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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNatural Resources Advisory Board - Minutes - 07/20/2005MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS NATURAL RESOURCES ADVISORY BOARD Special Meeting 281 N. COLLEGE July 20, 2005 For Reference: Nate Donovan, NRAB Chair - 472-1599 Ben Manvel, Council Liaison - 217-1932 John Stokes, Staff Liaison - 221-6263 Board Members Present Linda Knowlton, Gerry Hart, Glen Colton, Randy Fischer, Ryan Staychock, Rob Petterson, Nate Donovan, Board Members Absent Joann Thomas, Clint Skutchan Staff Present Natural Resources Deot: John Stokes, Terry Klahn Guests Ben Manvel, City Council member • Manvel said he's happy to be here, and that he's impressed with the work the NRAB has done in the past, and hopes that the board will continue with the same outstanding work. Ann Hutchinson, Chamber of Commerce Public Comments None Council Policy Agenda, Nate Donovan • Knowlton: What is the relationship between the policy agenda and the seven BFO outcomes. Which is driving Council? • Manvel: They're linked, they're both driving us. We didn't have time to do the policy agenda before, that would have been nice, but we just didn't have the time. We had to get the process under way. Now we're working on the policy agenda. BFO will affect some policies, but there may be other things. There could be policy changes that don't cost the City money, like changing the election process for the city. The two things are not the same, but are closely linked. • Fischer: As to the BFO, it seems like in most of the categories there are so many redundancies. I don't know how it's going to work. • Fischer: I do believe we should weigh in on the policy agenda, and make a formal recommendation. Personally, I believe I would add to prioritize completion of the Sustainability Mobility Plan. Its been ongoing for many years. I don't want to see it drop off the radar screen. I want to see it as part of the policy. I don't think Natural Resources Advisory Board July 20, 2005 Page 2 of 9 community separators are listed on the old version. Pollution prevention and solid waste are definitely worth reiterating. We should reiterate our consistent support of things we've been dealing with for years and years. • Staychock: Where the bullets say clean air and clean water, I would like to add clean soil. • Colton: What is community sustainability? Is that the program Randy is talking about? • Stokes: It was unclear to us on the result team. We interpreted it as environmental sustainability. • Colton: I would like to see continued discussion of it. Something to the effect of continuing the community dialogue of sustainability. • Manvel: Maybe you should include in the subtext that the economic health of the City depends on the environmental health of the community. • Colton: There have been a few soapboxes recently talking about how one of the niches of Fort Collins could be alternative energies, and things like that. • Donovan: Does anyone have thoughts on how we deal with each topic? • Hart: This is a laundry list. I think the ideas about sustainability are good. It's very clear that what makes Fort Collis attractive is the environment. The economic health of the community is not mentioned predominately at all. It's the environment the people have created. The City should be focusing on a livable, sustainable community. If you want a good healthy economy you have to keep the environment going. • Fischer: I would suggest that instead of limiting target one to the energy policy, we have the energy policy bean objective for the proposed sustainability target. What is the current nomenclature around sustainability? • Stokes: APS — Action Plan for Sustainability. • Donovan: Is it gathering dust? • Stokes: No, we've included elements from that plan into our offers. We haven't proposed to comprehensively implement the plan. We don't think we would be successful. But, the offer does get out four or five elements of the plan that are measurable, tangible and easy for people to be able to appreciate. • Donovan: OK. I had focused on primarily the things that go toward the General Fund side of the budget. Should we include open lands things? How about strengthening the enforcement of the natural resources protection standards. • Stokes: That died on the vine last year. • Fischer: I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on that. • Donovan: Do people like Randy's idea of an overarching goal to comprehensively implement the APS. • Fischer: I'm hoping for a specific target. Something that includes reaching out to the business community through pollution prevention program. • Petterson: This is really about form. It sounds like we are saying there are things existing that are good. We could just write a letter that says there are four or five areas we'd like to address, and not wordsmith this. Natural Resources Advisory Board July 20, 2005 Page 3 of 9 • Donovan: I could write a memo with four to six areas, and a sentence or two about each. • Stokes: Right now you have: 1. Implementation of the Community Separator 2. Implementation of the APS 3. Continue to have dialogue around energy related businesses • Petterson: I like the idea of emphasizing the recycling program as something that's been successful. • Colton: How about the Poudre River corridor. I'd like to add to continue to protect the natural nature of the Poudre River with appropriate development in the downtown area. • Hart: The opening sentence should reflect that the economic health of the City is directly related to the environmental health. • Knowlton: If we write a letter and say here are the five things we think are important, they might take those five things and ignore other stuff we think is important. We could say we looked at the past Council policy agenda, and we'd like to see modifications along these lines. Highlight what we're adding and changing. I'm afraid if we leave it to Council, or staff, that some of our wishes won't be recognized. • Donovan: I don't get the impression they're going to use this old agenda as a baseline. It seems that we can say what want to stay and if there are good words, we use those. • Hart: We could say we support the continuing implementation of the objectives of 2003, and the following things should be added or changed. We don't want to get too specific. • Knowlton: Say we have chosen to use BFO since we believe this is what you will base your next council policy agenda on. We're addressing what we would like to see. • Donovan: Can we say we support the environmental health goals in the BFO process and wish to highlight the following items. • Staychock: I want clean soil added to the environmental health list. Rob Petterson made the following motion: Move that the NRAB draft a letter to City Council in support of, and giving our thoughts about the upcoming Council Policy Agenda. We need to emphasize the link between environmental health, referencing BFO and environmental health as the basis for this discussion, highlighting several of the key points, and adding clean soil. The motion was seconded by Ryan Staychock. • Fischer: My understanding is Council will take up the policy agenda issue on August 5. We have to have the memo to them prior to that. • Donovan: I will write the memo and get it to them. • Fischer: It's important this on this one to get it in at least a week before their meeting, instead of waiting until the day of the meeting. Natural Resources Advisory Board July 20, 2005 Page 4 of 9 The motion passed unanimously. Board Creation & Possible Consolidation, John Stokes John Stokes provided background and information regarding the need to designate a board for Open Space, Yes! by January 1, 2006. There is a requirement in the ballot language. We need to get this done this fall to be in compliance with the law. Council can designate an existing board, or create a new board. • Stokes: I drafted these options for council to consider, along with pros and cons relative to each option. Council will discuss this at a work session August 9. It was going to be August 23, but they bumped me back to the 9h. • Stokes: The NRAB and AQAB have previously considered the idea of combining the NRAB and the AQAB. I think its fair to say that idea was universally disliked by both boards. I go on to say that I prefer the option of creating a new board. I really feel pretty strongly about creating a new Open Space, Yes! board. I feel we need a stand alone board that addresses open space issues and speaks to the community and council. The county has an open lands board, and it has been pretty successful. That model includes a member of the County Commission. Having that stand alone board has helped staff and the community with communication. It's much harder for us to have a dialogue with our City Council about anything. The commissioners are full time paid staff. It's easier for county staff to talk to their commissioners, and get feed back. Our council could appoint one of their members to be on a seven or nine person board. We would have a direct link to council. Really, the prominence of the program ahs increased, the visibility of the footprint has increased dramatically. And, we would like to have fewer boards to deal with. It would help with allocating our time. I acknowledge my job right up front, but if we could combine the NRAB and the AQAB we could eliminate redundant items, and more carefully chose the agenda items. It should be a nice synergy. We'd have air quality as a series of issues to be considered by a single board. • Staychock. The language says the expenditure of monies. Would that limit what the board could address? • Stokes: We can write the charter more broadly. • Donovan: There are other parts of the ballot language that talk about what the board would do, and how staff and the board would interact. • Stokes: In terms of what we do, o/m, capital projects, and how we manage the properties, all would be part of the board purview. • Staychock: I'm sensitive to option 3. But, if we're going to be a board that is efficient wouldn't it make sense to include the water board too? If there's going to be an open space board, it clears up our agenda from those items. Water is one of our precious resources. I think we should entertain the option of combining that board with the NRAB. I understand there are different departments. I'm not favoring one option or another. Hart: This is the NRAB. I don't see where air quality and open space differ. Get rid of one and pick up another. I don't see where that is relevant. We talked about this a year or so ago. Natural Resources Advisory Board July 20, 2005 Page 5 of 9 • Fischer: I don't get what you're staying. • Hart: We advise on all elements except air quality. • Petterson: You think we should cover all of them, then? • Hart: Maybe what we need is nine people with sub committees that work together and make recommendations. • Stokes: When the AQAB was established, the air was not as good as it is now. We were on a downward trend. The air quality has improved. The biggest source of air pollution is mobile sources. That's going to improve, because the fleet is improving. • Stokes: The idea of having a larger board, including water is an interesting idea. Water is such a critical issue for the areas in terms of quality and water rights. But the issues are complicated. They created a separate board because the issues are so complex. • Fischer: I do not think it would be a good fit with this board. It's a better idea for us to discuss water quality issues, and stormwater planning. The water board spends most of its time on water supply and rates. I was frustrated on the board because we didn't talk about water quality. • Stoeks: Maybe the NRAB could have periodic interaction with that board. Their staff has been pretty good about putting things on your radar screen that have to do with water quality and stormwater. They're pretty diligent about coming over and talking about stuff that has a direct relationship. • Fischer: Another reason its not a good fit is that they have a quasi-judicial function to approve or disapprove flood plain variances. I don't believe that's something we want to get into. • Staychock: I'm not really advocating that. If just seems that if we're going to start messing with boards, its just another option. • Donovan: I don't think its, practically or politically feasible. • Petterson. We have to look at tasks. I agree with Randy that I'm not interested in spending a long time discussing water plain variances. I'm more interested in quality stuff. Both of those tasks need to be done. I wouldn't advocate combining the water board into the mix. My reaction to the memo is the split of function is sort of an arbitrary thing. It's driven more by practical consideration than by any grand philosophical thing. I'm not sure that's so bad. I don't know what the arguments were when people were opposed before. It seems to make sense from a practical point of view. Both from a staff support issue, and by not overwhelming the volunteers on the board. It seems to make sense to combine them. • Stokes: I did go back and look at all the agenda items over the past twelve months. There were only a handful that overlapped. Even taking out the items that are exclusively open space, if we combine the boards we'll have to work carefully to focus on stuff that is important. It would require some strong leadership from the board itself, and some close cooperation from staff. • Knowlton: Well, first of all, I would not recommend even suggesting the water board get involved. AQAB and NRAB is staffed by NRD. One time we were one board. If we'd suggest this to the water board they would scream bloody murder. It would really complicate things. Natural Resources Advisory Board July 20, 2005 Page 6 of 9 • Knowlton: I am wondering about the workload. There's not that much open space left out there. The pot is shrinking. I'm wondering if this board couldn't continue to handle that. Maybe with more use of committees to look at things, and flush them out. I'm wondering if we wouldn't be creating a new board unnecessarily. • Stokes: It's a plausible scenario, it is possible this board could do that. • Knowlton: Is the work load going to be that great? If so, how much greater? • Stokes: If we had the luxury of having a separate board we'd probably bring more things to the board. I'm strongly motivated to have a separate board. I sense some trepidation in the community about the open space program. We need to talk to the public, people have a misapprehension. I really believe our ability to communicate with the community would be enhanced by having a board that was solely in charge of the open land program. The County's has really worked for them. The commissioners are great emissaries in the community for that program. • Petterson: Is this mostly about providing a vehicle to get a council member? Is that likely to happen? • Stokes: I don't know. I would encourage Council to nominate a member to be on a new board. • Knowlton: I could make the argument it would draw more attention to the process. People might say, "now they've got a whole board, they must be going hog wild". • Stokes: I don't agree. I think they would like and appreciate the chance to see a new board. That's my intuition from talking to people about our program. I'm an eternal optimist. I think it would be good to engage them in the work we do. If they don't like it, at least they might understand it better. • Colton: I think I like the alternative Linda talked about. I'm a little concerned about taking the NRAB and AQAB and throwing them together. Even if we do chose to do a separate open lands board maybe we should continue with the NRAB's existing responsibility. It might be there are niches we haven't touched on. There's global warming, and maybe there are other things we could be exploring, or other programs in the Natural Resources area we haven't touched on too much. It might be good to have a separate board, but I would continue with the NRAB for a period of time before I would consider consolidating. • Stokes: I got that suggestion before. Why don't you create a new board, but leave AQAB and NRAB, at least try it for a year. It seems like too much to staff, and there are redundancies. Fischer: I'm totally opposed to the combination of the two boards at this time. It was brought up in the 2003 meeting. Let's wait till a new board is formed and weigh the amount of work that being required, and the workload on the volunteers, and then make a decision. That concept is still valid. Staff s workload will stay the same, or even decrease slightly. We meet twice a month, the AQAB meets once a month. If there was a separate board, the NRAB could meet once a month because we'd have less to deal with. The number of meetings would stay the same. Colton: We could also do away with the Trails and Natural Areas committees. Natural Resources Advisory Board July 20, 2005 Page 7 of 9 • Fischer: The people on the AQAB don't want to combine with the NRAB. I have been told there is even more opposition to combining the two boards than there was before. It wasn't really vehement before. • Fischer: I would like to agree with John. Initially I was skeptical of creating a board, especially with the newly elected officials speaking out against the natural areas program. The opponents of the natural areas program are a small handful, a tiny minority, but they are vocal. I don't want to give them too much credibility. A new board could give Council more buy -in into the program. They would in fact be able to appoint the members of this new board. It's risky. • Petterson: Why is there such opposition? Is it that people aren't interested, or is it a turf thing. • Fischer: My sense from the 2003 meeting is that several of the people on the AQAB are technically trained and have expertise in air quality. They don't want to talk about other things. They didn't like the idea of participating in City Plan, the 1-25 Corridor and sub area plans, and have no interest in flood plain or water quality issues. • Donovan: People on both boards thought air quality would get short shrift. • Stokes: I will talk to them next Tuesday. • Hart: I'm trying to figure out the reason behind the push. Is it that a stewardship board would bring the program into center stage and get more attention? Its already gotten acceptance by the citizens of Fort Collins. Nothing else got approved. If we, as a board or staff, haven't sold that, that speaks to us, more than general acceptance. • Hart: I'm not trying to keep control. I'd like to see the NRAB deal with natural resources, green building, recycling and solid waste. • Staychock: What about combining the stewardship board, with the AQAB and the NRAB. • Stokes: I don't support that. I feel pretty strongly about this, but I can be flexible. I do feel strongly about having a stand alone land board. I think it would help our program a lot • Petterson: From a practical point of view, conceptually the sub committee idea sounds great. Practically speaking the sub committee members would have to have a lot of meetings. That would significantly increase the load on the volunteers, and maybe on staff. There are practical considerations around that kind of "superstructure" board. • Stokes: I honestly think that this board has trimmed down its number of agenda items. The AQAB has not. With some better choices we can have a much more efficient structure in terms of considering agenda items. We bring a lot of agenda items that don't need to be considered by a board. I think its inefficient. Does that mean we should have a combined board? We can discuss that, but if we better manage the agenda of a combined board we can squeeze it all in, and not need a subcommittee. It's true that air issues can be pretty technical. As a manager I want to be more efficient with time, especially knowing that we're going to have less staff time from the general fund side. Is there a way to be more efficient and still be a successful, vibrant board that considers really important environmental matters? Natural Resources Advisory Board July 20, 2005 Page 8 of 9 • Knowlton: Let's get back to my thought that maybe we could do it with this board. Sometimes this board meets once a month, and sometimes twice a month. We could always meet twice a month, and have one of those meetings dedicated to open land issues, and the other meeting to everything else. • Colton: There could be a flattening of the board, and less subcommittees. We could eliminate some redundancies. We could keep the AQAB and have the open lands issues come to this board. We might need to be more selective. • Petterson: My sense is that part of the reason we meet more than once a month is a timing issue. I'm not convinced we could segregate the meetings, or get it down to once a month. Knowlton: We could do it by better planning. The County's board meets once a month. • Petterson: Does Council cooperate? Is our inability to get things done the first of the month their fault, or our fault? • Knowlton: One more point for keeping the boards as they are is that Council has questioned the number of boards in the past few years. • Donovan: The P&R Board and the Golf Board are going to have joint meetings. As far as Linda's suggestions it doesn't seem that we would have to follow that strictly. We could be flexible if something critical came up. • Fischer: We'd have to change the charter of the NRAB to have a council member be an actual member. There might be an advantage to writing a new charter, but I am concerned about that. Our charter is unique in the City. It allows us greater latitude in the things we can discuss. We can work with staff on issues. If we open up the charter of the NRAB anything could happen. • Knowlton: We'd have to revise our charter if we take out the natural areas functions. • Stokes: I don't think it specifically address that. • Hart: The question isn't what serves the board, but what serves Fort Collins the best. I don't have any investment in a continued existence. I think Linda has good ideas of how we could make it work, but maybe that doesn't meet the needs of the City. • Knowlton: The impetus for a new board is more political than work load related. • Stokes: It's party political, but only partly. I'd like to have a board that is pretty nimble, and can deal with land issues. There are complicated transactions that need approval. I would love to have a small nimble board. It would be helpful to have a council member be part of the board. The County's model has been successful. It has focused more attention on the program, and that has not been a detriment. • Knowlton: The open space issue passed with 65%. • Stokes: I'm not talking about the naysayer. It's the people who don't understand the program. I have a gut feeling that having a board could be important to the future of this program. • Donovan: I support the idea of a separate open lands board. I like Linda's idea that it could work with the NRAB, but I believe a separate board is the better way to go. It should be a nine member board. If you look at how many people it takes to have a quorum, four isn't enough to get good dialogue. I don't think nine is more of a burden than seven. If one of them is a council member, that's fine. Natural Resources Advisory Board July 20, 2005 Page 9 of 9 • Donovan: I also think the NRAB and AQAB could be combined. It would involve some trauma. The makeup of the NRAB has changed since 2003. Nearly all of the members said they would want to apply to the open lands board, as far as the numbers of consolidating people. • Stokes: It would depend on who council appoints. • Donovan: I don't think the code for the NRAB would have to be changed at all. The jurisdiction would already include air quality issues. I think there are some good points to combining them. Through careful leadership, and selection of agenda items, we could minimize the concern that some topics would get shorter shrift. • Stokes: I propose to bring this back August 3rd. We will go to the AQAB next week. I'll redraft this based on input, and then visit with you before I go to Council again. • Colton: It would help me to see the work plan and annual report of the AQAB. • Fischer: To me its more important to get the results of our discussion to Council before the 9`h. • Stokes: After the meeting next Tuesday I'll write a quick one pager about what the AQAB thought and mail it to everyone. • Donovan: Will you share what we've talked about here? • Stokes: Yes. • Fischer: Would it help to have a straw poll about the different alternatives? • Petterson: Conceptually, I don't have a problem with combining the AQAB and the NRAB. But, I couldn't answer your questions right now. My mind is open at this point. • Fischer: What's lacking is a joint meeting between the two boards. It's sort of unfair to discuss it separately. • Hart: I support Linda's alternative. • Fischer: I support option 2. • Colton: I'm not sure between one and two. • Staychock: I would support my option, a different option of creating a mega board that incorporates, air, water, and soil. • Hart: I hope this board never talks about the technical aspects of air quality. Getting the open lands out separately is probably a good idea. Adjourn The meeting was adjourned at 8:15 p.m. Submitted by Terry Klahn Admin Support Supervisor &/3/aJUJ�