More civil discourse, cooperation needed in Springs, Gazette publisher says
The president and publisher of The Gazette today called for cooperation and more civil discourse among the region's citizens and groups, including the newspaper’s opinion department, during the Downtown Partnership’s 12th annual Mayor’s Breakfast.
Steve Pope, who has lived in Colorado Springs for about 10 months, was invited to the breakfast to offer his perspective as a relative newcomer to the city. He also said the city needs a strong-mayor form of government and a way to eliminate the so-called ratchet effect, which prevents government spending from returning to pre-recession levels.
Pope told the crowd of about 200 at the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Building at Colorado College that he does not see what he called “overwhelming coordination” in the city. Colorado Springs has a handful of economic development plans, for example, but the organizations leading those efforts aren’t “doing much talking or coordinating,” he said.
Ron Butlin, the partnership’s executive director, said Pope is “absolutely right.”
“There have been and there still are kind of fragments that occur,” he said. “I just hope he’s not preaching to the choir because that message needs to go out to the whole community. We need to figure out what we want this town to be in 20 years.”
Pope also said he’s observed “more shouting than talking” and not enough listening about important issues facing the community.
“I will freely admit that my newspaper has been part of that,” he said, adding that he’s talked to The Gazette’s opinion department about making its arguments more respectful.
Pope, who said he has studied the city’s finances, going line by line through several comprehensive annual financial reports, said the city’s financial problems are real.
“At the end of the day, I’m convinced we do have a crisis,” he said.
Pope said he personally endorses issue 2C, a property tax increase on the Nov. 3 ballot, and opposes initiative 300, which would phase out enterprise payments to the city.
Colorado Springs residents need to decide what level of service they want from city government and to pay for them, he said.
Developer Chuck Murphy called Pope’s remarks “refreshing and to the point.”
“I didn’t think that I would live that long to see that attitude and the commitment and willingness,” he said. “I feel that’s one of the things that’s been lacking in the community, is to have that driving force of the newspaper. When you have a newspaper that walks lock step with the community, all of a sudden things happen.”
