Longmont adopts water plan, postpones Fair Campaign Practices Act di…

The Longmont City Council adopted the city’s 2023/2024 Water Supply and Water Shortage Implementation Plan during its regular session Tuesday.

The council approved the plan as a consent agenda item without discussing it. However, the city is expected to have “sufficient potable municipal water supplies for 2023 through 2025 to meet customer water demands,” according to a council memo.

City staff started preparing a water supply and implementation plan during the drought of 2002. Since then, the council has reviewed and ultimately accepted the water plan annually.

The city projects that its water supply in 2023 will be “141% of demand, assuming a sustainable conservation level is maintained,” the memo said.

Fair Campaign Practices Act

During Tuesday’s regular session, the City Council was also scheduled to discuss whether or not to remove references to P.O. boxes from the Longmont Fair Campaign Practices Act but ultimately postponed the conversation.

Mayor Joan Peck requested that the item be removed from the agenda due to Mayor Pro Tem Aren Rodriguez not being able to attend Tuesday’s meeting. Peck wanted a full council to be present for the discussion.

Currently, council and mayoral candidates must report the name and street address or P.O box of each person who contributes $50 or more to their respective campaigns.

However, some council members and residents have raised concerns about campaign donors using P.O. boxes instead of street addresses when making contributions.

It isn’t immediately clear when the council will discuss the topic again.

During the portion of Tuesday’s meeting when the public was invited to be heard, former Councilwoman Polly Christensen implored the council to eliminate P.O. boxes as an allowable address for campaign donors.

“It has been said that people who want to keep their address private in public documents should be able to do that; not when they’re giving money,” Christensen said. “Secrecy in funding is the very essence of corruption.”