Tomorrow night’s City Council meeting will be a very big deal. Council will be discussing, accepting public comment on, and finally voting on a proposed agreement with the Colorado Department of Transportation regarding changes to Highways 6 and 93. In other words, this is beltway issue.
As you probably know, pro-development forces have been trying for decades to push a superhighway through our little valley. While Golden has resisted growth (and in fact, has a 1% growth limit), the cities to the north of us have grown like mad. Now they have traffic congestion, and they want to relieve it by rerouting their traffic through Golden. The project has been called a number of things over the years, including the beltway and the Northwest Parkway.
Golden has been fighting this project for decades, and has spent millions of dollars in engineering and legal fees proving that the road is unnecessary (and unwanted).
City Council has been negotiating with neighboring cities, the Department of Transportation, and others, and has arrived at a compromise that they believe will best serve Golden. Mayor Sloan summarizes the proposed agreement in her latest newsletter (start at paragraph #8).
As is the nature of a compromise, Golden doesn’t get everything it wants, and neither do the developers. There will doubtless be people at the Council meeting who are very unhappy at the suggestion of any compromise.
It will be an emotion-filled meeting. If you have strong feelings on the issue, you should plan to attend and participate in the public comment period. The meeting starts at 6:30, the date is Thursday night, May 9th, and the location is city hall (911 10th Street). It will be preceded by an open house from 5:30-6:25, in which the details of the plan will be available for review. If you can’t attend but want to watch, the meeting will be streamed live on cable channel 8 and on the city website.
