If You Go What: Meetings on proposed 50-year agreement between CDOT and Plenary Roads Denver on maintenance and operation of U.S. 36 When: 6:30 p.m. Wednesday Where: City Park Recreation Center, 10455 Sheridan Blvd., Westminster When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday Where: Louisville Recreation Center Crown Room, 900 W. Via Appia

A simmering dispute over the future operation and maintenance of the Boulder Turnpike will take center stage this week when transportation officials go before the public to defend the terms of a private 50-year contract for the highway.

Two meetings have been scheduled — the first on Wednesday in Westminster and the second on Thursday in Louisville — in which Colorado Department of Transportation officials will address a growing chorus of concern that the agency is forging a deal with Plenary Roads Denver that hands a disproportionate amount of power and control over the Boulder-to-Denver highway to the private entity.

Plenary, a consortium made up of six companies with expertise ranging from finance to construction to road design, was chosen last spring by CDOT to complete the second phase of the $425 million U.S. 36 Managed Lanes project and maintain the entire corridor, including ice and snow removal, until 2063.

The public-private partnership, which is being overseen by CDOT’s High-Performance Transportation Enterprise financing arm, also gives the firm maintenance responsibilities along Interstate 25, from U.S. 36 to downtown Denver.

Under the deal, Plenary Roads Denver would collect all revenues from the toll lanes currently being constructed in each direction of the turnpike.

The contract between Plenary and CDOT, which is expected to be finalized in the next couple of weeks, has raised howls of protests — including from a group of Colorado lawmakers who want time to review the agreement — about whose interests are being protected in the arrangement.

“Before any state highway is privatized, let’s have a public discussion about the merits of privatization versus publicly funding the project,” said Ken Beitel, spokesman for the Boulder-based alternative energy advocacy group Drive SunShine Institute. “We have no problem with well-written public-private agreements, but this particular deal poses an extreme risk to the Colorado taxpayer.”

Worse still, he said, state lawmakers have so far been denied the opportunity to read the full 600-page contract. An online petition from the Drive SunShine Institute to slow down the process had gathered nearly 5,000 signatures as of Monday evening.

“It’s an undemocratic and highly risky financial proposition that CDOT is moving full steam ahead with,” Beitel said.

Contrasting views of deal

Among the concerns, Beitel said, is language in a summary of the contract recently released by CDOT that states that a tolled roundtrip voyage between Boulder and Denver cost as much as $28 during peak times, and be adjusted upward for inflation. And the number of occupants per vehicle to qualify as high occupancy, and thus be exempt from tolls, would rise from two to three.

He said the agreement will hamstring the state by making it difficult for it to build roads near the U.S. 36 corridor that might compete with the highway.

“There is language that says if an unplanned facility is constructed that lowers toll revenues on U.S. 36, that the state of Colorado or a municipality that has built the facility will have to compensate Plenary (for) 50 years of lost toll revenue,” Beitel said.

Much of the language Beitel and others question appears in a section labeled “Compensation Events,” which spells out several scenarios in which CDOT’s High-Performance Transportation Enterprise financing arm would have to reimburse Plenary its toll revenue losses.

New laws that might exempt certain vehicles, like low-emission cars, from tolls or new road projects that cross or link into U.S. 36 and impact toll revenues could trigger compensation from the state.

Amy Ford, a CDOT spokeswoman, said critics are mischaracterizing what the contract says.

She said the maximum $28 roundtrip toll reflects the desire by transportation planners to include the flexibility of congestion pricing on the highway to ensure that the toll lane in each direction doesn’t bog down in the way the two general purpose lanes next to it will.

“Realistically, we think the likelihood (the maximum toll price will go into effect) is slim,” she said.

More likely, the one-way ride between Boulder and Denver for those who choose to travel the managed lane will start off on the order of $5 to $6, comparable to other tolls in the metro area, Ford said.

The idea that there is a non-compete clause in the contract preventing nearby road projects from moving forward is simply erroneous, she said. The contract clearly states that compensation would be due to Plenary from CDOT only during periods when construction affecting U.S. 36 impinges on toll collections, she said.

“It does not prohibit us from doing any improvements to area roads or nearby transportation systems,” Ford said.

And as far as specific events out of Plenary’s control that might curtail its toll-collecting abilities go, Ford said the language is there to provide assurances to the firm that its forecasted assumptions going into the deal aren’t suddenly changed in mid-stream.

The Plenary Group, with offices in Australia, Singapore, Canada and the United States, on Monday referred all questions on the contract to CDOT.

The agreement, Ford said, strikes a good balance between the interests of the state and Plenary and has the additional benefit of transferring the risk of reconstructing the highway to the private sector.

Without a public-private partnership like the one being created with Plenary, improvements to U.S. 36 would still be 20 years away because funding through traditional avenues simply isn’t there, Ford said.

As far as the full contract being kept under wraps, she said it’s necessary because proprietary financial information in the agreement needs to remain private.

‘We shouldn’t have secret deals’

But state Sen. Matt Jones, D-Louisville, said the lack of transparency on the CDOT-Plenary contract bothers him.

He and 13 of his colleagues late last month called on CDOT to provide lawmakers 60 days to go over the contract in detail. He said he hasn’t gotten a response from the agency, though CDOT does plan to give a presentation on the proposed agreement at the state Capitol on Thursday.

“We shouldn’t have secret deals,” Jones said. “We should be able to look at the whole contract and see how the state and the company are treated.

“But we can’t, because we can’t see the contract.”

To begin with, the senator is no fan of the HOV3 concept — three occupants to a car to qualify as high occupancy — that’s called for in the agreement, which he believes will “take 90 percent of carpools off the road.”

Jones said ultimately it should be up to elected officials to pass judgment on contracts as large and long lasting as the one being proposed for U.S. 36.

“I would like the ability of the Legislature to look at this agreement and approve it, or not,” he said.

Contact Camera Staff Writer John Aguilar at 303-473-1389, aguilarj@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/abuvthefold.