September 2022

Hey everyone – Here’s my update for things going on in Superior for September 2022.  Read on for updates about Chili Fest, the November election, an update on the Boulder County Housing Authority proposal in Superior Marketplace, our meeting with the Boulder County BOCC, and more… 

Chili & Beer Fest this Saturday!

The Town of Superior and the Rotary Club of Boulder Valley are once again hosting the Town’s biggest event of the year this coming Saturday (Sept. 17, 2022) from 2pm-6pm at Community Park. 

This year’s event will feature live bands, food trucks, a community chili cook-off competition, beer/cider/seltzer sampling from local breweries, and a super-sized kids’ zone.  Best of all, I’ll be in the Superior Chamber’s Dunk Tank booth (3pm-3:30pm)… so go on… take your best shot!  General entry is FREE.  Beer Fest tickets are on sale NOW here.   

Bike Racks @ Oerman Roche

Check out the beautiful new bike racks installed at the Oerman-Roche trailhead.  Special thanks to our OSAC and PARC committees as well as Parks & Rec Staff for making this improvement happen.  In addition to bike racks (picture above in the post’s featured image), there’s a bike maintenance station as well.

Election

This November, Superior voters will be electing a new Mayor and four Trustees.  Here are the candidates the will be on the ballot (in the following order):

Mayor:

• Mark Lacis

Trustee:

• Stephanie Miller
• Jason Serbu
• Jenn Kaaoush
• Stephanie Schader
• Mike Foster
• Bob McCool
• Michael Neustedter
• Neal S. Shah

We will also have one write-in candidate for Mayor: Gladys Forshee.

The League of Women’s Votes will be hosting a Candidate Forum and I anticipate the Superior Chamber should host their “Face the Chamber!” event as well.  Dates are TBD.  Please get to know the candidates.  They will be the ones making decisions that will affect our town’s future.  Thank you to all the candidates who are stepping up to serve our community and don’t forget to vote!

Joint Meeting with Boulder County Commissioners

On August 31, 2022, the Superior Town Board met with the Boulder County Commissioners to discuss a number of shared issues and goals.  The topics of our meeting included Marshall Fire recovery efforts (including the Town’s request to the County for financial assistance, waiving of use taxes for fire victim rebuilds, and the development of an open space management plan to mitigate fire risks in the future).  

We also discussed the County’s three additional sales tax ballot measures that will appear on the November ballot.  The County’s proposed sales tax ballot measures are as follows:

1. Wildfire Mitigation (.1%) – A proposal to establish a 0.1% countywide sales and use tax for the purpose of funding countywide wildfire mitigation efforts to proactively address the increasing risk of climate-driven wildfires in two programmatic areas. The first is to conduct strategic forest and grassland management projects (using Fireshed partnerships) to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, protect drinking water supplies and create more resilient forest and grassland ecosystems. The second is to help and extend the Wildfire Partners program to residents in east county and continue work in the mountains to prepare for wildfires by making homes more fire-resistant using community partnerships, individual technical assistance, and financial assistance.
2. Emergency Services (.1%) – A proposal to establish a 0.1% countywide sales and use tax, declining to 0.05% after five years, for the purpose of funding emergency response, including: facility, equipment, capital, and operational costs of search and rescue organizations; funding for the capital needs of fire departments in mountainous and rural areas; ambulance services in areas not covered by municipal ambulance services; wildland firefighting staffing; and other projects and services to address the need for emergency services and public safety in unincorporated Boulder County.
3. Transportation (.1%) – A proposal to extend the existing 0.1% countywide transportation sales and use tax for the purpose of continuing to fund multimodal transportation needs, including safety improvements to roads, regional trails and commuter bikeways, transit, regional transportation corridors, and community mobility programs. The county’s Transportation Master Plan (TMP) provides a blueprint for Boulder County’s transportation system improvements for the next 25 years, including projects, programs and services throughout the county that provide mobility and connect people between Boulder County cities and towns, using all modes of travel. Learn more about the existing Boulder County Transportation Sales Tax.

Video of the joint meeting is available here.  To learn more about Boulder County’s ballot measures, please visit this site (https://bouldercounty.gov/government/county-ballot-issues/).

Boulder County Affordable Housing @ the Superior Marketplace

I last wrote about a potential pair of development applications that would impact the Superior Marketplace in August 2022.  One of those development applications would have involved Boulder County Housing Authority’s proposal to build up to 239 permanently affordable rental homes for low- to moderate-income residents earning up to 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) near the RTD Park-N-Ride along US-36.  BCHA’s application was originally scheduled to go before the Town Board on September 26, 2022.

Since my last update, BCHA has officially pulled their application for the foreseeable future.  A copy of the BCHA’s withdrawal email is available here.  According to the withdrawal email, BCHA explained that “The Marshall Fire on December 30, 2021 was a traumatic and devastating event that affected the community and has strained the Town’s resources…. we understand that having a pending application prevents open and frank discussions about this project between elected/appointed officials and residents.  BCHA would like to remove this application from any quasi-judicial process to allow the residents and officials to discuss the proposed changes to the Superior Marketplace and BCHA’s plans for affordable housing.”      

I’m grateful that BCHA pulled this application.  While affordable housing is a collective goal of the Town Board, our focus as a Board should be on helping our neighbors recover and rebuild from the Marshall Fire.  Consideration of the BCHA application — without substantial input from the surrounding communities which were lost in the fire — would have been a mistake.

Town Sales Tax Ballot Question

As I detailed in my August 2022 post, the Town Board approved a ballot question which will ask Superior voters to extend/repurpose the existing .16% sales tax that is currently collected by the Superior/McCaslin Interchange District (SMID), which is expiring at the end of this year — and replace that expiring sales tax with an identical .16% sales tax (which will sunset in 2023), which is to be used for “recovery efforts related to the 2021 Marshall Fire and other related expenses.”

If approved by voters this November, the Town’s sales tax will not increase — it will remain the same.  That .16% generates approximately $800,000 per year in revenue to the Town and is largely paid by those who shop, but do not reside, in Superior.  This sales tax extension will allow Superior to fund recovery efforts and not dig into an even deeper financial hole that was caused by the Marshall Fire.  I encourage you all to support the Town’s sales tax ballot measure and vote “YES.”

Life Sciences Campus in Downtown Superior

On August 22, the Superior Town Board approved a development application for a Life Sciences Campus in Downtown Superior by a vote of 3-2.  Mayor Folsom, Trustee Howard, and Trustee Lish voted “YES” to approve; Trustee Shah and I both voted “NO” against.  There has been a lot of media coverage surrounding this meeting — not because of the outcome of the vote, but because of the way in which the vote occurred.  I wrote more details about it here.  

At the Town Board meeting on September 12, I shared some ideas on how we could improve our process going forward.  I suggested that If a board member is participating remotely and logs off, we should take a 5-minute break to check and see if there was a technical issue that affected the Board member’s continued participation in the meeting.  I also suggested that we should — as a matter of course — move to continue whatever agenda item we are currently considering to the next Board Meeting, before proceeding with the agenda item.  That motion to continue might pass or fail, but at least it would give the Board an opportunity to pause before moving forward.  I anticipate we will be discussing these and other process improvement ideas at a future work-session.

Rocky Mountain Metro Airport Noise Roundtable

Before reading any further, if you’re not familiar with the RMMA Community Noise Roundtable is, please first read the “RMMA CNR Update” in my June blog post.  It will give you some history on the Roundtable, when it meets, who are the members, and what the purpose of the Roundtable is.  I also provide a brief rundown of what the Roundtable has been working on since it was formed. 

Since June there have been a few important updates/developments:

• June 2022: CNR approves a new budget of $12,000 per member government ($96,000 total).  The new increased budget will allow the Roundtable to hire consultants with the appropriate aviation industry expertise.  
• July 2022: Westminster quits the Roundtable.
• August 2022: Roundtable forms a subcommittee that is looking at changes to ingress/egress routes for pilots operating under Visual Flight Rules (VFR).  The priorities for these proposed VFR changes will be to direct pilots to safely avoid residential areas and instead, to target commercial/industrial areas; roadways like US-36 and US-287; and open space areas. Currently, there is a 30-day pilot-project underway that is encouraging pilots to use alternate routes to access training areas.  Stay tuned for updates in the future on this topic.
• September 2022: Westminster rejoins the Roundtable.

At the most recent Roundtable meeting on September 12, Airport Director Paul Anslow reported that flight operations are up 35% for the year (104,316 operations in 2021 vs. 141,215 operations YTD thru July).  Director Anslow reminded us that he is “running a business.”  My sincere hope is that the Roundtable continues to build bridges and is able to work together to find some solutions that will work for all parties.  It is important to remember that we do not own the airspace over Superior and we have zero jurisdiction over the airport so this is not an easy problem to solve.  

I believe that until Jefferson County (who owns RMMA) and the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners (who hire the Airport Director) become committed to delivering a solution to the airport noise impacting surrounding communities, we will see very little change from our current situation.  

2023 Superior Town Budget

Just a quick note that we are beginning “Budget Season” where we are delving into the depths of our Town’s budget over the next several weeks.  All budget meetings (like all Town meetings) are open to the public.  If you’ve been one to say, “What does Superior do with all its money?”  Come join us and see for yourself. The next budget meetings are scheduled for Tuesday, September 27 (1pm-4pm) and Wednesday, September 28 (5pm-8pm).  After the Budget is considered and approved in October, I will do my best to summarize its contents in a later post.

OfficeMax / PetSmart

OfficeMax has decided to close its location in Superior.  I’ve been told that this location has struggled for years and was underperforming.  Although we hate to see any business leave town, from a financial perspective, OfficeMax was not in our top 10 tax retail base in 2021.  So it is not anticipated to have a substantial adverse impact on Town finances.

PetSmart will be relocating within the Superior Marketplace to the former PartyCity location (which is currently home to the Spirit Halloween store).  PetSmart was in the top 10 retail tax base for Superior in 2021 and it’s great to see them continue to invest in Superior.

Superior Rising — Debris Removal Celebration

Come Celebrate a Downtown Superior Milestone on Wednesday, September 21 from 6pm-8pm at the Angry Horse at the Sport Stable.  You can expect food, beverages, and community.  Thank you to Superior Rising for hosting these milestone parties! 

My family attended the Original Town celebration at the end of August and even Santa was there!  He was trying to eat one of my son’s cookies!  P.S.  Amazing cookies provided by Superior business Elevated Oven.  The kids painted them with M&Ms!

Mark for Mayor

I am running to be the next Mayor of Superior.  Please see my announcement here  or watch it here. To learn more about me, visit the other parts of my website (About, Issues, Endorsements, etc.) and please follow my new campaign Facebook page for updates.  If you would like a Mark for Mayor lawn sign, please email me at mark.lacis@gmail.com.  Lawn signs are allowed during the specified election season.  I hope to earn your vote in November.

Let’s Connect

Please follow my new Facebook page and sign up for blog updates from my website: www.marklacis.com.   You can also send me an email at markl@superiorcolorado.gov.  The next “First Fridays” will be in person on October 7 at the Superior Community Center.