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Here are some of the stories we are following this week. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for up-to-the-minute news.
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Does your neighborhood hold block parties each summer? Do you and your neighbors have summer cookouts or volleyball games? Should the government be in the business of promoting such neighborhood gatherings to address mental health? Read our latest original article to learn about a new Colorado Springs initiative that does just this.
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Governor Polis has signed a $24 million bill to help fund schools with new illegal immigrant students. Never let a crisis go to waste.
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Mayor Mike Coffman of Aurora, Colorado, has appropriately deemed vagrant camps a threat to public health and safety. Aurora will try a “tough love” approach on vagrants, by giving them a period of time to move before they are forced to move. How long before the ACLU sues Aurora for violating the human rights of these blight-generating urban campers?
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Academy School District 20 is reformulating how teachers are paid. Many teachers say they cannot afford to live in the district where they teach. Fun fact: many who are not taxpayer-funded employees cannot afford to live in the district either.
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As we’ve been reporting, Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade is asking for the “pothole tax” to be renewed. Some current and past public servants have answered questions about why our roads are in such poor shape - even though we pay a special tax to repair them.
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Also in pothole news this week, The City of Colorado Springs has purchased a new truck, which will be driven around town to collect data on potholes with special technology. We could have done this with a 1972 Plymouth, but whatever. We are curious how many potholes could have been filled with the funds used to purchase this vehicle.
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Former Colorado Springs City Council member Richard Skorman is the man behind a new, volunteer, non-profit called Richard's Rubbish Roundup. This organization plans to clean up trash and filth in our city, particularly around waterways. From what we’ve seen, they will be very busy. This reminds us: Whatever happened to former Mayor Suthers’ “Keep it Clean COS” effort? Did Mayor Mobolade abandon this?
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Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade, who once owned two restaurants in downtown Colorado Springs, is being sued for allegedly not paying bills associated with the restaurants. Definitely not a good look.
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Residents in the Flying W Ranch area are suing over the water tank fiasco in their neighborhood. The suit claims the City Council was not impartial when they made their decision to allow the tank to be built taller than planned.
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The Colorado Springs Fire Department is having trouble replacing aging equipment. Lack of budget is being blamed. The city can afford a pothole truck though.
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The effort to monitor our driving and collect revenue through speed cameras is moving ahead in Colorado Springs.
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More wolves have killed more calves in Grand County. As a reminder, this measure was approved largely by people along the Front Range who don’t have to deal with the fallout from introducing apex predators into range land. It made them feel special to vote for it, though.
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Transparency may be on the ballot in November. We may be able to overturn the effort by corrupt politicians to alter current open meeting laws to hide certain communications from us. It may be tricky, though, as voters will need to understand the ballot language.
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Legislators have removed the “vexatious requestor” provision from their proposed bill to hamper citizen CORA requests. They still plan to increase CORA response deadlines, however, because the last thing they want is for citizens to quickly learn details about what they are up to with our money.
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A bill that would require live-streaming state and local government meetings appears to be dying in the legislature. Not a surprise. Tyrants don’t like transparency.
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With a few weeks left in the legislative session, there are still almost 400 bills that have yet to be heard. This is ridiculous. Our public servants are not serious people, and we don’t need this much legislation.
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Democrat leaders in the state house have given Republicans in the legislature a list of words they are not allowed to use. Again, these are not serious people. These are grade school bullies.
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Voters may also get to decide to shorten the legislative session from the current 120 days to 90 days. This would be tremendous. The less time they have to inflict their crazy ideas on us, the better.
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Food banks in Denver are experiencing strong demand. Why, you ask? Because there are 40,000 illegal immigrants in Denver who were invited there, don’t have jobs, and need to eat, that’s why.
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Denver City Council is considering cutting $41 million from the taxpayer funds supporting the illegal immigrants there. “Sanctuary City” was a juvenile fantasy, and reality always wins.
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The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether camping bans, that prevent vagrants from camping anywhere they please, constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Denver has a camping ban in place now, and this court case could impact that.
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As was reported recently, Denver will cut police and fire department budgets to fund illegal immigrants. They do, however, have money to pay for stagehands at various entertainment facilities in the Denver metro area. Priorities, folks.
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Recent high winds forced Xcel Energy to cut power to tens of thousands of customers because the power was being generated by windmills. High winds can easily destroy windmills. A natural gas power plant, by contrast, stands up to winds just fine. The “reliable green-energy fantasy” is just that: a fantasy, promoted by pseudo-elites so they can pretend they are earth-saving heroes.
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This power outage cost people incredible amounts of money. Some restaurants had to throw away thousands and thousands of dollars of food that spoiled because of this outage.
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Also in fake earth hero news this week, those who rent cars in Colorado may pay an extra $3 per day for this service, to fund Governor Jared Polis’ earth justice choo-choo train.
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State legislators plan to use “poverty” as a cynical excuse to gut TABOR refunds. Here is an interview on this very subject. If you make over $75,000 a year and don’t have children, radicals in the legislature don’t think you deserve the leftover tax money you paid in. The last people on earth who should be trusted with helping impoverished people think they deserve this money instead.
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A bill moving through the state legislature appears to favor apartment developers over citizens. This bill makes it more difficult for citizens to file lawsuits to protect their neighborhoods from rampant apartment development in high-fire danger areas.
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The Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles claims that, in any given month, 87,000 drivers in the state are driving with expired registrations. This results in lost revenue for the state, much of which is in “fees” that are really taxes.
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If you would like to help support us in our mission as government watchdogs by becoming a Newsletter Sponsor, we are offering two sponsorships for each weekly newsletter, at the nominal cost of $100 each. Funds raised from these sponsorship opportunities will help us to keep looking out for taxpayers.
Here are some upcoming meetings in the area. We hope you can attend one or more! If there are other public meetings you’d like to see announced here, please drop us a line. We are happy to include them in an upcoming newsletter. These might be government-related, candidate, or elected official meetings. Thanks!
Colorado Springs City Council Meetings
Monday, May 13, 10:00 a.m.
Colorado Springs City Council
107 N. Nevada, 3rd floor
Live stream link here
Agenda not yet posted
Tuesday, May 14, 10:00 a.m.
Colorado Springs City Council
107 N. Nevada, 3rd floor
Live stream link here
Agenda not yet posted
El Paso County Board of County Commissioner Meetings
Tuesday, April 30, 9:00 a.m.
El Paso County Board of County Commissioners
Centennial Hall
200 S. Cascade
Live stream link here
Agenda not yet posted
Tuesday, May 7, 9:00 a.m.
El Paso County Board of County Commissioners
Centennial Hall
200 S. Cascade
Live stream link here
Agenda not yet posted
Colorado Springs Utilities Board of Directors
Wednesday, May 22, 1:00 p.m.
Utilities Board of Directors
Blue River Board Room
Plaza of the Rockies, South Tower, 5th Floor
Live stream link here
Agenda not yet posted
Miscellaneous Meetings of Interest
Monday, May 6, 6:00 p.m.
Law Enforcement Transparency and Advisory Committee
City Hall
107 S. Nevada Avenue, Suite 200
Also, online via Microsoft Teams
Information and Agenda
Saturday, April 27, 9:30 a.m.
Independence Institute Speaking Up and Speaking Out
Independence Institute
727 East 16th Avenue, Denver, 80203
Registration
View the full Colorado Springs City Council meeting schedule here to see upcoming meetings.
View the full Board of El Paso County Commissioners meeting schedule here to see upcoming meetings.
View the full Colorado Springs Utilities Board meeting schedule here to see upcoming meetings. Please also follow CSU on their Facebook Page and on Twitter.
Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube Channel. Since most of the City and County board and commission meetings are not televised or recorded, we are trying to remedy that. We now have a camera and tripod for volunteers to check out for future meetings.
If you have a tip about a story in the Pikes Peak region that you aren’t seeing reported, let us know. We will see what we can find out.
How to Contact City and County Officials:
City Hall
107 N. Nevada Avenue
Colorado Springs CO 80903
(719) 385-5986
Contact City Council
Mayor's Office
30 S Nevada Avenue, Suite 601
Colorado Springs, CO 80901
(719) 385-5900
Contact Mayors Office
County Commissioners
200 South Cascade Avenue, Suite 100
Colorado Springs, CO 80903-2202
Phone: (719) 520-7276
https://www.elpasoco.com/contact-us/
Thank you!
Rebecca
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