Monday, July 07, 2008

Eastside Graffiti Removal — 19 July 2008

Taking another whack at the lunacy.

Eva Montoya’s band of merry (and some not so….they’re kids doing public service due to misconduct) folk will be hitting the ugly ‘art’ again this year.

The next installment is as follows:

Date: Saturday, 19 July 2008
Time: 8 am to 11 am
Place: Pueblo Human Services, 2631 E 4th Street
Attire: Grubbies, i.e., things you don’t mind getting paint on.

Have at compadres!

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Dual Purpose Ponds

Having ‘fun’ with the latest plans to widen I-25.

Speaking of ideas to improve the city.

Let’s look at one of the known changes to the proposed widening of I-25 through the center of town. Specifically let’s look at these storm-water collection ponds that will be scattered along the length of the highway.

Obviously, if you know ANYTHING about weather in this town, you know that we get the occasional deluge. These ponds are intended to help prevent flooding. However, as my former battalion commander would put it, “For a few dollars more, you can go first class.”

What I propose is that a selected number of these collection-ponds be configured for duel purpose use; they not only be collection ponds, but also recreational facilities.

One idea would be that such ponds be laid in concrete and the concrete be configured as a skateboard park. It would not take that much space. Nor that much concrete. And, when the ponds are not being used for their primary purpose, they could be used for recreational purposes by some of the agile young men who like that kind of entertainment.

Others, given space, could be made into local parks with a set of childrens’ playground equipment that would not be damaged by the occasional flooding.

Everyone knows that the occasional deluge and resulting flooding would last only a few hours. The rest of the time, unless these facilities are established for dual-purposes, they’ll be so much wasted space.

I think we can think farther ahead than we are currently doing…..

Thursday, October 13, 2005

An Evening At the Open House

Our friends at CH2MHill host a small party.

Attended the New Pueblo Freeway Open House last night. It was hosted by our friends at CH2MHill at the behest of CDOT.

The topic of the overall program was Pueblo’s heritage vis-a-vis that part of which was under potential threat of being demolished or at least degraded as part of the proposed plan to widen Interstate 25 as it passes through the center of the city.

There was a cute series of presentations by 8th-graders from Beulah School on the history of Colorado, stemming from the initial exploration by Coronado, in his vain effort to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, through the founding of CF&I from three competing steel/metal smelting operations. Each of the kids was dressed in attire apropos for their part of the presentation. Personally, I found part of it informative, as I’m a service brat and learned all about Louisiana history, being there at that age. However, I get the impression that the natives were getting a re-bluing—as we’d say in the Army—of stuff they’d known all their lives.

I am curious why they had to go to a charter school in Beulah to get these children. But that’s another question, better asked of Christian Piatt and Kitty Kennedy, who are running for D-60 school board.

Back on topic….

I had hoped that our friends from CH2MHill would have spent a bit of time at the lectern bringing us up to speed on changes to their plans and the current state of affairs with respect to the timeline on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA), both of which are essential to the overall project. But we didn’t hear anything specific.

In order to learn about those activities we had to go to the boards and beat the bushes.

The boards did have information about the timeline for the EIS, but nothing specific that I could see about who was doing what with it right now. There was no one at that particular board to ‘beat about the bush’ with in order to find out.

Looking that the boards on the planned widening of the interstate, it was not readily apparent what had changed since our friends from CH2MHill had last shown us what was planned. I had to ‘beat about the bush’ with the guy there for details. He did point out that some rainwater collection ponds had been added to the plans. This in an effort to prevent localized flooding in the event of another deluge we have every Summer. [Note: With respect to these intermittent ponds, I would like to make a suggestion on how to use them for two purposes. I see a potential recreational use for them when they are not being used for their original purpose. More on that later.]

The gentleman working that board could not identify much else in the way of changes. I would like CH2MHill to highlight any changes they’ve made to their plan as we saw it last year, just so we can catch up to them. We all studied their plans last year. But we’ve slept since then. They’ve slept WITH their plans. We’d like to get up to their level of familiarity.

There was a board about the plans for Mineral Palace Park. However, I did not see anyone I could talk to about any changes to the plans to mitigate the impacts I-25 has had in the past and will have in the future on that district park. Looking over the plans, I did not see anything that jumped out at me as a significant change to what we had seen described before.

There was no board nor any person to beat about the bush with over the status of the IGA. However, I did catch wind that the IGA was being discussed. I think it would be VERY nice if our friends at CH2MHIll would bring us up to speed on the IGA process. Where it is. Who is doing what. And allow some of us to kibitz on the meetings.

It was nice of CH2MHill to invite us to their open house. The children were, as all children dressed-up, rehearsed and trotted before serious adults are, charming. Some good information was provided. A lot of necessary information was not.

In all honesty, I still think this whole project is going to be significantly impacted by the proposed Super-Slab to the east of town. The Slab is coming. It’s much more needed than this project, in my personal opinion. But that’s another essay.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

PNP Meeting August 2005

Thoughts on the latest meeting of the Pueblo Neighborhood Partnership (PNP)

Yesterday’s meeting, held at the Hyde Park center, was informative.

For some reason the City and County Public Health Department was there en massè. I guess it had to do with the fact that both of the items on the agenda, teenage pregnency prevention and the proposed property maintenance ordinance, touched on areas they are interested in. But they outnumbered the reps from the neighborhoods. Not that their interest in PNP isn’t appreciated. And they all had something useful to add to the discussions.

At any rate, nothing unusual during the course of the round-table. So, on to the two topics presented.

Pueblo Adolescent Pregnency Prevention Program

First was Kirsten Townley from the Public Health Department. She’s honchoing the effort to reduce the incidents of teenage pregnancies in the city and county from their perspective.

It IS a serious problem. And as with all things that touch on this subject, people get a little squimish when the topic comes up. It’s considered ‘impolite’ and becomes the elephant in the living room that nobody wants to talk about. Unfortunately, the elephant won’t go away and keeps damaging the living room. But, until the people start not only talking about it, but doing something about it as well, the problem will remain and the quality of life in the proverbial living room will continue to diminish. Unlike the weather, which everyone can and does talk about, but nobody can do anything about it, this is a situation we can all do something about.

Kirsten seemed to be focusing on the importance of the family in this matter. I agree with her in the most vehement manner. Contrary to popular books, it does not take a ‘village’ to raise a child. It takes a family to raise one. The family is the most influential part of a child’s life enroute to being an adult. Especially in the younger years. But it doesn’t stop there. It’s a full-time job requiring both parents’ attention all the way from B’day to Immacipation Day. And, if you’re lucky and did it right, beyond. WAAAAAY beyond. And you never really know how well you’ve done until you see your grand-children. As some wag put it, “You know you’ve been a good parent, if your grand-children turn out okay.”

That’s a hard test to plan for. And you only get one chance at it. Unless your Rupert Murdock….

If you want to help Kirsten or would like more information, she can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), via e-mail.

Proposed Property Maitenance Code

The next topic was addressed by Mike Smyth, from the City Land Use Administration office. Due to the burgeoning number of properties that seem to be going slowly to hell, the city has been working on an ordinance to address minimum standards for maintaining properties.

The current situation requires someone to complain about a situation before the city can do anything. And even then, for some strange reason, the city has managed to understaff the group that is responsible for dealing with complaints. That is as of the last time I looked at the matter, which was a couple of months ago.

So we have a problem in the first place that we cannot enforce the codes that are already on the books. Someone pointed this out right off the get-go at the meeting. They made a point that if you can’t or won’t enforce the current codes that these new codes, if adopted, won’t do anyone any good either. Especially if they require four times the staffing that the current situation calls for.

To be fair to the proposed plan that they have worked so diligently on, they do have a good point that mandatory inspections WOULD alleviate one problem they see in the current system. And that is a situation where tenents are afraid to call in a problem with the property they rent because of possible retribution by the landlord. It’s a reasonable concern. And I think worthy of implementation of the ordinance all by itself.

But without adequate staffing of the department necessary to carry out the duties incumbant upon them, it’s just another waste of time and makes the City Fathers look ineffectual. And that can’t be good.

There are some questions that Mike would like to hear from you regarding the proposed ordinance. They are in the extended text area. Just click on “MORE…”, below.

More...