Letters - Sunday
DANCING WITH DEVELOPERS
Residents subsidize new housing costs
The Gazette’s story Sunday about Banning Lewis Ranch (BLR) only scratched the surface of implications for our city’s future (“Moving ahead,” July 8). BLR is very significant to our community because, as the story pointed out, the massive 24,000-acre development represents about a third of the city’s geographic footprint.
BLR’s John Cassiani was reported as saying the growth will occur “whether Gardner or anybody else likes it or not.” This is a member of the same industry that routinely stands in front of City Council and threatens that charging developers and builders actual costs in utilities development would bring homebuilding to a stop. Which is it? Can we, or can we not, have an impact on demand for new houses by charging higher fees?
Demand for new houses depends on a steady influx of in-migrants buying those houses or buying the existing houses of residents who then buy new houses. This is an important point for two reasons: 1) we have a limited and uncertain water supply and 2) any future water we manage to acquire will come at great cost and risk.
Cassiani mentioned BLR is taking on the “biggest burden . . . of any developer in city history” to pay its way. This is true. Agreements between the city and BLR do the best job yet of requiring growth to pay its way. Is that a lot of money? Yes. Is it 100 percent of the cost? No. Many of the costs will still be shifted to current residents.
City leaders have been unwilling to assess new development for the full cost of infrastructure. I see three possible reasons for this: The Housing and Building Association is the biggest campaign contributor in town; council members fear economic catastrophe if home prices rise; and/or city coffers get a quick hit of sales tax revenue from construction materials.
At no point did citizens vote to tax ourselves and raise utility rates to discount the prices of new houses. Yet policy makers act as if they have a mandate from us.
The growth industry lobby is the most powerful force in town, so none of this will change until our citizens speak out in great numbers about our desire to stop subsidizing growth and gambling with our water supply and our children’s future.
Dave Gardner
Founder and Chair, SaveTheSprings
Colorado Springs
RESEGREGATING SCHOOLS
High court took step back to time of divided nation
I remember playing with friends in the streets of Dallas in 1954 when the Brown vs. Board of Education decision was announced. It made me wonder if I would be attending school with white kids the next school year. As it happened, however, I completed high school without ever benefiting from this decision as far as school was concerned (Texas, like many other states, was slow in implementing this momentous decision). But there were many other ways this decision helped all Americans to free ourselves from segregation.
Not only did we begin to learn with but we learned about each other, how to work and play, as well as laugh and cry with each other. This decision, along with other civil and human rights activities, began to shape the America that I am proud to call my country, whose uniform I proudly wore for 30 years, the country that in 1954 recognized that separate but equal was a farce, and that separate and unequal was detrimental to individuals, families and to the nation. Many of us would not have achieved the modicum of success we’ve enjoyed had it not been for the foresight of those that rendered this decision.
That’s why the recent Supreme Court decision that prohibits race to be considered as a factor in school integration is so appalling. The decision sets us back to a time that nurtured discontent, mistrust, maladjustment of the social discourse among people, and deprived the nation of its collective synergy for progress.
William Gamble
Colorado Springs
PAYING TO PLAY
Bracken ran up bills; wants others to pay them
Eddie Bracken seems to think it was his right to run up huge expenses in the name of incorporating Black Forest (“Black Forest city backers ask for help to pay debt,” Metro, July 11). What he failed to mention is that, had he won incorporation, those debts would have immediately been transferred to the residents of Black Forest according to state statute. So he is angry at our legal challenge to incorporation: we drove up the debt by challenging him in court.
It was fine for him to hire a legal team, a public relations team, etc. We should have paid without complaint and incorporated? Bracken plays that old child’s game, “see what you made me do?”
Incorporation opponents watched our debt conservatively while Bracken spent money like a sailor on leave, thinking that if he just threw more money at what he wanted the people would cave. The debt is his; the people have spoken. What is it about “no” that he doesn’t understand?
Donna Hartley
Black Forest
LIVE EARTH
If you can’t beat ‘em, verbally abuse ‘em
The oldest trick in the rhetorician’s handbook is that when you cannot attack the underlying truth of an argument, you attack the person making the argument. So Wednesday’s Our View, “Live girth,” pointing out the hypocrisy behind Al Gore and the other participants in the Live Earth events, does nothing to undermine the basic scientific arguments behind humans’ impact on global warming.
Indeed, because of the structure of our society, it would be almost impossible for any American concerned with global warming not to be labeled a hypocrite. Simply driving to work every day makes me one of the biggest CO2 emitters on the planet. Does that mean I shouldn’t work to lower my greenhouse emissions or push for regulation that would lower my country’s emissions, or argue for treaties that cause other countries to do the same? No, it just means that I will have to change my ways more than others.
If we are going to face the problem of global warming and leave our children a world at least as nice as the one we found, we are going to have to take a long look at ourselves and work hard to make those changes.
Thus, in the name of truth-telling I have another definition of hypocrite that is perhaps more appropriate for the editorial pages of The Gazette: someone who professes to speak the truth, but is really only interested in persuasion.
John M. Horner
Colorado Springs
WHAT REALLY COUNTS
Let’s not leave out any important subjects
Milo Bryant’s column on schools’ role in fitness education interested me for a few reasons (“Mandating exercise in school is start,” Life, July 9). I agree that schools should play a role in getting our nation fit. But as a math teacher, I take issue with part of Bryant’s argument. His statements about history and mathematics implied that fitness education is somehow more important than academics. But we can and should embrace the importance of all areas of education.
Our culture has issues with fitness. It also has issues with mathematics. Innumeracy is perhaps more rampant than obesity. Some people seem proud of their being perplexed by mathematics. I hope Bryant is not one of those people, but his column seemed to betray that about him.
His reference to Columbus was historically accurate. He probably did not have to look up any information to write about that, and he probably never gave a thought to making his mention of history into gibberish. However, the preceding paragraph was mathematical nonsense. It was either a cheap way to win over math haters or a poorly considered display of his mathematical ignorance.
Kids don’t need more reasons not to learn math. They think they have plenty. Let us not take the easy route of denigrating that which we find challenging. Let us celebrate achievements in all areas.
Joyce Anderson
Colorado Springs
