Hazlehurst’s Blog
Insight and commentary from John Hazlehurst

The Pikes Peak region needs a slogan

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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
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Your tax money at work

3

Press releases. They come. We delete. Life goes on. But every once in a while, we get one that piques our interest, like this one from the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments:

Colorado Springs, CO-The Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority (PPRTA) has released the 2008 Annual Report to the Citizens. The report highlights how the four member governments of Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, Green Mountain Falls, and El Paso County made significant transportation improvements and spent more than $83 million in new revenue on major construction and design projects, maintenance activities, and transit services.

More than 200,000 copies of the PPRTA Annual Report will be distributed through major news publications including the Gazette, the Colorado Springs Independent, Cheyenne and Woodmen Editions, Military News, the Tri-lakes Tribune, Fountain Valley News, the Pikes Peak Bulletin, Ranchland News and Black Forest News. The report will also be available in all area King Soopers and Safeway grocery stores.

200,000 copies? That’s more than enough for every man, woman and literate child in the PPRTA’s entire service area. It’s also about 199,900 copies more than any reasonable person would imagine the demand for such a publication to be.

Let’s not forget that this is the cash-strapped PPRTA that had its budget cut by 51 percent this year and cannot afford to fill its usual number of potholes.

Obviously, you might conclude that we have a dog in this fight. After all, our peerless publication was inexplicably deprived of the no doubt lucrative business of enclosing this bit of puffery, and making it available to our similarly deprived readers.

But here’s a question: why publish the piece at all? Why not just make a PDF, and drop it in the websites of all the member entities? Cost for printing, insertion, and distribution - zero. Take the money saved thereby, and fill a few more potholes…and that reminds me of yet another press release, this one received Tuesday morning from the city.

“Fewer streets to be resurfaced in 2009.”

But maybe I’m way off base - and if so, I’m sure our readers will let me know. If any of y’all feel unjustly deprived of your PPRTA annual report, let me know. I’ll arrange to have one delivered to you.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on May 26th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
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Sheriff publishes puff piece

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We all know that local government is in crisis, right? Thanks to the recession, not to mention the unavoidable constraints imposed by TABOR, our elected officials are finding it difficult to fund even the basic needs of government, right?  No money for frills-it’s just meat and potatoes at the city and the county, right?

So how, pray tell, does El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa justify paying for an expensively produced, 36 page, glossy magazine titled “2008 Special Edition Annual Report?”

The mag, printed on heavy, glossy stock, with color on every page, masquerades as a report to the taxpayers.  It’s not an annual report,-just as Congressman Doug Lamborn’s equally slick and glossy “newsletters” have little to do with news.

To read the “Annual Report” is to find out that all is well in the Sheriff’s department.  According to Sheriff Maketa, “Every component of our organization achieved higher levels of performance” and “The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office continues to carve a path of creativity, resourcefulness and commitment toward serving our great community.” 

In subsequent pages, every part of the office is singled out for embarassingly fulsome praise.  The mag contains no fewer than 115 color photographs, as well as a smaller number of (largely uninformative) charts and graphs.  There’s a single page of financial information, which consists only of a couple of bar charts and a pie chart. 

Let’s call this “Annual Report” what it really is: a taxpayer-funded campaign piece for Sheriff Maketa.  At least, I assume that it’s taxpayer funded-if it isn’t, if it was paid for by anonymous private contributors, that’s even worse, since it pretends to be an official government document.

In any case, it, along with Lamborn’s taxpayer-funded mailings, are both deplorable.  We don’t need glossy P.R. pieces from our elected officials, telling us how noble, selfless, and dedicated they are - we need the unvarnished truth.  And if times are as difficult as our leaders tell us, how can they afford to squander thousands on fancy print jobs?

To quote the legendary Sergeant Joe Friday of the LAPD “Just the facts, Ma’am.”  Forget the color, forget the pics, forget the puffery - just the facts, Sheriff.

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Posted by John Hazlehurst on May 6th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
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