Happy November, neighbors! This last week has been quite a quick entry to winter, which I can’t say I’m thrilled by. As much as I love to ski, I am keeping my fingers crossed that things get sunny and warm so we can enjoy a bit more hiking before it’s really time for snow sports. To that end, Halloween was definitely chillier than I would have liked, so I hope you had a great Halloween with your families in spite of the weather! I will now shamelessly share a picture of me celebrating the holiday with my adorable nephews 🙂

This morning, I hosted November’s First Friday at 1500 Coalton Road along with Trustee Sandie Hammerly and Trustee Kevin Ryan. 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 November’s First Friday include:

• RTD: A resident of Calamante pointed out that the RTD Flex Ride doesn’t go to Old Town Louisville, and that getting to Louisville using public transit is extremely difficult as the 228 bus route is more than a mile from her home. Trustee Hammerly said she would bring this up at the next meeting of the Denver Regional Council of Government (DRCOG) to see if Old Town Louisville could be considered as a Flex Ride destination. (More on Superior public transit options here.)
• Airport noise: Several residents asked about further progress on addressing noise from Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (RMMA) since our October 14th Town Board Meeting. Since that meeting, we have not yet been able to revisit the topic, and will likely be unable to do so until the new year. At First Friday, we talked a lot about the need to gather data that will help us identify the bad actors / worst noise offenders, so we can target them rather than punitively trying to limit all the flights.
• Sales taxes: A resident noticed that there were different sales taxes on receipts across Target, Whole Foods, and Costco. With these three retailers, the difference is likely caused by what’s being purchased (e.g., food vs household goods); however, if you were to compare Safeway and Whole Foods, for example, they are in different tax districts. Unfortunately, we do not as a town have the ability to audit sales taxes, unless we were to become a Home Rule municipality.
• Zaharias development: A resident asked about the Zaharias property, which is currently under review for development; as such, members of our Board cannot comment on the application. However, I’d like to remind residents that we have a Development Projects page on our town website, where you can see a status report for all pending applications, a map of Downtown Superior with links to approved / pending applications, and see detailed plans for everything in progress. It’s a great resource that I hope you find helpful!
• 1500 Coalton Road: Once again, we held this month’s First Friday at 1500 Coalton Road (the former Land Rover facility), and the location again worked very well. At our last Board meeting (recap coming this weekend!), we selected an architect to design the space, and will soon commence community engagement to ultimately determine the amenities and design.
• 88th Street improvements: In Monday’s Board Meeting, we also provided direction to Town Staff to move forward with designs for the planned 2020 improvements to 88th Street that include preparing the right-of-way on either side to be able to expand it to four lanes. Note that we are not widening the road to four lanes in 2020; we are just taking advantage of the construction period to prepare the area for this as a future possibility.
• Power line undergrounding: Finally, a resident spoke up about the need for the power lines and telephone lines in Original Town to be relocated underground. This is an expensive proposition; however, in our budget approval meeting on Monday, we pulled $1.3M out of the capital improvement projects budget (from a proposal to build the Promenade Drive road-to-nowhere next year rather than waiting until it is needed). This could potentially help fund the undergrounding as well as other projects.

Edited to add: a resident has contacted me about a few other topics we touched on that I didn’t have detailed notes on (Rocky Mountain Fire, Town Center development); I’ve invited him to share his recap in the comments to make this post more complete!

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 November 18th at Town Hall and speak up in public comment, or email the full Board at townboard@superiorcolorado.gov.