I snapped this photo of the mountains east of Reno out the window of my 7th floor hotel room. The sun was dropping quickly and was casting a shadow on the city, but showering a beautiful sunset on the mountains.
I spent most of the day inside today at the National League of Cities (NLC) conference. The morning started out with a keynote address from former Secretary of Housing & Urban Development Henry Cisneros. Another former HUD Secretary, Jack Kemp, was supposed to be a co-presenter with Cisneros, but he was suffering from complications from a recent knee surgery and was not able to attend the conference. Cisneros was good. He is an articulate spokesman for affordable housing initiatives across the country.
After lunch, I attended a workshop session on strategies to elicit greater citizen participation in local government. One of the presenters was a Councilmember from nearby Sparks, NV. They use a Citizens Advisory Committee that might be of interest to the upcoming City Council in Eden Prairie. Setting up some sort of citizen’s budget committee is a priority of Mayor-elect Young, Councilmember-elect Duckstad, and Councilmember Aho. Three votes will get it done, so I’m starting to look for models of such a committee that might work well in Eden Prairie.
Following the session on citizen participation, I attended a workshop on emerging challenges in storm water management. I know. It probably doesn’t sound very interesting to many people, but the presenters were good and the information was relevant for our future in Eden Prairie. I learned about the positive aspects of Low Impact Development (LID) techniques, ideas to control source pollution, and discussed the intergovernmental challenges of storm water management. Our storm water problems my be caused by a source in another community.
Councilmember Phil Young is also attending the conference. He and I went to different workshops. That’s always been the custom with Eden Prairie Councilmembers. It allows us, as a group, to get more information (and benefit) from the conference. It’s about time for dinner with Councilmember Young, and possibly Chanhassen Mayor Tom Furlong and City Manager Todd Gerhardt. We’ll touch base about what we learned today and plan for tomorrow.
