 Hello everybody. Welcome to the very first episode of 15 Minutes. I'm Marsha Martin and I'm your host for this short bi-weekly program about living and getting along in Longmont. We'll have a lot to say about our municipal government, how it works, and how it impacts our lives. Every episode of 15 Minutes features a guest who lives or works in Longmont. I choose my guests to highlight different ways to live in our city and to make a unique contribution to life in Longmont. They won't always be someone you know, but I hope you enjoy meeting each one. Today's guest is Matthew Popkin. Matthew moved to Longmont almost one year ago, coming to us from Washington, D.C. Hello Matthew Popkin and welcome to 15 Minutes. Thanks Marsha. It's a pleasure to be here. Let's why don't you start by telling everybody a little bit about who you are and what brought you to Longmont. I'd be happy to. And I'm a little bit amused to be even sitting here because I moved here just under a year ago and I guess you go to a brewery, you go to the farmers market and then you do a media interview with your local councilman and that's usually what new residents do. Yeah, that's how it is. Yeah, we welcome people as much as we can that way. It's a fantastic program really. Pleased to be here. So no, I grew up in Maryland, went to college in Maryland and I was working in Washington, D.C. up until last year and my fiance and I wanted a change of pace and I didn't have to change jobs because my company was based in Boulder and so we just loaded up the car, moved out and settled in Southmore Park. Southmore Park. Matthew is practically my neighbor. I want everybody to know that I can throw a rock and hit his house, although I have to do a really good wind up. Yeah, tell us about your job because it's a really fascinating one. I've always had an interest in working with cities and working on kind of clean energy and the energy transition and how cities can be designed to be more sustainable and so I work for Rocky Mountain Institute or RMI on our urban transformation team but generally I was mostly intrigued when I moved here to think about finally I have a city that I can call my home again and what does that mean when you actually live there, what kind of changes are going to happen over the next five, 10, 20 years and how do the decisions we make today shape that and so even at work those are the kinds of questions we are asking as a team, as a program that's helping cities across the country figure out this transition that has to happen to be more sustainable and to think about how we get around, how we live and where we live. It really makes me happy to hear you say Longmont is a city that I can call home. I like to think of that as my mission. You know that Longmont needs to be a city that is home to everyone who lives here and we really want everyone who works here to be able to live here. Honestly I was surprised to feel that way so quickly. This is the biggest move of my life that I've ever made and so it was you know it was a little nerve wracking leaving behind a city in an area in a region that I knew so well and frankly loved. I didn't leave DC or Maryland because I didn't like it there. It was a great place and there was also a lot of great things about Longmont and about the region of the front range overall right. We don't have mountains in the same way in Washington DC. The appellations are great but the Rockies are a different sense of scale and opportunity and it was just a pleasure to kind of shift over. My dog loves the outdoors. My fiance and I are both major trail runners so it's just been a lot of fun to readjust our life, get to know the community and get to kind of set up our roots here. Well I look forward to working with you and everyone else in Longmont in terms of making and keeping Longmont the kind of city that inspires those feelings. It's very interesting to me I met Matthew when he asked a really really good question at a coffee with counsel. I knew immediately that I was going to have to collar him after the session and get to know him and that's what we did and so far it's been a good collaboration. I'd like you to tell everybody a little bit about what you've done so far to engage with the city. You know one of the the funny thing about that coffee with counsel that you mentioned it's the only one I've been to it was the only one that I had thought to start to attend I was trying to think about how do I learn more about what's happening in the place that we live. We've already explored some breweries we checked out some restaurants gone on different trails and how do I get to a feel for what's happening at the community level for future plans for future developments and so what really struck me in that meeting was one I was the only resident from district two there and so because that stood out we happen to have a nice conversation there so that was fortuitous if I may say so but what really stood out was a lot of the challenges and questions that other people were raising which was most of the reason why I went there I didn't have any agenda I wanted to just hear like what are the topics of conversation right I learned a lot about the railroad issues I learned a lot about housing and future development plans and transportation and parking issues and what really struck me there was a lot of people wanted space but also wanted the convenience of being close together which is something you really value in the community and something I certainly do and so when I think about it what people what I think we all need to appreciate a little bit more and this is highly relevant for where Longmont is going is that density is actually an asset even in a part of the country where land is prevalent and there's a lot of space and open space density actually reduces the need for driving everywhere it reduces it encourages people to walk to restaurants it helps small businesses and and what struck me is some of the major plans if you're going west to east in Longmont the Boulder County fairgrounds are going through a revamp revamp right now the whole steam project that is perpendicular to Main Street that's proposed will fundamentally transform downtown Longmont in a really exciting way and then farther east on the sugar mill district I mean that is you know a historic site in Longmont that has a lot of transformative potential and I've seen that in other cities across the country if you take those three projects in aggregate there's going to be a whole new horizon in Longmont and that can be really really exciting if it's done well and that's part of the key right now and I think why I got both excited and interested I want to learn like what are the discussions happening around planning and development issues which aren't necessarily the most exciting but they actually have such a transformative potential and the city of Longmont will look completely different in 10 years I think so and changed for the better and I want everybody to know if I'm you know I'm breaking the fourth wall here but I did not set up that speech with Matthew he came to that conclusion all by himself I think it's really important for everybody to understand that the steps we're doing now the transition that Longmont is making from a suburb to an herb are going to solve a bunch of problems they're not going to create a bunch of problems which is what everybody tends to assume you know worst case thinking but the best case is that urban density for Longmont is going to mean that we have a whole lot more cool places and we have fewer cars on the road at least most the time especially if fewer people commute and more people live here and work here I think what's important to note on this because density can be a controversial topic for people density looks different in every place right and so a small city like Longmont will have a very different density or or build than what Denver has or what New York City has those are going to be entirely different just as you know a small city in West Texas will look different from Houston and so we get a chance to define what that looks like right now and I think that's what's particularly encouraging is that Longmont has set such a publicly available process out and Boulder County I know is running the fairgrounds process but all three of those projects are very publicly run right now and there's an opportunity for input because we do get to shape kind of the direction that that goes and we do need to recognize that that's an asset and a really nice value add to the community you know I'll give you an anecdote like I work I used to work before I was at RMI I used to work for a very small consulting firm and all of our clients were small cities and towns and many of them are in Appalachia rural Rust Belt areas of the country and they're going they're asking similar questions of like hey we used to be defined by our steel manufacturing or we used to be defined by coal what do we look like going forward and a lot of cities have sugar mill type districts and they're trying to reinvent what that looks like Longmont I think is is is farther ahead there and that they didn't have a long line doesn't have an industry that's closing out and something restarting in the same way but cities are still asking those same questions and it's going to look very different in Huntington West Virginia than it is in Lansing Michigan than it is in Longmont Colorado in some ways we do have that what Longmont thought of it before Longmont has been through two transitions really fast now we're entering the second but the first one was a farm community and a lot of people still hold a lot of nostalgia for that but you know there is no going back and then Longmont became a suburb and its economic engine was real estate development because it was inexpensive compared to Boulder where all the jobs were and whenever somebody doesn't like something about Longmont you will hear them say oh you're just doing it for the developers hasn't been true for a long time because our land is essentially used up the public voted to surround the city with an open space buffer and that circle is almost complete so in the developers guys but we're defining what our new economy our new architecture our new walkability our transit model is going to be and we've got all the experience of all those other cities to get it right what's really interesting about that I appreciate you sharing that Marsha because what's interesting and what I really want to highlight is that this is the time to get it right they're going to be some major projects happening and to do that right means we think about the walkability and the transit connectivity we think about you know what's the reliance that people have on commuting versus staying or using public transit versus driving and what's the sustainability of this whole system right how easy is it to get around but also how are we building and how do we want people to interact with the community I'm coming at just as a fresh resident in the last year but you know Boulder and Longmont are almost the same size in population at this point and I think Longmont has a lot more potential to grow and likelihood of growing faster than Boulder for a variety of reasons but then how we build how we design our communities and especially the new construction areas is going to really reshape the opportunities there and if we do it poorly or we try to not think about the interconnectivity of those systems we're gonna have to reinvest in that ten years from now and everyone's gonna be disappointed and so it's really important to get that right and I think that the direction the city is headed right now from at least the public engagement that I've joined so far seems really exciting and encouraging public engagement as part of the city management process was something that I had honestly never encountered in another town before and I've lived in you know quite a lot of places I was working in the private sector as an engineer so maybe I just didn't notice and they were really doing it but this is the first place that it's ever been part of my life and I'm delighted to see how engaged the public is even when the public is you know butting heads a little bit they still all really are working at the process with will and I think that's really important otherwise you know you're selling somebody something and they don't know what they get until they open the package I mean if I'm looking through those developments that we talked about before the fairground revamp is gonna be redefining where people gather and where people sell things for vendors and markets right that was one of the early things that I really gravitated towards was the farmers market and the Boulder County farmers market and it made the community feel a lot smaller a lot quicker where people gather and how people sell things then you get to that steam project and it's where people live and where people shop and then you get to the sugar mill and it could be a whole boat boat load of things but that's still up for discussion and it's just east of mainstream and there it's it's so it's such an interesting little spot and it's so picturesque from any part of the community too so however they get redefined I'm looking forward to seeing that it's gonna be wonderful and you know everybody in you think about it this is the saint very in river quarter goes all the way from Rogers Grove in the fairgrounds and it sweeps all the way east to the sugar mill and out of Boulder or out of Longmont rather yet the vision that we can put together of that is is really quite wonderful all the way the river corridor is already protected as an ecosystem even in the narrowest places where the buildings come up closest we have really a pretty unprecedented riparian protected area and we are not compromising on that some of the leading cities these days are really trying to do it's how do we embrace the natural assets that we have and work with that and build around it in creative and sustainable ways when we're when we're looking at when I am my team at work are looking at you know how are we shaping cities for the future we're thinking about the implications of increased heat of changes in precipitation rain we're looking at and what the climate change impacts will be in a whole variety of ways and how can that a small city like Longmont even kind of think about itself as its own ecosystem and own system and then how does our energy system and transportation system support that that's that's the opportunity that the projects I mentioned before and a lot of other questions before council in the city right now and the county have them in mind and you know I just have to add that one of the great things about Longmont is that in in terms of planning that transition for Longmont and in a way that's what Matthew and I both do for a living we have been incorporating social equity from the very beginning the idea that some of these transitions are going to cost some money and we are determined not to let people who can't invest in it themselves be left behind so part of the city plan part of what we think about when we have to dig up a street for ordinary maintenance is do we put in extra electric infrastructure so we can offer people community solar deals you know we're going to make sure that this transition doesn't leave anybody behind and that's the best way to make it work you're absolutely right and what I want to add to that is that there's a bit of a mind chef mind set shift that has to happen here which is we never asked what the return on investment was for paving a road never asked what the return on investment was for a park both of those are useful things to have in a city we don't expect a we don't expect Roosevelt Park to have a pet to pay the city back and create savings long-term but somehow we are expecting that from our energy system from a clean energy deployment we are expecting that from a solar project or from a bus you know downtown bus system some of these public services and goods will have a whole host of benefits but ROI may not be one of those that rent we have to invest in the system but maybe not expected to necessarily pay back because the public good is far greater than what that dollar value return would be over time and and that's hard because we've you know our system is built around the fundamental economics of how some of these projects get built but well you know that's true and yet we're a city yeah the public good is the ROI it's not to say that budget doesn't matter right like responsible budgeting is clearly incredibly important to give that flexibility enable those opportunities but it does mean it does reset the expectations of what we want to see from projects I love running and biking on the left-hand greenway almost every day I don't expect that to have somehow given the city or the county whoever's maintaining that a particular windfall in financial gains there's so much value that a city has to invest in that distinguishes it from any private entity to provide an ROI though Matthew because you and your dog alerted us to the fact that the lighting system had been subverted by people who wanted to sleep in the dark in the park little bit of vandalism and now people can run safely in the park again things like that you know the littlest piece of public engagement really do have value to the city well I think it's also helped that we've gotten we've had to get our feet wet so quickly since moving here my fiance my dog my cat and I because we're also planning a wedding this June and this is the postponed wedding from a couple years ago it's a long story I don't need to go into that right now but we've we've had a chance to meet local vendors very quickly and had to for the backyard wedding that we're going to put on and so we have some food trucks and some breweries come in to support that and it's a way to for us to better connect with the local vendors and community that are here too so we're really looking forward to that but it's certainly been a journey of trying to meet others and completely transform an event that I had planned for a completely different context two years ago so we can all be happy to congratulate Matthew and I don't know your wife's name future wife Eleonora Eleonora Eleonora my dog Pippin our cat Phoebe but they love the backyard it's been really nice to come to the Colorado climate here and that's something that we have to preserve and think about long-term right that's right we've we've seen this from floods to fires to high winds to droughts and that's that if we aren't keeping that in mind as some of these planning decisions are made then the backyard life that we came here for that other people I know love the farming practices that people still hold on to in some ways will will change fundamentally and and we have to be careful and thoughtful in what decisions we're making now that might impact that 10 years to come I mean right now we are struggling with oh fires are weather and they used to just be up in the mountains and we didn't really think about them now they're not now now we know that they can be on the plains they can threaten our cities and we need to get our act together in terms of being more cooperative about file fireproofing our environment out here on the flat fortunately that's something that was really attractive to us when we were moving here was we saw how Longmont was trying to rebuild and rebound from the floods of 2013 I have no personal anecdote from there I was on the other side of the country but it's very clear that that was taken seriously and flood resilience is really key in the same way that fire resilience and heat resilience will be going forward so that's encouraging to see and frankly gave us gave us a nice pause of like okay yeah I think I think we can handle this here and we think the city is ready for it so I I think we really have it together you know there's a lot of people who are seeing how interrelated everything is you know the floods and the fires are even interrelated and you know the aftermath of fire is a flood even when there's a drought which is really a frightening nexus but we've recovered from a flood we're recovering from a fire now and we're just growing the muscles that we need to be a sustainable city in the face of all of this change yeah and you know the interconnectivity is just put on put on a pedestal when you talk about kind of the future plans that the city has right so the more you build out from a city the more like you build on the outskirts of the city the more roads you need to build there the more streets you need to maintain the more accidents that'll happen the more roads you need to enforce and just that increases cost to you so there's an efficiency and a life that can happen and long much needs to define exactly what that's gonna mean for the small city that it is and not say oh we're gonna become New York City we're not never will be and don't want to be and that's not why we moved here so it's more of a question of how do we take the small city that long month is and continue to grow in a sustainable way that allows everyone to be able to get around easily safely and comfortably and make it a part of of the pleasure of living here as opposed to an inconvenience to be overcome absolutely so I guess that's to say challenge extended thank you for your service you're welcome Matthew thank you so much this has been a great talk and I hope everybody is is encouraged and excited and will engage in living in long month the way Matthew has in less than a year thanks Marsha pleasure to be here you welcome