021. Following reports of gunshots in Downtown Superior, Sheriff’s Office staff responded and were able to take the suspect into custody without incident or injuries. I want to say thank you to our law enforcement for their handling of this incident, and am relieved that there was a peaceful outcome.

Item 2F2 – Presentation – ACES Recommendation to Join the ICLEI Race to Zero

Our Advisory Committee for Environmental Sustainability (ACES) Chair Mike Foster presented an overview of the Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) 150 Cities Race to Zero Initiative. ICLEI has invited the Town to join as one of 150 municipalities across the country who will commit to participating in the global effort to cut emissions by at least half by 2030 and to zero by 2050.

I firmly believe we need to take drastic action quickly in order to mitigate climate change; however, I was very nervous about the targets set as part of this initiative. Zero emissions may never be possible, and we acknowledged that it’s not achievable with today’s technology; we’d need to have faith that we can get there with future technological advances we can’t conceive of yet. Furthermore, based on preliminary discussions with ICLEI, the Town’s 2030 reduction target would be set at 63.4% below 2019 emission levels. While this is less than nine years away, we don’t currently have a plan to achieve this reduction either. Although I fully support us working with ICLEI in order to identify strategies to reduce our emissions (and hopefully even reach these goals!), I did not feel comfortable committing to these targets without any plan to get there. To me, this would be like putting a down payment on a $10M house without having any idea how I could make enough money to afford the mortgage – no matter how much I need that house, it’s not a good idea to commit without a plan.

The resolution passed 6-1, with me as the dissenting vote. In spite of my vote, I am thrilled that we will be working with ICLEI and the other 149 communities to reduce our emissions, and certainly commit to supporting the pursuit of these goals! I look forward to working with ACES to develop our plan.

Item 2F3 – Presentation – Boulder County Co-Responder Program

Finally, we heard a presentation from Jennine Hall, Program Manager for the Boulder County Co-Responder Team, explaining the program. The Boulder County Co-Responder Program works with law enforcement to better respond and de-escalate situations that involve mental health, substance abuse, death of a loved one, etc. The Program is currently funded by a five year grant that is in year three. The presentation was very impressive, and with mental health issues on the rise and needing special attention, I’m thrilled we have this program in our community!

Item 3 – Planning Commission Interview

Next, we interviewed resident Amanda Vaughan for potential appointment to the Planning Commission. We will vote on this appointment at a future meeting.

Item 4 – Consent Agenda

Next, our Board unanimously passed the consent agenda – including meeting minutes, a proclamation for Extra Mile Day, an alcohol permit for Purple Park, and the appointment for Brek Hoenninger to the Superior Youth Leadership Council (SYLC). We pulled the approval of our last meeting minutes for the correction of a typo, and it too passed unanimously.

Item 6 – McCaslin Road Closure Update

You may have noticed the lane reduction on McCaslin between SH128 and Coalton to construct drainage improvements; with those complete, we now need to do a full restoration of the road surface itself. Town Staff has determined that certain improvements would be difficult to impossible to construct under alternating traffic flow; furthermore, the milling operation for the entire stretch will leave a rough surface that would be dangerous for bicyclists. With this in mind, Staff proposed closing the road from 9/20-10/8 to complete these changes (it’s actually anticipated to only take two weeks, but could slip due to weather or other unforeseen delays). At that point the bottom lift of pavement would be in place to provide a smooth surface for motorists and bicyclists, and the final lift of asphalt would be installed in mid-October using alternating traffic flow.

A member of the Board proposed delaying the project until we can put in a roundabout at McCaslin and SH128, which is something we have anticipated for several years down the line; otherwise, we’ll be closing this critical stretch of roadway twice. However, drawing up plans for a roundabout would at a minimum require delaying the road reconstruction until spring – and Public Works Director Alex Ariniello said that he anticipates whenever we do build a roundabout, we’d build a bypass road to avoid closing the intersection for months, so moving this roundup up wouldn’t necessarily help.

The construction is currently slated to run from 7am to 5pm; another member of the Board proposed extending those hours to potentially shorten the dates of closure. I felt strongly that we should not start construction before 7am, for the many residents who live along this stretch of road, but offered that continuing the work from 5pm until dark could help us speed up the timeline without significantly impacting neighbors. We agreed to move forward with the construction next week.

Item 7 – Landscape Vendor Discussion

In October 2020, our Board approved a $1.06M agreement with Brightview Landscape Services for 2021, with an option to renew for up to four consecutive years. However, we have received a number of complaints about landscaping and snow removal service in the last year, and in June 2021, considered terminating the contract. Now, Town Staff are in the process of evaluating Brightview’s performance, and wanted the Board’s input on whether to renew the contract for 2022, or rebid the contract to potential other vendors.

A large part of our initial decision to go with Brightview last year was due to their ability to provide an emission reduction strategy at no cost, for a 25% reduction in emission per year of the agreement. Given our commitment to join the ICLEI Race to Zero, I thought it was important to consider that there may be no viable alternative vendors who could provide a similar reduction in emissions (which we now need). In 2020, Brightview submitted both the lowest cost overall and the lowest costs for the most used labor services, so it’s likely that sending this out to bid and requiring emissions reductions would result in much higher costs than what we are currently paying. However, since we had just put together the RFP last year, my understanding from Town Staff was that the RFP would likely not require too much updating to send out to bid again. Furthermore, we were told that we would still have the option to renew our existing contract with Brightview after attempting to rebid.

We decided to send the contract out for rebid.

Item 5 – FDP for 22 Single-Family Homes on Blocks 26 and 27 in Downtown Superior

Finally, we reopened a public hearing to consider a final development plan (FDP) from Ranch Capital and Remington Homes for 5 single family homes on Block 26 and 17 single family homes on Block 27 in Downtown Superior. At our last Board meeting, we heard the initial presentation from the developer, asked a few questions, and took public comment. On Monday night, we continued our questions, with a heavy-focus on the side-loaded garages and parking. After a brief recess where our Town Attorney met with the developers, we decided not to move forward with a vote on this proposal; instead, the developer will come back with a potentially revised proposal next month; a motion passed unanimously to continue this to Monday October 25. As this application is still under consideration, I am not legally permitted to comment on it outside of the formal Board meetings, so will refrain from robust commentary at this time.

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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