Happy New Year, neighbors! On Friday January 4, the Board of Trustees held our first “First Friday” forum of 2019. This month’s session was hosted by Trustee Sandie Hammerly and me, and we were joined by Trustee Ken Lish, representative Ryan Hanson from U.S. Senator Cory Gardner’s office, and about a dozen residents.

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 covered, which can help provide a pulse of the town:

Topics discussed on Friday include:

• Disc golf: Ray Woodruff from Mile High Disc Golf attended and let us know that the National Women’s Disc Golf Tournament is again looking to have their event in Purple Park in August (date TBD); they plan to have a non-competitive residents event the Thursday afternoon before. This sounds fun and I’m hoping to attend!
• Oil & gas: Several residents inquired about the progress against preventing oil & gas drilling in Superior. The Board has hired Attorney Matt Sura to represent us, and at the next Board meeting we will be considering a six month moratorium.
• Home Rule: At the December Board Retreat, the Board discussed the potential to become a Home Rule municipality (more details here). Residents asked questions around whether it would be difficult to write a charter (potentially, but over 100 other municipalities have done this successfully), and whether this would improve our ability to collect sales taxes (it may or it may not, depending on how accurate our sales tax collection is today). On the topic of sales taxes, a small PSA: when shopping online, if you enter the 80027 zip code and the site autopopulates the city to Louisville, you must change the city to Superior in order for the taxes to be remitted to Superior rather than to Louisville. Check the addresses on any packages you receive to make sure!
• Application noticing: A resident expressed concerns around the noticing of the drilling application, specifically that the business only need notifiy the Town and not residents directly. While it wouldn’t be feasible for all applicants to notify the general public, this is part of why I believe improving transparency and communications is key – so that citizens are fully informed. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes, and I want to open those inner workings up to residents and make it easy for you to get information.
• Open communications / cost of CORA requests: On a related note, a resident expressed frustration with the difficulty and cost of requesting documents via the Colorado Open Records Act. Again, this is why I’d like us to start proactively publishing our (already public) emails – so that residents can get the information they need without the time / expense of filing an Open Records request.
• Rocky Mountain Airport: There was discussion addressing noise from Rocky Mountain Airport. Resident Brian Lavash told the group that the FAA provides funds to airports every year for noise studies (which cost $100K-$150K), but that the study has to be requested by the airport itself. Resident Laurie Muir asked the Town to focus on the flight school noise (which she believes is the bulk of the noise) rather than trying to tackle general aviation noise.
• Composting: A resident suggested that the Town add composting to our yard waste site; I emailed our Town Manager to inquire about this, and learned that the issue is that our Honey Creek Lane site is simply not big enough to accommodate anything more than yard waste. However, Waste Connections does offer curbside composting pickup from April to October for $120/year – more details here.
• Speed humps on Castle Peak: A resident inquired about the status of the speed humps on Castle Peak, which have been removed for the winter. In September, the Transportation & Safety Committee decided that the speed hump at the bottom of the hill will be made permanent in the spring, while the other two temporary speed humps will be redeployed to slightly different positions on Castle Peak. More details here.

Hope to see you at next month’s First Friday! In the meantime, our next Town Board Work Session and Town Board Meeting is Monday January 14th. 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.