Pueblog USa
Sunday, October 16, 2005
CAVE? (Part 1)
Where’s an Acronym Control Officer (ACO) when you really need one?
Steve Henson has an interesting observation in today’s Pueblo Chieftain. He seems to think that either we change or we remain the same. I think he’s doing a number of things wrong here. And I’ll address a couple of them right now.
First off, he seems to be putting us into a box; change or don’t. And it’s a ludicrous box at that, as change is invevitable. I think his purpose, unintentional or otherwise, is to try to quell the voices who are opposed to any of a number of changes. It’s as if he’s trying to make them out as Front Range Luddites. I am of a different opinion. Here’s why….
Talk about hitting a nerve. Last week, I wrote about CAVE, Citizens Against Virtually Everything, and their role in preventing Pueblo from changing.—Steve Henson
Actually, I think it more apropos to say CAVE stands for Citizens Against Venal Expansion.
There could be some card-carrying members of Citizens Against Virtually Everything out there. After all, it is a good sized city we live in. However, having lived here for a little while now, driving around town on streets that change their names at the drop of a manhole cover, go from names to numbers—I thought the numbered streets were supposed to run East-West??!?!?—and back to names, frontage roads that have stores on them, but you can’t get to them on the frontage road. The road system has some ‘interesting’ aspects to it, to include the proverbial “You can’t get there from here” cunundrum.
Then there are the fascinating machinations of the City Fathers vis-a-vis the late Wal-Mart distribution center fiasco. They claimed it wasn’t in their bailiwick, however, they said and did nothing about the 1400 additional 18-wheeler trucks that were supposed to transit the already crowded US Highway 50. Were they blind that they couldn’t or wouldn’t recognize the impact? Or was there a deeper plan within plans.
Speaking of the City Fathers, we’ve still not heard about their plans to force everyone to do recycling and yet we can’t seem to find a way to get everyone to get rid of their regular trash just yet. This makes no sense to the casual observer. However, if you consider that the way they had proposed the money flow about in this proposal, you’d notice that the city was going to fill its coffers by the recycling scheme. It had the same affect on the individual as a new tax.
Let’s take a look at PEDCo; a company supposedly dedicated to bringing good business to Pueblo. They got the Wal-Mart distribution center deal going. However, according to one person I heard speak to the City Fathers, PEDCo was in violation of it’s own contract with the city on that deal. Furthermore, I’ve not seen much that PEDCo has actually accomplished in all this time. So, what is the city’s return on investment with PEDCo? How much money have we paid them? How many companies have they attracted to Pueblo? What tax revenues have been realized from these companies?
Then again we’ve got companies already in town that have little regard for the community they live and work in. Case in point, Parkview Medical Center. The year we moved here, they demolished a perfectly good home/office building that they owned. Not that they didn’t have that authority, being the owners, but:
[1] They did it on the Saturday before the City Fathers were going to consider declaring it an historic landmark. It having been the home of one of the captains of industry that made Pueblo the giant of the Front Range.
[2] They demolished it, to the best of my knowledge, without benefit of the requisite demolition permits. And, interestingly enough, the city has not, to the best of my knowledge, done anything about that.
[3] The house, built in the late 1800s, was rife with asbestos in it’s heating system. But the demolition crew did NOTHING about asbestos abatement, to the best of my knowledge. Clouds of the dangerous asbestos powder were spewed into the air by the demolition equipment, according to reports of eye witnesses. And this was done by a ‘hospital’? What were they thinking? Increasing revenue from their chronic lung disease ward?
So now, we have a nice parking lot where a useful and historic house that added to the charm of the community used to stand. And the features of that lot clash with the charm of the wonderful neighborhood. Where’s Joni MItchell when we REALLY need her?
Razed Thatcher House; put in a parking lot.
Progress is going to happen. We cannot stop it. What we CAN do is guide it to where we think it should be.
The biggest problem I’ve observed is—as Steve points out—a lack of vision. Or maybe it’s something else. The people driving this train have a vision but it isn’t one of a prosperous Pueblo, it’s one of dollars.
Some wag said it a long time ago, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” I agree. I’ve seen it all too often, that when people have their priorities in the wrong order, everything goes wrong.
However, when they have their priorities in the proper order, everything seems to fall into its proper place automatically. And that is true in EVERY situation.
If the City Fathers are only interested in getting in as much money as possible, they’d sell their soul, and everyone else’s as well, to get it. As far as I can tell, based on the items cited above, the Wal-Mart distribution center, the Razing of Thatcher House, the Recycling/Hidden-Tax Scam, that seems to be the case. As long as they are lured this way and that by anyone holding a bucket of money in front of them, like a mule and a carrot on a stick, Pueblo will be guided in a haphazard manner that will leave the place in a shambles of patchwork efforts that do not work well together. Like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces have been slapped down and hammered into improper places. It won’t be ‘pretty’, people. And a number of the pieces, i.e., people and places, will be broken in the process.
CAVE dwellers are not so much opposed to everything as they are paranoid about what is actually going to come of it. This is from many instances of being burned by the people that are supposed to be advancing Puebloan interests.
We do need a better vision of where this city should be going than what we currently have. That’s why this coming election is an important step in changing the current ‘vision’ to something more people can agree with. The trust of the community for the City Fathers is not there any more. That’s why people are opposed to so many things.
More on the Steve’s “jobs” issues later.
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