Thursday, February 03, 2005

Recycling WILL Require Payment by Residents

Or, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Found in the classified section of today’s Pueblo Chieftain….

PUBLIC NOTICE

PUBLIC NOTICE is hereby given pursuant to Section 30-15-401(7.5), C.R.S. that the City of Pueblo, Coloardo will on or after August 1, 2005, subject to adoption of appropriate orinances and contracting with qualified contractors, require the use of and commence the imposition and billing of a fee for residential recycling serivces throughout the City of Pueblo. [Note: Emphasis added.]

The rest of it looks to be about soliciting bids from qualified contractors to get in on this.

This can be found on page 6C of today’s, 3 Feb 05, Pueblo Chieftain.

What this says to me is that whatever you may have heard at City Council meetings or the last PNP meeting about Pay as You Go or voluntary, don’t you believe it. You are hereby notified, officially, that they are going to charge each and everyone of us, if they can get the ordinances passed.

This is done even before the research efforts on feasibility and economics have been presented. But I guess they intend to thrash those out over the next couple of months and hope for the best. However, as has been mentioned before, the economics don’t seem to work well in all too many cases. Hence having to have the residents pay. So who is really benefiting here? If it relates to not having to procure and manage another land fill, I’d like to see the math on how that works out.

I look forward to seeing the study. I hope they can get it out to us sometime soon. Like May. Anything closer to July is going to look ‘peculiar’.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

The Super Slab Is Coming

And what shall we do?

So much to write about today. Where to begin? Ah. Yes…..the Pueblo Chieftain’s article on the super-slab project.

Seems like that massive project to re-route the heavy road and rail traffic to the flatter lands to the east of town is going to come true in the not-too-distant-future after all. This years legislative session is taking up the issue today.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea and its time has just about come. During the, what I called TRANSPLAN 2030, meetings I kibbutzed last Spring it was talked about in almost hushed tones, but I could see the necessity of it. Especially after hearing the reps from the railroads expressing what they had to contend with in moving trains up and down the Front Range, through burgs like Colorado Springs. It sounded like a logistical nightmare to me.

[Hystorical Note: I even had a glimpse of the sort of masstyeria the Imperial German General Staff had to contend with in their planning mobilization for World War I. It was a running joke with them that their best young minds graduating from their military academy went into the railroad planning division and from there into an insane asylum.]

At any rate, the most interesting impacts of this project, when it comes to pass, are going to be as follows:

[1] The new Wal-Mart distribution center. Is it REALLY smart to build the center so far away from the planned route of the super-slab? Doesn’t look like it to me. It’ll just cause the trucks to travel so much farther, if they are coming from out of state. It would be much smarter to build the distrubtion center at the municipal airport industrial park, where it will be conveniently located for both the truck and rail loads.

[2] The plans to widen I-25 through Pueblo proper to ease traffic. The planned super-slab puts all of this planning on its proverbial ear. The need will not be to build a wider and faster road through Pueblo. It will be to build a better connection from the super-slab to the northern part of town. This is because the southern part of town would be serviced by the proposed connection at Stem Beach. So, looks like CH2MHill will have more time on the contract as they re-write their plans to accomodate something any rational person could see coming last year.

[3] Expansion of the industrial park at the municipal airport. Here’s a great thing for the city. And something that will bring in more business as well. As commented earlier, the Wal-Mart distribution center would work better out there. So it will need to be expanded. Maybe for no better reason than to make it inconvenient for the people at the Target distribution center to get into a turf war with their competitors.

[4] Speaking of expanding the industrial park. I understand that Denver doesn’t want any stenkeng piggy-back railcar transfer facilities anymore. The railroad built a huge activity south of C-470 off Santa Fe some time back and the word at the TRANSPLAN 2030 meeting was they didn’t want it there anymore. Here’s a great opportunity for the city. Expand the industrial park, near the super-slab, and get the facility to be moved there. After all, if we don’t know railroads, we don’t know jack.

This thing has great potential, if we have the vision to see it and the courage to seize it.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

We’ve Got Mail

E-Mail available via Puetown.

For those in need of e-mail capabilities, we’ve established an e-mail server to support you. This will likely be used mostly for administrative capabiltiies and inter/intra-agency communications as necessary.

If you’re group needs to have an e-mail network and your group is associated with Puetown Views we can likely accomodate your needs. Please contact the Administration for arrangements.

Registration On-Line

Now accepting new members!

Okay. We have the registration system operational.

You only need to register if you are intent upon making comments or, even better, becoming a contributor to the entries published here.

Just click on the REGISTER button at the top of the screen. If you are a registered member, click on the LOG-IN button to make a comment or, better still, publish an entry.

Enjoy….

Friday, January 28, 2005

Limitations

Some of this stuff….

...isn’t working quite right just yet.

We’re still trying to stand this thing up properly. Not to mention the almost austere appearance of the page; some of the buttons along the top of the page do not work, just yet. Particularly, REGISTER, LOG-IN and STATISTICS are not available.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we hope to bring the rest of it on-line.

One item of importance, Guests are not going to be allowed to make COMMENTS on this system. We had some interesting experiences with spammers of the most nefarious form in the last few days of OHNO Pueblo. We do not intend to let THAT happen again. Therefore, if you wish to make comments here, to express yourself, you will need to register with the system. This is nothing personal. Indeed, we’ll keep personal information completely confidential. You can use a nom des blogs to identify yourself in comments or even in entries, if you are a co-author. However, we will need to know who you are as part of registration. And that information will be kept very close hold. The only way anyone will get it out of us is with a valid search warrant.

[Note: Those spammers ARE pernicious and of a most distasteful demeanor. This is the only way we can think of to prevent them from doing what they did there, here.]

OHNO Victories

The Night of January 24th.

It’s an Ayn Rand classic, come to life!

Last Monday night, at the regularly scheduled meeting of the City Council, the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) and Old Historic Northside Organization (OHNO), inadvertantly combined forces in order to give the City Fathers an opportunity to do the proverbial ‘right thing’, vis a vis a proposed modification to the city ordinance regarding historic landmarks and the establishment of Mineral Palace Park as an historic district.

It’s rather interesting that the two items came up together like this and the story is certainly worth telling of how that happened. But we’ve got a lot of other things to do before this day is over; so maybe another time. Suffice it to say that these two matters were related. The fun part is trying to understand the why’s and wherefore’s. But, as I said, that’s another, rather long and ‘paranoid’ story. And one better described over fine scotch and tobacco.

So, back on track. The people won a good fight last Monday night. The City Fathers wisely chose to amend the proposed ordinance so that the City Council would not be ‘above the law’, vis-a-vis other private and/or corporate entities. It also agreed to declare Mineral Palace Park an historic district. Both of these decisions will go far in maintaining a quality of life for the general population, well above that realized on Gedi Prime (see classic science ficition series by Frank Herbert).

A round of applause and drinks for all those who participated, either by communicating to the City Fathers via phone or e-mail, attending the meeting itself, and testifying on the matters.

THIS is what makes this land and this community a great place to live.