Denver Post Article: COS turning out streetlights to save on the electric bill (Colorado Springs: for sale, how much)

[tfox]

Sunday's Denver Post article about COS trying to cut costs:

Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many - The Denver Post

Apparently they're going to be shutting off streetlights in order to save money on electric bills, to say nothing of cutting back on police, fire, libraries, etc.

I kind of wonder if the city has is trying to do these things mostly to demonstrate to the notoriously tax-averse voters how deep their fiscal pain really is. Something like when companies remove the free coffee from the breakroom when earnings are down -- it creates an overall "feeling" of belt-tightening more than actually saving much money.

Wonder what the thoughts of Springs residents is on this one. Of course, I realize that the post never misses an opportunity to poke fun at our neighbors to the south.

IMHO, I wonder if COS and its voters are still wrestling with what exactly the city should be "when it grows up" -- this recession is just bringing those tough choices into clearer view.

[Bob from down south]

I'm proud that Colorado Springs is one of the few cities that has strapped on the challenge of living within greatly reduced means as the deleveraging from our debt crisis plays out over the course of probably at least 10 years. Turning off some of the streetlights won't throw the city into anarchy, and I'd rather see brown grass in the parks than cutbacks to a four day school week like they're talking about in Pueblo.

Geez, the Post quotes some snotty-nose criminal justice student that thinks helicopters patrolling bus stops is economically feasible and necessary.

The entire country is going to be in this boat soon enough...we can't borrow $trillions of dollars every year for long, and we're going to see the same kinds of pressure on programs at every level...highway maintenance, education, defense, etc. Best that we put on our game faces early and avoid digging a hole with local spending that can't be sustained when the BIG bill for FedGov's insane spending frenzy comes due.

[Terytee]

Gosh! I sure wish I had voted for a tax hike......NOT!

IMO, when folks are having a hard time putting food on the table, or are out looking for work day-in, day-out, no streetlights and messy parks are kinda' trivial.

[froggin4colorado]

No street lights is fine by me. In fact, I discovered out here in Williamsburg there are few street lights and things are fine. If this helps with the budget- go for it! This is why we yell at our kids to turn off the lights when they are done in the room and why we don't turn them on in the day.

[treedonkey]

Maybe the city should start an 'adopt-a-streetlight' program... How much can it cost to run one of those things for a year?

I agree with froggin' - it creates a 'feeling' of savings but it's really just a smoke screen to veil the impossibility of fixing the root problem... kinda like 'heightened' airport security.

[Bob from down south]

I prefer to think of it as "if it doesn't provide a cost-effective benefit to the taxpayers" then I won't vote for it.

[Kibbiekat]

"More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled."

Read more: Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many - The Denver Post

the streetlights would be the least of my worries. Actually, no street lights in combination with fewer cops...

[Mike from back east]

Any litmus test based on "cost-effective benefit to the taxpayers" is a very slippery slope. I don't like that as a metric; it's nearly impossible to measure or to even agree on what's in/out to be measured in the first place.

First, we have to define the term "cost effective." Are we talking about making a profit, or something else like getting the best price for those goods and services which government procures?

Few things we consider "basic, essential city services" may pass a test for cost effectiveness, that's why government usually does these things, they are considered to be "basic and essential city services" which are usually found in the public domain (parks, buses, PD, FD, EMTs, roads, etc) and not part of the free enterprise world (hotels, restaurants, car dealers, house building, banking, health care, groceries, clothing, phone and cable, etc).

For sure, schools don't make a penny of profit, cost us hundreds of millions of dollars per year, but are they cost effective? How do we measure that? Whose "generally accepted" method of accounting should we use for that determination? What school costs are in or out (sports? arts? music? lunch? driver ed? sex ed? buses? athletic fields? gyms? pools? auditoriums? school nurse?). We've agreed before that schools are funded "for the public good" but that SAME argument holds for many other things, such as buses, parks, street lights, not to mention the PD, FD and EMT services.

I contend it's barely feasible to downright impossible to use "cost effective" as a basis for whether or not city services get funded. Public safety in the way of PD, FD and EMT are usually first on the list of critical items, followed by Public Health services, roads, infrastructure, schools, courts, jails, transit, parks, etc, though my list is hastily generated and certainly neither complete nor infallible.

It's not really a case of "cost-effective benefit to the taxpayers" but rather a case of:
- Are these services PROPER for the city to fund/perform? If so,
- How BEST can the city fund and perform these (in-house or contract out)?
- Whether performed by city or contractor, are we getting VALUE for our money?

[tfox]

Although I 100% agree with Mike's argument that some city services are ABSOLUTELY part of the government's responsibility to provide, there is a bit more here that meets the eye, in my opinion.

The Post writer seems to blame the voters for the shortfall, noting that the voters failed to pass a ballot initiative which would TRIPLE the property tax. I think it goes without saying that there's not a city in this country that is going to vote to triple their property taxes, regardless of how liberal/conservative the voting base might be. Even putting something like that on the ballot seems to me an admission of failure by the current leadership, and the attempt is kind of like a desperate, flailing attempt to cope with the problem. What's more, it seems that the government of Colorado Springs, much like many other state and municipal governments around the country, was caught completely unprepared by the arrival of an economic recession.

Recently the city of Denver made a (mostly successful) push for an expansion of property taxes called "Better Denver." While it's definitely true that Denver is much more liberal city than the Springs, I think there's quite a difference in the way it went about it that could be instructive. First, the taxes were very modest in scope, such that the proposed increases, even if all passed, were only a matter of 1-2% of the tax bill, and still left Denver's property taxes among the lowest in the Metro area. The city laid out very specifically what every dollar would go to pay for, and broke it out into about a dozen ballot items, letting the residents select what they thought was a worthwhile use of their money. In the end, all but a couple of the items passed. Voters saw what their money was going to be spent on, and they figured it was worth the money. In a couple cases the voters apparently didn't like what they saw and so they voted those down.

Bottom line is that I think even voters in conservative Colorado Springs would vote for a tax increase IF they felt like they were getting a good value for money spent. Apparently the voters haven't felt that so far.

[Josseppie]

Originally Posted by Bob from down south

Gee I hope not. Who says we want things here to change? I don't. We're dealing with our challenges without even thinking of taking our kids out of school. You folks down in Brown Town don't seem to have that same sense of priorities. You'd rather pay for a useless riverwalk and enormous bluegrass yards in the middle of an alpine desert than full time schools I guess.

So we'll keep what we have, and you can stew in the juices of your own misplaced priorities down there.

Things seem to be changing up there, just not in a good way. Let wait 10 years and see what both cities look like.