Monthly Archives: August 2010

Here we go again? Boulder’s City Manager’s trying to save Money!

Of course, there is always Room to save a Buck or two!

The Pottery Lab at the Old Fire House is “ALIVE” with ART! Boulder has a Reputation for promoting Art of any kind!

The Idea of privatizing the Lab is totally wrong! Please keep it alive the “WAY IT IS”!

As a Boulder retired Senior, I was able to take Classes at the Lab! Nancy Utterback was my Teacher! She is a great Artist and She can FIRE YOU UP, not in the Kiln but artistically! The other Art Teachers are equally SUPER! Money is not everything? The Lab in private Hands would be totally wrong!

Please keep the Lab alive “THE WAY IT IS”!

The Pottery Lab at the old Fire House IS BOULDER!

Otto A Friedli
Boulder Continue reading →

I was disappointed to read in the Aug. 30 Daily Camera that Glenn Beck has rejected a call to run for President in 2012, along with his potential running mate Sarah Palin. He said ” there are far more people smarter” than he to run and that he thinks he’s ” not electable”. Come on, others smarter than he is? He founded his own university, Beck University. Can’t do that if you’re not smart. Not electable? Millions upon millions follow his every word. And the beautiful Sarah Palin would cinch the deal as VP. She could fill in any intellectual gaps Beck may think he has. After all, she was the Governor of the great state of Alaska. Granted, only a half term, but by gosh, she learned a lot in those two years. Once they are elected, President Beck could appoint Newt Gingrich as Secretary of State. Then look out World, America has it’s honor restored!
So fire up those computers America and let’s get this dream team elected in 2012! America deserves them.

Nancy Jones
Louisville Continue reading →

Right wing conservative commentator Glen Beck, a rich white man, and right wing funded tea party cheerleader Sara Palin drew over 300,000 mostly right wing followers to a rally in Washington on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s historical March on Washington.

One purpose of the event, as Beck and Palin indicated, was to claim ownership of the civil rights movement since, all along , they are the ones who believe in individual rights.(not poor black minorities) Beck, who carefully praised King, would have us believe that King was a conservative as was Jesus. Palin, claimed that the spirit of the civil rights movement would “help our cause”

Omitted from the hoopla was how Beck and Palin reconcile how their right wing forbearers resisted and tried to sabotage every step of the civil rights movement labeling the peaceful picketers as anarchists, communists and terrorists. Omitted also was the agenda that their new right wing candidates propose like denying people the promise of stem cell research, denying women the right to choose, cherry picking science to deny the existence of global warming and evolution, revising textbooks to put a right wing slant on history, privatizing prisons, roads and Social Security, allowing the financial sector to remain unregulated and allowing corporations unlimited influence on our elections and further they would like to eliminated the department of education, make “their God” an integral part of government policy and obstruct any get out the vote organization that seeks to allow the poor and disenfranchised equal access to the polls. It seems to me that individual rights and freedoms are not very high on the list of their priorities.

Tom Lopez
Longmont Continue reading →

I would like to respond to Rusty Davis letter regarding “Fearful for the our future” Aug 30 . According to Mr. Davis, American is going down the tubes, and it’s all the fault of the usually suspects, “conservatives”,” Reagan” ,” greedheads”, “Bush”, ” Christianity.., etc. He even blames the “press” ( guess he means Fox News!). Wow and I thought two years ago we elected hope and change. And so it goes.

Scott Schmidt
Boulder
Continue reading →

To the Editor:

I have been reading the numerous letters from county residents disappointed in the failure of our current county commissioners to maintain our county infrastructure. This is a basic function of county government – one that seems to elude the current board.

My neighbors and I experienced this first hand when the commissioners, lead by Cindy Domenico, voted down the request of the Transportation Department to pave a heavily traveled section of Sunshine Canyon Drive last year. This is the most expensive section of gravel road in the county to maintain. Domenico indicated she was not persuaded by arguments that this $315,000 investment would save the county more than a million dollars over 20 years, or the clean air, health and safety issues raised in expert testimony, but rather by the need to preserve ‘rural’ character. She did not elaborate how a heavily travelled road generating huge amounts of atmospheric dust would preserve ‘rural character’. This blatant fiscal and environmental irresponsibility seems endemic in the decisions of the current commissioners.

After the hearing at which this vote was taken, Ben Pearlman told a group of residents that the only way the road will ever be paved is if we elect a different group of commissioners. I am sure that Don Sherwood and other residents who have been writing to the Daily Camera will agree that this is a great suggestion!

I am encouraged that there is a candidate running against Domenico this year named Dick Murphy who appears more qualified than any of our current commissioners. He is a former Deputy Colorado State Treasurer with a PhD in economics who consults with state and local governments on budgetary issues. It sounds like he might bring fiscal discipline to a body that is sorely in need of it!

Gene Fischer
Boulder Continue reading →

Thanks Clay, for telling it like it is, on Betio (Tarawa). You probably saved many vets of that Campaign the trouble it would take to visit that forsaken place. I am not one of them. I have no desire to visit any battle sites , nor “re-live” any of those battles, and your column confirms my feelings.

The Gilbert Islands was also the scene of the sinking of the Navy’s aircraft carrier The Liscomb Bay, on November 24, 1943, six days before “Tarawa”.
643 officers and men were lost, including the Captain, and the Executive Officer. It was the largest single loss of life the Navy ever sustained, but of course it was wartime and couldn’t be broadcast.

I didn’t know that your Grandfather’s (Lt. Alex Bonnyman, Medal of honor winner, posthumously) gravesite was one of those that is missing of the some 300 that were lost and not recovered. I have a picture of his gravesite at the time of his burial (on Betio) as I’m sure you must have also, but how could it turn up missing after all the publicity given him?

Jack Garber
Boulder Continue reading →

I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been very happy to see
the hundreds of thousands of people gathered together on the
Washington Mall by Glen Beck (your so-called clown) calling
the country back to God. Dr. King was a very Godly man and his
niece, Dr.Alveta King, was one of the speakers at the event. (a
fact not mentioned by the media).

I imagine that God, who has guided this country through good and
bad times, was well-pleased, also.

Printing the King and the Clown cartoon was a very low form of
intolerance against religious freedom and the right of people to
gather in the exercise thereof..

Margaret P. King
Boulder Continue reading →

This morning on CNN Sanjay Gupta was again deep in the quagmire of another disaster. Haiti still is mostly a camp. Pakistan has millions of displaced people from the floods.
We have lost millions of trees to this pine beetle epidemic. This too is a huge disaster. 3.5 million acres and counting. It is getting worse here in my town as it moves here to the front range.
Can’t we get these trees harvested, put on trains and sent to these areas? We have idle OSB plants and sawmills here in Colorado. Heck 12 small diameter trees would make a castle. I am sure we could have put a roof on the entire island of Haiti by now and still have enough to build homes for the folks in Pakistan. We just let the trees fall over with warnings to hikers.
Good shelter is the first need to stabilize these disasters, Tent cities are a waste of time as frame structures go up fairly quickly and are permanent. Proper fasteners can be included as well.
Once our forests are cleared… new trees do come up quick. Evidenced by the good work done by our Open Space folks.
We need to utilize our natural resources, not just let it all rot. There is very limited wood on our planet.
Can we come up with a better plan here? These folks do need the help and the next disaster is just around the corner. Or do we want to have a tangled mess in our mountains for another generation? This soultion is so obvious and would help our economy too!

Mike Shaw
Nederland Continue reading →

In Saturday’s Daily Camera , the need for chip-sealing substantial lengths of Nelson Road and US 36 that were in already “fine condition” was questioned by Mr. Steve Maxwell, a frequent bike rider on these roads. A similar question arises with the county’s decision to chip-seal S. Cherryvale Dr. between S. Boulder Road and Marshall Road – a multi-mile project now in process. This section of Cherryvale was widened, re-graded, bike lanes added, curves straightened, and fully repaved only 6 years ago. As roads go, it is virtually new (per Reed Construction Data, work began in 06/2004 with a cost of over $500,000). This road was in pristine condition prior to the totally unnecessary chip-sealing.

In an environment where the County Commissioners and Transportation Department say they have no funds to meet their moral and perhaps legal obligation to fully maintain the subdivision roads they own, why are they spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars chip-sealing perfectly good roads? For the same cost as the county spent on just these three highly questionable projects, how many roads that need repair in the numerous subdivisions they refuse to maintain could have been chip-sealed? Is this an intentional misapplication of funds and project priorities to hit subdivision residents “close to home” and coerce them into providing additional funds to pave their roads? Funds the residents have already paid to the county once through unreduced taxes over the past decade and a half. Is it just one more example of our County Commissioners deceitful practices decried by Bob Greenlee in this last Sunday’s paper? Or, is this just poor management and ineptitude? Any way you look at it, a travesty of responsible leadership!

Boulder County is now in the process of revising the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. (The commissioners have constantly said that this process provides ample public discussion and input – have you seen anything about this?) Attend these meetings (if they exist, if any are still yet to be held)! Write or email the County Commissioners (commissioners@bouldercounty.org)! Demand they change the Comp Plan back to the pre-1995 version to provide full, tax paid maintenance for all county roads – as they committed to do when they accepted full ownership and maintenance of these roads and for which they have already collected taxes to do, for decades!

If the current commissioners will not correct this gross injustice, consider that all three current commissioners are term limited and in their final term. Ask the replacement candidates if they will change the County’s practices to fully fund complete road maintenance. Ask if they will modify the comp plan back to the pre-95 version to return to full county maintenance of all County owned roads. Failing this, will they at least be straight forward and open in their actions and undertake a proper vote to increase property taxes as required by TABOR or undertake a honestly worded bond initiative to obtain adequate funding for road projects to be repaid via the current tax revenue stream?

Peter Dente
Boulder Continue reading →

To the Editor:
To my ear, having a School of Information and Information Technology at the University of Colorado sounds downright Orwellian. “Journalism” has apparently become too old fashioned, straightforward, and honest a word for our double-think culture. Need I point out that the Supreme Court has ruled that Fox News has a guaranteed-by-the-founders right to lie in its broadcasts, meaning, strangely enough, that what is considered perjury in the courts and fraud in commerce is perfectly constitutional in media and the public airwaves. It is indeed a strange world we are creating.

Robert Porath
Boulder Continue reading →

Please help me understand – when does voting matter? I thought there was a county wide vote of subdivision owners on future road maintenance. I thought it was to be decided by a simple majority of responding voters. I thought it was reported that 58% voted NO. Now I read that the county commissioners are going to let some of the 42% who voted yes get their roads repaired, using a special local improvement district.

Once again the commissioners are disregarding their own rules (a simple majority vote) and going ahead with what they wanted all along, an implementation of their past idea to form special local improvement districts to pay for PUBLIC ROADS in subdivisions. Oh, and I think “improvement districts” means more taxes, but when does NO mean NO? Meanwhile, they are entertaining the purchase of $17 million more in open space.

There is nothing in the 1995 comprehensive “plan” that specifically says subdivisions or roads so I would suggest the commissions reinterpret that section and try to remember the voters.

The message from the public by this vote is “through our home purchase we paid for and turned over to the county newly built subdivisions roads with the promise that the County would maintain these roads in perpetuity, we paid taxes yearly for road maintenance, we are not going to pay for a second county wide improvement district TAX for road maintenance.” The county has breached their contract with the subdivision tax payers. It’s time see a reallocation of the budget and apply more to road maintenance. The County breached our trust once – are they going to do it again?

Sharon Malcolm
Boulder Continue reading →

Here’s a thought. Why not immediately confer citizenship upon any illegal who is willing and able to alleviate the housing bubble crash by purchasing one of the increasing number of foreclosed homes!? They may well have the money, since they’re willing to work for wages at which the rest of us scoff. Then-presto-the housing market reasserts itself. And these new homeowners can (eventually) bolster our floundering consumer based economy.by taking out home equity loans..Which means manufacturing jobs will re-emerge to satisfy these Americanized homeowners lust for stuff; which further means unemployment will drop. And we can all live happily ever after, while China wonders what the hell happened.

June Warwick
Boulder Continue reading →

The political cartoon in the August 29 edition of the newspaper portraying Glenn Beck as a clown is demeaning to anyone employed in that profession. Charlatan, flimflam man and/or huckster seem a much better fit.

RC Lloyd
Longmont Continue reading →

On Saturday, Sarah Palin and Glen Beck stood at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial and set out to, “reclaim the civil rights movement” on the anniversary or Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The event was geared towards members of the Tea Party Movement, according to Beck, “the people of the civil rights movement.”

Certain members of the Tea Party in March shouted racial epithets at members of the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington. Other members called civil-rights leader John Lewis and President Obama the “n-word”, held up signs at rallies calling for Obama to “return to Kenya”, and compared him to Hitler. These are the people that actually spat on Missouri Representative Emmanuel Cleaver and are now avidly supporting racial profiling against Hispanics in Arizona.

These people are not “the people of the civil rights movement”; they are the people of racism, hatred and xenophobia. This rally and their claims of humanitarian integrity are a disgrace to the reverend Dr. King and his legacy and a disrespect to all those truly fighting for it.

It is a travesty that 47 years later, Dr. King’s dream is still just a dream.

Ellie Driscoll
Boulder Continue reading →

There are among us unsung heroes who toil in the field of international human rights protection. With great creativity, sometimes great courage, and with amazing results, these people work to make the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights a living, vital and effective document. They work to free prisoners, to protect women from medieval barbarism, to better living conditions, and the like.

The United Nations Association of Boulder County will award its 16th annual International Human Rights Award in December. If you know of a resident of the County who has the past year or over a lifetime contributed significantly to the advancement of international human rights, you should nominate that person now. Simply write a letter detailing the contributions to UNA, P. O. Box 1181, Boulder, CO 80306. Supporting letters are always helpful. The deadline is October 1, 2010. Please call Clovis Morrisson, 303-828-4257, for more information.

Clovis Morrisson
For the UNA Board
Erie Continue reading →

Lately, there has been a lot of news about the undocumented foreigners among us. They are being marked and noticed because we, Americans suffer shortage of jobs and we like to believe that it is them taking the remaining jobs away from us.
It has been my observation that the line of work of the undocumented such as house construction, cleaning and gardening is not what the American jobless are looking for. But for the case they were, I have a suggestion: Re-frame the problem.
Give the undocumented a two year working permit, let them apply for the job alongside the Americans and if, with no English language skills, for some reason they get hired, pay them the same wage as the Americans. There is one thing we have in common: We are starved for money. Since they are working in our country, why not taxing everybody with a two year working permit a flat up front tax of 30%. Period. The money could go to our communities and foreign workers will still make enough to keep them from going hungry, which is why they are here first place.
I prefer a win/win solution over the contrary. We are about to loose the American Dream while causing dire hardships to them if we choose deportation and other punishments for being here.
We can help each other instead.

Daniela Clemons
Boulder Continue reading →

There are thousands of regular cyclists in Boulder, and many of them do a lot of their riding in the area to the north and northeast of the city – on the various paved roads between Boulder, Lyons, and Longmont. This is primarily because the roads to the east and the south of Boulder are narrower, do not have bike lanes, and are generally not very safe for riding. Although I’m not exactly sure which roads are maintained by the County and the State, I am writing to inquire as to why two of the roads in this area seemingly in the best condition – Highway 36 to Lyons, and Nelson Road from Hwy. 36 to 75th Street – have recently been chip-sealed. Whereas both roads seemed to be in fine condition and were very smooth previously, both have now been rendered much more uncomfortable on which to ride a bicycle. Other area roads, such as Neva-Niwot, St. Vrain, and Hygiene, are in seemingly worse condition, and would seem to have been more logical targets for resurfacing. Now, riding north on Highway 36 out of Boulder is akin to riding on a gravel road. Smaller-sized gravel appears to have been used in the chip sealing of Nelson Road, but the ride there is not much better. In addition, last summer another of the key cycling roads in the area – the Diagonal Highway to Longmont – was also resurfaced, and left with a series of seams and bumps about every five yards. These seams only occur in the bike lane part of the road, and are also very irritating to ride a bike over. This has rendered the Diagonal much less pleasant to ride on as well. The only significant and longer piece of smooth and good conditioned road in the area is now 75th Street – please leave that road as it is!

I understand that we all need to “Share the Road” and I recognize that these routes are primarily for automobile traffic, but it seems like in a cycling town like Boulder, there ought also to be some attention paid to the needs of cyclists, and the condition of the road from the perspective of the cyclist. Is there not some way to leave a smooth surface on the side of the road when chip-sealing? Or, would it be possible to use smaller-sized gravel in the process so that the road did not end up being as rough?

Thank you for any insights, and for your consideration of the cycling community.

Steve Maxwell
Boulder Continue reading →

Many thanks to Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) Rangers, Rocky Mountain Rescue, and others for their response this summer to several heat related incidents “Dogs struggle in August heat” (DC 8-24-10). Fortunately, despite this summer’s loss of the East Boulder Dog Park’s swimming hole, there are still some opportunities for water access and/or “cool’ trails that provide relief from the heat. Dog Dayz is an opportunity for your dog to swim at Scott Carpenter pool, which runs through August 28. Shanahan Ridge, Ranger Trail, Sanitas Valley, Gregory Canyon, Shadow Canyon, Boy Scout, Homestead Trail, Enchanted & Kohler Mesas are all great summer trails that provide shade or water.

With a little common sense and by choosing wisely, you and your canine companion can continue to enjoy many wonderful Boulder hikes in every season of the year. For some tips on beating the heat, check out “Boulder’s Cool Trails for Hot Dogs” – Tales from the Trail by Rich Wolf. Happy Trails !

Ed Mills, President
FIDOS.org
Boulder Continue reading →

Solitons in Boulder? They are lots of them. Solitons are formed when the front of a wave travels more slowly than the back of the wave, causing a natural bunching effect. Solitons are generally useful fellows, with many important applications in optics, electronics, magnetics, and even biology.

Unfortunately, solitons also form naturally in transportation systems when traffic is high. SKIP busses are particularly susceptible to soliton formation. As soon as two SKIP busses get a bit closer to one another than normal, the SKIP bus in front starts taking on more riders, leaving fewer for the bus in back. As a result, the bus in back speeds up while the bus in front slows down. This results in the “nose-to-tail” SKIP busses we see on busy winter mornings during rush hour parading up and down Broadway, each trying in vain to pass the other and regain its schedule in defiance of the well understood mechanics of soliton formation.

The operators of the HOP have correctly recognized that schedules are less important than maintaining a uniform distance between closely spaced busses on crowded routes. They do this by having more quickly traveling busses wait for a short time at the end of the route to let the other busses catch up a bit and even out the overall distribution of busses on the route. Unfortunately the operators of the SKIP busses do not follow this practice, wasting much tax payer money paying for two drivers and their busses to do the work of one.

Dylan Williams
Boulder Continue reading →

In reference to the ground zero mosque controversy , my observation is that finding a solution based upon what the Imam said or what the constitution implies or what symbolism is relevant is a vacuous pursuit. We don’t need big governments interfering in our lives nor do we need politicians stuffing their morality down our overstuffed throats. Let’s allow Americans to solve this problem in a time honored traditional way that would make our founding fathers proud. Simply put, let the free market determine the outcome. If a buyer and a seller can agree upon a price and no zoning laws are violated, then it’s a deal.

Len Aitken
Boulder Continue reading →