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How Small Gov't Can Go Horribly Wrong

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,145
16,539
Riding the baggage carousel.
As much as it disturbs me, I feel the need to defend $tinkle here. I find that 42" annual snowfall number shocking, seems like a hell of a lot. I don't know where they are taking that measurement from but its for sure not my neighborhood or the airport. I would have guessed no more than 20" a year.
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
As much as it disturbs me, I feel the need to defend $tinkle here. I find that 42" annual snowfall number shocking, seems like a hell of a lot. I don't know where they are taking that measurement from but its for sure not my neighborhood or the airport. I would have guessed no more than 20" a year.
National weather service.

Keep in mind that since it's cumulative, getting 6" total per month between November and April is already 36" of snow. I'd guess that you probably just get a lot of little snowstorms that add up?
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,145
16,539
Riding the baggage carousel.
National weather service.

Keep in mind that since it's cumulative, getting 6" total per month between November and April is already 36" of snow. I'd guess that you probably just get a lot of little snowstorms that add up?
I understand its cumulative, it just seems way high to me. I guess the reason I find that figure so odd, is that if you look at snow falls since I've been here (2003) there has never been a bigger snowfall year than 34". (07-08) Most winters I've been here the piles of snow left by the plows on the airport ramp don't even make it to 42", and they last all winter.
 

mattmatt86

Turbo Monkey
Feb 9, 2005
5,347
10
Bleedmore, Murderland
I understand its cumulative, it just seems way high to me. I guess the reason I find that figure so odd, is that if you look at snow falls since I've been here (2003) there has never been a bigger snowfall year than 34". (07-08) Most winters I've been here the piles of snow left by the plows on the airport ramp don't even make it to 42", and they last all winter.
How about the 84" we got here in MD last year. I'm actually hoping for another bad winter because I live in the city and can walk everywhere(bars) in a storm. During two consecutive storms we had last year one of my roommates didn't go to work for 34 straight days :rofl:
 

SkaredShtles

Michael Bolton
Sep 21, 2003
65,379
12,533
In a van.... down by the river
I understand its cumulative, it just seems way high to me. I guess the reason I find that figure so odd, is that if you look at snow falls since I've been here (2003) there has never been a bigger snowfall year than 34". (07-08) Most winters I've been here the piles of snow left by the plows on the airport ramp don't even make it to 42", and they last all winter.
Then answer: It used to snow on the Front Range. :D

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/pub/?n=/climate/cossnow.php
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,145
16,539
Riding the baggage carousel.
Meanwhile, in Colorado Springs:
“UFO Phil” Hill gets abducted six times a week.

Even aliens, it seems, need a day off.

“They’re out there hovering around. They talk to me but they are afraid of scaring people,” explained the wiry 39-year-old, who stopped by The Gazette’s offices this week, clad in a blue and yellow jumpsuit, with a box of alien Fruit Roll-Ups in hand and a video cameraman in tow.

“Imagine if an alien being walked in here. You would say, ‘What is that thing doing here?’ When I walk in here, I’m just a regular guy.”

Of course, he’s not.

Hill — if that is his real name — is the sort of pseudo-celebrity that is a product of the Internet Age. He doesn’t have a television show or film career, but 421,000 people have watched his low-budget movie, “UFO Phil: The Movie,” on YouTube. He doesn’t have a major-label record contract, but his songs about aliens have been played on national radio.

And he claims to have recently moved to Colorado Springs from Spokane, Wash., with the express goal of building an alien-designed, pyramid-shaped power plant atop Pikes Peak.

“The good thing about Pikes Peak is it’s double the altitude of Mt. Spokane, so I can get closer to the aliens,” said Hill.

Of course, the Summit House would have to be demolished.

Brimming with nervous energy, UFO Phil is a helium-voiced obsessive and struggling musician caught in a war between “good aliens” who want to help humanity and “bad aliens” who want to take over the planet. The aliens have put chips in his head and taught him how to replicate the ancient Egyptian pyramids, which were alien fuel depots ... or something.

The aliens, by the way, love Kix cereal.

Of course, the aliens won’t let him take their pictures.

His movie, an often-funny mockumentary that follows the exploits of UFO Phil as he bewilders store clerks and insurance agents with stories of aliens, came out in 2009. His music has been on the “Dr. Demento” radio show and he appears regularly on national radio show “Coast to Coast AM with George Noory,” warning of the impending alien attack. He did a television segment with Tom Green.

During his stop on a round of area media interviews to drum up interest in his pyramid scheme, he never broke character, and insisted his visit was not a publicity stunt, despite the presence of his cameraman.

Of course, he does sell T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers. And his songs are available for purchase on iTunes.

“All that stuff is really to get the word out. This is not about making a profit. This is about giving free energy.”

By “free energy,” UFO Phil means power that will be generated by the 480-foot-tall pyramid-shaped power plant on Pikes Peak. It will provide a landing pad for alien aircraft and create local jobs.

Of course, he conceded, “I can’t really pay them a lot.”

So, would this be built by slave labor like the original pyramids?

He’s hoping to call them “volunteers.”

“I’m going to do what I can do to at least feed them.”

For the record, despite Hill’s claims to have peppered city officials and the U.S. Forest Service with phone calls about getting approval, officials report that none has been received.

“We certainly have never received a proposal, and it’s highly unlikely that anything like a pyramid would be built on top of Pikes Peak,” said Pike National Forest spokeswoman Barb Timock. Perhaps, she suggested, The Gazette could do a story on the British film crew planning to search the forest for Bigfoot?

Mayor Lionel Rivera’s office said it has never received any call, despite a news release issued Monday by Hill claiming “the mayor of nearby Colorado Springs won’t return his calls.”

Perhaps sensing the unrelenting skepticism of his interviewer, Hill grew tight-lipped toward the end of the meeting.

“I think I’ve already told you too much,” he said.

So, can Colorado Springs and this interviewer look forward to being featured in a UFO Phil sequel, or is he, as the narrator says in the first movie, “completely insane”?

The truth is out there.
http://www.gazette.com/articles/moves-111100-ufo-peak.html
Congratulations Springs residents! We might not have bus service, or water and pick up the trash in city parks, City councilmen are misleading voters and the streets aren't plowed, but between this guy, Dobson, and Doug Bruce, we've got the market in batsh*t crazy absolutely fvcking cornered! Take that hippies!


This was one the front page of the local rag this morning. :disgust:
 
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KavuRider

Turbo Monkey
Jan 30, 2006
2,565
4
CT
Meanwhile, in Colorado Springs:


Congratulations Springs residents! We might not have bus service, or water and pick up the trash in city parks, City councilmen are misleading voters and the streets aren't plowed, but between this guy, Dobson, and Doug Bruce, we've got the market in batsh*t crazy absolutely fvcking cornered! Take that hippies!


This was one the front page of the local rag this morning. :disgust:
You must be so proud.

Maybe you can take some of the focus off my trainwreck state...
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,145
16,539
Riding the baggage carousel.
Huh. Turns out that not funding local basic government functions might have consequences after all.
From Feb 2010
COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.
More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.
The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.
Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.
City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.
"I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day."
Some residents are less sanguine, arguing that cuts to bus services, drug enforcement and treatment and job development are attacks on basic needs for the working class.
"How are people supposed to live? We're not a 'Mayberry R.F.D.' anymore," said Addy Hansen, a criminal justice student who has spoken out about safety cuts. "We're the second-largest city, and growing, in Colorado. We're in trouble. We're in big trouble."
Mayor flinches at revenue

Colorado Springs' woes are more visceral versions of local and state cuts across the nation. Denver has cut salaries and human services workers, trimmed library hours and raised fees; Aurora shuttered four libraries; the state budget has seen round after round of wholesale cuts in education and personnel.
The deep recession bit into Colorado Springs sales-tax collections, while pension and health care costs for city employees continued to soar. Sales-tax updates have become a regular exercise in flinching for Mayor Lionel Rivera.
"Every month I open it up, and I look for a plus in front of the numbers instead of a minus," he said. The 2010 sales-tax forecast is almost $22 million less than 2007.
Voters in November said an emphatic no to a tripling of property tax that would have restored $27.6 million to the city's $212 million general fund budget. Fowler and many other residents say voters don't trust city government to wisely spend a general tax increase and don't believe the current cuts are the only way to balance a budget.
Dead grass, dark streets

But the 2010 spending choices are complete, and local residents and businesses are preparing for a slew of changes:
• The steep parks and recreation cuts mean a radical reshifting of resources from more than 100 neighborhood parks to a few popular regional parks. The city cut watering drastically in 2009 but "got lucky" with weekly summer rains, said parks maintenance manager Kurt Schroeder.
With even more watering cuts, "if we repeat the weather of 2008, we're at risk of losing every bit of turf we have in our neighborhood parks," Schroeder said. Six city greenhouses are shut down. The city spent $19.6 million on parks in 2007; this year it will spend $3.1 million.
"If a playground burns down, I can't replace it," Schroeder said. Park fans' only hope is the possibility of a new ballot tax pledged to recreation spending that might win over skeptical voters.
• Community center and pool closures have parents worried about day-care costs, idle teenagers and shut-in grandparents with nowhere to go.
Hillside Community Center, on the southeastern edge of downtown Colorado Springs in a low- to moderate-income neighborhood, is scrambling to find private partners to stay open. Moms such as Kirsten Williams doubt they can replace Hillside's dedicated staff and preschool rates of $200 for six-week sessions.
"It's affordable, the program is phenomenal, and the staff all grew up here," Williams said. "You can't re-create that kind of magic."
Shutting down youth services is shortsighted, she argues. "You're going to pay now, or you're going to pay later. There's trouble if kids don't have things to do."
• Though officials and citizens put public safety above all in the budget, police and firefighting still lost more than $5.5 million this year. Positions that will go empty range from a domestic violence specialist to a deputy chief to juvenile offender officers. Fire squad 108 loses three firefighters. Putting the helicopters up for sale and eliminating the officers and a mechanic banked $877,000.
• Tourism outlets have attacked budget choices that hit them precisely as they're struggling to draw choosy visitors to the West.
The city cut three economic-development positions, land-use planning, long-range strategic planning and zoning and neighborhood inspectors. It also repossessed a large portion of a dedicated lodgers and car rental tax rather than transfer it to the visitors' bureau.
"It's going to hurt. If they don't at least market Colorado Springs, it doesn't get the people here," said Nancy Stovall, owner of Pine Creek Art Gallery on the tourism strip of Old Colorado City. Other states, such as New Mexico and Wyoming, will continue to market, and tourism losses will further erode city sales-tax revenue, merchants say.
• Turning out the lights, literally, is one of the high-profile trims aggravating some residents. The city-run Colorado Springs Utilities will shut down 8,000 to 10,000 of more than 24,000 streetlights, to save $1.2 million in energy and bulb replacement.
Hansen, the criminal-justice student, grows especially exasperated when recalling a scary incident a few years ago as she waited for a bus. She said a carload of drunken men approached her until the police helicopter that had been trailing them turned a spotlight on the men and chased them off. Now the helicopter is gone, and the streetlight she was waiting under is threatened as well.
"I don't know a person in this city who doesn't think that's just the stupidest thing on the planet," Hansen said. "Colorado Springs leaders put patches on problems and hope that will handle it."
Employee pay criticized

Community business leaders have jumped into the budget debate, some questioning city spending on what they see as "Ferrari"-level benefits for employees and high salaries in middle management. Broadmoor luxury resort chief executive Steve Bartolin wrote an open letter asking why the city spends $89,000 per employee, when his enterprise has a similar number of workers and spends only $24,000 on each.
Businessman Fowler, saying he is now speaking for the task force Bartolin supports, said the city should study the Broadmoor's use of seasonal employees and realistic manager pay.
"I don't know if people are convinced that the water needed to be turned off in the parks, or the trash cans need to come out, or the lights need to go off," Fowler said. "I think we'll have a big turnover in City Council a year from April. Until we get a new group in there, people aren't really going to believe much of anything."
Mayor and council are part-time jobs in Colorado Springs, points out Mayor Rivera, that pay $6,250 a year ($250 extra for the mayor). "We have jobs, we pay taxes, we use services, just like they do," Rivera said, acknowledging there is a "level of distrust" of public officials at many levels.
Rivera said he welcomes help from Bartolin, the private task force and any other source volunteering to rethink government. He is slightly encouraged, for now, that his monthly sales-tax reports are just ahead of budget predictions.
Officials across the city know their phone lines will light up as parks go brown, trash gathers in the weeds, and streets and alleys go dark.
"There's a lot of anger, a lot of frustration about how governments spend their money," Rivera said. "It's not unique to Colorado Springs."

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14303473
 

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
6
uh, not sure that having a "proper" budget would have stopped 65mph winds from blowing embers across queens canyon & down into mountain shadows.

or did i miss your point?

my point: starve the budget until we no longer have homeless people. ok, so maybe that's actually doug bruce's point. gotta somehow get that on a bumper sticker today...
 

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
6
or........

maybe having a proper budget would have led to more homes being built due to incomes being uniformly lifted.

learn to find your heroes in these tragic times.

/gallowsHumour
 

dump

Turbo Monkey
Oct 12, 2001
8,195
4,419
Ugh. So despite what you may have heard, occasionally communal (government) activities are more efficient than singular acts. Just take the "cutting the grass activity" as noted above. Individual property owners can show up with their 20" walk-behind lawn mower and spend all day Saturday mowing a park. *Or* the citizens can agree that they can raise $10,000 (through taxes) to fund a big, efficient lawn mower, and pay someone minimum wage to use it. Now your parks are mowed, you have your Saturday's free to spend with your family (or work harder and make more $$$$), and quality of life improves.

What's going on here is that the people are so anti-tax that they're basically ruining their city...
I heard a PBS special on this exact issue. The mowers were getting good money, pensions, etc. Something in the area of $30-40K. In order to save money, they fired everyone, sold the machines/trucks and outsourced... and many of the same people ended up doing the same job, on the same equipment, but under a new company, for less pay. 2 years on (i believe) the city couldn't say if it saved money by outsourcing the job. IIRC the price was something like $2million/year (!)
 

stoney

Part of the unwashed, middle-American horde
Jul 26, 2006
21,520
7,069
Colorado
As much as I am a fan of irony, CoSprings has me cracking up. I just saw a live news report in which the mayor's assistant said that with Obama coming into town today, the mayor's sole focus will be on finding out what the Federal govt can do to help CS recover from the fire. For an anti-tax city, that hates the "socialist" Federal agenda, they sure are quick to ask it for help.
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,145
16,539
Riding the baggage carousel.
As much as I am a fan of irony, CoSprings has me cracking up. I just saw a live news report in which the mayor's assistant said that with Obama coming into town today, the mayor's sole focus will be on finding out what the Federal govt can do to help CS recover from the fire. For an anti-tax city, that hates the "socialist" Federal agenda, they sure are quick to ask it for help.
There was an "opinion" pieces in the local rag a couple days back (even before sh*t hit the fan on tuesday) about how the Fed's were taking way too long to come down and assist. All I could do was :rolleyes:
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
I'd have far more respect for Libertarians if they *actually* suffered on whatever cross they nailed themselves to. Libertarianism today means "I will refuse to pay for *your* problems, but you'd better still be paying for mine!"
 

Secret Squirrel

There is no Justice!
Dec 21, 2004
8,150
1
Up sh*t creek, without a paddle
Of course not. But maybe a couple more homes would be standing ya know?
or........

maybe having a proper budget would have led to more homes being built due to incomes being uniformly lifted.

learn to find your heroes in these tragic times.

/gallowsHumour
butterfly...flapping wings....taiwan.....hurricane...alabama...nova scotia. Meh.....
 

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,145
16,539
Riding the baggage carousel.
they need the Clive Bundy PR makeover
We've got James Dobson. He's published more books full of stupid sh1t than Cliven Bundy has even read.

You know what would make it all better? Legalized ganja.

Oh, wait.
I bet that changes when the two shops in Manitou open up and start dragging in fistfuls of cash. Bet they won't have any potholes come next winter. :rant: