Sprawl and Transportation Committee

Minutes

Committee Meeting - May 11th 2006

Action items are formatted like this.

Transit Village Charette pre-interview: Diana, Betsy, and Bill summarized their pre-interview with the BTV charette consultants.

Biodiesel

Different jurisdictions have tried different approaches to promoting the use of biodiesel. We discussed the city-county initiative to lure a E85 distributor in Boulder. We briefly discussed the possibility of SC sponsoring an educational forum on the range of alternative fuels-biodiesel, ethanol, etc. We encouraged Eric to write a letter to the editor encouraging the inclusion of biodiesel in the alternative fuels mix.

Bicycle Project in the TMP

Alan has distributed and briefly discussed a list of approximately 10 high-priority bicycle projects that BBC that were removed in the last TMP update that they believe should be added back. BBC has asked for IPG support. S&T committee voted unanimously to support the BBC proposal.

Annexation initiative

Steve Pomerance, Lisa Morzel, and Pat Shanks were committee guests to discuss the annexation initiative. We continued the discussion from last month in the context of recent unanimous Boulder city council decision to "keep the door open" to additional Area III annexation proposals beyond the 5-year major update process called for in the BVCP. Eric, who abstained at last month's vote, had supplied through the committee listserv his comments on the initiative. After further discussion, S&T voted 5-1 to recommend that ExCom endorse the inititaive. ExCom meets Monday, May 15.

General discussion on Growth

Steve, Lisa, and Pat also joined us in a discussion of growth in general, particularly in the context of the S&T principles in support of compact, ped-friendly, transit-accessible urban development. We accept that all growth has environmental iimpacts, including energy, water, open space, air quality, etc. and also social issues associated with growth (e.g. affordable housing, agricultural lands, infrastructure costs to community). All growth should be sustainable (sample metrics for sustainablility: carbon-neutral, net energy impact, transportation impacts). S&T should consider these overall environmental impacts when new development is proposed, and if justifiable then apply principles of good urban development. Betsy will check for consistency with national SC policies regarding, e.g. evaluation of carbon neutrality, how to counter-balance the environmental impacts of new development.

Initiative 76

Mark is involved with a proposed ballot initiative that would limit residential growth in the Denver metro region to 1% per year until 2010 and require 30% of new residential units to be affordable. Counties would then vote in 2010 whether to continue the limits. S&T generally likes the idea but haven't had time to study the issue in detail. See http://www.coloradogrowthlimit.com/. We also had questions about SC jurisdiction for this issue - since it's a regional question, can IPG take a position or is it in the chapter's jurisdiction?

Back to Top of Page

   get Involved

   get Connected

   get Informed

   get Outside