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DRCOG Established
Denver has been thinking regionally for a while - Created in 1955 as an Inter-County Regional Planning Association, the Denver (Colorado) Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) -
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA)
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA)
Under the provisions of ISTEA, metro areas that violate air-quality standards, as Denver has, must make sure that new highway construction doesn't worsen air quality.
And because DRCOG controls the dispersal of federal highway funds, suburban governments have an incentive to cooperate. -
DRCOG Attempt to Define UGB's
That's why Gov. Roy Romer promotes Smart Growth and why the eight-county Denver Regional Council of Governments, representing more than 2 million people, has spent two years defining official Urban Growth Boundaries in its Metro Vision 2020 Framework. -
DRCOG More Power
But now, under the federal Clean Air Act, the regional council has the authority to disperse or withhold federal funds for transportation projects. And with that power, it has gained clout. -
DRCOG Have Informal UGB's
And now, Denver's eight-county urban region is attempting to adopt urban growth boundaries like those governing Portland's three-county area.
DRCOG primarily has verbal agreements on growth boundaries -
DRCOG Approves UGB/Metro Vision 2020
DRCOG votes Feb. 19 on urban growth boundaries and metro vision 2020.
The plan would be voluntary, although the council of governments does have some indirect enforcement power. If cities do not go along with the plan, the council of governments can withhold federal money for transportation projects.
Once Metro Vision 2020 is implemented, local governments that don't stick to their allotted square mileage could lose federal transportation funds distributed by DRCOG. -
UGB's Adopted
urban-growth boundaries adopted by DRCOG in 1998 -
SB 107 Fails in Legislature
SB 107. mandating the imposition of urban growth boundaries. It would have required every county with over 10,000 population and every city with 25,000 population to draw urban growth boundaries within three years. Pascoe's bill would have required that every city and county of any size draw boundaries on the map limiting development. New construction could occur within those boundaries during the next 20 years. The idea is to deny to areas outside of those boundaries such services as storm -
Mile High Compact Signed
DRCOG Mile High Compact
Through the Mile High Compact, local governments use their local comprehensive and master plans as their primary growth and development decisionmaking tools. -
Amendment 24 Fails
The Colorado Responsible Growth Act would mandate "urban growth boundaries" around most of the state's cities and towns.
If the measure passes, people will have to pay careful attention to their local comprehensive plans, adds Lamont, because they will become legally mandated blueprints for how development takes place.
Anti-Amendment 24 campaign ads last fall warned that Denver housing prices could skyrocket if Colorado were to follow Oregon's lead and adopt urban service boundaries that can shr -
County Commissioners Abandone Proposal to Alter UBG in Centennial
county commissioners have abandoned a proposal to shift 23 square miles designated as urban growth area from Centennial to unincorporated areas to the east. The proposal was meant to expand the areas for potential development in the unincorporated parts of the county without violating -
Perlmutter HB to limit Growth Proposed
Perlmutter's bill would mandate every city and county to formulate a comprehensive plan, giving local jurisdictions with populations in excess of 50,000 until July 2002 to complete them. Perlmutter's approach is to have local governments set urban boundaries beyond which they could not sprawl and to require developers to build adjacent to already developed areas until they "roll out" over a 20-year period to the absolute boundary line. -
East Cocalico changes UGB
Supervisors first changed the township's urban growth boundary to include the Four Seasons expansion site. -
FasTracks Lightrail Approved by Voters
The most spectacular breakthrough came Election Day in Colorado, when Denver-region voters decided, 57 percent to 42 percent, to OK "FasTracks,'' a $4.7 billion initiative to build about 119 miles of light rail and commuter rail with extensions reaching out through the suburbs to such targets as Boulder and the Denver International Airport. -
Officials Want to Change UGB
Denver-area officials are haggling over whether projected growth boundaries for the metro area should be redrawn to make way for the predicted increase of 1.5 million people over the next three decades. At issue is the metro area's urban growth boundary, part of what's called the Metro Vision 2030 Plan
