''We're in a slow-down now, but what are we doing to plan for future growth?'' asks Jim Tyler, executive director of DirectQuest. ''If the legislature doesn't take action Colorado voters are fully prepared to take a ction. Somebody is going to get done. What will it be?''
Perlmutter agrees.
''The issue, although we're in an economy that's slumping, isn't going away,'' he says.
He notes that today's population in the state of about 4.3 million people was predicted in 1974. Every year for the past 50 years, with the exception of 1986, Colorado has shown a net gain in people, he says.
''So this is a state that we all love and other people will love it too when the see it and they will want to move here and we'll want to continue to have our children here," Perlmutter says. ''Now things may have slowed down a little bit this year, but that's not going to stop the growth that we can anticipate over the next 40 years.''
Legislators need to adopt growth legislation, but it's difficult, he says, because there are 47 different lobbying groups on growth and land issues. That's almost six times more lobbyists than he has seen on any other issue.
''It's a very complicated subject,'' Perlmutter says. ''It involves construction, it involves planning, it involves transportation. These are all the kinds of things that have to be considered in any kind of growth bill, in master planning, in personal master plans, got passed down to the Senate and are sitting in the House.
"We have a bill on impact fees for the benefit of school districts," he adds. "We had a number of school districts that reached their volume capacity and we are unable to build new schools where they really need them so we had to enact a bill that's now in the House. And we also have a bill on Smart Growth incentives. And so with that incidentplanning organizations can give additional density if you know there's an energy and water conservation major attached to it for open space or transit related kind of a problem.''
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