Karen Oxman, Golden City Council, District 2
April 9, 2007

While many Americans were consumed with basketball during the month of March, I joined several thousand elected municipal officials at the annual meeting of National League of Cities.  NLC was formed to unite the individual State Municipal Leagues, 49 of them.  (Hawaii does not have any cities! so does not have a State Municipal League, but participates in other ways!)  Our own Colorado Municipal League was formed in 1923 and serves more than 260 communities, about 99% of the municipal population of Colorado.  CML advocates for municipal interests on State and Federal  Policies that affect our cities and towns.  That is the civics lesson for today!  Now, I will tell you about my experiences!

The first two days in Washington, DC were spent in educational seminars.  (Unfortunately, we were inside all day during the best of DC weather!)  My choices for education mainly fell into the categories of communication and accountability to your constituents.  Citizen surveys are a reality check for city and staff.  It is important to hone your message into three points, in order to not ‘lose’ your audience!  The three points are concise, confident, and comprehensive.  The more you talk, the higher your loss of message.  How you look and sound weighs far more than what you say.  (Maybe we can shorten those meetings yet!) 

The following 3 days were spent in ‘general assembly meetings’ that had interesting speakers…….among my favorites were David Gergen, Editor for U.S. News and World Report, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd….that need no adjectives!  Issues discussed in these sessions were transportation, budget, energy, education, health, homeland security, and housing…….the usual ‘punch-list’ of issues that affect all of us in many ways.  The message was that we all have issues that are not unique to our small niche of the planet.  The differences come in how we choose to deal with the issue.

Lastly, our Mayor, Chuck Baroch, and Councilors Jacob Smith, Lynne Timpeiro, and I had appointments with our Representatives, Mark Udall and Ed Perlmutter, and our Senators, Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar, to discuss issues near and dear to Golden.  We wanted to let them know where we need their support in Washington, and what is going on locally that we felt they might like to hear.  We stressed our desire to keep ‘local control local’……meaning, please respect our cities and citizens.  Transportation was discussed, as well as the budget shortfalls that are prevalent across the Nation.  (It is really fun to visit our elected officials in their DC offices…..and walk through the tunnels that link the buildings…….open to the public even!)  I feel that these visits are very important to remind our elected officials in DC that WE are the ones who sent you to DC to ‘do good……and do no harm’.

I thank the City of Golden, and the Citizens, for the opportunity to attend and learn.  If we don’t try to expand our minds, and extend ourselves, we can too easily stagnate and be useless to our community!  We all need to take the time to move forward with our minds and bodies!