NOREEN: City needs more results, less chest-thumping
Fix the broken USOC deal, tell us about the new USOC deal before it's final, show us tangible progress through the summer and maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to coax a tax increase out of the voters in November.
A little less chest-thumping and more results are in order.
Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera lauded the police and fire departments during his state-of-the-city address Tuesday. He touted Memorial Hospital.
He praised the street department, sang the praises of Colorado Springs Utilities and waxed poetic about the parks department. Rivera was bullish on the military, pointing that "we are leading the country in cyber-security" and that 5,000 more troops will be stationed at Fort Carson before long.
All the while a chamber-of-commerce audience munched chicken, beans and rice, politely ignoring the foul-smelling 30-ton mastodon in the corner of the room.
Oh, Rivera gave a little lip service to the troubled $53 million deal intended to keep the Olympic committee here in town. He assured the crowd the deal will be restructured and all will be well, "even though we've encountered some unforeseen delays."
That's like attributing the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina to ground clutter.
Yes, there have been a few little things, such as a developer not walking his talk, a criminal investigation of that developer, questions about that developer's relationships to the mayor, a deal that went due south about two weeks after Rivera basked in its aura at this same event a year ago. Well, there are a lot of things, actually, a lot of things the mayor didn't talk about and hasn't talked about for weeks.
Not that anyone expected Rivera to discuss such matters Tuesday, because if he had, people would have been choking back lunches so badly that a only vast communal Heimlich maneuver of some sort could have salvaged the day.
After glossing over the USOC debacle, Rivera said, "I can promise you the Colorado Springs City Council won't let you down."
Rivera all but guaranteed there will be some kind of tax increase proposal on the ballot in the fall. He cited the city's $40 million in budget cuts and compared the city's property tax to other Colorado cities, such as Thornton, Pueblo, Aurora and Denver, where the tax is substantially higher.
The mayor rightly lamented the "ratchet effect" caused by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, which means city coffers won't be able to benefit from the rebound when the recession ends.
Rivera is right: the city does need more money. City services have been cut too much.
But the bungled USOC deal has hurt City Hall's credibility. Getting that back on track as transparently as possible would be the first step in persuading the community to support a tax increase.
The two things are linked like the Olympic rings.
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