CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
February 01, 2010 06:14 PM UTC
75 Comments
I’m waiting to hear Doug Bruce come out his bunker and claim what a great thing this is.
Unless,of course, an apartment complex full of military families burns down because the lack of firemen who could respond.
Or the petty crime picks back up in downtown Springs, and people stop going to jack Quinns and spend their money on weekends.
Remember those “technicals” in Somalia?
The gas pedal sticks…
Denver Broncos… Still Suck!
The funniest, if you find the destruction of government funny, was someone wanting to solve the budget problem by not paying salaries and benefits. Wow, what a genius. A 350,000 population city run by volunteers.
The Springs don’t need your asses meddlin in our business !
what services the State will have to cover in order to meet the basic safety shortfalls in the Springs now that it appears they’ve gone to circling the bathtub drain?
But residents of the Springs shouldn’t worry – they’ll get their piece of the pie, and screw everyone else in the State if that’s what it takes.
And how many people are they laying off? It looks like major reductions but there’s no mention of layoffs???
enough money to run things swimmingly if only we cut out all that liberal tax and spend waste? Guess the Brucers didn’t save enough string or foil or something. The next great idea: Transform decently paid government workers who pay taxes and buy goods and services into unemployed collectors of benefits.
and slash taxes then the yachts to float to the top and their bilge will trickle down to the peeps. Its called Republican VooDoo or Stockman’s Woodshed.
All the personnel from military installations around CS, where they spend millions each year manicuring lawns, picking up trash, lighting the community and providing health inspections, must believe they are living in the “Green Zone” in Baghdad. Leave the manicured military bases and you’d swear you were in a third world country.
Maybe the Springs’ cuts in services are intended to provide our military with the realism of working in a place they rather not be?
“Three or four years from now, we’re not going to have a conversation about jobs and all of that kind of stuff.” -Scott McInnis
How ironic that in one town you have too much government in the military and too little government in the town. What a mish mash understanding of government goes on down there.
does not “mash” very well with the McInnis plan to attract military jobs. After all, the people who make those decisions also look at the surrounding community in making their determinations of whether or not it is a good environment for their personnel to live in.
“Three or four years from now, we’re not going to have a conversation about jobs and all of that kind of stuff.” -Scott McInnis
Your dream of no taxes is becoming a nightmare of no services.
TABOR must go.
the hell that society will become because of republican selfishness… well the “conservatives” in the springs deserve to see/feel/experience what they themselves have wrought.
Idiots.
third world country, right here in Colorado.
I wonder how the realtors are taking the news? Sure makes me wanna move there and buy a house.
Say you’re Google, or HP, or some other company that pays high wages. Would you move to the Springs?
my point is…most of the realtors in the Springs would be Republicans or very conservative Independents. I know that is true here in Happy Valley.
I wonder how they square their precious TABOR with the perception by the larger market that Colorado Springs is tax-hating itself into backwater status.
I know, maybe the tax-exempt churches and religious organizations will start a faith-based initiative to fund the fire department and the parks department. I’m not sure they should be involved in the police dept. though.
Actually, a lot of that crowd is quite “law and order” oriented, as well as “strong military” and “American strength in the world.” Should they be involved in the police dept.? Lots of them seem to want to be.
(They don’t want to pay for it, of course.)
Several good quotes in the article. I found the one about replacing the entire City Council most telling: there is no trust and people won’t believe there’s a problem until a new set of councilors are elected and have the same problems. Take streetlights for an example: I can imagine a proposal to provide street lighting on private property, even would have a small streetlamp in the front and would pay its cost. Now, I’m not saying this is realistic, I just think there are people in the Springs who will probably propose this. We are so far from having a polis, I get rather despondent thinking about it.
All new houses had the porchlights wired before the meter. The city was the power provider, having booted out the hated private company. It was law to keep your light on from dusk to dawn. Heck you could burn it 24 hrs a day and it didn’t cost you anything.
Even after they put in end of block corner lights many years later, the bulk of the light still came from residences.
We’ll be seeing an explosion in private parks, pools and rec centers, no?
If the people of the Springs want these things, they should be happy to pay for them out of pocket, and the free market will be happy to provide them the opportunity to spend their money on them 😉
because people would happily pay for all these things out of their own generosity if only their tax rates were slightly lower.
they were private. If you paid a fee, you got a medallion. The companies would respond to a fire and, if it had a medallion, save the building. No medallion, they let it burn.
Welcome to Bruceworld!
Hey, Hasan, you still thing TABOR is pefect in every way and want to extend the wonders of “TABOR4LIFE” from Colorado Springs to all of Colorado?
he and Bruce are all inn favor of society circling the drain from first world to third world status… ALL because of TABOR.
when fire departments originated, England was the largest empire in the world.
With the American empire declining, we need to get back to the ideas that worked in order to make America great again.
Hey, that was easy.
let’s go back to having legislatures appoint U.S. Senators. I think Romanoff would do very well in that venue 😉
I continue to support the Taxpayer Bill of Rights
Are your fingers in your ears, and are you going “Lalalalalala,” as you type this?
Deal with the predictable and predicted consequences of the policies you support, if you want anyone to take you seriously.
Where is the private funding to take over all the services government has stopped performing? I’m sure there are billions of dollars available for park maintenance and garbage collection; can you make some calls and make it happen?
Boy, that TABOR4LIFE thing has really worked out well in the Springs. Who needs cops or street lights when rigid right-wing ideology will wish away the need for them.
Well, cutting back on suicide prevention sort of solves that problem, doesn’t it? All the whiners and complainers simply disappear, and gubmint doesn’t have to lift a finger!
must be that they didn’t embrace TABOR fully enough. The problem must be that they’re still collecting any taxes at all, which is keeping good private citizens from mowing parks.
Right-wing nutjobbery can never fail, it can only be failed.
The moral hazard is inescapable.
Once the rabid skunks start nesting in the overgrown parks, citizens will either move into gated communities or take scythes in hand — the choice is theirs.
Can you at least give us a reason?
…no offense, but you’re running for State Treasurer? How do you expect to run in a general election and win like that? That is about as tone-deaf a response to anything as I ever read/heard since McCain 2008 “The Fundamentals of the Economy are strong”. If you really feel strongly about something, I respect that. But the problem I’ve seen with you is that you seem to be dogmatically following an ideology without even thinking of the consequences even as they start staring you in the face.
Can we go to war with Spain again?
We’re so overextended in Afghanistan and Iraq that Spain just might whup us this time!
If we can’t put Spain in its place, perhaps we don’t deserve to be a Great Power again.
Denver is no utopia either…
1) The City cut my garbage collection services by 2/3rds. They would not collect household chemicals at all in 3Q09.
2) Denver Water tripled their paper usage by moving from Quarterly billing to Monthly billing.
3) I had to call Charlie Brown to get an illegal dump cleaned up from our street.
4) My son was robbed and we had to wait 15 minutes for the cops to show up.
Is the Colorado Springs city council just having a tantrum? Angry at voters for denying a tax increase during the worst economy since the depression?
I remember when the National Park Service closed the Washington Monument to visitors when the President cut their budget. Is this just another Washington Monument Gambit?
Just so much grandstanding…
I think given the history of cuts, the Springs really is out of cash.
allege a conspiracy.
http://www.i2i.org/main/articl…
GOP minimalist Groverian talking points nonsense.
http://www.google.com/search?q…
You’re referring to the fact that Denver’s manual pickup in neighborhoods where they give you big black barrels was cut 2/3; if you’re producing more garbage than the big black barrel can handle in a week, chances are you’re not also recycling. So start recycling, and if that doesn’t solve your dilemma, look into what you’re doing to create so much trash in the first place.
As to the other issues, I’m betting that Colo Springs was already doing these things years ago. The water billing issue seems weird to use an example. What does that prove, exactly?
Perusiing the responses here and on KOS one very important issues has not been raised very high. Businesses will not want to locate or have their employees locating in the neighborhood featured in Back to the Future Pt.II.
I can see them locating in Castle Rock (water?) or South Aurora (good water supply).
That is the part of the equation that seems to confound those of a “libertarian” bent. The “free market” is a construct of government institutions. You can debate the efficiency of the institutions, argue about the effectiveness of particular regulations, but you can’t honestly contend that business can succeed in the midst of anarchy. You have to have schools, parks, roads, police, courts, etc. to have a successful “market.” It appears that CS voters are intent on making their community the experiment that proves this.
When you are talking about neighborhoods from “Back to the Future Pt. II” do you mean the shitty future neighborhoods or the shitty alternate present neighborhoods?
Yes, the distinction is important. The Biff Empire alternate present neighborhoods is the one I see as the present future reality for the Springs.
From figures I’ve gathered from the EPC website:
1992: Population 422,815 Budget.... 141,750,969 2008 Adj. 217,526,612 2008: Population 617,315 Budget.... 232,007,401So the county has added 194,500 people (46% growth) and budgeted an extra $14,480,789 (<7% growth) to cover the extra services required.
For national viewers, Colorado Springs residents pay approximately $1,141 in total property taxes on a $200k home – all inclusive (water, schools – >$700 of the total – etc.). Most U.S. citizens would kill for that property tax payment – if it didn’t come with the corresponding near-defunct government.
2008 pamphlet (PDF), based on the Citizen Budget Oversight Committee commissioned by the EPC BoC.
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But in Colorado Springs, that is NOT all inclusive. We pay separately for our utilities (water, wastewater, gas and electricity) and trash pickup.
Taxes are collected by the County, and 70% goes to the school districts.
The city, who gets a share of that $1200, has been cutting back some things, and I haven’t noticed any difference yet. Having been assaulted by a group of on-duty policemen once, I tend to think we have more policing than we need. I don’t miss the 2 AM “pursuits” by helicopter. Having been resuscitated by firemen once, I don’t like the idea of not filling every single vacancy, but there is a for-profit ambulance service that probably could have done nearly the same job, if the CSFD hadn’t taken care of me.
The city sweeps the streets after every snowstorm where gravel has been put down. In residential areas, folks ought to sweep their own streets. I think we can afford to turn off some street lights. Out of all the cutbacks listed, the one that I disagree with most is cutting back on bus service. I don’t use it, but its essential for some folks to hold jobs.
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The breakdown I saw includes every property tax charged to a city resident of SD11.
The goal is not to limit the government to inflation adjusted population growth–it is to destroy government by spending less money per capita on both an inflation adjusted and nominal dollar basis.
What I have yet to figure out is Why? Who loves anarchy so much (aside from 13 year old skate punks and Somali warlords) that they would seek as a goal, the destruction of civil society?
also love anarchy.
The consequences be damned.
It seems that when it’s explained to small government types who are complaining about too many taxes and regulations that they’re advocating for a thirld-world style economic model, the response is always “Oh No! We’re not advocating that, we just think that tax money can be used more efficiently, and over-regulation (of the toxic byproducts of industry) kills jobs”
It’s hard to believe when the response is never “Business should have to pay for (or prevent) the effects of its toxic waste.” or “That tax sounds appropriate for the level of services we want from government.”
Others must fail.
–Attribution disputed
Really, it’s just basic contempt for other people who are beneath you in some way, since instilling such feelings in people is the only way the Republican message gets through to the lower classes.
Cutting tax RATES increases tax REVENUE by stimulating the economy. Therefore, reducing tax rates to zero will produce an infinite amount of revenue!
There is actually some truth to that notion, if you looks back to the marginal income tax rates in effect in the Eisenhower Administration (World War II holdover rates of 93 percent.) Reducing such confiscatory rates as John Kennedy did really did boost the economy and increase revenues, partly by moving income from less productive tax shelters to productive (and taxable) uses.
But C/S is now learning the results of pushing that reasonable proposition to absurd lengths, by applying it to already low municipal tax rates.
If we give a lot of nothing then we are bound to get something. It will be interesting to see how this little experiment in conservative ideological extremism works out. Something for nothing looks like one of the conservative bias’ that don’t work very well in the liberal real world where nothing is usually followed by nothing.
Their silence on this topic speaks volumes.
They have nothing to say.
No excuse. No explanation.
Even Muhammad Ali Hasan has nothing to say other than “I still support TABOR” – but with no explanation whatsoever.
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so you may question my qualifications to make this comparison,
but I don’t think that things are any worse here than last year, and the cuts started some time back. I sure don’t think things are as bad as they are in Mogadishu, or Bossaso (the jumping off point for illegal immigration to that land of plenty across the Bab-el-Mandeb, Yemen.)
Of course, things aren’t as nice here as they are in the upscale parts of Garowe, where the Pirate Kings make their homes, but then Garowe (and parts of Eyl) is akin to Genessee Park or Mount Vernon.
Except for cutbacks in bus service, I think all the cuts are OK in a time like this. Regardless of what the corporate media (including Jon Stewart) tells you, we are not in a recession. If you take out the money being made by the uber-wealthy, the rest of the country is in a depression. Nice-to-have but not essential services can be pared back when taxpayers are stretched so thin. Nobody is starving; nobody is losing shelter or clothing due to these cuts.
Our city’s annual budget is under $145 M per year. The Mayor recently gave the US Olympic Committee $53 M in incentives to stay here, and that was just the cost of admission; he committed the city to ante up even more in the future. That’s the sort of payola that has folks here voting down tax increases. We see what the city does with what little they have, and we don’t trust them to spend any increase wisely.
Would our city be poorer culturally without USOC ? Of course. But having the Olympic Training Center here is mostly a plaything for the rich of this burg; remember that a Hybl was the USOC president for several years. He could afford the $53 M; we can’t.
Now, if we could get a Silverdome here for $600,000, I might go for that.
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you will always have that Rodeo Hall of Fame. Or do they receive tax incentives also?
“Three or four years from now, we’re not going to have a conversation about jobs and all of that kind of stuff.” -Scott McInnis
I have been pretty busy lately with trying to sell my house to get out of this state so I never noticed this latest attack by the Denver Far Left Post.
You nailed it. We are doing fairly well down here considering the state of our economy in general and the fact that our Mayor can offer the USOC tons of money and a free multi story brand new building to stay here, but out of the other side of his lying mouth he can tell us how bad things are…how he will have to lay off hundreds of firemen and policmen….lay off hundreds of city workers, how the parks will dry up and he will have to close all of the pools if we don’t vote for yet another tax increase. Of course the morons decided to make it a real estate tax increase. Make those of us that own property pay more while the thousands that rent pay next to nothing extra. Smart move.
I found it amusing that all of the hype coming from their mouths before voting was a smoke screen as magically they found the funds after all to keep the city services running. Imagine that.
So to answer all of those that took and continue to take jabs at us, look in your own back yards. We are doing fine here. We pay 7.4% sales tax now. How much would you like us to pay? Or better yet, move down here yourself and you can vote for every moronic tax rate increase these mental midgets come up with and pay them yourselves. In the mean time, don’t believe everything the newspapers tell you. The cops are still out there, the firemen are still out there, we all pay our fair share of taxes just like you do.
When our elected officials realize that we can see them giving away millions of our dollars to giant entities like the USOC that won’t help the average working family, but then tell us how bad things are and how stingy we are, maybe then they will lead and not try to dictate.
The property owners of rental units pay property taxes which are then passed down to the tenants in their rental/lease payments.
but a tiny fraction compared to home and business property owners. If they wanted to be fair, they could have asked for a time limited sales tax. Not a forever property tax increase. Especially right after giving millions to the USOC and then standing there with their hands out saying how broke they are.
You should be aware that a smart (and not necessarily unethical) landlord pays for all his property overhead out of the rent he collects. That includes property tax, which means that renters do pay it all.
Now, sales taxes aren’t so fair because they’re regressive, that is, they take a disproportionate hit on the poor. Those with property are more able to afford higher property taxes than those without can afford higher sales taxes. I see nothing unfair in that.
….go ahead and live the myth that you’re being taxed to death in the Springs. Enjoy living behind the concertina wire in your new mountain compound.
If the Post is far-left of you, then I have no idea where you are.
OK, enough snark…
So the city council gave the USOC $53M. Meanwhile the budget has been nearly flat(?) for almost 20 years, while the population has grown almost 50%.
Geez, that sounds bad. So bad that I think that maybe it’s not the whole story. Did the city do an economic analysis that shows that the $53M invested will bring in more than that over the long run? I would certainly hope so. If so, then you just have a disagreement over how to invest in your future. If not, then how did that council get elected? Did they run on the unicorns and faeries platform?
is that the city has to bribe the USOC annually just for them to keep their training center in the Springs.
Maybe if the city had actually spent some money making the Springs a decent place to live they wouldn’t have to bribe the USOC.
Just sayin’
B-X, so what happens when the CoSprings police force cuts back on patrols to downtown, and the usual mix of rowdy drunk Joes, petty crooks and hookers turns it back into the wasteland?
I was stationed at Cartoon during the late 80’s, and in those days the Post Commander made it officially off limits for those very reasons.
What happens to the sales tax revenue when people stop going downtown to party & eat? Or will the Gun-totin’ spirit of the West make ordinary citizens strap on their shootin’ irons and take up courtesy patrols?
And y’know, the CoSprings fire dept can bare handle the calls they have with the massive manpower they have now. What happens when one of those cardboard box apartment complexes on Academy burns down, taking 300+ junior enlisted families’ stuff? I’m sure everyone will just say that they had a fiscal incentive to fight the fire on their own!
And about those same junior enlisted families that can barely afford one car, some of which with foreign national wives who can’t drive in the US. Instead of relying on public transportation to get to school/shopping/mental health activities, they could use their new-found wealth from tax cuts to form a private taxi service!
Lastly, the reason I don’t eat out in the Springs when I go to visit my 11B buddy is that I don’t have a lawyer on retainer to sue the restaurant when they give me food poisoning from their un-inspected kitchen. I mean in the LIbertarian-think universe I’m supposed to KNOW when a joint serves bad food, because the previously-poisoned customers would be voting with their feet and not coming back…
As if everyone should use the example of the Broadmoor, dusting trinkets and watering poinsettias for a measly $2000 per month as what cities should strive for. His statement suggests the Tea Party’s worst definition of socialism which is that everyone gets paid the same, regardless of what they do or how long they’ve done it. Haha. Haha. Hahaha. This is not funny.
at less than the minimum wage and tips of la migra if they complain? Naw, that would never happen,,,
The last time I stayed at the Broadmoor, their concierge made our stay worse rather than better. Now I understand. At 24K, you get that level of sevice.
“Three or four years from now, we’re not going to have a conversation about jobs and all of that kind of stuff.” -Scott McInnis
For $24k, I doubt it.
I used to deliver plants to the Broadmoor (thus the poinsettia reference) and I thought the workers to be exceptionally down-trodden.