Member Services

The Member Services “program” is primarily work done by the Executive Director drawing upon administrative staff, including our communications and GIS consultants and sometimes those in other programs to address specific requests by the Council. We get asked a lot about what a Council of Governments does. The short answer is we exist to do what our Membership, which is made up of Municipalities and Counties, wants us to do. Some of those requests become programs that last for years. Others may be stood-up to meet a specific need.

CARO Matrix

We observe for and listen to challenges facing our membership. Much of the content for our Reports and Newsletters which can be found under Who We Are tab above is generated through listening for trends and needs. Those in local government face common issues. There is a lot of idea sharing and learning that happens among members, and NWCCOG seeks to encourage that, especially through Council meetings. When a topic can benefit from a deeper dive, we often seek experts to present to the Council, or write a report. Funding for Member Services operations and projects comes from Member Dues. Those are leveraged when possible with Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) grants and funding from other partners. As time allows from other duties, the Executive Director often works with member boards or councils to facilitate retreats or perform direct services such as assisting with a Manger search.

Since collaborating on the Mountain Migration Report in 2021, NWCCOG and CAST have discussed several possibilities for another joint research project.  We’ve observed that remote work, STRs and the global pandemic appear to have deeply impacted the economies and communities of our members.  We have also observed something of a “reset” in thinking about tourism and economic development in mountain towns and counties, including “down-valley” support towns, challenging leaders to consider if changes in the regional economy call for different ways of measuring trends and sharing data about destination marketing and community development.  Already, some municipalities have made an overt shift from marketing tourism to managing tourism.  In 2022, some communities put questions to their voters about diverting tourism funding to other acute needs such as workforce housing.   Many places are in the process of wrestling with how to re-assess and rebalance their resources between a focus on residents and a focus on visitors.  In this collaboration, we will be asking if different communities track unique “key performance indicators” (KPI) that should be included in the project. There is a rich discussion occurring about whether economic metrics or quality-of-life metrics should instruct these decisions.

As a first step, with this initial survey, we seek information from leaders like you who are members of these regional organizations.

After gathering input from you and your local government peers, the survey tool will be refined and then we will be requesting your assistance to distribute it widely among residents, second homeowners and visitors alike.   That data will be compiled into quantifiable and qualitative information that can be compared across the region and (eventually) across time.  Though some individual resort towns have undergone similar efforts, the idea for this project is that a simple, uniform tool will become a standard for measuring change year-over-year and from one community to another.

At that point, CAST and NWCCOG leadership will discuss next steps which may include seeking grant funding to assist interested communities in acting upon the data.

To access the survey please visit: CommunityMetrics.org

Click Here For more information about the NWCCOG Research Effort