Secondly, a focus on the growth of the food & arts community needs to be taken. Larger companies won’t relocate to an area without good arts, entertainment and food for thier officers/employees. While we have some of these things we havent done a good job as a community in supporting them, and encouraging them.

Thridly, work closely with the new branding initiative to help develop a strong brand for the city. This brand must combat the negative media we’ve experienced in the last 10 years regarding everything from our ultra-religious/closed minded attitude (as portrayed by the media) to the street light and trash cans fiasco. We are a diverse city and we should embrace it not divide the community.

First of all, BREAK 2 of your campaign promises: Not to raise taxes, and refusal to sign a proclamation for Pride Fest Day. On the first point- We are NOT overtaxed in this community. Well designed and prudently used tax policies can go a long way to attract tourism and business – especially the infrastracture, parks, medians and streets. I agree with comments already made about shabby parks, streets and medians. Last year, our immediate neghborhood raised over $8000 to water, seed and maintain our neighborhood park (Pinon Valley Park). This is proof that citizens will pay for those appropriate municipal services. That money is still in the bank ready to be used, but the Parks Department never did bill us, and apparently never seeded (nor weeded) the park. This spring, it looks like crap! Let’s make this a city one that we can all be proud of, and show off to our guests when they visiit from out of town.

On the second point, you are Mayor for ALL citizens and residents of Colorado Springs. By embracing and involving the GLBT community, you will go a long way to eliminate the negative national image of Colorado Springs as one of bigotry and intolerance. You have to power to unite us into a dynamic community.

And further have the city show leadership by requiring all city employees whose work is not manual, to ‘work from home.’ And encourage all those larger employers to do the same.

This city still works like it is it is forever in the Automobile and Physical Services age. Everybody gets up at home, drives up to 10-15 miles to and back from ‘work’ then either sits down doing the same kind of work they could do from home, over the net, or stands behind counters. And in doing so hammers the road and parking infrastructure, which is ever more costly (streets, pot holes, snow, expansion to handle the traffic).

Economic growth does NOT have to invariably be connected to Physical Growth in this Information Age.

But nobody has ever measured this. You, the City, do NOT know how many people work from home, have computers connected to the Internet or at what bandwidth – or even from ‘neighborhood’ work centers. You do NOT know what the City obstacles or business deterrents from working from home are – small business licensing, taxes, zoning, bandwidth. You do NOT know how much road usage would reduce (traffic volume, wear and tear on roads, bridges, capacity) if there were even a 15% reduction in day-trips required to ‘go to and from work.

What kind of ‘knowledge work?’ Administration, education (distance learning), legal, architectural, cultural – art, literature, music), book selling, technological – programming, web design, training, counseling, remote medical services.

And you have no idea (nor does the city administration) how many dollars flow into Colorado Springs from just such work being done by individuals over the net.

Over a seven year period I brought in over $2 million from the National Science Foundation doing a large portion of my ‘telecommunication work’ over the Internet from home. And I rendered advice – for a fee – to other city professionals who admired our work in bringing Old Colorado City back from the business dead based ENTIRELY (unlike downtown) on small businesses and historic preservation. Who knew besides me?
And I recruited Theoretical Physicists at MIT to teach ‘classes’ to high school kids in this town over the early internet.

This city needs to dis enthrall itself from economics based on local Automobile travel, and flight to deliver its products and services.. Its high time for Colorado Springs to make a huge step forward into the Knowledge Age by becoming an ‘Intelligent City.’ And I can guarantee you – for I am an example – that CS will gain a reputation that will attract knowledge workers to a city which understands them and their needs. And the quality of life here, the mountain setting will sell itself to them.

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1. Privatize part of our mass transit (use smaller busses or shared taxis instead of running $400.000 vehicles across town)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_van
2. Convert or if you need to replace the remaining city busses to CNG (compressed natural gas)

3. Improve the energy effciency of our city buildings (most upgrades can be financed as they create a doubble digit return or can be implemented via a public private partnership).

4. Promote energy effciency in our private buildings be it commercial or residential. The Pikes Peak region was recently selected as one of only a few communities in the country to be elligible for teh power saver pilot program (http://www.ncbr.com/article.asp?id=57306
On the commercial side we should ask our bankers locally to create a loan program for this. Result:
improved cashflow for building owners
locally created jobs in the construction industry, HVAC and renewable energy business
higher sales tax revenues
greener image for our city
5. Create a feedback form to be filled out by the customers to rate city employees on their service

6. Review on a periodic basis the paperwork required to get a job or an approval done (less is better)

7. try to represent all citicens in our town that means building a bridge in our deeply divided town between the right and the left. I would suggest that we create a think tank (on a volounteer basis) which would deliver ideas to City council and the mayor to improve our beloved city.

8. Get advice from the guys who ran against you from both the left and the right

9. Change City government, the best way is to flatten hierarchies and create an environment of idea generation instead following the paper trail

Pay attention to minorities and to the GLBT community. They have much to offer.

Good luck.

Your being receptive to these suggestions is an honor. Thank you for listening. I would have liked to stay in Colorado Springs but relocated because of the business atmosphere.

Though there are many tasks for you and none are easy, more venture capital activity would help, as would diversifying the economy to lessen the dependence on defense and chipmaking.

I agree with Mr. Bill Meacham above: there are too many hurdles. One insidious killer of business and initiative is the overregulation, number of forms, tax complications, and overlapping federal, state and local agency requirements. All these make it unworthwhile to pursue new ventures.

If I might help you, please feel free to ask. Best of success.

Best regards,
Robert Dunlap