Thursday, November 02, 2006

Honor Farm Road Plan Meeting TONIGHT!

Public Input Forum for the way Pueblo—City and County—should try to relieve traffic congestion on US 50 and enhance traffic between the Pueblo and Pueblo West is on for tonight.

If you’re interested in improving the mess on US50 and you live in Pueblo West and/or north and northwest Pueblo, you’ll want to attend the public input forum for building roads through the Honor Farm between Pueblo West and Pueblo.

It is happening tonight at the Convention Center.

Starts at 6 pm.

This is a great opportunity to participate in your city and county government.

BE THERE!

Give the government your thoughts and concerns on the various proposed routes.

Friday, September 15, 2006

A Lost Stalwart of Pueblo

On the passing of Ersilia Cruz

A week ago, today, Pueblo lost one of it’s finest citizens. Ersilia Cruz passed away from a stroke.

Our condolences to her family and most especially to the community for which she was such a pillar of strength and energy. Pueblo and especially Hyde Park will miss her.

The challenge, now, is for some one from that community, that neighborhood, to come forward to fill the big shoes that this little lady wore.

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.

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