An intrusion of noise and pollution

Bob Loevy lifts up an attempt to put a road into Monument Valley Park by Springs City Council. Again?! Isn’t this idea ever going to die? It was a bad idea every time it has come up, every time the promise was made to the people that this intrusion of noise and pollution would not be revisited.

What does Colorado Springs desire to be? Are there spaces where nature, quiet, retreats from all the incoming modern cacophony that keeps nerves on edge and feels like assaults to an already overloaded human system can be guarded? Or are we to be a concreted, asphalted environment where natural spaces take a back seat, become an afterthought, and not a defining feature?
A road moves people in sealed-up vehicles at speed from here to there. But our parks, bikeways and treed spaces provide more than just ‘recreation’…those with pricey titanium bikes as well as those traveling ‘shanks mare’ receive the reset to mind, body, and spirit that helps mental, emotional and physical health.

City Council, please not only drop the ‘consideration’ of this extension, but preserve the protection and completion of the walking/bike trail around the city, placing us in the category of the visionary towns and cities that have elevated human beings above machines and so-called ‘expediency.’ Be visionaries, protect natural spaces that enrich all of us.

Deborah Tinsley

Colorado Springs

Weakening taxpayer protections

This election is not about whether we value education. We all want excellent schools and opportunities for every child. The real question is whether we should permanently weaken one of Colorado’s most important taxpayer protections—the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR).

For more than three decades, TABOR has required government to live within reasonable fiscal limits while ensuring excess tax collections are returned to the people who earned them. It requires government to ask voters before permanently expanding its claim on taxpayers’ income. Those refunds are not government giveaways—they are taxpayers receiving money that exceeded constitutional spending limits.

Proposition NN would permanently raise the TABOR spending cap, allowing the state to retain revenue that would otherwise be refunded to taxpayers. While supporters say it directs surplus revenue to K-12 education, it also permanently increases the state’s allowable spending base. According to the nonpartisan fiscal analysis, the measure would increase the TABOR limit and reduce future taxpayer refunds over time.

Once government is allowed to keep more of our money, history shows it rarely surrenders that authority. The higher spending cap becomes the new baseline, and government grows from there.

Colorado families are already struggling with rising costs for housing, groceries, utilities, insurance and childcare. TABOR refunds provide meaningful relief, allowing families—not government—to decide how best to use their own money.

We can and should support public education. But we should do so transparently and without weakening constitutional taxpayer protections that have served Colorado well for over 30 years. If government needs additional resources, it should make that case directly to voters without permanently rewriting the rules.

Proposition NN is about more than education funding. It is about preserving taxpayer accountability. I urge Colorado voters to vote No on Proposition NN.

Chuck Broerman

El Paso County Treasurer

Fake voter rolls are real

Erik Maulbetsch’s Aug. 10 piece on James Wiley as an election denier needs correction. The topic was Colorado’s voter rolls, and Matt Crane suggested that ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center, could catch voter roll issues.

I volunteered in April 2021 with USEIP.  We canvassed neighborhoods and immediately found phantom voters. In a random search, that doesn’t speak well of our voter rolls or ERIC. Addresses didn’t exist, or voters were registered at a strange location like the Lowe’s garden center. I personally found a person who had died over 20 years ago and never lived in Colorado.  Why are these logged as “real Colorado voters”? Why did ERIC miss all these?

Our “secure” military computers have been hacked. Why not our voting machines and voter rolls too?  Fake dirty voter rolls are real. Want to save real money? Encourage citizens to hand-count their ballots at the precinct level for in-person voting, and let the clerks and records count the military and medical handicap as the only mail-in ballots.

The real election denier is the one denying the full power of others’ votes by phantom voters that they deny, but are very real.

Jearell Kelley

Colorado Springs

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