Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Politicians should run in the districts in which they truly live.

Politicians should run in the districts in which they truly live.

I find it interesting that so many of our political hopefuls can’t seem to follow the basic rules of the election process.  We continually have candidates who do not live in the right district trying to skirt the residency rules.  They continually try to claim at the last moment that they own property in an area where they don’t truly live.  The residency requirements are there to allow people who genuinely live in the district to represent their neighborhoods or region.  I find any politician who tries to falsely claim he or she lives in an area where they do not truly reside to be disingenuous and not worthy of being elected to public office. 
We have seen this in recent elections for School Board, City Council and now the race for County Commissioner.  Now Mr. Jim Brewer has the audacity to sue the Pueblo County Clerk and waste our precious tax dollars claiming he didn’t get due process, when he openly admits he doesn’t live in the right district.  What a joke!  The answer Mr. Brewer is to plan ahead and move to the right area and establish residency within the guidelines.  Unfortunately, that would mean that you would actually have to follow the rules and not attempt manipulate the system. 
We also seem to have a bunch of politicians who can’t seem to follow the rules on the distribution of political signs.  Many of our candidates have violated the rules by putting up signs and parking semi-trailers months before they are legally permitted to do so.  My plan is to not vote for any candidate who posted their signs too early and openly violated the rules after being told to take them down.
If our political candidates can’t follow our simple election rules during the race, why should we expect them follow the rules once they are in office.  Mr. Brewer should do the ethical thing and drop his lawsuit.  He can always run next time from the district in which he truly lives. Otherwise, we can only hope for a judge that believes that candidates should follow the election rules.
Chris Nicoll

 

No Justification of Convention Center Expansion

This is the third year the expansion of the Convention Center will have been placed on the ballot and still no varifiable justification.

June 20, 2008

Mike Tedesco, Executive Director
Urban Renewal Authority (URA) of Pueblo
126 N. Mechanic Street
Pueblo, CO 81003

Re: Justification of Convention Center Expansion

Dear Mr.  Tedesco,

The Pueblo Citizens for Positive Change (PCPC) has requested verifiable lost business reports and booked business reports on a number of occasions.  The first responses from the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) indicated that the information was proprietary and not available to the public(Oct. 12,2007, Nov. 19, 2007, Nov.21,2007).  More recently several more requests were presented to the URA for verifiable lost business information (Jan.16, 2008, Feb.7, 2008, Mar.5,2008)  This time the URA responded with a list of 110 mixed type of events which you claim were not held at the Convention Center for the following reason: No Space available on requested day and time.  Since the report is missing the verifiable information requested to document your claim for expansion, we question the premise in which you make such false claims. Consequently, unless other information exists that you have not yet provided, the lost business report supplied does not and should not be used to justify the Convention Expansion. 

 

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