In a stunning example of City Council’s apparent inability to decide upon anything, councilmembers first voted to open this afternoon’s meeting, and then voted to have a closed session after all.

City Attorney Pat Kelly prefaced the meeting with a recital of routine legalese, citing the Colorado statutes which permit closed meetings (”to receive advice from counsel, to consider real estate matters, blah, blah, blah”).

Mayor Lionel Rivera then polled councilmembers to determine whether a two-thirds majority, as the applicable statute requires, would support closing the meeting.  Five votes for closure, four votes against.  The mayor then asked whether city staff would agree to present the issues in question in an open forum.

Deputy City Manager Mike Anderson said that staff was not prepared to present any issues that could be appropriately discussed in an open session.

Three of the four dissenters (Tom Gallagher, Darryl Glenn and Jerry Heimlicher) remained opposed to a closed session. The fourth, Scott Hente, withdrew his objection and changed his vote. Council ushered out members of the “public,” which consisted of four print reporters, one radio guy and one TV crew.

So here’s a question regarding the USOC deal: What did council know and when did they know it?  Put differently, who are the maniacs responsible?  Who got the city into this mess?

We don’t have any answers yet, and it seems that both the city administration and a majority of our elected officials, aren’t particularly interested in giving us any.

LandCo’s lawsuit against the city, filed on Friday at 5:30 p.m., gives an interesting, if biased, account of the events leading up to the suit.

According to the recital contained therein,”… In Feb. 2008, the USOC, the city, and LandCo spent three days negotiating a deal in the conference room of a Denver law firm …The city was represented at these negotiations by (acting city manager) Michael Anderson, City Attorney Patricia Kelly and an outside attorney.”

OMG-LOL!! (pardon the textspeak).

Anderson and Kelly are capable enough, and i suspect that the “outside attorney” also is a capable person.  But this was a speculative real estate deal, with more than $50 million on the line.  With all due respect, which of these three had ever originated, structured and put money at risk in such a venture?

Probably none - for that kind of expertise, you need a developer and an experienced commercial real estate broker.  You need Steve Schuck, or David Jenkins or Tim Leigh, or any of the scores of people in this community who have put together big development deals and pulled buildings out of the ground.

You need folks with experience, who understand risk, performance and reality.

Land development is a tough, risky business.  It’s no place for amateurs, especially with tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on the line.

Lawyers can write a contract, or they help you get out of trouble after you’ve screwed up.  But putting deals together isn’t what lawyers do - and it isn’t what city officials do either.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 30th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog

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Not if you’re the lofty academics who run Colorado College, who unceremoniously jettisoned the football program, announcing the decision to the world in a curt little memo three days ago.

The Colorado College football program has been in existence since 1882 -or, for 127 years. C.C. played its first game 11 years after the founding of the City of Colorado Springs and has fielded a team every year since.

The team, as Mike Moran noted in a long, elegaic piece, has a distinguished history, most notably in defeating an opponent that had not lost a game for three years. The year? 1908. The team? The University of Texas!!

Citing budgetary considerations, the college claimed that the decision came only after extensive consultations with alumni, staff and students.

There might have been consultations, but they didn’t involve many of the most noted alumni of the program, who were stunned and dismayed by the news.

But the means by which the decision was made are less important than the decision itself, which speaks volumes about the college’s apparent isolation from mainstream America.

Basketball, football and baseball are quintessentially American sports - invented here, played here, and in many ways unchanged for generations. Football is an anomaly, in that it remains, for the most part, an all-male sport, a stubborn survivor of a time when virtually all college and high school sports were closed to girls and women.

That time, thankfully, is long past.

Football, rather than a symbol of male dominance, is, at least in Division III, just another sport. It’s not the province of physical freaks, 300-pound behemoths on the offensive line, or 260-pound linebackers who can run a 4.4-second 40 yard dash.

To the contrary, it’s a sport with room for everyone with a modicum of athletic ability, some high school football experience, and the willingness to submit to the discipline involved in this most arduous of team sports.

It’s a cliche to say that much of the American character has been formed upon the gridiron, but, like many cliches, it’s true.

By abandoning football, especially after committing scores of millions of dollars to build and operate the Cornerstone Arts Center, Colorado College is signaling in unmistakable terms that it’s a different kind of institution, one which disdains the rituals, traditions and recreations that most of us treasure.

Such institutions have a place, but that place is not at the center of the American experience.

The three institutions generally acknowledged to be the finest small liberal arts colleges in the United States, Amherst, Williams and Wesleyan, are in many ways much more avant-garde than is C.C. - but they love their football!!

They know that diversity isn’t just a matter of race, class, sexual orientation and ethnic orgin. They know that to succeed, a college must draw upon all of our country’s diverse and wonderful traditions - and that to extinguish a flame that has burned for 128 years is no way to advance such goals.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 27th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog

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It’d be pretty funny if the potential consequences to this particular brouhaha weren’t so serious to the city, and to all of us who live here.

In one corner, developer Ray Marshall and his company LandCo. Marshall’s not an easy guy to reach - at least if you’re a reporter for the Business Journal. He hasn’t written, he hasn’t called, he hasn’t e-mailed, he hasn’t texted … not even a tweet, to let us know what’s up.

But after we published a story earlier this week on the Web, and a follow up revealing that he was the subject of a criminal investigation, we got a long e-mail - from his P.R. firm!

According to the P.R. folks, there’s nothing to the stories! The million dollar Internal Revenue Service lien on Marshall’s residence? No problem - the IRS had no right to do it!! The statute of limitations has expired!! Those lawsuits? All settled, except one!! (Ah, er, Mr. P.R. guy, that just ain’t so.) And the criminal investigation? He’ll be completely exonerated!! And anyway, those lawsuits were frivolous - just disgruntled investors!! No word on why the investors went from being gruntled to disgruntled.

But Marshall did speak to Gazette reporter Rich Laden, who had previously written a long, mostly laudatory piece about the developer a few weeks after the U.S. Olympic Committee deal was announced.

And speaking of the Gazette, it’s funny to watch the daily’s reaction to being scooped.

Perhaps as a matter of policy, they never, ever, acknowledge the work of other newsgathering organizations, as in “The Business Journal reported, and the Gazette has confirmed that blah, blah, blah.” They write their own piece, and then post it as “Breaking News!!” Guess what? We broke it, not The G!!

Meanwhile, we’ve had a lot of comments/posts/e-mails from folks who wonder why the city was so lax in its due diligence. Surely, they write, the city with all of its resources should have known about Marshall’s legal and financial woes. Good questions-and we don’t know the answers.

Some speculation. If Marshall’s problems cause his exit from the deal, who’ll take his place? The list of folks who are both capable of taking such a deal, and willing to be heroes, is not a long one - but it includes some of the most illustrious figures in this city’s business community.

Finally, a word about leadership. There are many programs, some in existence for nearly a quarter of a century, which purport to teach leadership skills to city residents. Many councilmembers have passed through such programs. Now, they’re confronted with a situation which requires leadership - firm, decisive, uncompromised, and right now!

They’re going to have to take risks, to acknowledge their own past failures and move quickly. They can’t just sit there passively, hem and haw, pass the buck and hope that, by some miracle, everything will turn out just fine.

We’ll see. And we’ll see whether they have the guts to hold their scheduled “closed session” meeting in public, and let the rest of us know what they know - and what they’re going to do about it.

And I just figured out how to get in touch with Marshall … I’ll friend him on Facebook! That’ll show Rich Laden …

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 26th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: City Council, Gazette, marshall, Rich Laden, U.S. Olympic Committee

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No, no, no-I didn’t win this year…of course, no one entered me so I could hardly expect such an honor.  But getting a Pulitzer is a very big deal for an author, a journalist, a dramatist or poet. It’s kind of like an Oscar, or a Grammie, or an Emmy, or a Golden Globe.

If you’re fortunate enough to be nominated for an Oscar, your name is announced weeks in advance.  You get to pout, preen, say insincerely nice things about your fellow nominees, and plan for the actual ceremony. The red carpet! The dress!  The cool suit! Your date for the big event!  Win or lose, you have fun for weeks, you go to parties, and you enjoy a nice little moment of fame.

But the Pulitzers? Here’s what happens (taken from the Pulitzer organization’s website).

“The 2009 Pulitzer Prizewinners and Nominated Finalists in all categories (Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music) will be announced on Monday, April 20, 2009 at 3pm eastern time. The announcement is made at a press conference at Columbia University in New York City. Please note that finalists are not announced in advance.”

No party, no black tie event, no publicity, no fun.  Just a nasty little press conference hosted by a bunch of boring, superannuated reporter-type people.  If you’re a finalist, you only learn about it after you’ve lost.

“Congratulations!  You’re a loser!  No parties for you-and no one will ever notice.”

These are not the most joyful of times for journalists.  Dailies are shrinking or disappearing, weeklies are under siege, and print publications seem destined to follow the passenger pigeon into extinction. In such times, why not market?  Why not celebrate the craft?  Why not let the stars shine?  Why not let Dick Clark take over the whole event (if he’s still alive, that is)?

But don’t stick to gray, boring, stuffy, haughty, soul-deadening Monday afternoon press conferences!  Can’t you at least invite the finalists to a bar for drinks & nachos (I hear that there are bars, as well as boring university conference rooms, in Manhattan).

Remember, when the Titanic was sinking, the band kept playing.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Blog

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If you want one good reason why daily newspapers are important to our Democracy, check out this story, published this morning in the Greeley Tribune.

“GREELEY - Greeley Mayor Ed Clark told Greeley radio station KFKA Thursday morning that he hopes the Greeley Tribune closes.

Clark made his comments during an interview on the Amy Oliver Show on KFKA Thursday morning when asked about the Tribune’s coverage, editorial board and editorials critical of his leadership that have appeared since the beginning of his tenure.

Telling Oliver that he won’t run again for mayor, Clark told Oliver that he hopes the Tribune closes.

“You try things in your adult life. I was very successful at law enforcement. Politics is gonna be something, I’m gonna take away a bunch of good with it. There’s gonna be some baggage,” Clark said. “I’m not leaving Greeley. I love this town, and I only want the best for Greeley, and, uh, I only want the worst for the Tribune. I hope they fold.”

“Those are strong words,” Oliver said after a slight pause in reply to Clark.

“Yeah, well, I stand behind them,” Clark then said. “I think they haven’t done us a service as a community. So, I stand behind what I say. I don’t think that is a fair newspaper.”

The Tribune employs about 140 people in Greeley in advertising, production, the newsroom and circulation.

Clark and Oliver didn’t immediately return phone calls seeking comment Thursday.

In his comments, Clark was also critical of Tribune’s coverage of him — calling it biased, was critical of the Tribune editorial board and defended his actions including detaining a teen on the ground in his neighborhood and showing children at University School a fake $3 bill depicting President Barack Obama in a Middle Eastern headdress.

“That paper is probably one, um, of the biggest detractors from our community,” Clark said.

Mayor Clark is, to put it kindly, a lout and a buffoon. His behavior is not atypical of small town mayors, or councilmembers, or county commissioners, or state representatives, or county clerk & recorders.

I suspect that many petty elected officials only behave because they know that the big, bad daily newspaper is out there, taking names & kicking butt. Absent a daily which is professional, accountable, and factual in its reporting, the Ed Clarks of the world would seldom be called to account-at least, not in any effective way. Weeklies, bloggers, and local websites might go after them, but those so targeted soon learn to respond by attacking the attackers.

The blogger? “Just some guy with a grudge and a laptop!” The weekly? “Just a bunch of lefties writing lies in the skanky alternative! They should stick to running ads for escorts-and maybe we need to do something about that!!??”

We compete with the Gazette, but we also want them to succeed. A city without a strong, vibrant, credible daily would be weakened and damaged. “If the cat’s away, the mice will play”-but what happens if the cat leaves town?

So to our friends at the Gazette: Rock On! Get those stories-except for the really important ones, which we’ll report on…just trying to help you out.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 20th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog

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How much water, in the form of both absolute and conditional rights in the Colorado River basin, have companies such as Shell and Exxon claimed during recent years to support the so-far nonexistent shale oil industry?

According to a study by Western Resource Advocates, nearly 7.2 million acre feet.

That figure is incomprehensibly large.  In fact, if all of those rights were perfected and developed, the industry would use all the water available for  Colorado that currently flows down the river.

So long, Dillon reservoir!  Good-bye, Homestake project!  Au revoir, Windy Gap!  All you folks in Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins and similarly hapless Front Range cities had better start catching rainfall in barrels, because your taps are about to run dry!

And as for irrigated agriculture … dust bowl, here we come!

Shale oil is now, always has been and always will be a desert mirage.  When petroleum sold for less than $1 a barrel back during the 1920s, shale oil promoters said that they were ready to start production-if the price would just go to $1.50!

That was 90 years ago - and shale oil has always been right on the verge of feasibility, at least according to generation after generation of eager promoters.

Here’s the bad news - or, depending upon your prejudices, the good news.

There will never be a self-sufficient shale oil industry.  That’s because squeezing the liquid hydrocarbons out of the rock requires substantially more energy than the hydrocarbons yield, regardless of process.  Every such process (including the flavor of the decade, in situ processing) requires enormous inputs of energy, water and industrial infrastructure.  Extracting shale oil will only be feasible when all other sources of liquid hydrocarbons are exhausted, and we still need, for example, aviation fuel.  Don’t hold your breath - that might take a couple of centuries.

The folks that run Exxon & Shell know perfectly well that shale oil isn’t competitive with conventional sources, so why do they bother?

They’re no fools - they’re just waiting for another Middle Eastern crisis, another time when the country embraces energy self-sufficiency … and some nice, fat government subsidies (excuse me, I mean incentives!) to jump-start the business.  And if it doesn’t work, and if the government ends up pumping tens of billions of dollars into economically/environmentally ruinous projects, no biggie!

The oil companies will tip-toe off, and leave us with a ruined landscape, a failed industry and a big mess to clean up.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.  But during a bad economy, politicians are ready to throw taxpayer money anything and anybody that promises jobs … desert mirage or not.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 19th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Colorado River, Exxon, oil shale, Shell, water, Western Resource Advocates

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Pueblo Chieftain Publisher Bob Rawlings has opposed Colorado Springs’ Southern Delivery System water pipeline project since it was first proposed a decade ago.

He’s written, or approved, scores of editorials excoriating the Springs as a treacherous partner and attacking Colorado Springs Utilities as a bunch of double-dealing, stream-polluting, sewage-dumping, reservoir-draining scoundrels who care little for the well-being of their city’s southern neighbor.

Thanks in part to Rawlings, the Pueblo County Board of Commissioners, who have the power to issue or deny a land use permit for the “preferred option,” an SDS pipeline from Pueblo Reservoir, have hammered out an agreement with CSU that promises many benefits for Pueblo, and for Colorado Springs.

But having, in effect, won the battle, Rawlings is admitting defeat.  In an editorial today, the magnificent old warrior conceded that the permit is likely to be granted when the commissioners meet this evening at 6.

Here’s an excerpt from The Chieftain:

“Pueblo County land-use planners and their expert consultants under the circumstances seem to have squeezed about as many concessions as possible from Colorado Springs Utilities officials over their plan to build a giant new pipeline out of Lake Pueblo for export north to Colorado Springs.

“The major recommendation of the staff report is payment of $50 million for projects to protect Fountain Creek, which would be overseen either by a special district that the Legislature may form or by a new foundation that would be formed by Pueblo County and the partners in the pipeline.

“Other recommendations include a slightly better guarantee of minimum flows in the Arkansas River.

“Which brings us to the main point: It appears Colorado Springs sadly will get its permit. That means Pueblo County officials - current and in the future - must be assiduous in seeing that Colorado Springs’ feet are held to the fire of scrutiny on their part of the bargain.

“Colorado Springs officials have a long history of promising the moon while sharpening their knives to exact changes to their benefit. So the byword for all Pueblo officials who have or will have a part in this deal is: “assiduosity.’”

Bob, Bob, Bob - you won!  We all won!  The war between the cities might finally be over, and a new era of mutual cooperation might be dawning!

Celebrate, don’t mourn!

And next time I’m in Pueblo with my pretty lady - whom I know you want to meet - I’ll buy you a drink, and lift a glass to you, to Pueblo and to a bright future!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 18th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog

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For almost half a century, local businesses, elected officials, nonprofits, and concerned citizens have conceived, pushed, and sometimes implemented a variety of schemes to improve downtown-to make it what it once was, the vibrant center of our community, an exciting, fun place to be, full of lively shops, restaurants, residents, defined by broad boulevards and historic buildings. 

Here’s what we’ve actually done.

During the 60’s and early 70’s, we tore down most of the major historic buildings that once defined downtown, and razed many square blocks of less distinguished buildings.  So successful was this program that today, forty years later, the site once graced by the Burns Opera House and Out West Printing, as well as a dozen other buildings, is still a parking lot.

Then we further improved downtown by building a bunch of ill-conceived, badly designed “junk buildings”-the Colorado Square Building, the renovated building at the NW corner of Pikes Peak & Tejon, the Antlers, the Holly Sugar building.

So moribund did downtown then become that a couple of clever businessmen figured out that it was, in effect, like the deserted warehouse districts of similar cities-so they bought buildings in the heart of downtown for cheap, and turned much of central downtown on weekend nights into a giant, skanky, nightclub district, with rowdy patrons, public drunkenness, and frequent fights that taxed the resources of the P.D.

And during the last couple of years, we’ve made sure that downtown has at least one major headquarters industry: the homeless.  The new Marian House, referred to by some of our frenchified wits as the “Palais des Clochards” (the Beggar’s Palace) nears completion, and the city also thoughtfully provides its patrons with the ‘DASH’ (downtown area shuttle), otherwise known as the Bum’s Bus.

The feral, homeless men who help define the street life of the Tejon Street corridor have, as anyone who works in or visits downtown knows, taken over the shuttle.  That’s the reality-despite the lofty pretensions of folks who want to believe otherwise.

And now, so dismayed are the shuttle pushers by the imminent demise of the Bum’s Bus, thanks to the city’s financial crisis, that they propose to keep it in operation by collecting a few  more dollars by anyone who may be unwise enough to visit downtown, and patronize local merchants.  The parking meters, just like the rest of us, are scheduled to start work earlier, and finish later!  Yup, they’re going to roll up their sleeves and collect those quarters between 8 AM and 10PM, six days a week, instead of their present lazy banker’s hours of 9AM to 6PM.

Just how stupid is this? To save a service that only adds to downtown’s scruffy disorder, the powers that be propose to stck downtown’s patrons with another fee.  And, of course, lots more folks will be stuck with $20 parking tickets (just downtown’s way of saying ‘thanks for shopping with us’!), and…why go on?

Here’s a small bit of advice-which, we know, will be ignored.  Hood all the meters and make the parking garages free for a month-and see what happens.

But then there wouldn’t be any money to run the Municipal Court, or pay for the parking garage expansions, or pay the salaries of the meter maids (and meter men), or pay for more plans to make downtown an exciting, vibrant place…

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 18th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Bum's Bus, Burns Opera House, DASH, downtown, parking garages, parking meters

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… your first take on anything.

Saw that Hugh Hefner sold his Holmby Hills mansion for $27 million, and I immediately thought “The end of an era! At last, the 1950’s are over!”

Turns out it was the mansion next to the Playboy Mansion, where Hef’s estranged wife Kimberley lives with their teenage sons.

Thank God!  Party on, oh Hef!  All bow down to the King of the Geezers!!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 16th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Hefner, Playboy

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“Mistah Kurtz - he dead.”  It was a “Heart of Darkness” moment for Republican elected officials in Denver, as they bemoaned the Colorado Supreme Court’s 6-1 decision upholding the legality of Gov. Bill Ritter’s property tax “freeze,” which the legislature enacted last year.

Oh, the poor taxpayer!  Oh, the ruthless, tax-lovin’ libruls on the Supreme Court!  Here’s what the stalwart GOPsters had to say.

“It’s fitting that the most partisan court in the land rubber stamped the governor’s property tax increase on exactly the same day Senate Democrats are poised to repeal Colorado’s landmark spending limits, and exactly two weeks after the governor signed the largest increase in car taxes in a generation. With loyalist Democrats in charge of the governor’s mansion, the House, the state Senate, and the Supreme Court, the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights is on life support and the principle of fiscal restraint is in full retreat.” said Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry.

“Given the Court’s history with the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, I am not surprised by the decision, but I am nonetheless disappointed. The dissent is imminently better reasoned than the majority’s opinion. I remain convinced that the Colorado Constitution dictates that the voters decide when their taxes should be increased,” said Attorney General John Suthers.

“Imminently better reasoned?”  I’d guess that Suthers meant to say “eminently” - but why quibble over the A.G.’s slightly defective command of the English language?

“Most partisan court in the land?” Of the seven supremes, only one has a record that would seem to indicate a certain, shall we say, political bias.

That would be Justice Alison Eid, a powerfully intelligent woman who served as Colorado’s Solicitor General under Gov. Bill Owens, and as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Eid was the lone dissenter.

The other six justices are, like Eid, men and women of substance, even brilliance, all of whom had distinguished careers in the law before joining the court.

The notion that this is some rabidly partisan group of crazed, tax-loving radicals is, not to put too fine a point on it, nuts.

As the old saying goes: If the law is with you, pound the law. If the facts are with you, pound the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table!

Josh, John, Alison: pound away on them tables!!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 16th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Alison Eid, Clarence Thomas, John Suthers, Josh Penry, Tabor

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