ARE YOU NEW HERE? NOT LOGGED IN? PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO REGISTER FOR AN ACCOUNT AND LOGIN TO REMOVE THIS WINDOW
Welcome to PatsFans.com. Do you have an account? If not - please take a moment to register for our forum and experience a much smoother experience with fewer ads, along with no longer having to see this notification window. Also learn about how you can receive a free Patriots T-Shirt from the Patriots Official ProShop by CLICKING HERE. Please enjoy your stay here, and Go Pats!
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."
...
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.
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."
For context, this is how much colorado springs pays in property taxes:
Quote:
i just found a chart that lists the 2009 property tax rate in colorado springs as $78.71 on a $200k house
LOL, Coloradans would rather their city turn into an Eastern European slum rather than raise their already meager taxes just a tiny bit.
Here's a little more background on how this happened:
Quote:
For those who don’t live in Colorado or don’t follow the whole “Tax Payers Bill of Rights” (TABOR) movement I need to set the stage a little bit. There is a this very conservative fellow by the name of Douglas Bruce. Old Dougie is more than a bit of a nutter about taxes. He and Grover Norquist have the same idea,namely, that the government never spends money well and should always be starved of all the money possible, at every turn
TABOR being passed, first in Colorado Springs, then state-wide in Colorado. One of the provisions of TABOR is that tax revenue cannot be increased except by the popular vote of the people, beyond the rate of inflation plus the rate of population growth. Beyond that limit the State or the City has to return any revenue they have collected.
That would be bad enough, but TABOR is based on the previous year, so if we have a recession like the one we are in, and revenues fall, then the next year the City or the State has to start from that lower limit. They can’t stay where they were the previous year and to raise anymore revenue requires a popular vote.
You can see where this is going. When there is a long term recession, revenues fall, and then the next year there is even less to start with. This is where the City of Colorado Springs is now.
Last summer the City knew it was in trouble. They had to cut out the health inspections of pools and day care centers, because there was not enough revenue. They put the idea of raising taxes before the people and the anti-tax crowd in the Springs, lead by Douglas Bruce not only defeated it, they managed to unseat some incumbents on City Council who had proposed the increases and campaigned for them.
Fast-forward to February 2010 and the City is in real trouble.
RECEIVE A FREE PATS T-SHIRT AND SAVE 15% OFF WHEN YOU BUY FROM THE OFFICIAL PROSHOP!
Free T-Shirt & Save 15% Off!
Like Our Site? Please help support our site and server costs by DONATING TO PATSFANS.COM and receive a FREE PATRIOTS T-SHIRT and SAVE 15% off EVERY purchase you make from PatriotsProShop.com. You'll also receive added benefits to your account including Removing All Ads During Your Experience Here At Our Forum.
NEEDED YEARLY SITE DONATIONS: 345 | CURRENT # OF SUBSCRIBED SUPPORTERS: 98
Re: Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phokus
For context, this is how much colorado springs pays in property taxes:
Your numbers are wrong.
On a $185K house in 2005 the property tax was $874; only $73 of that went to the city but that's a separate issue. While that is a low property tax (the $874), tripling it would put the total property tax to about $3K for a $200K house.
Re: Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
NEPatriot has some competiton now. His "Obama's policies starving millions to death"(paraphrase) thread Title earned him dumbest Title of the year award but I have a feeling that won't last.
Last edited by PatsWSB47; 02-04-2010 at 03:59 PM..
Re: Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
Glad to see someone trying to put some restraints on government hope this will workout for them. Thanks for the info silly title aside.
__________________
"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."
Re: Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
Wow, so a town realized that they couldn't afford a ton of parks, so they are cutting most of those services instead of doubling taxes? I didn't know that was possible. Hmm, balance the budge by reducing spending instead of raising taxes. What a novel idea! This is brilliant! Can't believe no one's thought of this before.
Re: Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
Um, you do realize it's not just "parks," don't you? It's also police presence, firemen, street lights, social workers, youth programs, childcare, buses and road repairs which are falling by the wayside.
Nice to have cheap taxes - It's a good lesson in that you get what you pay for.
Re: Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mrs.PatsFanInVa
Um, you do realize it's not just "parks," don't you? It's also police presence, firemen, street lights, social workers, youth programs, childcare, buses and road repairs which are falling by the wayside.
Nice to have cheap taxes - It's a good lesson in that you get what you pay for.
Thank you, David Copperfield, but you slick illusion has been exposed as a typical cheap parlor trick.
Yes, the libertard thing to do - when you need to cut spending, cut it on the police, firemen, youth, public transportation, etc first. Cut spending on the most important things to create a false sense of emergency. Too bad Americans are waking up to this stupidity.
Way to go Calorado Springs!!! You're learning, like the rest of the country, it's not an income problem, it's a spending problem. Let the other libertard areas of the country stew in their self-created mountain of debt.
__________________ “If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.” ~ Thomas Sowell
Re: Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
With all that extra tax money, I'm sure peopel will be lining up to pay the police and fire department out of pocket.
Watch as the citizens of Colorado Springs leap at the chance to complete public projects on their private time, and police themselves.
holy crap....
Its sad. I'm seeing the same thing happen in California to a lesser extent. There are pockets of this happening right now. As stated and debated in past threads, we will see what philosophy works best. But as we've seen on a national scale, Conservative economics tend to run deficits, while liberal ones tend to run surplusses.
No matter...Wal Mart or Chevron will soon own Colorado Springs.
Re: Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
Could this ever happen in Taxachuessetts? God knows, you need those 150k/yr popo's and firemen. All states should take heed of this. It's time to start cutting, especially these ridiculous pensions that state workers are getting. It is insanity.
__________________
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Re: Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
Quote:
Originally Posted by Holy Diver
With all that extra tax money, I'm sure peopel will be lining up to pay the police and fire department out of pocket.
Watch as the citizens of Colorado Springs leap at the chance to complete public projects on their private time, and police themselves.
holy crap....
Its sad. I'm seeing the same thing happen in California to a lesser extent. There are pockets of this happening right now. As stated and debated in past threads, we will see what philosophy works best. But as we've seen on a national scale, Conservative economics tend to run deficits, while liberal ones tend to run surplusses.
Assuming the tripling of the property tax meant the actual property tax and not the tiny bit the state gives to the city, this would have been an increase of about $2,000 per house worth $200K. That's a lot of money, it's no wonder it was voted down.
Maybe the bigger question is why does the city get less than 10% of the property tax if the state isn't paying for these services out of the 90+% that the state keeps. Presumably schools get funded out of that, I would where the rest goes.
Colorado Springs to turn into Baghdad thanks to tax averse Conservatives
Linear Mode
