MD’s Moab City Council Preview 2020-08-11

[Editor’s note: Both Mike Duncan and Rani Derasary have graciously agreed to let MADAR reuse their regular email updates to constituents. Despite the overlap, we are running both versions of the MCC previews. Readers can choose to read both, either or neither of the previews.]

This meeting will be conducted using a video conferencing tool named Zoom. Staff, Mayor and Councilmembers talk to and see an image each other sitting at a computer at remote sites. You can see and hear (but not talk to) them using the City’s YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl00z0Zgdmz4y1FoI0l7CJA

To have your comments considered for the Citizens to Be Heard portion of the electronic meeting, please fill out the form found here:

https://forms.gle/lvcmtlb9rvi6kpnaa

You must submit your comments by 7:00 pm on 11 August 2020. Please limit your comments to 400 words. 

NOTE: I have only discussed interesting items in this report; please see the complete agenda at moabcity.org for a complete list.

Workshop at 6:30 PM

Presentation of Greenhouse Gas Inventory for Grand County and the City of Moab

Moab is a participant in an organization called ‘Local Governments for Sustainability.’ It recently convened a “Mountain Town 2030 GHG Inventory Cohort” (cohort means ‘group’ in this context). Consultant Claire Buysse will present a 2018 GHG Inventory report: about ¾ of its 600K metric tons (a metric ton is 1000 kg, about 2200 lbs) of CO2 (or equivalent) is Transportation. This report is the easy part – it establishes a baseline from which improvements are hoped to be made. The hard part is actually making improvements. Covid helps, but I personally don’t recommend it as a long term strategy. I drive a Prius; my step-son just yesterday took me for a ride in his brand new Tesla, memorable not so much for its zero-emissions as its 0-60 MPH in 4.2 seconds, a rocket, I gotta tell you. Seriously, it’s a conundrum. The President is gutting environment regulations. Council recently received a letter from a resident asking about progress towards another environmental issue to which the City had committed – to my knowledge we had little progress to report other than awareness of the issue.

Regular City Council Meeting at 7 PM

Lionsback Resort update

Planner Nora Shepard will give us an update on Lionsback as it was approved and vested in 2008 and 2009. This large 257-unit, 5-phase project zoned Sensitive Area Resort is on a 175 acre parcel owned by SITLA, NE of town off Sand Flats Road, shielded from view from below by a ridge.  It has a long and troubled history. While infrastructure construction is currently in progress, no application for units has yet been submitted. It is believed that 30-50 first phase residential units (“casitas”) are planned. Since both surface pollution and sewer leaks have the potential to enter fractured sandstone and travel along NW trending faults towards Skakel Springs, culinary water source protection issues are important.

Hope this helps, (Councilmember) Mike Duncan