OUR VIEW: Wall Street Journal does the Springs (vote in poll)
Finally, a fair story about our city
The campaign to make Colorado Springs the poster city of despair continues, this time with a piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal titled “Strapped City Cuts and Cuts and Cuts.”
Reporter Leslie Eaton’s story led with our city’s phenomenal effort to save energy and hedge against any possibility the hypothesis of human-caused global warming is correct. She used the energy-saving move as an example of our problems. The lead states: “Tax collections have fallen so far that the city has turned off one-third of its 24,512 street lights.”
Weren’t we all told as kids to turn out lights when we don’t need them, as they cost money and waste power? There is no boogie man who appears in the dark.
For the record Ms. Eaton: We are substantially reducing the amount of filthy black coal shipped into our city and burned in our power plants. We are doing more to help Mother Earth, by turning off one-third of our lights, than the national Earth Day and Earth Hour programs combined. We deserve a medal. We are a green, environmentally correct city. In case the Wall Street Journal needs some big league advice from The Gazette, here’s a better lead for your story about the Springs: “Stodgy old Colorado Springs does more to be green than hippie-dippy Boulder.”
As another example of our poverty, the story says: “Taxi drivers have been recruited to serve as a second set of eyes for stretched police patrols.”
If that’s poverty, we’ll take it. All law-abiding citizens who work in the public should be asked, under any economic conditions, to help uphold the law. As for that “stretched” police department, it is staffed with some of the highest paid, best qualified cops in the state.
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In fairness to the Wall Street Journal, this was the best story of them all. It acknowledged that Colorado Springs isn’t alone in using responsible economic measures to come through recession. It paraphrased the research director at the National League of Cities explaining that Colorado Springs could become a model for other cities. It pointed out the fact our unemployment rate is OK, relative to the country. It quotes city spokeswoman Sue Skiffington-Blumberg explaining that a lot of residents are happy with streetlight reduction. It explained that some efforts to replace city services with volunteers are working, for now.
The routine stories about poor old Colorado Springs have all been amateurish hack jobs — until now. That’s what separates the Wall Street Journal from the wannabes.
— Wayne Laugesen, editorial page editor, for the editorial board
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