Wow! I can see that the political philosophy of John C. Calhoun is alive and well in America today.

But here’s my point.

Clearly, elected officials in any state have the right to oppose, to question, to seek to amend, or to minimize the impacts of federal regulations/legislation that they deem inappropriate, badly drafted, burdensome, or unlikely to meet the goals that legislation purportedly seeks to achieve.

But states cannot simply brush aside legislation that has been duly enacted by the national government, and exempt themselves from its central provisions. That’s nullification-and that’s a recipe for enduring conflict.

It was instructive to read many of the posts, particularly those from folks whose dislike of the current administration and fear of the consequences of the nearly completed health care legislation is such that they’re apparently willing-even eager-to attempt nullification.

Today’s bitter, unrelieved partisanship is sadly reminiscent of the decades before the Civil War, when regional economic issues pitted the agrarian south against the industrial north, and abolitionists fought slavery.

For those of you who detest the president and his reform agenda, there’s a simple solution: vote for folks who will amend or overturn it. All this prattling about Ayn Rand & godless liberals is just hot air-if you don’t like it, organize! Don’t waste your time huffing and puffing-you need a majority in the House and the Senate.

So get to work, all you right-wing irredentist slackers!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 31st, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: conservatives, nullification

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The sweeping health care reform bill passed by both houses of Congress has yet to be reconciled and presented to the President for his signature, but revanchist uber-conservatives are already trying to undo it.

Their plan: to amend state constitutions to make key provisions of the act unconstitutional. Here in Colorado, the feisty Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute is leading the charge.

As Jessica Fender wrote this morning in the Denver Post,

“Caldara’s proposal aims to bar the state from requiring its citizens to purchase health insurance, ensure Coloradans can pay out-of-pocket for health care expenses and allow them to purchase plans from other states.”

He hopes to make a draft of the initiative public next month.

Freshman state Rep. Cindy Acree, an Aurora Republican who wants Colorado to opt out of the federal plan, argues the state can’t afford the proposal and that the federal government is usurping states’ rights.

“Right now (there are states that) are in fiscal distress and cannot support or sustain the federal legislation as written,” Acree said. “And there are civil liberties here that are being infringed upon.”

Jon, Cindy, and all of you tea-partying irredentists-I’ve got some news for you. What you’re proposing amounts to “nullification,” a doctrine first expounded and refined by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

A little history lesson from the Infoplease encyclopedia: “nullification, in U.S. history, a doctrine expounded by the advocates of extreme states’ rights. It held that states have the right to declare null and void any federal law that they deem unconstitutional. The doctrine was based on the theory that the Union is a voluntary compact of states and that the federal government has no right to exercise powers not specifically assigned to it by the U.S. Constitution.”

That doctrine gave birth to secessionism. Less than three decades after the nullification crisis of 1833 was resolved, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. The Civil War ensued.

That war not only freed Americans who had been legally enslaved for many generations, but shaped and reinforced our constitution, and put to rest forever the debates that had led to secession and war.

It’s dismaying to see nullification once more proposed by quasi-serious political figures, even ones as inconsequential as Caldara and Acree.

President Andrew Jackson, who was ready to use force against South Carolina over nullification made this toast at a Democratic Party banquet during 1831: “Our Federal Union - it must be preserved.”

John Calhoun, who favored nullification as a way to preserve the union and avoid secession responded: “The Union - next to our liberty most dear.”

Thirty years later, Abraham Lincoln sought to end the debate with these words, the concluding paragraph of the first Inaugural …

“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Lincoln’s soaring words could not hold back the nation’s descent into war. Four years later, when the war had nearly come to an end, the dark words of the second Inaugural convey the terrible toll and burden of America’s grimmest conflict.

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

Here’s some advice: Spend New Year’s Day reading a good book. Might I suggest these two?

Ellis, Richard E. The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights, and the Nullification Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Freehling, William W. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 30th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Andrew Jackson, Calhoun, Cindy Acree, Civil War, first Inaugural, health insurance, Independence Institute, Jon Caldara, Lincoln, nullification, secession, second Inaugural, South Carolina

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Not so many years ago, when I was younger, carefree, single and ready to party, downtown was a wonderful place to be on a Friday night.

Clubs such as Eden, the Vue and Rum bay were safe and welcoming, if often rowdy. But, these days downtown is downright dangerous. There have been a number of recent reports about late-night downtown gun fights.

But, at the same time, there have been a number of stories about Springs police cracking down on public nudity.

They appear to care more about bare breasts than about public safety.

It used to be that if undercover cops were lurking downtown, they weren’t worried about nudity. They never bothered to arrest women for indecent exposure or shut down the clubs for liquor license violations or ticket patrons for excessive ogling.

But now things are different. The cops are out in force, and all of those skanky women have been made to change their ways. No more bare breasts! The elevated moral tone of our city must be preserved!

But as many of us have noticed, downtown has changed. Forget ‘Spring Break on Tejon Street’ - it’s now a fully-clothed free-fire zone.

It’s almost comical to listen to our elected and appointed officials solemnly declaim about the importance of the liquor licensing laws and how seriously the city regards violations of these ordinances.

Maybe councilmembers and cops alike ought to stop worrying about nudity and start worrying about public safety.

Downtown after midnight is about as safe as the South Bronx in the 70’s or Newark in the 80’s. Thanks to aggressive and effective policing, as well as neighborhood revitalization, barhopping in Brooklyn is a lot safer than partying on Tejon Street.

Why? Are the police underfunded? Or are we misapplying already - limited funds?

We have a problem. Gangs of armed thugs have essentially taken over much of the club scene, and we seem powerless to do anything about it. Forget the bare breasts, forget DUI sweeps, forget 20 year-olds with fake ID’s, forget speeding tickets, and stop mourning our vanished helicopters-just make the streets safe.

That’s your job - just do it.

And stop staring at those girls!!

<-Back to CSBJ.com

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 28th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: downtown, nudity, violence

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The Gazette has abandoned its ambitious plans to publish its FreshInk as a four-day per week free tabloid newspaper and instead has relegated it to a once-a-week insert.

FreshInk, launched during April of this year, was the brainchild of Gazette publisher Steve Pope, who reportedly told his staff at the time that FreshInk was intended to both compete with the Colorado Springs Independent for younger readers and to eventually become a zoned publication available throughout the region.

At the time, some speculated that Pope had created FreshInk specifically as an Independent-killer, in revenge for that paper’s revelations concerning his fudged resume when he first joined the Gazette.

But I don’t think that was ever the plan - the Gazette, like many floundering dailies, was struggling with the recession and with a swiftly changing business environment.

The Gazette’s parent, now-bankrupt Freedom Communications, had tried the same strategy with its publication in Mesa, Arizona, the East Valley Tribune. The strategy didn’t work, and Freedom announced plans to close the paper unless a buyer could be found. Apparently, there’s a buyer in the wings, and freedom has deferred plans for shutting the pub down pending the bankruptcy court’s approval of the proposed deal.

When launched, FreshInk was published with racked distribution throughout Manitou, the west side, and downtown Colorado Springs. During July, a zoned edition of the paper began distribution in Fountain.

But, it appeared that few businesses chose to advertise in FreshInk.

The paper had formidable competitors, including the Independent and the West Side Pioneer, Ken Jordan’s feisty neighborhood weekly, which routinely scoops every other news medium in the city.

During the last two months, FreshInkhad shrunk from 16 pages to 12, and most ads were so-called ‘house ads’, for which little or no compensation was received. And two weeks ago, the paper announced that it would henceforth be available three days weekly, rather than four.

In a curiously-worded announcement in the Gazette yesterday morning, FreshInk editor Tim Bergsten announced that “changes are coming to the Gazette’s citizen journalism platform…it’s natural to shy away from change, to assume that it’s going to be bad.”

“Beginning Jan. 6,” Bergsten continued, “FreshInk will print Wednesdays. On Feb. 3 we’ll launch two more neighborhood papers (serving the Powers Boulevard and Briargate areas). All four neighborhood papers will be delivered in the Gazette to home subscribers.”

In retrospect, it’s easy to say that FreshInk was doomed from day one, a bad idea that somehow implanted itself in the mind of a stubborn boss.

Maybe so - but it takes a certain amount of journalistic chutzpah to launch a print pub of any kind in today’s market, and FreshInk was often interesting and readable. Many observers believe that metro dailies are a dying breed, doomed to follow passenger pigeons and passenger trains into extinction - so I applaud the Gazette for at least trying something, rather than passively accepting what fate may bring.

“Stand by,” Liz Cobb, the Gazette’s Vice President of Marketing said, “More changes are coming.”

And change, if inevitable, is not always good.

When ‘The City of New Orleans’ immortalized passenger rail 40 years ago, Colorado Springs had two competing dailies, as did Denver, as did San Francisco, as did Seattle. America’s network of passenger trains had largely disappeared, leaving only a few faded reminders of a glorious past. Trains were made for songwriters - and newspapers are made by writers.

I suspect that dozens of laid-off journalists are banging away at their keyboards as I write this, hoping to write the book that will define and celebrate the end of journalism as we knew and lived it.

Good luck. And I know you’ve given up on fortune - but don’t expect fame either. Here’s the chorus from ‘The City of New Orleans’, which was written not by Arlo Guthrie, not by Willie Nelson…but by Steve Goodman.

“Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.”

<-Back to CSBJ.com

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 23rd, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: Freedom Communications, FreshInk, Gazette

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There’s something about earnest, cheerful, inclusive, well-meaning and uplifting community projects that brings out the Sheridan Whiteside in me.

Sheridan Whiteside was the protagonist of Moss Hart’s and George S. Kaufman’s 1939 comedy “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

Whiteside, who was modeled on the famously acerbic theater critic Alexander Woollcott, had one of the most memorable opening lines in the history of American theater.

“I may vomit,” he said.

In that spirit, here’s an excerpt from the request for proposals for an “inclusive, creative community activity.”

“Art Creates Community is a call to the entire Pikes Peak region to have a direct vote in creating an inclusive, creative community activity in 2010. Bee Vradenburg Foundation and Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado are teaming together to let citizens vote online for one arts project that will be awarded a $10,000 grant…
Ideal projects will be surprising, fun, creative, accessible and inclusive. A project could be a one‐day festival, a series of small events over several dates, the installation of a permanent piece of public art or mural, The project may be an existing event, festival, etc., but applicants must demonstrate what will be new, inclusive and “community building” with the project in 2010.”

I know what will happen.

There will be dozens of feel good proposals, and the sentimental fools who reside in the Pikes Peak region will choose the sappiest one available. Artists and arts organizations, knowing this, will tailor their submissions accordingly.

• How ‘bout 20,000 rainbow balloons, to be launched by 20,000 schoolchildren, each with a message of peace, love, and the brotherhood/sisterhood of all people??!!
• Or maybe a great big purple dinosaur that will show up inclusively where you most expect it, making adults smile and children shriek with joy??!!
• Maybe a big beautiful mural depicting a giant purple dinosaur and thousands if kids on a flower-strewn hillside releasing rainbow balloons with messages of peace, love, joy, inclusion and…oh, never mind!

But enough of curmudgeonly cynicism! Rather than rail at the well-meaning efforts of my betters, here’s my entry,

Project: the Tejon Street Gateway Arch.
Project concept: Downtown lacks a ceremonial, inclusive, and welcoming entry. The proposed sculpture/arch will fill this void with an appropriate structure which will bring our city national and international renown.
Project description: A parabolic arch, soaring over Tejon Street at Platte Avenue, to be constructed of cor-ten steel, a durable, unsightly, and maintenance-free material. On the north side of the arch, an ingenious dual system of illumination will send an appropriate message to travelers at all hours of night and day. By night, gas jets will spell out in letters of fire the same message that glowing red neon tubes will deliver by day: “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.”

Many will recognize these words which, according to Dante’s Inferno (Canto 3, verse 3) are inscribed on the gates of Hell.

The rainbow balloon folks may not like it, but they’ll have to admit that this entry meets all stated criteria, and then some!

Inclusive? What could be more inclusive than Hell? Like Fannie Mae Duncan’s legendary Cotton Club, everyone’s welcome! The devil doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, age, gender, or sexual orientation-sin, and you’re in!

Accessible? Just read Dante, or the sermons of my great ancestor, Increase Mather, or go to church this Sunday-Hell is only too accessible!

Community Building? A not-so-gentle reminder of the transience of our lives on this mortal plane and the probable consequences of unrestrained partying on the Tejon Street strip should strengthen, not weaken, our regrettably sinful community. And for those of us who fail to mend our ways, it’ll be comforting to find a reminder of home as we begin our journey into eternal torment.

One minor problem does exist, though - the terms of the competition require that entrants be sponsored by, or partner with, a 501c(3) nonprofit.

I’m not sure that any local nonprofit would want to partner with such an infernal project, but I’m trying to get in contact with the head of a well-known international organization. His phone is unlisted, but he called the other day.

“Please allow me to introduce myself,” he said, “Just call me Lucifer - but what’s puzzling me is the nature of your game.”

I tried to explain, but he was uninterested. I asked how I could contact him - he just laughed.

“If you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse, or I’ll lay your soul to waste.”

As the caretaker of one of the six extant copies of Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon (given to Increase Mather by a man convicted of witchcraft in Salem during the 17th century), I could summon up Mr. Lucifer with ease.

But why bother? You know, I’ll bet that Mr. Lucifer doesn’t even have a 501c(3).

<-Back to CSBJ.com

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Posted by Rob Larimer on December 21st, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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<-Back to CSBJ.com

 

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 17th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog

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I suppose that we should be all a-twitter, eagerly anticipating the forthcoming announcement that we’ve all be waiting for. Who dat? Who dat? Who dat … gonna run the USOC?

According to a recent column by Phil Hersh of the Chicago Tribune, there are six finalists:

• Sandy Alderson, a former major league baseball vice-president and former CEO of the San Diego Padres
• Scott Blackmun, former USOC general counsel and its acting CEO in 2000-01
• Norm Bellingham, the current chief operating officer of the USOC
• Mark Lewis, who led the joint marketing venture between organizers of the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics and the USOC. Lewis is now president of Jet Set Sports, a global hospitality company with extensive Olympic sports business
• Chuck Wielgus, USA Swimming CEO
• The sixth candidate, whose name is unknown, is the only one from a corporate background with no link to the USOC or the Olympic movement.

Here’s a question - should we care?

Would any of the six make a difference in this city, as well as to the USOC?

As an organization, the USOC is in better shape than, say, Lehman Brothers or Bernie Madoff’s securities business, but that’s about it. During the last few years, the organization has managed to infuriate the International Olympic Committee, alienate the national Olympic committees of most other nations, and blow New York’s bid for 2012 as well as Chicago’s attempt to host the 2016 games.

Apparently acting on the theory that if the tough guys beat you up, you should turn on the weak kids and beat them up in turn, the USOC shook down its bankrupt hometown for $30 million. Result: the organization is actively loathed by most Springs residents.

Can this be turned around?

I don’t know about the national/international stuff. I suspect that a new paradigm is emerging, and that the United States will become less and less influential in the Olympic business (it’s a business, folks, not a ‘movement’) as more countries crash the party and demand a place at the table.

But for Colorado Springs, the best candidate is Scott Blackmun. He lives here, he’s deeply involved in the community, and he’ll know how to mend fences and heal the deep rift between the USOC and its host city. He’s smart enough to realize that it will take years, not months, actions, not soothing remarks.

Meanwhile, I have one New Years’ resolution: I will never enter the building at 27 South Tejon that the city is handing over to the USOC. The building perfectly symbolizes corporate rapacity, governmental incompetence, and bad architecture.

I can forgive the first two, but to go through all that grief and end up with a dismal piece of architrash -  that’s too much!

So to the architectural community, here’s a tip: yes, Virginia, it is possible to build elegant, beautiful, and functional six-story buildings. Just take a walk up Tejon Street, and look at the Hibbard’s building, or at the DeGroff Building … too bad the architects of those two structures died half a century ago, or you could have gotten some useful tips.

<-Back to CSBJ.com

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 16th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: 27 South Tejon, USOC

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During the past 150 years, thousands of reporters have covered statehouses throughout the Mountain West.

They tend to be merry, cynical, and tough-minded men and women, used to dealing with fools, scoundrels, hypocrites and even the occasional selfless idealist.

In the old days, they seldom refused a drink, an opportunity for a good time, or a free meal. They were - and are - a fearless lot, unafraid of the brutish power brokers who would just as soon silence their voices.

Publishers distrusted them, because they took on the powerful and the unscrupulous in the shadowy no-man’s land of lobbyists, interest groups, and trade associations - and thereby infuriated advertisers. Their editors protected them, knowing that, as Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session.”

But after 150 years, many of these voices will be stilled.

The Gazette will no longer have a full-time reporter at the legislature, nor will the Pueblo Chieftain. That’s not just regrettable - it’s potentially catastrophic.

The legislature’s proceedings are about as transparent as, say, Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus logico-philisophicus” in the original Latin-if you don’t speak Latin.

Absent smart, skillful and perpetually alert reporters, it’s almost impossible to figure out what our elected representatives are up to.

A clever legislator can do the bidding of the powerful, and kill a popular bill while appearing to support it. Without statehouse reporters, serious debate-not that there’s much of it in the best of times-will vanish, to be replaced by lies, exaggerations, and the nastiest kind of partisan political maneuvering.

Grim times, indeed-and that’s why we need Mark Twain, who was one of the first, and certainly the best, statehouse reporter in our region’s history. During 1862-1868, he covered the Nevada legislature, and anything else that caught his fancy, for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

He was a great reporter - and he knew how to have a good time. He would have been right at home in the Red Room, the Colfax Avenue establishment long favored by reporters, lobbyists, and legislators. Here’s his immodest account of one convivial evening during December of 1863, a ball and supper in Virginia City hosted by the Virginia City Eagle Engine Company.

A TIDE OF ELOQUENCE

“Afterwards, Mr. Mark Twain being enthusiastically called upon, arose, and without previous preparation, burst forth in a tide of eloquence so grand, so luminous, so beautiful and so resplendent with the gorgeous fires of genius, that the audience were spell-bound by the magic of his words, and gazed in silent wonder in each other’s faces as men who felt that they were listening to one gifted with inspiration [Applause.] The proceedings did not end here, but at this point we deemed it best to stop reporting and go to dissipating, as the dread solitude of our position as a sober, rational Christian, in the midst of the driveling and besotted multitude around us, had begun to shroud our spirits with a solemn sadness tinged with fear…”

“A solemn sadness tinged with fear.” That’s how we ought to view the disappearance of statehouse reporting. And what would Twain have done?

Listened to John Belushi, as Bluto in Animal House.

“My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.”

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 10th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized

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Peg Brickley’s blog on the Wall Street Journal’s Web site might be of interest to Colorado Springs residents.

Titled “Bankruptcy Beat,” it’s devoted to Springs resident Tim Hoiles, who reportedly cashed out his 8.6 percent stake in the family business, Freedom Communications, which owns the Gazette, for a cool $142 million. He’s sitting pretty - and that’s why unsecured creditors, including a lawyer he once employed, of the now-bankrupt company are snapping at his heels

Here’s a sample from the blog:

“If creditors of Freedom Communications are hoping to recoup “illegal dividends” from Timothy C. Hoiles, motorcycle aficionado, patron of the arts and ex-scold of the family who owns the company, good luck to them… Creditors haven’t named any names when it comes to insiders who could be tagged with lawsuits, and Hoiles cashed out years before the company filed for Chapter 11 protection in September.”

Click here to read the blog.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 9th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: bankruptcy, Freedom Communications, Gazette, Tim Hoiles, Wall Street Journal

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The city’s ongoing budget crisis became slightly less acute this week with the discovery of a few million extra dollars that, it appears, Colorado Springs Utilities owes the city as a result of an inadvertent miscalculation of the so-called payment in lieu of taxes (PILT).

That’s good news, since it enabled the city to pony up $365,000 to keep the Pioneers Museum open and to provide enough funding to keep the aquatics centers open for a few more months.

But thanks to the Dark Lord of Taxes, He-whose-name-must-not-be-spoken (he’ll sue!), the PILT will be phased out during the next several years. And thanks to previous successful voter initiatives created by his tax-cutting majesty, even a reviving economy won’t bail out the city.

That’s because, thanks to the mini-Tabor amendment to the city charter, year-to-year city revenue growth is capped at a rate pegged to certain local and state indicators. In practice, if a suddenly booming economy produced a 20 percent gain in sales tax collections, the city would likely be required to refund two-thirds of the gain to the taxpayers.

So acute and visible are the city’s problems, and so pressing is the need for some sort of long-term solution, that even Broadmoor CEO Steve Bartolin weighed in last month with a long, thoughtful letter to the mayor and members of council.

In the letter, Bartolin expressed his concern about the city’s cost structure, noting that personnel costs consume the lion’s share of the budget.

“My intent was not to have (the letter) circulated,” he said, “I don’t want to embarrass anyone. Colorado Springs is not alone in this - every city, large and small, is going through similar difficulties. But it may be time for somebody to take a fresh look.”

Bartolin’s no stranger to the restructuring process. He’s been at The Broadmoor for 18 years, becoming its CEO three years after the El Pomar Foundation sold most of its interest in The Broadmoor to the Oklahoma Publishing Company.

Looking at today’s resplendent resort, it’s hard to believe that The Broadmoor of two decades ago was a faded grande dame, increasingly shabby and irrelevant in a changing resort environment.

During Bartolin’s tenure, The Broadmoor has added 150 rooms, a new golf club, a new spa facility, a new pool complex, the 60,000 sq. ft. Broadmoor Hall, The Summit restaurant, the mountain golf course, 23 retail shops, and developed the Broadmoor resort community, as well as spending$35 million restoring the main building.

“We don’t have any debt,” Batolin said. “We’ve spent hundreds of millions (in improvements) and we’ve financed it all through cash flow. In my business, a lot of people focus on quality, and a lot of people focus on costs - but you have to do both. We have about as many employees as the city, not including utilities and the hospital, so there may be some similarities.”

The Broadmoor may be a success story - but Bartolin’s former employer, the Greenbrier, has fallen upon hard times.

Like The Broadmoor, the Greenbrier is a historic resort hotel with a national reputation. Situated on 6,500 acres, offering 700 luxuriously appointed rooms (to use hotelspeak!), it has sheltered kings and presidents, movie stars and scoundrels. Today it’s in bankruptcy, having lost $35 million last year.

“They let their personnel costs get out of control,” said Bartolin. “There were some expensive labor agreements, and they just refused to tackle them. They thought they could just go on raising their prices. This is a very, very competitive business. Their personnel costs got to 70 percent of their budget and no business can compete with those kinds of costs.”

Bartolin didn’t have to point out that the city’s personnel costs consume 70 percent of the general fund budget, and that the city’s cost per employee, with benefits, is close to $90,000. For a business, such a cost structure would be unsustainable.

Maybe, Bartolin agreed, it’s time to bring in a major national consulting firm such as McKinsey & Co, and ask them to analyze the city’s operations and make specific recommendations.

“I’d support that,” he said, “we need to do something. We all have to work with the city.”

And Bartolin, more than most of us, has a dog in the fight. He’s not happy that council has cut the CVB’s budget by almost $600,000 this year, particularly since the Broadmoor pays a substantial percentage of the “lodger’s tax” from which the Convention and Visitors Bureau funds are derived. As the state of Colorado learned a few years back, cutting tourism funding has at least one absolutely certain outcome: fewer tourists.

And he’s also concerned about prospective increases in the resort’s water bills.

“We paid $586,000 last year for water,” Bartolin said, ” and if water rates are going to increase at the level they predict, then we’ll be paying $2.5 million ten years from now. That’s a lot of money.”

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on December 9th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Colorado Springs

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