This is the first of a series of stories about the April 2 Colorado Springs municipal election.

Should Colorado Springs City Council members get a gargantuan jump in pay?

Should a greater percentage of proceeds from a tax that funds parks, trails and open space be devoted to repairing, renovating and maintaining existing parks?

Voters will provide the answer to both questions when they fill in their ballots for the April 2 municipal election.

But there’s no need to make an on-the-spot decision. The election is mail-only. Most ballots were mailed out Friday and aren’t due back until 7 p.m. April 2, so there’s plenty of time of weigh the pros and cons of the two measures.

COUNCIL PAY

Oddly enough, the group that proposed a pay raise for City Council members was inspired by Mayor Steve Bach, who opposes the ballot measure — though not necessarily the idea of a pay hike for the nine elected officials.

At a gathering of young professionals last year, Bach encouraged the audience to help reinvent City Council. Some came forward with several proposals, including one for a pay hike for council. They argued that the current $6,250-a-year salary is too low to attract younger candidates or anyone else who can’t afford to give up a better paying job to be a public servant.

Other supporters of the measure agree. Pay more for council, they say, and you’ll get a more diverse pool of candidates. Otherwise, the contest tends to draw people who are retired, independently wealthy or have a spouse or someone else to help foot the bills.

“I do see that the more you pay, the more likely you are to attract more people to the job, and that’s good,” said Dave Munger, president of the Council of Neighborhood Organizations, whose executive board supports the proposal.

Bach and other opponents have reiterated several arguments against the measure: A council pay raise should be addressed as part of a larger review of the city charter; it’s not clear where the money would come from to pay for the higher salary and benefits; and the proposed salary increase to $48,000 a year — or half of the mayor’s pay — was pulled out of thin air.

“This is a random number that was chosen,” Bach said recently.

Opponents say the amount shouldn’t be established until it’s determined whether council will continue to serve as the Utilities Board. If that role is taken off council’s plate, the argument goes, council members would put in fewer hours.

“This number is not true to any future roles and responsibilities,” Bach said.

Several supporters of the measure say the job eats up more than 40 hours a week, and the number isn’t likely to go down dramatically, even if Utilities is no longer council’s responsibility. In other words, it will still be a full-time job, and the pay should reflect the importance of the role.

“I think we have to tell ourselves as a community that council is very important, and we expect council to be a full-time job, and the only way to do that is to pay it appropriately,” Munger said.

With no support from Bach and other powers in the community, some of the young professionals felt they wouldn’t be able to raise enough money to support it.

“Lots of groups believe it’s a good idea, but there was not a lot of political will behind it,” said one of the supporters, who asked not to be identified. “So we made a recommendation to pull it.”

But at a recent council meeting, none of the young professionals spoke out to keep the measure off the ballot, and council voted to let the public decide.

“We put it on the ballot — I did vote in favor of that, to bring the question to the citizens, because it was brought forward by the citizens,” said Councilwoman Brandy Williams. “I felt strongly about this one because I didn’t feel that being the only person under 40 and a young professional was really a diverse group and representative of the community.”

The group that pushed for the measure, Better Pay, Better Council, had raised only $105 as of March 1, according to its campaign finance report. Anthony Gioia, the campaign co-chairman, could not be reached for comment.

TOPS

Fundamentally, the Trails and Open Space Coalition would love to support the Trails, Open Space and Parks ballot measure, which could provide an estimated $1 million more a year to maintain, renovate and improve the sustainability of existing parks in Colorado Springs.

But the TOSC isn’t backing the proposal, because there’s no wording to guarantee that the city will maintain its level of financial support for parks maintenance if the measure passes. Although Mayor Steve Bach has pledged in public and written comments that the city, “to the best of our ability,” won’t cut funding for parks maintenance, it hasn’t been enough to sway the group. The group wants formal assurance that the TOPS money will supplement, not supplant, the city’s contribution.

“Our concern is there is a history there that when things get tough, parks takes the brunt of the hurt,” said coalition Executive Director Susan Davies, “Yes, our board said ‘we can’t support this,’ and it’s a hard place to be. We know parks could use this money. On the other hand, we also know this is not going to solve things if we don’t commit that general fund money, too.”

Bach has said he doesn’t want to tie the city’s hands financially with a “maintenance of effort” clause, in case the general fund needs to be tapped to address an emergency, such as the Waldo Canyon fire. He’s also said such a clause is likely not enforceable legally, and would “create an unfortunate and unwise precedent to infer that certain portions of the City budget could never be reviewed.”

But he has tried to reassure the trails coalition and other maintenance of effort supporters that the city will do all it can not to strip parks maintenance money from the budget. “To do otherwise would be unethical,” he said.

Colorado Springs City Council also is expected to vote on a resolution this week –

Former City Councilman Richard Skorman, who headed the Parks Solution Team that came up with the proposal, said a maintainence of effort clause raised too many questions to be included.

“So if you say they’re going to set 5.1 percent of the whole parks budget as the minimum and wouldn’t go below that, is that 5.1 percent of today’s budget? Five-point-one percent of the budget seven or eight years from now? What’s it tied to?” said Skorman, who supports the measure because of the money it will provide for pressing repairs and other work on city parks.

The ballot measure would free up more TOPS money to address an estimated $20 million backlog in parks maintenance and repair projects. The .1 percent tax brings in about $6 million a year, with 3 percent going to administration and 6 percent to maintenance, Davies said. Out of the remainder, 20 percent goes into the parks bucket — but only to acquire and develop new parks. Skorman said there’s no reason to build new parks when the city can’t maintain what it has, so the Parks Solution Team hoped to relax the restrictions by allowing some or all of that 20 percent parks allocation to go toward maintenance and repair.

“It doesn’t make sense to stockpile this money in the parks category and not use it, because the political will is not there to build brand new when you can’t maintain what you have,” Skorman said.

In addition to repairing and maintaining parks, the money would also be used to retrofit irrigation systems and make parks less water-hungry — a critical need at a time of water shortages and water rate hikes, Skorman said.

Skorman said there’s no group supporting the ballot measure, and the trails coalition isn’t aggressively fighting against it with huge expenditures for yard signs and ads. But when Davies appears before civic groups to address the issue, she makes it clear where the group stands.

“We’re not going to stay neutral,” Davies said. “So we will speak against it when we get the opportunity.”

Photo by