Another look at stormwater issue

I just caught Mayor John Suthers’ speech and thought it might be time to take another look at the stormwater issue. The first iteration, as I remember, failed more because of how it was presented to residents and how it was perceived to be assessed than opposition to the need.

Take another shot and remember to include fencing the revenue for specific tasks. Let the folks know there is a need and that there is a definite plan to meet that need. Put in a “sunset” clause so that everything comes up for periodic reviews and a “dies by” date unless renewed by the voters. Look again at how the fee/tax will be assessed with special attention to heavy users and large impervious areas. No free pass to churches or nonprofits with their large parking lots. This is a community problem and will only be solved by the entire community – entire means all of us.

Michael S. Welsh

Colorado Springs

Stop littering the city streets

In this lovely area, rich with farmers and farms, gay pride and gay individuals and professionals of every race and creed, why do people spoil it by throwing litter all over the place? It is rude, gross and inconsiderate. For those of you who place your soda bottles, coffee cups, candy rappers, cigarette packs and butts, beer cans and whiskey bottles on the ground for others to pick up: Stop it!

Wendy Redfield

Colorado Springs

Crisis to crisis taking a toll

Regarding “Resolve Road Crisis,” the latest Gazette editorial supporting the 0.62 percent sales tax, I take issue. The reason Springs residents spend an average of $200 more per year on car upkeep is likely the low local wage base, resulting in more “clunker” cars on the road, than potholes. When The Gazette argues that “Springs voters for generations have proven themselves to be shrewd judges of fiscal policies proposed by City Hall,” nothing could be further from truth: Local voters have fallen for many dubious projects, including the airport expansion, Memorial Hospital, downtown beautification, USOC, etc. The idea that we “rightly pride ourselves on being able to cull the wheat from the chaff at the ballot box” is laughable; we vote in chaff more often than not, which is why the city stumbles from one budget crisis to the next.

Our mayors always make promises such as Mayor John Suthers’, that the tax will be used for some key item. The promises are broken reliably by the next mayor when a new crisis demands a spending spree or as a revenue base to justify new borrowing. Something else will go wrong while Suthers is fixing potholes. Two decades of incompetent political leadership, crisis to crisis, are “taking a toll on our economy.”

Many of us fear the sales tax will beget more city workers with luxurious pensions, expand the city bureaucracy, expand our unfunded PERA obligations and be siphoned off for “administrative costs” rather than applied to the roads. Shouldn’t we be rolling in future dough from the “City for Champions”? That was the last big promise.

Michael Lowery

Colorado Springs

Column had contradictions

Sorry, Barry Fagin. You wrote a great column in Thursday’s Gazette about America’s entrepreneurial greatness (“Politicos not interested in these folks’ stories”), then you bashed the Republicans for their immigration stand, which is exactly what you touted about the Haitian immigrant earlier in the column. The Haitian came to the U.S. legally and is working to become a U.S. citizen in three months.

Tom Forsett

Manitou Springs

Nation is at a crossroads

I am amazed at how the progressives and liberals can verbally persecute Christians in the United States of America today and how they feel free today to promote this idea that they can start demanding restrictions be put on where, when and how we the Christians can practice our faith. They are using the homosexual problem as a means to give this power to courts and government bodies. And through this power grab, the progressives and liberals feel they have obtained the power to demand we the Christians to surrender and violate our faith at the business doors. They are telling us that we must choose between providing for our families and obeying our God. If we choose to obey God, then we no longer have the freedom to provide for our families.

We have seen this happen with Christian business owners, a fire chief who is a Christian and was fired because he wrote a Christian book, Christians in the military being told that if they go to a church that believes marriage is between one man and one woman then that is a hate church and the soldiers could face Uniform Code of Military Justice actions.

We have seen Christian chaplains face UCMJ action because they dare to answer questions about the homosexual through the word of God. The issue now with the Kentucky clerk is just another example of the struggle we the Christians face in this new United States of America, where the freedom to be Christian is limited to our private lives and to our homes and the churches. Once we enter the business doors, we the Christians must surrender and violate our faith in order to provide for our families.

I am sorry to say if you dare to stand up and speak out against what is happen in the United States of America today, you will be targeted. They will declare you are a bigot, a spreader of hate, forcing your values on them, that you and your churches are not part of the Christian faith while proclaiming those churches that have left the word of God are the real Christians. Our nation today is at a very important crossroads as this movement of restricting gains power; we the Christians need to be in prayer that God will raise up godly leaders that have the fortitude to stand and speak out against this evil that our nation is headed toward. We are facing the start of the restriction phase of the Christian persecution. May God have mercy on our nation.

The Rev. Roy Russell

Colorado Springs