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
Tags :: 6035, City council county commission, Colorado Springs Leadership institute, Colorado Springs Utilities, dream city, Economic development Corporation, Memorial health systems

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Utopia or dystopia?  What does the future hold for our city?  

How can we, individually and collectively, shape this community?  In endeavors such as Dream City, the 6035 project, and a dozen predecessors, we’ve asked ourselves the same question:  how do cities thrive?

Forty-eight years ago, Jane Jacobs published “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” 

In the book, she attacked the planners, bureaucrats, and urban brutalists whom, she believed, were ripping the heart out of American cities by imposing their own sterile modernist visions upon the complex, messy, unregulated chaos of the city. Her particular target: Robert Moses, who tore down whole neighborhoods in New York City to build freeways to serve suburban commuters.

Jacobs was too late to stop the tidal wave of urban renewal (AKA urban destruction) that swept across the country during the ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s. 

More than almost any city in America, Colorado Springs suffered from the “new brutalism.” 

Entire city blocks were leveled, including most of the city’s major historic structures. The architects of this disaster weren’t trying to rip the heart out Colorado Springs - they just wanted to build a shiny new city that would be convenient and modern, just like a suburban office park. 

Deluded fools, every one - right?  We’ve learned our lesson - right? 

We know now that we need to get the stuff back that we so casually ripped down a few decades back - downtown residential structures, retail density, vibrant street life, thriving small businesses, art galleries, convenient public transportation.

Trouble is, we’ve been trying to revive downtown for nearly three decades, with mixed success. Tejon Street looks good, but most everything else is suffering.

I don’t think we can revive downtown with half-measures. We need to make some big changes - and that doesn’t mean spending tens of millions in taxpayer funds to give a junkily designed renovated building to the USOC.

Here are some suggestions.

• Get rid of the parking lots. There are three enormous lots that are being held by owners sure that, sooner or later, the time will come to build a trophy high-rise. Here’s some news from the reality-based community: that time may never come. 
• Have the city/county act together to create a fat incentive package, deferring all manner of taxes, to encourage property owners to build low-rise commercial/residential structures on their vast sites.  And here’s a stick to go with the carrot: remove flat parking as a principal permitted use.
• Make downtown a special tax-exempt zone for both merchants and residents.  Just suspend the collection of sales/property tax for five years, and offer property owners/ residents the same break.  Do that, and watch the stores open, watch the lofts go up. And try to get the state to suspend the state income tax as well … we’d have a mini-Monaco!

Would it be fair, equitable, and logical policy?  No - but it’d sure work. 

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on November 24th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: 6035, Colorado Springs, downtown parking lots, dream city, dystopia, Jane Jacobs, parking lots, Robert Moses, Tejon Street, the death and life of great american cities, Urban Renewal, utopia

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After months of hype and hundreds of column inches of high-minded rhetoric, the Gazette’s ‘Dream City’ project culminated with a much-touted meeting at Coronado High School. 

Three hundred people showed up - an impressive turnout for an earnest few hours of community-minded heavy liftin’, especially on a radiant Saturday morning. 

I didn’t go - too busy riding my bike, caring for my ancient dog, weeding the garden and riding up to Cripple Creek in our snazzy li’l black roadster. 

The bike ride was absurdly perfect. The roads to and around the Garden of the Gods were  uncrowded, passing motorists were courteous, and the Garden was, as always, transcendently beautiful.

The dog was happy and the drive to the Creek, top down in the mountain cool, couldn’t have been better-and we even won a few bucks at our favorite casino.

So let’s see - I ditched Dream City because I feel like I live in dream city. 

Maybe I’m just a small-town simpleton, but the city seems pretty close to perfect just the way it is.

Most of the people I know, regardless of political affiliation, feel the same way. They complain about the politics of the daily, or about the mayor’s apparent venality or about the incompetence of local governments - but they stay put.

A friend who lives in Kentucky and does business in Colorado Springs put it this way.

“Everyone I talk to in Colorado Springs says it’s a great place, and they never want to leave.  Actually, we’re trying to figure out how to move there ourselves…”

I admire the folks who have worked so hard on Dream City and upon similar, parallel efforts.  They usually preface any discussion by saying “This is a great place, but we can make it even better.”

Can we?  Maybe we’ll just screw it up.  Would you say of the Mona Lisa “Great painting!  But a little touching up would make it even better.”

As the great conservative Edmund Burke once said, “If it is not necessary to change, then it is necessary not to change.”

Perfection, or even near perfection, can’t be improved on.

Although maybe we could paint the Garden of the Gods a fetching shade of pink-those salmon-colored rocks are so 19^th century!

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on July 20th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Cripple Creek, dream city, Edmund Burke, Garden of the Gods, Gazette

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The estimable folks who brought us the “Dream City” project are searching for a slogan.

Appealing to the public, they wrote that “The Pikes Peak region needs a slogan, words that suggest all the great reasons to visit or live here. As part of the community engagement project Dream City: Vision 2020, we’re collecting your ideas for inspiring slogans.”

Far be it from us to fall short community-engagement wise. We asked for suggestions. Here are a few, and yes, we know that they’re sadly inadequate! That why we’re asking you, dear readers, to submit your own suggestions, in the hope that we can, collectively and individually, come up with the single perfect phrase, or scrap of doggerel, or limerick, or haiku, that inspires, informs and amuses.

Here’s what we have so far:

“Pikes Peak and Busted.”

“Nobody shares our views!”

“Colorado Springs - where only the view matters!”

“Colorado Springs: South of Denver-and to the right of everything”

“Dobson, Haggard - need we say more?”

“Colorado Springs: Where not even Katherine Lee Bates stayed for long.”

“No springs in Colorado Springs!”

“Colorado Springs hits the spot/One 14′er, that’s a lot?/The USOC, and what a view/At least we’ll always have one of two!”

“Colorado Springs - once a city, now a suburb.”

“There once was a town near Pikes Peak/Whose founders large fortunes did seek/But soon they did find/That the town fell behind/And now its reputation is weak”

“Go west young man and claim your stake/To Colorado Springs-where everything’s fake/There you’ll find nature/And government failure/And a town that’s rarely awake.”

You get the idea.

Actually, the city already has a slogan-”We Create Community.” That little phrase was stolen from a bumper sticker created by Citizens Project during the late 1990’s, which read “Celebrate Diversity/Create Community.”

We have no quarrel with the city’s deft plagiarism - it’s better than paying a P.R. firm 20 grand or so to come up with a catchy phrase. The city’s various departments, “friends” groups, and divisions also have mission statements. Here’s our favorite, copied directly from the city website.

Mission Statement

City Contracting

“Business with a Competetive Edge”

Colorado Springs Utilities has its slogan as well - “It’s how we’re all connected.” El Paso County is without one.

But Denver’s slogan is simple and memorable -”The Mile-High City.” And just to rub it in, at least one city agency, the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs, has not only a mission statement (”To advance the arts and culture in the City and County of Denver”) but a vision statement (”To make Denver a community that attracts, cultivates, and mobilizes the creative spirit”).

Inspired by our neighbors to the north, how about “Colorado Springs-755 feet higher than a mile!” or “Colorado Springs - no mission, no vision, no slogan - and proud of it!”

Your turn.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on June 19th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: Colorado Springs, Denver, dream city, El Paso County, pikes peak region, slogan

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