Why you should not sign a charter amendment change proposal
Castle Rock - Most of what is shown here (or all of it) is in private ownership
The Heart of Golden project which involves moving city hall and police to the location of the former Miller/Coors office building is moving forward. (People reasonably ask "what about the museum", and that is also in the mix, but we are studying our entire arts and culture scene, so how it plays out is unclear). Since the city almost never builds new facilities, it is smart and prudent to hire an agent acting on our behalf to design and manage this project. At the city council meeting on 5/15, we let out a multi-year contract to do just that. There were many many people who spoke up against our moving forward at all, without a vote of the people. A set of local residents has formed a committee to change our charter. The specific change they want to make is yet to be shared, but basically they want to demand a vote of citizens for all issuance of debt that exceeds a certain amount. It was very clear from the presentations by folks that they are motivated and could quite possibly push for this question to come to voters soon. And by soon, I mean before the fall election. The city would have to pay for a separate election which may just include this question. And if passed, they would have to pay for some unknown series of elections in the future. I was in vocal (see my comments here) opposition to this question being put on the ballot. As I pointed out, we are a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. What I made clear was that as such, and with people on different sides on a given issue, that it was literally impossible to please everyone. People who spoke in favor of this included many of the losing candidates from last falls district and mayor's races, some are on the petition committee, others not. . So, they were not elected to be representative, but now want to have a direct vote to enact change. I am VERY concerned that passage of limitations on the ability of the city council to make prudent fiscal decisions for all voters will result in worse strategic planning, worse maintenance of infrastructure, and a degradation to our quality of life. If offered a chance to sign the petition, I'd ask you not to do so. Ironically we couldn’t even have this conversation had we had this limitation in place, most likely. In 2019, when we bought the Miller/Coors building we did so with somewhat private negotiations. Would we have acquired this land if we waited for a public vote? Hardly.
What is the harm of asking the voters? As I also laid out later in the meeting, the voters are going to be asked to limit borrowing. Without a design for a municipal building it is absolutely imprudent to ask citizens for a vote on funding, when the answer to what we are funding is unclear. Also voters will be given no context around our ability, or inability to react to opportunities that arise all the time. We now have control of 7.5 acres of prime real estate in Goosetown (311 10th) that cost us $12.5M. Would we be able to react to such an opportunity with those limitations?
Above is a picture of castle rock, which is owned by private individuals who have refused to sell to the city or county. But if they change their mind, could we react?
While we did not win the bid, we did seriously consider purchasing the former Xcel property to partner with a group on affordable housing. That property is now going to become a home of a large construction company from what I've heard. The state recently passed a law giving municipalities right-of-first-refusal to purchase apartment buildings to protect their affordability (where as an outside developer often flips the units and increases rents, a municipality could just maintain them as affordable). Would we be able to do so in a fast moving real estate market while waiting for a vote from citizens?
Water rights are always handled in executive session. But if we needed to secure more, how would we ever do so if we had to publicly disclose our interests to seek funding? Or waste water treatment, or water plant rebuild.
These are just a few examples of somewhat unknown-knowns. I'm more concerned about the unknown-unknowns. Our current long term budgetary planning process (which was talked about the same night) has safeguards and has served us well. The way our government works, and has worked, is that if people do not get what they want from their representatives, they change them. I may be fear-mongering, which I find abhorrent as a persuasive technique, but I truly believe that a limitation on future city councils to take on debt has so many "unknown unknowns" as to be too dangerous to try.