Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many
COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.
More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.
The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.
Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.
City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.
"I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day."
14 comments:
Wow! Those conservatives don't mess around. That would never happen here. Here,they would inact martial law check points and shake down all the people still working, removing gold rings, food, clothes, money....gas...light bulbs....battteries....flashlights...well you get the idea.
Let's have a contest, it will be something like this;
What small city in America will incite a civil war?
And, who will be fighting against each other?
Will it be gov employees? Who won't take concessions?
Against - private sector, who have lost jobs, homes, health care and are starving. This group usually has lots of guns and explosives.
Bankers contracts are being negotiated and broken as I post. Police/Firefighters contracts have been broken and negotiated/concessions taken.
Gov/teachers employee unions (although in p-twn our teachers don't get paid much) across usa will not take concessions and cried foul when they thought they had to pay taxes on their health care because they said they could not break their union contracts.
Remember, not all unions are created equal, there are union employees who work for private sector and their jobs are not protected like gov/teacher employee jobs, where tax payers money goes towards their paychecks. Heck! Private sector contracts are being forced to break.
What small town will incite a civil war????????? We shall wait and see.
You're eagerly anticipating civil war?
Can't you feel it?? Something's gotta give. How bout Vallejo? I don't see it happening in Pacifica, our public works, cops, teachers, firefighters don't get paid much. But, Vallejo? A public worker was attacked by a mob of young people. Watch Out!!
About the only person I've heard make any sense in Vallejo is Stephanie Gomes. There was also a recent article about how a lot of the policemen who had been laid off in Vallejo are being absorbed into Richmond and Hayward.
The Pacifica Police Department does an admirable job with the staff they have, but you have to wonder how much crime is slipping through the cracks due to lack of manpower.
There was an eye-opening Letter to the Editor this week about how the storms knocked out power to the traffic signals along Highway 1, but there were no police directing traffic. This was due to the short staffed department being engaged in other activities, and a policy that was set in the late 1990s/early 2000s (my guess is 2002 when the staff was being gutted by this current city council) that they can't put an officer at every signal.
Their advice was "motorists should assume that traffic problems will occur during times of inclement weather and plan accordingly."
yes, I remember watching peeps in town fly through those , not even stopping. Train your youth well, it's wild wild in the west.
I laughed aloud at the absurdity of the Pacifica Police's response in the Tribune. "Plan accordingly?!" Are we to assume that the traffic lights will be out on Highway One every time it rains? I guess I would have planned on the police being able to direct traffic.
The official response also states that "every police officer in Paifica was tied up on traffic, storm-related, and other calls." Well, if this incident, which causes absolute gridlock, doesn't rise to the top of the list of storm-related, or traffic calls, I don't know what does.
The response doesn't pass the "smell test."
I don't think the Pacifica PD's response was absurd. Their staffing level is at the legal minimum already, so they don't have anyone to spare unless they call people in.
I used to be a cop in the Air Force. Our minimal staffing level was 3 patrols + 1 supervisor patrolling a base of about 7000 people per shift, and often we had more patrols operating per shift. Chief Saunders told me about a year ago that Pacifica operates with the same 3 patrols + 1 supervisor per shift staffing for a city of about 38,000, which I found amazing/frightening. Given their resources, Pacifica PD does a great job.
Two points in rebuttal:
1) How would have their advice to "plan accordingly" be of any use? (after all, it's the response to concerns about how they handled this particular incident)
2) Given that the another excuse was that the police were too busy addressing "storm-related and traffic calls," I'd like to know what storm-related traffic call was bigger than *this* particular one? Let's not forget about all the safety issues created with the amount of gridlock present.
1) Advice of "plan accordingly" isn't of much tangible value, other than to hopefully remind people that big storms often result in big traffic problems.
2) Lots of things could be higher-priority than slow traffic, e.g., tree limbs or power-lines falling into the street that need to be marked and removed before someone runs into them; flooded streets that need to be marked so that nobody drives through them; or genuine traffic accidents that need to be responded to. And crime and medical emergencies don't stop just because there's a storm. I went through CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training a few months ago, and one of the things they stressed over and over was that during big storms, the police and fire departments were always incredibly busy, so we shouldn't count on them for immediate assistance if something came up.
Slow traffic due to traffic lights going out is a huge annoyance, but I don't know that it's any more dangerous than when the roads get clogged during rush hour.
After reading SSinai's posted aritcle, I scrolled down and read the comments. This is what I read.
I recently asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, 'If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?' She replied, 'I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.' Her parents beamed. 'Wow...what a worthy goal.' I told her, 'But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.' She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, 'Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?' I said, 'Welcome to the Republican Party.'
What Steve says about the lack of staffing in our police department is interesting, and may be the lowest police staffing in San Mateo county-- we're probably #1 again, no surprise.
Cities need services to protect us all. Kathleen, your allegorical story may have been what people did many years ago, but I think the world is more complicated now. And, paying unskilled labor under-the-table seems somehow more bipartisan.
Sorry, I could not help meself.
Neither could I.
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