Hazlehurst’s Blog
Insight and commentary from John Hazlehurst

Colorado Springs: The entitlement city

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Remember the “6035” project? Remember “Dream City”? And whatever happened to those hundreds of fresh-faced community leaders that the Colorado Springs Leadership Institute has trained, graduated and sent on their way during the last decade?

I have good news for you! Dream City is alive, sort of, kept on life support by the occasional article in the Gazette. 6035 is apparently hibernating, ready to stun the world by announcing that they’ve hired someone to … well, implement some very important recommendations that will vastly improve our spiritless little burg. And as for all those leaders, they’re sooo ready to lead, and they’re especially willing to serve on committees that will consider important issues and produce important reports which will make important recommendations to which most of us will pay no attention.

That’s why there were more than 60 applicants to fill six seats on a city advisory committee which will consider the “ownership structure” of Memorial Health System. Presumably, the committee will meet, gather data, hear from the various players, and summarize its findings in carefully parsed bureaucratese.

The report will then become a part of our ongoing and historically futile debate over whether Memorial ought to remain in public ownership or sold to the highest bidder.

Advocates of selling the hospital system believe that the city has no reason to be in the health care business, or in any other business for that matter, and that such ownership confers few benefits upon city residents. They claim that a sale might net hundreds of millions for the city, and yet have little effect upon Memorial’s ability to provide care.

That’s debatable.

In health care, as in government, business and private life you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Any private entity buying the hospital will see an immediate increase in fixed costs, as the new owners are forced to refinance all of the hospital’s debt at higher rates. Being capitalists, they’ll want a return on their investment - and that can only be realized by raising prices and reducing uncompensated care. And who will pay the bills? That would be us.

But the argument over Memorial will go on, and will serve as one of many issues that distract us, and our hundreds - nay thousands! - of leaders from dealing with our city’s core dilemma, that being …

We love our entitlements! In common with welfare recipients before 1996, UAW members before the collapse of the domestic automobile industry, subprime loan recipients, and Wall Street bankers, we think that we can get something for nothing.

We want a prosperous, vibrant city, a spacious park system, a vital downtown, and an efficient, smoothly functioning city government - but we think that someone else should pay for these things. Our city council was so sure that we wouldn’t fund even essential governmental functions that they backdoored a stormwater fee in a futile attempt to outsmart the tightwad taxpayers.

Absent divine intervention, most city community centers and Rock Ledge Ranch will close in a few weeks. And unless our timid city council forces Colorado Springs Utilities to provide water at greatly reduced rates, our once-verdant city parks will be withered and sere.

Absent an aggressively funded Economic Development Corporation, we’ll fall farther and farther behind our peer cities, as the jobs and companies that would once have come to Colorado Springs are lured to Albuquerque, Omaha, Des Moines, Fort Collins…and even Pueblo!

Absent a focused community effort to diversify our economy and rebuild Downtown, South Nevada, South Academy, and the West Side, we’ll continue our slow decline.

The city doesn’t need leadership - it needs followership. A handful of sincere would-be leaders cannot easily reverse decades of Bruceite propaganda, which has led people to believe that taxes can always be lower, the government always has plenty of money, and that most politicians are lying weasels who just want your money.

What this means in practice is that brilliant governance, such as that provided during the last two years by county executive Jeff Green and our five county commissioners is largely unremarked, while the floundering incompetence of city council during the same period is seen as the norm.

Folks, don’t you think that we’ve wasted enough time? Let’s leave Memorial alone, and concentrate on our immediate problems.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on January 25th, 2010 :: Filed under Blog
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My very own reservoir site - and it’s free!

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Colorado Springs Utilities CEO Jerry Forte may have been born on a Wednesday - but it wasn’t yesterday.

In a polite but devastating takedown of Mark Morley’s offer to sell Utilities a reservoir site near Pueblo for $36 million, and pass along $12 million of the sales price to the USOC, Forte said thanks-but no thanks.

The USOC offer wasn’t even mentioned. As CSU spokeswomanJanet Rummel said, “That was totally not part of our evaluation.”

The site in question, known as the Stonewall Springs Quarry property, had been considered as a reservoir site by Utilities during 2004. CSU passed, having determined that the function that such a reservoir might perform by recovering and storing water that might otherwise be lost to the city could be dealt with for far less cost.

How much less? In the restrained “engineerspeak” favored by the professionals at CSU, here’s how much less.

“Current operations under the Pueblo Flow Management Program have caused curtailment for Colorado Springs return flow exchange of an average annual amount of 1,950 acre-feet. Of these curtailments, we have recovered or sold an average of 82 percent. We have experienced an increase transit loss to our current Recovery of Yield Storage (Holbrook Reservoir or Lake Meredith), and these losses amount to approximately 1.35 percent of our total annual exchange yield. We have not left any water stranded in downstream storage nor has this program had a negative impact on our ability to serve our customers.

From the years 2004 through 2008, we have invested about $260,000 in the entire Recovery of Yield program, which includes water, operations, staff time, studies and a lease option for storage in Holbrook Reservoir.

In summary, we have been able to recover or sell a majority of the water (82%) and the total cost for this program over a five year period was about $260,000 which translates to an average of $52,000/year and $37/acre-feet.”

Let’s see: $36 million plus the cost of actually, like, building a reservoir vs. $260,000 to achieve 82 percent of the possible benefits from the proposed impoundment…don’t think that we need a cost-benefit analysis here, Mabel!

It’s possible that, in the long term, it will make sense to build such a reservoir. It’s also possible that, in the long term, it will make sense for me to tear down my 1898 house on the west side and build a 30-story condo complex.

But, inspired by the ingenious Mr. Morley, I’ve put forth my own proposal. I have a rocky, gravelly, weedy side yard. I’d like to landscape it, but that takes work. So I’m offering it to CSU for nothing - if they’ll dig a shallow reservoir, keep it filled with clean, healthful water, and line it with concrete and tile. They can lease it back to me for a dollar a year for the next century. I’ll maintain it-and install a diving board at my expense.

Oh, and I’ll also need an adjacent heated water facility, commonly known as a hot tub. I’ll invite my pals over and we’ll soak, swill champagne, and make plans to compete in the 2016 Olympics. Talk about community benefit!

The champagne’s on CSU, of course…

Posted by John Hazlehurst on August 20th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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The Dougster’s baaaaack!

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Just when you might have thought that Douglas Bruce had retreated quietly from politics, perhaps happily ensconced in some palatial, Mandarin era residence along the Bund in Shanghai, he’s baaaaack!!!

Here’s the scoop, such as it is, on the latest Bruce/city kerfuffle.

The ol’ tax cutter took out petitions during May of this year, intent upon collecting enough signatures from “qualified electors” of Colorado Springs to force council to either approve his latest initiative as written, or let the voters decide its fate.

By Monday afternoon at 5:00 PM, Bruce had not turned in his petitions, thereby missing the deadline for placing the matter on the November coordinated election.

City clerk Kathryn Young released a statement confirming his “failure to perform”, which we included in a brief story. We didn’t hear from the often-irascible Mr. Bruce until after our deadline.

He was not pleased.

According to Bruce, the charter specifically grants him 180 days to collect signatures (true). Ms. Young was/is entirely in error, he claimed.

“I know the law,” Bruce said, “she just made it up.”

And, he continued, he will continue to collect signatures for the proposed initiative which, if passed, would phase out the city’s “payment in lieu of taxes” that it receives every year from Colorado Springs Utilities. It’s a nice little chunk of change-about $30 million annually. The initiative also requires that utilities pass along the savings to its customers.

For those of us who have known Douglas Bruce for the last twenty years, whether as uneasy ally or bitter foe, it’s pretty clear that he does nothing by accident. Had he so desired, he could have had more than enough signatures at the Clerk’s office well before last Monday. His failure to do so may be because of any number of factors, e.g.

-He wants to force a little confrontation with the city, during which he can portray himself as the hapless victim of a scheming bureaucracy, the noble crusader against taxes, and the grand old man of the anti-tax movement, and make Young and/or the city back down, and put the initiative on the November ballot.

-He may want to force the city to hold a special, post November election, as he believes the charter mandates if Young refuses to put the matter on the ballot during November.

-And why would he do that, given that the city would have to shell out $480,000 (Young’s figure, according to Bruce) or $220,000 (Bruce’s estimate) to fund such election? Just maybe, some of his allies (or even the ol’ taxcutter himself) are thinking about putting another initiative on the ballot-maybe one that calls for overturning the USOC deal…

But I dunno. I’m only certain of one thing-politics in our fair city is far more interesting when the ol’ Dougster is on the prowl.

Welcome back from Shanghai, big guy!!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on August 5th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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