Utopia: A Little City in Colorado

Hello Children,

Today’s update is one I actually wrote ought near two months ago, but never got around to posting.

Eventually I just wrote it off, thinking it had done been made irrelevant by the passage of time.

But then I seen this on the intertubes {Here}:

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- City economic leaders say Colorado Springs isn't getting a fair shake in the national media. So now they are fighting back.

The heads of the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce and the Colorado Springs Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC) are talking about a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

They say the article painted an inaccurate picture of Colorado Springs as a city that is cutting all its services, and that could make it hard to attract new businesses to the area.

The head of the chamber and the head of the EDC each say they don’t want to get into a shouting match with the national media. Instead they are focusing on reminding locals why this is such a great place to work and live. They say the picture of Colorado Springs as a city without services is wrong.

And that’s what they are accusing the Wall Street Journal of publishing.

"The article was not balanced and it really focused on the negative in a community that has so many positive things that we could be talking about," said Mike Kazmierski, head of EDC.

The article talks about recent cuts to city services.

But the head of the EDC says sometimes people in other parts of the country get a distorted view of the Pikes Peak region.

"We get questions -- we got questions just last month from a prospect in California that said, 'I hear you are laying off all your police,'" said Kazmierski.

The fear is that articles like the one in the Journal will keep employers from relocating here.

"Image is everything and perception becomes some people's reality," said Dave Csintyan, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce.

Officials say Colorado Springs is proud to be a city of accountability and financial restraint. Now they say they are stressing the positive while talking to local businesses and prospective new companies.

"We say, 'You may have heard this but let me tell you what is really going on in Colorado Springs and what a great place it really is,'" Kazmierski said.

They say typically once a prospective employer visits here they are able to close the deal despite what is reported in the national media.

"Our cost of doing business is at least 30 percent less than either of the coasts," Kazmierski said.

Wednesday night the chamber and the EDC will host local businesses to talk face-to-face about what both groups are doing to make the Springs a better place to do business.

It’s free and open to the public at the Stargazers Theatre and Event Center, 10 S. Parkside Dr., Colorado Springs. The meeting is at 4:30 p.m.

Them city leaders is almost APOLOGIZING for cutting city services!

WHAT??? WHY???

So maybe a little support for the city of Colorado Springs is in order:

_________________________________________________

I declare, if’n I didn’t once again happen upon something that don’t highlight perfectly the INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY of LIEberals and their whole TAX & SPEND philosophy of COMMUNISM!!

I done come across it while scouring the assembly of LIBtards over at Something Awful forums {Here}, or you can go on and find the original article {Here}:

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

"I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day."

Some residents are less sanguine, arguing that cuts to bus services, drug enforcement and treatment and job development are attacks on basic needs for the working class.

"How are people supposed to live? We're not a 'Mayberry R.F.D.' anymore," said Addy Hansen, a criminal justice student who has spoken out about safety cuts. "We're the second-largest city, and growing, in Colorado. We're in trouble. We're in big trouble."

Mayor flinches at revenue

Colorado Springs' woes are more visceral versions of local and state cuts across the nation. Denver has cut salaries and human services workers, trimmed library hours and raised fees; Aurora shuttered four libraries; the state budget has seen round after round of wholesale cuts in education and personnel.

The deep recession bit into Colorado Springs sales-tax collections, while pension and health care costs for city employees continued to soar. Sales-tax updates have become a regular exercise in flinching for Mayor Lionel Rivera.

"Every month I open it up, and I look for a plus in front of the numbers instead of a minus," he said. The 2010 sales-tax forecast is almost $22 million less than 2007.

Voters in November said an emphatic no to a tripling of property tax that would have restored $27.6 million to the city's $212 million general fund budget. Fowler and many other residents say voters don't trust city government to wisely spend a general tax increase and don't believe the current cuts are the only way to balance a budget.

Dead grass, dark streets

But the 2010 spending choices are complete, and local residents and businesses are preparing for a slew of changes:

• The steep parks and recreation cuts mean a radical reshifting of resources from more than 100 neighborhood parks to a few popular regional parks. The city cut watering drastically in 2009 but "got lucky" with weekly summer rains, said parks maintenance manager Kurt Schroeder.

With even more watering cuts, "if we repeat the weather of 2008, we're at risk of losing every bit of turf we have in our neighborhood parks," Schroeder said. Six city greenhouses are shut down. The city spent $19.6 million on parks in 2007; this year it will spend $3.1 million.

"If a playground burns down, I can't replace it," Schroeder said. Park fans' only hope is the possibility of a new ballot tax pledged to recreation spending that might win over skeptical voters.

• Community center and pool closures have parents worried about day-care costs, idle teenagers and shut-in grandparents with nowhere to go.

Hillside Community Center, on the southeastern edge of downtown Colorado Springs in a low- to moderate-income neighborhood, is scrambling to find private partners to stay open. Moms such as Kirsten Williams doubt they can replace Hillside's dedicated staff and preschool rates of $200 for six-week sessions.

"It's affordable, the program is phenomenal, and the staff all grew up here," Williams said. "You can't re-create that kind of magic."

Shutting down youth services is shortsighted, she argues. "You're going to pay now, or you're going to pay later. There's trouble if kids don't have things to do."

• Though officials and citizens put public safety above all in the budget, police and firefighting still lost more than $5.5 million this year. Positions that will go empty range from a domestic violence specialist to a deputy chief to juvenile offender officers. Fire squad 108 loses three firefighters. Putting the helicopters up for sale and eliminating the officers and a mechanic banked $877,000.

• Tourism outlets have attacked budget choices that hit them precisely as they're struggling to draw choosy visitors to the West.

The city cut three economic-development positions, land-use planning, long-range strategic planning and zoning and neighborhood inspectors. It also repossessed a large portion of a dedicated lodgers and car rental tax rather than transfer it to the visitors' bureau.

"It's going to hurt. If they don't at least market Colorado Springs, it doesn't get the people here," said Nancy Stovall, owner of Pine Creek Art Gallery on the tourism strip of Old Colorado City. Other states, such as New Mexico and Wyoming, will continue to market, and tourism losses will further erode city sales-tax revenue, merchants say.

• Turning out the lights, literally, is one of the high-profile trims aggravating some residents. The city-run Colorado Springs Utilities will shut down 8,000 to 10,000 of more than 24,000 streetlights, to save $1.2 million in energy and bulb replacement.

Hansen, the criminal-justice student, grows especially exasperated when recalling a scary incident a few years ago as she waited for a bus. She said a carload of drunken men approached her until the police helicopter that had been trailing them turned a spotlight on the men and chased them off. Now the helicopter is gone, and the streetlight she was waiting under is threatened as well.

"I don't know a person in this city who doesn't think that's just the stupidest thing on the planet," Hansen said. "Colorado Springs leaders put patches on problems and hope that will handle it."

Employee pay criticized

Community business leaders have jumped into the budget debate, some questioning city spending on what they see as "Ferrari"-level benefits for employees and high salaries in middle management. Broadmoor luxury resort chief executive Steve Bartolin wrote an open letter asking why the city spends $89,000 per employee, when his enterprise has a similar number of workers and spends only $24,000 on each.

Businessman Fowler, saying he is now speaking for the task force Bartolin supports, said the city should study the Broadmoor's use of seasonal employees and realistic manager pay.

"I don't know if people are convinced that the water needed to be turned off in the parks, or the trash cans need to come out, or the lights need to go off," Fowler said. "I think we'll have a big turnover in City Council a year from April. Until we get a new group in there, people aren't really going to believe much of anything."

Mayor and council are part-time jobs in Colorado Springs, points out Mayor Rivera, that pay $6,250 a year ($250 extra for the mayor). "We have jobs, we pay taxes, we use services, just like they do," Rivera said, acknowledging there is a "level of distrust" of public officials at many levels.

Rivera said he welcomes help from Bartolin, the private task force and any other source volunteering to rethink government. He is slightly encouraged, for now, that his monthly sales-tax reports are just ahead of budget predictions.

Officials across the city know their phone lines will light up as parks go brown, trash gathers in the weeds, and streets and alleys go dark.

"There's a lot of anger, a lot of frustration about how governments spend their money," Rivera said. "It's not unique to Colorado Springs."

Now that all sounds mighty sad…at least on the surface; until you realize that the folks in this idyllic slice of Heaven have one of the lowest property tax rates in the state!

This ain’t no town teetering on the brink of bankruptcy; it’s teetering on the brink of GREATNESS!

It’s a town what’s living a TEABAGGER’S dream-come-true!

Praise Jesus! Glory, glory hallelujah!

Now if’n the residents of that town want to achieve a true Conservative Utopia, they got just a bit farther to go.

Here’s the best way to go about it while staying true to the principles of the GOP:

• Eliminate all taxes on anyone earning more than 250,000 a year.
• Raise taxes on everyone earning less than 250,000 a year, with the penalty increasing exponentially the less you make.
• Eliminate police and fire departments funding.

This way, them rich folks – who obviously deserve their wealth, else why would God give it to them – get to keep more of their own money.

Conversely, the poor will choose to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or face crippling taxation. That-a-way, nobody gots to feel any sympathy for the “poor” or “homeless.” (Not that I do anyway; after all, if them no-account LAYABOUTS didn’t WANT to be poor no more, then they’d go out and make themselves rich.)

And just imagine how much better this nation would be without publicly funded emergency services!

Without the stranglehold that police and fire unions enforce on taxpayers, the free market would flourish, extending the private sector’s benevolent “unseen hand” to those folks what can afford to pay for them services!

That’s what I don’t understand about these LibTARDS; they don’t see no problem with paying to have a pizza delivered, but they expect the rest of us to pay TAXES so they can rely on GOVERNMENT LARGESSE to put out house fires or stop home invasions!

Hey LibTURDS, why don’t y’all use your brains (I know that’s asking a lot ) and look up “SUPPLY AND DEMAND”?!

• Do you value your safety? Then you won’t mind paying a police officer for the use of his services when you’re being robbed! *
• Do you value your property? They you won’t mind paying a firefighter for the use of his services when your house is burning down! *

I swanny! What’s so hard to understand about THAT?!

Oh yeah, I forgot. It don’t cater to the LIBERAL ISLAMO-FASCIST dream of a ATHEIST COMMUNIST ONE-WORLD GOVERNMENT!

-Norma Jean

* You notice I specifically don’t say “him OR HER?” That’s cause menfolk – and ONLY menfolk - should ever, ever, ever work outside the home!