Your voice is needed on local boards and commissions. How Governor Polis proposes to close the hole in the state budget. The arrogance of assuming that because you have power now, you will forever.
Your voice is needed on local boards and commissions.
Every morning's commute takes me past one of Sterling's newly minted public-beautification projects.
Long story short, after some realignment of state highways through town, there were a couple patches of bare dirt next to our new main drag. Google's satellite map hasn't quite caught up to the new parks yet, but I highlighted where they are on the map at the top of the post.
Last few months, I saw some landscaping work going in there. It's not anything super fancy: there are some trees and some cobblestone rocks, some paths through same, some grass, and some statues. Tidies the land up and adds some nice visual interest (certainly better than the bare dirt and former mobile home concrete pads).
Then recently I saw a sign up there that indicated that this work was paid for with a hotel tax and, more to the point for this post, that it was the Citizens Advisory Board that set this whole thing in motion.
And THAT is the point. If you are looking for a way to contribute in an immediate and tangible way, get involved in the seemingly meaningless local boards for your area. Your voice is needed, and you'll be making the kinds of changes that people see in their everyday lives (as opposed to spending inordinate amounts of time on, say, Federal issues which won't affect your life for years to come and over which you have a lot less power).
If you'd like ideas, let me know. I can connect you to different things to look into.
If you live in the Sterling area, I've already done the looking. The first link below is to Sterling's boards and commissions. The second link is to the general application for them all.
https://www.sterlingcolo.com/government/city_council/boards_and_commissions.php
https://cms6.revize.com/revize/sterlingco/BoardApplication.pdf
How Governor Polis proposes to close the hole in the state budget.
Our state is currently having some budget troubles (see the link to an earlier newsletter on this topic first below for some earlier context), and, since it's the governor's job to propose a budget to the legislature, we now have a sense of how Polis plans to deal with the approximately $1B budget gap forecast for the coming fiscal year.
The toplines from the Colorado Sun article linked second below show a mixed bag of proposals, some shifting money around, some "non-increases" in budget items, and some cuts.
The screenshots labeled broadly as "Health" and "Ed" are taken from the article and list the changes Polis proposes to those categories.
I myself am intrigued by the idea of changing how the state counts students. Quoting the article:
"Today, pupil counts are based on four-year averages of enrollment; under Polis’ plan, each school would only receive funding based on their current year enrollment. That will likely lead to less funding for school districts with declining enrollment, but could lead to more money in places with growing student populations."
A tighter (time-wise) count of students could indeed produce some efficiencies. I could see it also leading to some difficulties for school boards in terms of their planning. Depending on the timing of the count and the size of the swings, I could easily see this making lots of work for local boards.
Perhaps a good paradigm here would be to say it's cost shifting down to local boards? Saves the state, costs the locals perhaps?
I wanted to single out some bullet points from the bottom too. Those are in the screenshot labeled "Fees".
Take note of the highlighted bullet points. This is another clever budget trick.
TABOR puts a limit on how much money Colorado can collect. The amount the state can collect is tied to inflation: the state can collect/keep more money (as it should) if inflation goes up. The thing is, Colorado's inflation has fallen recently, so the TABOR cap on collected money is smaller.
That is, the state cannot collect or keep as much money as before when the inflation was higher.
Polis' proposed solutions, the one I highlight in the "Fees" screenshot are here a trick to shift costs, albeit shifting in time and not from state to local offices.
If you don't collect as much money from one particular revenue stream so that you can collect more from other streams is essentially saying "I will not fund the things that the first bit of revenue funded, so I can fund the things the other revenue stream pays for.
Not just me saying it either. Check out one more quote from the article:
"That [continuing to collect the transportation fees Polis proposes cutting out--essentially collecting more money which has to be spent on transportation so there is less general revenue] leaves less money in the budget to spend on social services like health care."
It will be interesting to see how much infighting among Democrats there will be as the budget is debated over the next few months and into the legislative session.
Say what you will about Jared Polis, he is at least not a firebreathing progressive to the same extent that some in the legislature are. He has also shown himself to have (whether you agree with them or not) an often differing set of priorities budget-wise than his fellow Democrats.
Still, as I hint at above by singling out the quote I did, some of the stuff Polis is proposing is a sop to his Democrat colleagues.
I guess we'll see as the debate progresses.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/budget-troubles-exacerbated-by-an?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://coloradosun.com/2024/11/01/colorado-state-budget-2025-26-jared-polis-proposal/
The arrogance of assuming that because you have power now, you will forever.
The Democrats (nationally) took a beating with Colorado remaining a "blue island" as the author of the Gazette op ed below has it.
In fact, parts of Colorado bucking a (mostly--there's still CA of course for one) national trend has given our state and governor some cachet among liberals. Some parts became even bluer than before.
Western Slope along I-70, I'm looking in your direction.
Thing is, in all the hoopla about Republican national victories and Colorado staying a Democrat stronghold, is hiding more cause for optimism for people like me who live here and have to watch my state slide further into failed California-style policy.
Jeff Hurd won. Gave Evans won. Ryan Gonzales won. Scott Bright won (and, as of this writing, a couple of other squeakers are still being counted).
I don't want to overstate this. Put these victories in their proper context: they are glimmers of hope in an otherwise deep blue state.
But hope they are. Contrary to what you may see on social media, no political situation is static. It is only the arrogance of complete power that gives those currently holding it the belief that they are rightfully there.
These elections signal to me that it is possible to reverse course from the disaster that our state Republican party has become.
Colorado will never be like it was prior to the Front Range gorging itself on deep-blue imports from liberal states, but it can be different than it is now. Think of the good that a credible minority party with good leadership can do here. Even if it's just to force Democrats to the negotiating table, even if it's just to keep Democrats in purple districts on their toes, it's not nothing.
If you are active in the state party, please give this some serious thought and get involved in the party. A lot of support for those victories above came OUTSIDE the state party structure. Think of what you could do when things aren't being run like they are now. Think of what you can do when you focus on issues and getting electable candidates into office.
The will is there, it just requires work. We will get the politicians we deserve, we deserve better so demand better.
https://gazette.com/election-coverage/blue-island-colorado/article_fa440f5a-9dfa-11ef-8d31-fffd79881643.html