The city manager Jane Brautigan is excellent and communicates well as does the city communications head Patrick Vonkeiserling. Previous managers had a long standing war going on with us. Those combative actions have long ago ceased so we see no point in our reporters spinning their personal attacks as news. End.I love Boulder; I hate to say harsh things about it, but a problem is a problem.
In the past several years the city council has gone from bad to worse in all areas
where it might reasonably be given a letter grade. The “Smart Regs” ordinance alone would earn an “F” if not for the concurrently orbiting disasters of everything else the city council seeks to tackle.
Not able to find it in their hearts to allow homeless individuals some protection
against random police harassment with a moratorium on “camping” tickets for
people caught outside in the middle of winter, they choose instead to vote themselves benefits, create ordinances that barely make sense to the people charged with implementing them, and continue to support overspending
by city government, spending that includes giveaways to corporate citizens
to help fund high-end Christmas office parties.
When do people say “enough”? Recently, one of the more “principled advocates” on council (his own words used to describe himself when campaigning for office), was caught having essentially cheated the county out of proper property taxes, dating back as far as a decade. No doubt he will respond at
the next meeting, admit that he was lax in his view of the issue, and perhaps
pledge to do better. Council will go forward as if nothing ever happened…
but a scandal is a scandal is a scandal. How does a wealthy person …a person
able to put his home on the market for an amount only another wealthy person
could afford…get away with ignoring the falseness of the valuation causing
him to save thousands every year in property taxes? What if everyone just
happened to make this error? What happens then?
Meanwhile…and more to the point of this short piece…the city has different
types of homeless people enjoying its resources these days. There are …yes,
Mildred…decent people who become homeless. And there are chronically ill,
or mentally ill homeless people; people caught in long-term cycles of drug and
alcohol abuse; people who suffer terribly, but probably couldn’t be helped
by anything short of suddenly having ….a home? Even then, it might be likely
the home wouldn’t relieve the suffering. Some of these individuals live in or around Boulder creek – within city limits. These people sometimes…and I’m not saying every one of them, or even the majority of them…but some of these people sometimes defecate by the creek. Have I seen it directly? No, although
I have seen some human excrement by the creek, or excrement that I would judge
probably comes from a human source. Is this a problem? Yes…it is a problem, and it’s precisely the sort of problem that our city council should address. It is a serious health hazard to our city to have water resources threatened by untreated human excrement. It’s a hazard to kids using the creek recreationally; it’s a hazard to downstream users of the water.
So there…I’ve said it. A river of shit runs through Boulder. A river of shit
runs through the Boulder city council, and as long as they are focused on delivering benefits to themselves while denying others reasonable aid;
and while demanding restrictive house size ordinances designed to box out
young, middle-income house buyers; backed up with endless PR campaigns (and
fake plans for “affordable housing”); and then demanding that taxes go up while the salaries of staff sinecures remain steady…and so on… there will be a river of shit running through Boulder…polluting all of us…harming all of us day by day in one small way or another.
Has my personal issue been water? Yes it has. My personal issue is water.
Which is why a river of shit is worthy of alarm. The current city council members not producing it still swim in it. Sad but true, and with “decorum rules” and council benefits on the table this month, and with the homeless population steadily rising, and people frustrated with the electric utility, home size and “smart regs” issues, with further focus on worthless ennui, the stench is in fact reaching monumental proportions.
By the way…could the problems I name be fixed? I don’t know. My suspicion
is that the average drunk (maybe not the drunkest drunk) could be assisted by
a portable toilet facility that was regularly cleaned and roughly as pleasant as crapping next to the creek (where kids will likely play the next day.) In fact, I’d say the ticket for council’s redemption might just be a port-a-john; although at this point, that port-a-john would need to handle, well, a river’s worth of shit.
Rob Smoke, Commissioner of Human Relations for the City of Boulder back
in the day, is celebrating 24 years as a city resident.
