Living Colorado Springs » Colorado Springs City Budget Issues

Old Farm Neighborhood Residents Taking Ownership

Rick Van Wieren — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:34:20 +0000

I’d guess that Colorado Springs budget woes have become famous about everywhere in the country by now. Not that they are actually that much worse than most places (what town is not feeling the pinch right now?), but Colorado Springs is more famous for how decisively the city council has acted. In particular, everyone seems to have heard about the hit that the Colorado Springs city parks maintenance budget has taken. I’m not going to spend a lot time talking about whether they were right or wrong in their decisions, but rather about how one neighborhood has responded.

Old Farm is tucked up against a ridge on the north-eastern part of the city. It has always been popular because of its great views, parks and trails, and good schools. Old Farm Park itself has all the great elements of a Colorado Springs City Park, with rock formations, a hiking trail that goes through it (The Homestead Ridge Trail is a 7 mile scenic trail), playground equipment, and a nice spacious grassy area perfect for throwing a football or Frisbee.

When the city announced they would be cutting off trash collection, watering and fertilizing at the neighborhood parks (as opposed to the large, more famous regional parks such as Garden of the Gods), Old Farm families decided to do something. Not picket, not protest, not get mad, but something constructive. The banded together, met with the city parks department, and came up with a plan to keep their park from going downhill. 48 families signed up for weekly trash removal and cleanup duties. A fundraising effort is underway to augment the watering and fertilizing schedules, so the turf won’t die. People are involved.

I guess if you are going to have a budget crisis, is there a better outcome than having neighbors working together to keep it from adversely affecting their neighborhood?

The following is a current list of homes for sale in the 3 subdivision that make up the generic Old Farm area (Old Farm, Starwatch and The Ridge subdivsions). For RSS reader, this link allows you to see the same information

Colorado Springs City Budget Woes

Rick Van Wieren — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:15:57 +0000

Colorado Springs has a budget problem. Yawn. So does about every city, state and county in the country. The Federal government is about the only entity out there than can just print or borrow money when they are short. For those living in Colorado Springs, there are also some other issues however.

1. Every government entity in Colorado is required to have a balanced budget. That means the city can’t hit their Visa card to pay for services.

2. Taxes cannot be raised without a general referendum here. In fact, if tax collections rise as a result of, say higher auto sales, they can’t even keep the money without a vote. This law, called TABOR, has made it very difficult for cities to figure out how to maintain services.

3. Coloradans in general, and residents of El Paso County in particular (of which Colorado Springs is the bulk of) are pretty tax resistant. The recession hasn’t ignored us here, and with many either unemployed or underemployed, more taxes are not exactly on the morning breakfast menu when they wake up. Low taxes are in part why our cost of living is 7.7% below the national average.

At a national level, the debates rage over “guns vs butter”. To be more specific, defense spending vs health care spending in the current environment. At the local level, if revenue can’t be raised, it comes down to some pretty basic services, like trash cans and irrigation in the parks, street lighting, police and fire department staffing and response times, fixing pot holes, bus services, etc. In Colorado Springs, the city council is having to make some tough choices. Some of them may, at some point, cause noticeable drops in city services that we all have come to expect. The watering season for our parks really doesn’t start until May, so the decision not to run the sprinklers may not even be noticed until then. Who knows, with the weather being so weird nationwide, we might even get lucky and have a wet summer that makes this completely a mute point. There are even discussions underway to possibly sell the city owned Memorial Health System. They are auctioning off police helicopters, and even sold some buses to help continue funding the commuter bus service to Denver (called FREX for Front Range Express). CNN is supposedly working on a piece using Colorado Springs as an example of the municipal budget dilemma being faced around the country.

This week I had a homeowner tell me that they are going to try and organize their neighborhood to raise money for the watering and otherwise maintaining the neighborhood park in Old Farm. Old Farm Park is part of the network of parks connected by the Homestead Ridge Trail. It has awesome views, some nice play areas for the kids, and services an area of about 1200 homes. I was totally impressed by the level of commitment being expressed to not let this recession rob the quality of living in Colorado Springs in the Old Farm area. Perhaps this is just one park, but perhaps this will be duplicated in other areas, and just perhaps this sort of thinking will take hold across the country. Until this recession is over, maybe individuals and neighborhoods will chip in to do what government can’t afford to at the moment?

Hospital for Sale in Colorado Springs?

Rick Van Wieren — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:22:22 +0000

Colorado Springs is doing what hundreds of cities across America are doing – trying to come up with either cost savings or revenue sources. One of the discussions that has begun here is the potential sale of the city owned Memorial Hospital system. A citizens committee will be discussing this over the next few months, and it is very unclear with this will develop any ‘traction’ or not, but I thought it warranted some discussion here.

The last several years have seen a boom in the Colorado Springs health care infrastructure. Colorado Springs has 2 main civilian hospital systems. The first, the Penrose – St Francis system operates 2 large hospitals, ‘Penrose Main’ in the Old North End, and the brand new St Francis Medical Center at Powers and Woodmen. The other system is the city owned Memorial, with 2 major facilities. Memorial Central is next to the Olympic Training Center, near Boulder and Union. The other is the new Briargate Campus, at Union and Briargate Parkway.

Living in Colorado Springs with an aging mother-in-law on dialysis, we have experienced a lot of the medical system here. We’ve had friends whose lives have been saved in both systems, grandkids born in both systems, and spent hours in the emergency rooms of both systems. Overall I think our family consensus has been that health care is quite good here. If the Memorial system is sold, it would undoubtedly be to a company that will run it professionally, and standards of care will likely not change.

The City of Colorado Springs is a little unique to cities I’ve lived in previously in California and Michigan, in that they own both a hospital system as well as the public utilities. We’ve been really pleased with how that has worked on both counts. My personal hope is that the current budget crunch doesn’t cause our local politicians and anti-tax activists to take a short term approach, and sell irreplaceable assets for short term gain.

We were below zero overnight, but it looks like the sun will do us some good and get us back up to normal in a day or 2. Upper 40′s and even low 50′s on the horizon!

Colorado Springs City Election Presents Hard Choices

Rick Van Wieren — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:20:00 +0000

The results are in, and Colorado Springs voters have taken a hard line against any kind of increase, or even maintenance of city tax revenue. We are a little famous for being very anti-tax here, so in some ways this should be no surprise. However, it does present some ‘interesting’ decisions for the city council, seeking to balance a budget that has been hit hard by decreasing sales tax revenue. Of course, all the fun stuff gets paraded out to the chopping block first (parks and bus service for instance). Police and fire salaries, whether by headcount, furlough, or layoff tend to be next. Street maintenance is never far behind, although since they are already doing so little in that area it isn’t that productive. Usually not mentioned are mayor and city council salaries (or size), wonder why? My personal hope is that the city will figure out some good creative ways to avoid cutting back things like park maintenance, we have some of THE best parks in the country!
I’m kind of glad Congress is getting serious about extending the 1st Time Homebuyer Tax Credit, both in time and scope. There is still some discussion going on, but I’ll cover this when the final version passes, maybe by tomorrow? The extension of the program to some existing homeowners is particularly exciting.
We may set warm weather records 3 days this week, with another day in the 70′s for today, pretty great for November! I’ll take it, we had snow last week to offset it!
Got questions about living in Colorado Springs? Call me at 719-590-4768 or 888-568-6784! Visit me on Facebook to see even more photos!