JOBS referendum would give city means to promote job growth

Colorado Springs is at a crossroads. Our community, like most communities in our country, has a struggling economy with unemployment on the rise. Colorado Springs lost more than 6,000 jobs to layoffs and company closures last year alone, and if we listen to the prognosticators this is just the beginning.

This is not a time to be weak or to listen to the "we can't do that" crowd. This is a time for leadership and we all know that leadership is about seeing a problem, offering a solution and backing that solution with all of the resources available.

Our city has an opportunity to be proactive and responsible by doing everything it can to support our existing businesses and by doing everything it can to bring new good paying jobs to our city. Did you know that local citizens fill 93 percent of all jobs created or expanded in our community?

On Jan. 26, our City Council showed real leadership when it referred the JOBS referendum to the 2009 city ballot. This referendum, which will be supported by retaining an existing funding source and is not an increase in taxes, will provide badly needed resources to assist in retaining and creating job opportunities for our city as it competes with communities such as Austin, Texas, Albuquerque, N.M., and Salt Lake City, for potential jobs.

The JOBS referendum does not create a new tax, and City Council has honored the spirit of TABOR by giving the people an opportunity to accept or reject it. The JOBS referendum is accountable and transparent, and is not a part of any corporation or of the private economic development community. The funding from JOBS will be overseen by an advisory committee that will make recommendations to your local elected City Council on the most prudent ways to help keep the people of our community employed and restore our local economy.

Our local elected representatives, members of our business community, and working people like you and me are coming together to offer a silver lining in what is perceived to be a very dark cloud.

Thanks to our council's leadership, today we have an opportunity to help our existing businesses and future employers by supporting the JOBS referendum on the ballot you will receive in the mail in March. The JOBS measure will set aside funds from a current source to bring jobs to our community, while at the same time help our existing local businesses expand jobs and train their workforce to keep the jobs we have today for tomorrow. For less than $11 per year, the average homeowner will have the opportunity to support the retention and expansion of jobs in our community.

Please join our coalition of people who care about the future of our community and vote yes to creating jobs for today and tomorrow for our children and grandchildren. When you receive your mail ballot on or around March 17, please vote yes for JOBS.

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Biggs, a Colorado Springs CPA, is the chair of the JOBS NOW Committee.