HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - Legislative Review Committee - 09/09/2014 -City Manager’s Office
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Legislative Review Committee Agenda
Meeting Notes
September 9, 2014, 4:00 p.m.
City Manager’s Conference Room
Present: Wade Troxell, Councilmember; Ross Cunniff, Councilmember; Wendy
Williams, Assistant City Manager; Carrie Daggett, Interim City Attorney; Dan
Weinheimer, Legislative Policy Manager
Absent: Lisa Poppaw, Councilmember
Guests: Kevin Jones, Chamber of Commerce
Councilmember Troxell called the meeting to order at 4:10 pm.
Adoption of the minutes from the August 26, 2014 meeting were moved for
approval by Councilmember Cunniff and seconded by Councilmember Troxell.
Minutes were adopted without amendment.
LRC reviewed the 2015 Legislative Priorities draft and provided feedback.
Generally, the objectives presented in the draft document were approved with
minor editing. Substantive changes were:
• Separating water resource management from waste management
• Putting construction defect reform within a priority on housing and
community affordability
• Adding oversight of certain federal, state and county regulations to the
purview of the LRC.
A second draft of the policy priorities will be brought for LRC review.
LRC discussed the potential of introducing two legislative proposals to the
Colorado Municipal League (CML) Policy Committee.
The first proposal was Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones, a law in California
that is intended to encourage landowners to offer longer-term leases to urban
farmers by changing the property tax designation of the land to agriculture. Dan
mentioned that the concept would be that cities and counties would agree to create
the zones – geographic zones within a city or county - and that there might be a
small property tax collection reduction to the county. Dan explained there was
interest from local legislators and that the Local Food Cluster had also expressed
interest in the concept.
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The second proposal was for disclosure to the local fire chief and/or emergency
manager of hazardous material rail shipments through communities. Dan
explained that this concept came from a presentation by Poudre Fire Authority
(PFA) chiefs at a recent meeting of the National League of Cities’ (NLC) Energy,
Environment and Natural Resources (EENR) Steering Committee. The
presentation indicated that local responders are not informed of the timing,
materials, or quantities for shipments of hazmat. The bill concept is to require
limited disclosure of the train contents and joint training from the railroads
shipping the materials. LRC approved submitting this bill concept to the CML
Policy Committee for discussion.
The meeting was adjourned at 5:10 pm.