Pol Watchers

Council members say Boulder trip worth every penny

Some Urban County Council members were upset that the Herald-Leader reported how much the city was paying for each of them to attend last week’s Commerce Lexington leadership visit to Boulder, Colo.

During work session Tuesday, Councilman Jay McChord said the group that went to Boulder was the largest group — with the largest council turnout — in the history of the Commerce Lexington leadership visit.

“What you’re seeing is a new day of collaboration, a new day of working locally better together,” McChord said. “And I find it funny that some of those in the media have looked at certain aspects of this and pointed out, well look who went and look how much that cost and so forth when those same media outlets the last couple of years have spent a lot of ink talking about dysfunction and we wish people would work better together and so forth.”

“We want to make this the best 21st century city possible and we’re willing to take time out of our busy schedules to go and sit down and talk about those things and study places that do it real well,” McChord said.

Councilman Julian Beard said that he has been attending Commerce Lexington’s leadership visits nearly every year since 1974.

On that first trip to Charleston, S.C. in 1974, there was about 70 attendees, Beard said. “Entirely different make-up. Very few women, very few African-Americans on that trip then. A whole lot of golf bags, however. At the carousel when we got back (from Boulder), I think I only counted four golf bags this time out of 200 people so it was not a junket by any means. It was a very active business meeting.”

Most of the 18 city officials who went to Boulder were there on the city’s dime. In all, the city spent at least $22,225 on the trips of 15 city officials. That total does not include other incidentals, such as parking at Blue Grass Airport and meals that weren’t included as part of the trip.

The elected city officials who went to Boulder on the city’s tab were Mayor Jim Newberry and council members Andrea James, Beard, Don Blevins Jr., Dick DeCamp, Chuck Ellinger II, Linda Gorton, McChord, George Myers, David Stevens and Kevin Stinnett.

Vice Mayor Jim Gray and Councilmen Tom Blues and Richard Moloney’s trips to Boulder were either paid for by the companies they work for or by themselves.

“It was a useful trip, I think, for many of us,” said Gray, who didn't have any issues with the Herald-Leader's report.

“For the cost of a modest consulting assignment, we were able to touch, in a sense, a city that has many analogous experiences or geographies of Lexington,” Gray said.

At the end of work session on Tuesday, Newberry said that he has now been on 10 leadership visits.

“I thought this one was the best one for me in terms of hearing about things directly relevant to Lexington,” Newberry said.

During the course of the trip, he “repeatedly heard comments from people on the trip about how appreciative they were of your all’s presence and I was,” Newberry said. “And I hope that all of you found it to be as productive as I did.”

- Michelle Ku

Lessons from Boulder

Regional cooperation key to future, Boulder tells Lexington

By Michelle Ku
MKU@HERALD-LEADER.COM

Recreational bicycle paths and walking trails were a hot topic during Commerce Lexington's leadership visit to Boulder, Colo., last week.

But the other major idea that Lexington leaders left Boulder with is the importance of working together with regional neighbors.

"I hope we'll commit to embracing the Bluegrass as a neighbor and embracing our neighbors as our friends and not as our foes," Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry said when he addressed trip attendees last Friday.

Forming good relationships with Lexington's Central Kentucky neighbors will take years, "but it will be worth the effort because the strength of this region is much greater than the strength of any one part of the region, including Lexington," Newberry said.

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Limiting growth has created severe housing woes for Boulder

In addition to learning about Boulder's best qualities last week, Lexington leaders also learned about some of Boulder's problems.

When Boulder decided to limit growth in an attempt to keep the size of its population under or around 100,000, it created some unintended consequences, said Richard Foy, a founding partner of Communication Arts, a Boulder-based, multi-disciplinary design firm.

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Boulder trip: Take a Hop, Skip or Jump around town

In addition to getting around Boulder by bike or foot, residents have another option: The Community Transit Network, the mass transit system in Boulder.

There are seven buses in the Community Transit Network, which is designed to move people around Boulder and to the surrounding communities. The Community Transit Network in Boulder is part of the Regional Transportation District, which serves eight counties in the Denver Metropolitan area.

With names like the Hop, Skip, Jump, Stampede and Bolt, the Community Transit Network is both practical as well as creative. The name of the bus and the drawings along its side helps describe the destinations that the bus travels by.

For example, the side of the Hop is decorated with images of rabbits, crickets and frogs — animals that hop — and words like “work,” “play” and “shop” which represent some of the stops. The Hop is a high-frequency bus that runs in downtown Boulder and goes by the University of Colorado and the Twenty Ninth Street Shopping District, a fairly new retail area.

The Skip, runs along Broadway, one of the main corridors in Boulder. The concept behind the Skip is to encourage people to “SKIP the traffic. SKIP the parking. SKIP the hassle.” At night, headlights from traffic reflect off the graphics on the bus.

Boulder’s Community Transit Network is easy to understand and user-friendly, said Terry Garcia Crews, executive director of LexTran. “They have done a stellar job because they’ve been able to make it fun — the Hop, the Skip, the Jump — and denoting that with their buses as well as with great graphics.”

Crews said she is interested in capitalizing on Boulder’s concept of using creative bus names with good graphics. But since Lexington has more routes, using fun bus names could be problematic, she said.

One idea that has potential is a bus that runs in the geographic area of the University of Kentucky, downtown and Transylvania University, Crews said.

- Michelle Ku

Boulder trip: Pearl Street Pedestrian Mall

Boulder has the kind of vibrant downtown to live, work and play in that many of Lexington’s downtown activists would love to have.

The Boulder Creek Path is a paved bicycle and pedestrian trail that runs alongside Boulder Creek. Residents can also go tubing and kayaking in the creek, but the jewel of the downtown is the Pearl Street Pedestrian Mall, which is located in the historic district.

Pearl Street is a four-block bricked thoroughfare with public art, a pop-jet fountain, a sandlot for children, shade trees, benches and colorful flowerbeds. The mall is lined on both sides with shopping, restaurants and many outdoor cafés.

Outdoor cafés did not exist in Colorado until 1975 or 1976, said Richard Foy, a founding partner of Communication Arts, a local multi-disciplinary design firm. "We had to get the liquor laws changed."

Pearl Street is a popular place for residents and tourist alike to walk, shop and watch street performers.

Pearl Street was converted from a city street to a pedestrian mall 30 years ago. At the time, downtown was just limping along, Foy said.

Initially, the center of the mall in two sections had grass instead of brick, Foy said. “The grass told people to come out, take off all your clothes except for your loincloth. It told people to lay down and throw frisbees,” he said.

The grass constantly needed to be reseeded and by the third year, merchants wanted to replace the grass with something else. But it wasn’t until five years ago that the grass was replaced with brick.

- Michelle Ku

Boulder Trip: Day three schedule

Friday is the final day of Commerce Lexington's leadership trip to Boulder.

The day will kick off with a discussion about healthy lifestyles. The featured speakers are Seth Goldman, president and CEO of YMCA of Boulder Valley; Urban County Councilman Jay McChord; and Mark Streety, vice president of service excellence and network with Saint Joseph Healthcare. Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry is also scheduled to speak to the group in a session titled "Good to Great."

Following some closing remarks by Guy Huguelet, president of Adecco Central Kentucky and chairman of Commerce Lexington, Reed Polk, a commentator with WYKT, will reflect on the past few days in Boulder. Then it's off to Denver International Airport.

The schedule is a light one because the group will head to Denver in two staggered groups starting at 11:15 a.m. MST to help expedite a check-in processs for a 2:30 pm. MST flight back to Lexington. The charter flight is expected back in Lexington around 7:15 p.m. EST.

- Michelle Ku

Boulder trip: Riding around town on a loaner bike

In 1997, Boulder launched its Green Bike program. More than 150 bright green loaner bikes are left around town for people to use for free.

People can hop onto a bike, ride it to wherever they are going and then leave the bike behind for someone else to use.

Recently, there have been discussions about starting a free loaner bike program in the city of Lexington.

The University of Kentucky already has a similar program. UK has had Wildcat Wheels Bicycle Library since the fall of 2004. The bikes, which are painted yellow, can be checked out by any UK student, faculty or staff member with a valid ID for a 48-hour period. Last October, Wildcat Wheels started the Departmental Blue Bike program, which provides free blue loaner bikes for university departments.

Wildcat Wheels currently has a fleet of 35 yellow bikes and 20 departmental blue bikes, said Shane Tedder, founder of Wildcat Wheels.

Wildcat Wheels has only purchased one new bike, Tedder said. The rest were either donated or abandoned bikes that were surplus property of the university.

Wildcat Wheels is very popular, Tedder said. “Pretty much every bike is checked out all the time,” he said.

The program is in the process of expanding, Tedder said. The university received a $100,000 congestion mitigation air quality grant from the state Transportation Cabinet for bicycling, and $18,000 of it will go to Wildcat Wheels, he said. The rest of the money will be used to implement the first set of recommendations from UK’s campus bike plan.

Michelle Ku

Boulder trip: Affordable housing requirement

On the bus and walking tour Wednesday, attendees learned that residential development projects in Boulder are required to have an affordable housing component.

Ten percent of the residential units in a development are supposed to be available at “affordable housing” rates. But the definition of “affordable housing” is controversial. Since the median house price in Boulder is $550,000, “affordable housing” refers to residential units in the $200,000-$300,000 range.

By comparison, the median house price in the Lexington/Bluegrass area in March was $148,600.

Boulder developers can get around the affordable housing requirement by giving the city money worth 10 percent of the project, according to one of the walking tour speakers.

Lexington should investigate whether it should have an affordable housing requirement, said Urban County Councilwoman Linda Gorton. “We traditionally have had a difficult time implementing affordable housing, and we need to find some kind of a mechanism to include it,” Gorton said.

Gorton said she’s concerned about Boulder’s housing market because police, firefighters and other service workers have been priced out and can’t afford to live in the city.

“We need to find a way for people to get into (Lexington’s) market and have a home,” Gorton said.

Michelle Ku

Boulder trip: Protecting the scenic viewshed

Located in a canyon, Boulder has fantastic views of the Rocky Mountains. The mountains can be seen from all around the city thanks to building-height limits on development.

To protect the scenic viewshed, buildings in Boulder are limited to roughly four stories tall.

Michelle Ku

Boulder trip: Day two schedule

Discussion topics on the second day in Boulder will be focused on a number of topics including education, regionalism, and elective sessions.

The first speaker of the day will be Jared Polis from The Jared Polis Foundation who will speak on the topic of education.

Dr. Dennis P. Jones, president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) , and Aims C. McGuinness Jr., senior associate of NCHEMS will then discuss the role of the University of Kentucky ten years after higher education reform.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and Boulder County Commissioner Will Toor will discuss regional thinking.

After lunch, attendees can choose from a number of elective sessions, including a tour of the Colorado Chautauqua Historic District & Park, a visit to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, two different downtown development tours, a trip to the Twenty Ninth Street, Boulder’s new retail district, sessions on branding and civic involvement among young professionals, a bike tour and a trip to a Green Building which is a building designed and constructed to promote economic health and well being of family, community and the environment.

The day will be capped off with the Bank Reception & Dinner at the Flagstaff House Restaurant which was originally a cabin built in 1929.

- Michelle Ku

Boulder trip: Regionalism No. 1 priority

Regionalism is a large part of Boulder and the rest of the Denver metropolitan area.

“In a seven county area, every community, every mayor talks about regionalism,” said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation and Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Seven counties pulled together to build Invesco Field at Mile High and Coors Field and to create an arts and cultural district, Clark said.

The area also has a nine county economic district which is first committed to selling the Denver metropolitan area to companies before selling the individual communities, Clark said.

The Metro Mayors Caucus, an alliance of 37 mayors in the Denver metro area, unanimously supported the passage of a November 2004 ballot issue to increase the sales tax for the eight county Denver Regional Transportation District from .6 percent to 1 percent to fund a $4.7 billion initiative to build at least six new rail lines in the Denver area over the next 12 years. The measure passed 58 percent to 42 and the sales was raised on Jan. 1, 2005.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and Boulder County Commissioner Will Toor will discuss regional thinking with leadership visit attendees on Thursday morning.

Compared to the Denver metropolitan area, regional cooperation is just beginning in Lexington.

Last Friday, more than 40 mayors, county judges and state legislators from 17 Bluegrass counties met at Keeneland for the first ever regional government summit. The leaders identified several top issues including education, water supply, economic development, transportation and dilapidated storm water and sanitary sewers.

- Michelle Ku