June 2019 President’s Blog

Happy summer to all, hopefully this is the beginning of enjoying the great outdoor activities that Colorado has to offer as well as well-deserved vacations with family and loved ones.  It has been a long, wet and cold spring so let’s envision long dry warm days ahead.

INDUSTRY IMPORTANCE

Sometimes we all need a little reminder why we do what we do.  We as an industry have great value to each one of our communities that we operate in.  When we combine our economic efforts on a national level we are even more impressive as an industry.  The Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy recently released a study that shows the positive impact of a stone, sand or gravel operation on jobs, tax revenues and other businesses.

$27 billion: aggregates industry sales

$75,129: average annual salary of a quarry job

$570 million: taxes paid by the aggregates industry

90%: percentage of aggregates produced within 50 miles of where they are consumed

4.87: number of additional jobs each quarry job creates throughout the economy

$4.19: amount of earnings in other sectors generated by every $1 earned in the aggregates industry

You can download this entire study on the NSSGA website.

LEGISLATIVE OUTLOOK

Some major bills that were passed by the Colorado Legislators that could potentially affect our industry are:

• House Bill 1257: That asks voters to give up future TABOR refunds and put one-third of those revenues to state and local roadways and to multimodal options like transit and bike paths.
• Senate Bill 263: Which delayed until 2020 a bonding initiative approved last year in another transportation-funding measure that was supposed to go forward on the November ballot, potentially conflicting with the revenue-retention initiative. Doing so will allow the state to sell another $500 million tranche of bond-like certificates of participation in July rather than having to hold them up until after the November election, and it will give transportation advocates another year to try to convince the public to back a $1.84 billion bond sale that will cut into the state’s funding backlog, even if only by 25%.
• Senate Bill 239: That requires the Colorado Department of Transportation to convene a study group to look into ways to monetize the increase of commercial vehicles on Colorado roads at a time when gas-tax revenues that have been used for maintenance are flattening and staring to decline because of the increase in fuel-efficient and electric vehicles.

 UPCOMING EVENTS

• The Summer Networking Event will be held in downtown Colorado Springs at the Phantom Canyon Brewery.  I would encourage you to use this linkto register and participate on Tuesday, June 18 at 5:30.
• The Land Use and Environmental Committee meeting Friday June 21, 2019 10:00-11:30 a.m.
• The Safety Committee July meeting will be July 11 from 11:30-1:00 p.m. at the association offices.