Letters - Friday

ISSUE 1A
Alternative situations too dire to allow to happen in county

We elect officials to arrange for and oversee services for all of us including public health, police, sheriff and jail. Now these officials have found that these services at the level we depend on are not financially sustainable.

With the help of the experts they hire, they've examined alternatives to maintain our services. They have discussed future financing of these services through increased property tax (which would require tripling the current level to raise the money), sale of park land (then it's gone), or a dedicated 1 percent sales tax.

The sales tax proposal on the ballot is "The Safer Community Initiative 1A."

How about the alternative of not finding more money and just taking our lumps?
Under this alternative, the sheriff says we would have significantly fewer deputies to deal with crime.

The Health Department says we would have further marked reduction in food safety inspections, an increase in the backlog for immunizations, and significantly decreased surveillance of tuberculosis, hepatitis, and salmonella infection, among other diseases.

Programs to prevent teen suicide and ensure meth lab cleanups, now on hold, could not be resumed. Mosquito control (to prevent West Nile virus) and plague control will be threatened.

I think doing without these safety and health services is a bad alternative.

Our commissioners deserve our admiration. They've provided our services at the lowest sales tax and mill levy combined of any of the front range counties. Now they've reached a financial impasse, and they deserve our support.

Because our elected and hired officials along with many concerned citizens have decided the 1 percent dedicated sales tax is the best way to pay for safety and health services, I will vote for 1A. I hope a large majority will also vote for 1A after considering the alternatives.

Darryl Thatcher, Colorado Springs

County has shown need for dedicated revenue stream

Too many voters think the county is just using scare tactics to frighten the voters into approving the sales tax hike. They are wrong.

The county has already decimated the county employees' health insurance for 2009, to the point that employees really don't have any. Individual deductibles are $3,000, $10,000 maximum individual out of pocket, $20,000 for a family.

If you go to the ER, insurance will pay $200. For a hospital stay, the county will pay $500 per admit (not per day). People who work for the county certainly don't have $3,000 to spend before insurance contributes a dime.

The county funds the district attorney's office. It was already hard enough to hire and retain good attorneys to prosecute the county's criminals, due to the lowest pay scale in the state (among urban counties). Now it will be impossible. The prosecutors we have are leaving just as soon as they can, and the county will have no one to prosecute the criminals.

The Public Defender's office is funded by the state, and the attorneys already make more than the deputy DAs, so they will still be around in great numbers. The result will be lenient pleas bargains or outright dismissals because the DA's office will not have the manpower to try anyone. Add this to the sheriff's office cutting defendants loose before trial because they have nowhere to keep them, and you have a public safety disaster in the making.

I think we have to pass a county tax increase. I think a property tax increase would have been more palatable, but we are, for the moment, stuck with what they have proposed.

Linda Harward, Colorado Springs

County learned lesson from city to help fill coffers with fines

It is a travesty that El Paso County doesn't appear have enough deputies to answer emergency calls, and yet seems to have enough to run speed traps on state highways within the Colorado Springs, city limits. The county obviously has taken a tip from the Colorado Springs police and found an easy way to increase revenue. The pat answer of course is always, "It's a safety issue," but there is little evidence to support such a claim in the areas chosen for these traps. Maybe Colorado Springs just doesn't have enough officers to keep the streets safe, and therefore needs the added coverage from county officers?

The county keeps saying it needs more money for services, but now it looks like officials couldn't wait for a tax increase, and have found some easy money. I guess they don't need an increase after all. Sadly a few poor souls will shoulder this financial burden, but at least the money will steadily pour into the county's coffers. The sheriff has said that high fuel costs are going to limit deputies' ability to answer calls and patrol the county.

Well, the deputies running the speed traps are not leaving the city, and they pretty much stay in the same place; what a savings.

This situation should not only anger county taxpayers, it should also move us to question the decisions and professional conduct of our elected officials.

D. H. Kincaid, Fountain

WHERE'S AMY
Republican candidate ducking forums to discuss issues

It seems that the El Paso County Republican candidates' play book for 2008 is to wait out the campaign season virtually in hiding until the election, knowing that the odds are in their favor to be elected based solely on the solid conservative majority. Past voter behavior supports the strategy, which paints the local voter as so dependably partisan as to be blissfully ignorant of whether there was even a choice.

This is a blatant insult to voters and an injustice to them as well. Local media don't do much to help to change things, either. In these times of economic peril affecting everyone with a retirement plan, it's also an increasingly risky strategy. Yet, local conservative candidates, specifically the incumbents from the congressional level on down to county commission, refuse to engage in political parlance with their opponent.

In recent weeks I have been to myriad forums with always the same result: my opponent is a no-show. In fact, a recent request for a forum by the president of the Monument Fire Fighters Association that I emphatically agreed to attend resulted in a resounding nyet from my opponent. Based in truth, her reply along the lines of, "I won by the largest margin in the state; I don't have time to attend forums, I'm too busy," nonetheless would have insulted almost anyone, let alone a valued public protector.

Exacerbating things for voters is the fact that my opponent's positions on issues cannot be found; they're conspicuously absent from her Web site and other media. Too bad she is so willing to cheat the voters in HD20 out of their ability to make a fair evaluation.

They can only assume she toes the party line on all the major issues. Unfortunately, withholding valuable decision making information from the voters is a winning strategy in this district. In fact, it's probably smarter if she stays home; she has less chance of saying something she may regret later. It will be up to the voters to effect any change of this principle.

I am running to offer HD20 voters a choice of candidates to elect as their next state representative. The voters are at liberty to assess my position on numerous issues via my Web site, my brochure, even my business card. They can also hear my position at the many forums I continue to attend at every opportunity. But the voters can't make a truly informed decision if my opponent refuses to provide any information regarding her stance on the issues.

Let this be an open challenge to my opponent: Amy Stephens, if you are ever willing to attend a public candidate event, I would welcome the opportunity to debate the issues with you.

Jan Hejtmanek, Candidate for State Representative, HD20 Colorado Springs

BAILOUT BLUNDER
Congress took time to add pork to so-called emergency bill

With respect to the bailout, our Congress is dealing with the most important piece of legislation that has ever come before it. What do they do? In one week they turn it into a 400-plus page monstrosity. They stuck into it lard that includes wool research, aid for the wooden arrow industry, mental health and God knows what else. How is it that we can elect so many idiots to Congress?

Dennis Mercadal, Colorado Springs