Rocky Mountain Highs and Beach Boy Blues

I spoke at the Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities on Thursday morning in Pittsburgh at the William Penn Hotel. My good friend, Mayor John Brenner of York, Pennsylvania is the president this year and is doing a great job. York is one of the cities that has joined the Inclusive Communities Program. Jack Garner is the Executive Director of the league and does a great job. Jack has been battling cancer for the past several years, but he always has a smile on his face and works as hard as any director in the country.

I got to see Brian O'Neill from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who is a Past President of the National League of Cities. I also was surprised to see Charlie Lyons of Arlington, Mass, who was visiting the conference. Charlie served as President of NLC in 2004. Governor Ed Rendell spoke at lunch and he is clearly running for reelection. Lynn Swann, the former Steeler is his opponent and spoke the following day.

I had to hurry to the Pittsburgh Airport to catch a flight to Denver, Colorado. My wife, Pam joined me for the trip and we were late leaving Pittsburgh and therefore got into Denver around 9:30PM. We got our rental car and headed for Breckenridge, the site of the Colorado Municipal League Annual Conference. We looked forward to a beautiful drive in the Rockies, but it was dark and all we saw was the road in front of us. The steep mountains make driving an experience. We arrived around 1:00AM and checked into the hotel and hit the sack around 2:00AM.

When we woke up on Friday and walked to breakfast, we were astounded by the beautiful scenery. It's no wonder people flock to Breckenridge to ski. We got to walk around the town and bask in the beautiful weather. The altitude is really an experience. A short walk leaves you breathless and everyone seems to have gotten the message to tell the tourists to "drink lots of water". If we heard it once, we heard it a hundred times.

The meeting was really great. The immigration issue is red hot in Colorado and I think many of the city officials were touched by the Inclusive Communities Program. Several cities have signed up and more are working on it. Several city officials spoke about what they were doing in thier cities to build a more inclusive community. Mayor Ken Fellman was really kind and told me that he believed that the program has already had a huge effect in his city.

Pam and I drove back to Denver on Saturday morning and did a real tourist thing by visiting the grave of Buffalo Bill Cody. It was pretty tacky, but the view from Lookout Mountain was spectacular. Lots of pictures that I'll try to post in the next few days.