Andrew Boucher for City Council

That's right, I'm running for the Fort Collins City Council.

www.andrewboucher.org

We've Moved (finally)

Blogging has resumed after a slight (let's be honest, it's been over a year) delay.

Go here.

Site Re-Launch Coming Soon...

We're going to be re-launching the Fort Collins Insider in the next few weeks. Look out for an updated design, some actual investigative reporting, and even more annoying attempts at wit.

One more thing...

The city has been pushing really hard on the "you cut the budget" theme.

But why are participants limited only to the cuts put forward by city staff?

That seems a bit disingenuous on its face: You cut the budget, but we control the menu.

Some Reading Materials

Red light cameras.

Regulatory silliness from the city. Is this part of an anti-smoking crusade? Busy-work for city staff? An attempt to make it difficult for anyone to do anything in Fort Collins? I just don't get it.

Manvel said smoking from hookahs could lead to health problems and said the city shouldn't "encourage" it.

"I don't necessarily want to throw this wide open and have Fort Collins establish a lot of hookah bars," Manvel said.

Really? Is that your role as a member of the City Council? To determine what the residents of the city want?

More on the size of the Fort Collins city government.

Now THAT's Service!

We had our home delivery of the Coloradoan suspended for a few days while we were out of town, and it wasn't resumed on the appropriate date (actually, it had been about a week.)

So, finally, I wrote a rather snarky e-mail this morning asking when they were planning on resuming our service.

Wouldn't you know it, about five minutes ago someone rings the doorbell with a copy of the Sunday Coloradoan and an apology.

Impressive.

We're Moving...

... and redesigning, rebranding, re-somthingorother - I just haven't figured out what. I'll have more in the next few days.

Ray Czaplewski is Right(?)

Today's letter:

Enforced noise ordinances = More affordable housing.

Let's see here:

a. I agree that we need strong enforcement of our noise ordinances.
b. I agree that we need more affordable housing.

What Czaplewski is saying is that the city can basically open up whole new neighborhoods for young families by making sure those neighborhoods are family-friendly.

It kind of makes sense. We'd essentially be increasing the supply of housing, thus reducing the cost. (Of course, it reduces supply for students, but let's tackle one problem at a time.)

While I was against the three-unrelated rule, I was always in favor of aggressive enforcement of nuisance violators. And now that the three-unrelated rule is law again (yes, I know, it never wasn't law), I'm actually hopeful that it will work.

Anyway, I hope the City Council won't kowtow to the new student-led push to ease up on nuisance penalties. Just because someone gathers a bunch of signatures and gets their name in the paper doesn't mean that their cause is right. Nor does it mean that you have to use their position as the start-point for some sort of compromise.

Hurricane Guru

There's a pretty good profile of CSU Professor William Gray in the Los Angeles Times. (Free registration required.)

New Arrival

Bailey James Boucher, born May 23 at 1:14 PM, 5 lbs., 9 oz. She's got ten fingers, ten toes, and plans to register to vote in time for the August primary. Mother and daughter are doing fine.

All Wet

Hmmmm... Let's check in to see what's going on in the town where I grew up....

The "Growth Should Pay its Own Way" Canard

Glen Colton had an op-ed on Monday, calling for growth to "pay its own way".

Colton's thesis is that:

a) Growth in Fort Collins doesn't pay enough in impact fees to cover its cost on the community.
b) As a result, growth is a net drain on our tax base and leads to higher taxes.
c) Thus, we should demand the growth "pay its own way".

Unfortunately, nowhere in Colton's op-ed does he offer any empirical evidence to back up his claim. We're supposed to just take him at his word that his numbers add up.

Colton notes that any growth requires an expansion of infrastructure (i.e. roads, schools, jails, etc.), and goes on to say that impact fees do not cover the cost of that expansion - which is true: Impact fees from a new shopping center do not cover all of the costs of the infrastructure needed, and impact fees from a new housing development do not cover the costs of a new neighborhood school.

However, Colton completely ignores the sales tax revenues that are brought in by that shopping center and the property tax revenues brought in by the new housing development. Those revenues are a long-term expansion of our overall tax base, providing revenue annually. New residents pay fees to the city for their utilities, pay their property taxes to support the schools, and, when they shop, they pay the sales taxes that feed the city's (anemic) general fund.*

Colton does not factor any of this into his equation - instead, he just counts the one-time development fees.

In other words, Colton ignores the largest contributions of economic development projects: the expansion of the tax base and the multiplier effect of job creation.

*Unless, of course, the anti-growth crowd gets their way and people in Fort Collins are forced to shop outside of the city limits or in Loveland.

Catch-Up Time

Been absent from the blogging world for a few days. Check out some of the new posts below.

Column on the Budget Mess

For more on the budget, see the post below. Here is my take, from my Fort Collins Weekly column:

The bad news? We’re broke. The City of Fort Collins faces a $2.3 million budget shortfall in 2007.

The worse news? The $2.3 million we already know about is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Ominously, sales tax revenues are not on pace with the estimates that were used to craft the 2007 budget. We could be facing an additional $2 million to $4 million deficit – on top of the $2.3 million that we already know about.

By my math, that means a deficit of anywhere from $4.3 million to $6.3 million in 2007.

In anticipation of the original $2.3 million shortfall, city staff put together a package for City Council of potential taxes, fees and cuts to close the gap. Choices include a transportation maintenance fee; a parks maintenance fee ($48-$78 per household per year); the creation of a library district property tax hike (which would go to the ballot); increased “payments in lieu of taxes” (read: higher utility bills); and, yes, even some proposed cuts to city services.

There are two problems with the recommendations. First, these “solutions” were put together with the $2.3 million in mind – not the $6.3 million scenario. Second, the recommendations are based on the same mentality that got us into this mess in the first place.

“The city had some years of rapid economic growth, and during those years previous councils exercised very little fiscal restraint,” says City Councilman Diggs Brown. “Now we’re paying the price, and it’s up to us to fix the problem.”

“You can’t expect sales tax revenues to grow when you’re making it harder to do business in the city,” says Brown. “Previous councils increased taxes, fees and regulations; businesses struggled; sales tax revenues fell; and now we’re facing a serious budget shortfall. We have got to be careful not to make the same mistakes.”

Brown is adamant: “Before we even consider taxes or fees, we must make some difficult cuts.”

Unfortunately, the city staff’s recommendations don’t include enough cuts to cover the shortfall. Even worse, the cuts they’ve proposed are guaranteed to generate the most possible outrage. If there’s enough blowback, the City Council might back down. A cynic might even say that the cuts were chosen not so they would pass, but rather so they are guaranteed to fail.

The city staff’s proposal reads like a laundry list of demographically-targeted, politically-charged issues guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings. What they don’t spell out explicitly is any dollar savings that could come from reducing salaries or benefits for city staff. Instead, they call for further reductions in Dial-A-Ride (seniors); cuts to recreation scholarships (underprivileged kids); closing the library one day a week (library district advocates); and cuts to police programs targeting gang violence and crystal meth (law-and-order conservatives). The goal is to lead the voters to the conclusion that “If that’s what they have to cut, then we might just have to raise taxes.”

Think I’m exaggerating? They’re recommending closing bathrooms at neighborhood parks. You can’t argue with the urgency and anger of a voter with a full bladder.

It’s bureaucratic blackmail. If the City Council doesn’t raise taxes and fees, the cuts as proposed are guaranteed to produce outraged citizens, sympathetic newspaper profiles, and indignant letters to the editor.

The City Council should demand a new menu of cuts, based on the most pessimistic estimates and putting everything on the table. That should include a hard look cutting salaries and benefits and a re-examination of the city policy that requires Fort Collins pay its employees more than the average employees of other cities.

A year ago, one candidate for mayor spoke of the city’s “economic health” and advocated “aggressive, smart management of the city budget.” The other promised to declare 2006 “The Year of the Arts in Fort Collins.” The voters elected the serious candidate with a clear-eyed view of our fiscal realities.

It’s time to get serious. Let’s hope our mayor lives up to his mandate.

The Budget Mess

Long story short:

We're out of money. Sales tax revenues are lagging behind projections and we face a budget shorfall of anywhere from $4.8 - $6.8 million.

Let the long, hot summer of healthy debate on spending priorities begin.

The Fort Collins Weekly broke the story on Tuesday.


Is Fort Collins Running on Empty?

City Manager warns of “hard conversations” needed to deal with a 2007 budget shortfall that’s “significantly greater” than projected

By Greg Campbell

Despite a revolutionary new approach to balancing the city’s budget, Fort Collins could be looking at yet another staggering shortfall in revenue to fund city services in 2007 if sales tax collections continue to lag behind projections.

The 2006-2007 budget was adopted knowing that another $2.3 million in cuts to services or additional revenue would be required to pay for a pavement maintenance program in 2007, but if sales tax collections don’t improve markedly, the city could be looking at an additional $2 million to $4 million deficit in its general fund for 2007.

In a worse case scenario, the city could be looking to fill a financial hole in its budget of as much as $6 million, a shortfall that seems to have caught city officials by surprise.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

“This is a significantly larger gap than we anticipated,” says City Manager Darin Atteberry. “The problem is significantly greater than $2.3 million.”

This news comes only months after the city adopted the biannual budget using a method called Budgeting For Outcomes in which more than $5 million was already cut to balance the city’s bottom line. Although far from perfect, the method was applauded at City Hall as an intuitive and common sense approach to funding city services that are critical to citizens while maintaining fiscal responsibility. Perhaps the only hitch was that it left a $2.3 million gap in funding for the pavement maintenance program. The budget was still considered “balanced” because it assumed City Council would implement a so-called Transportation Maintenance Fee, or TMF, to close the gap. The fee would be paid by property owners based on the amount of auto traffic they generate and would be applied to street repair.

But before deciding to go with the TMF, City Council directed the city staff to assemble a list of possible further cuts to services as well as a list of possible fee and tax increases, including the TMF, that could balance the 2007 budget. City Council was to discuss the options at a study session on Tuesday, May 9.

The trouble is that keeping the remainder of the budget balanced rests on the assumption that sales and use tax collections would behave as they were forecasted to behave, which is to grow at a rate of 3 to 4 percent.

So far, that hasn’t happened.

“We’re going to be significantly lower than our projections we made in ’05,” Atteberry says. “Our sales are generally flat. The good news is that sales aren’t on a steep decline. Whereas we projected a slight incline, the gap between the projection and actual (collections) shows relatively little to no growth.”

Yet the current rate of collections would be low enough to jeopardize the 2006 budget if it weren’t for a one-time spike in sales tax related to a business sale in February.

When that one-time spike is deducted, and as city staff evaluated preliminary results of retail sales from April, it has become obvious that collections that are “trending below” projections, says Deputy City Manager Diane Jones.

“If our trend continues, based on what we have now … we would have been under (for 2006),” she says.

Therefore, City Council will be eyeing the staff’s options for cutting services, raising revenue or both with a much larger figure in mind, one that is two to nearly three times what was expected.

The list of services that may be cut is sobering for a city that has already endured millions of dollars in reductions to services and amenities to cope with previous declines in sales tax collections. While many believe the city is more efficient and responsible operating in a leaner fashion, some of the cuts have been difficult for residents to swallow, such as the pending closure of the Youth Athletic Center and the discontinuation of the city’s SmartTrips program.

Another round of cuts could go significantly deeper, but Atteberry stresses that it’s up to the City Council whether to adopt cuts or implement fees—or come up with a combination of both—to cope with the anticipated shortfall.

No decisions have yet been made, he says.

“This isn’t a list of recommended cuts,” Atteberry says, “It’s a first look at what should be considered. … We’re not recommending, at this point, those cuts.”

Among the options for reducing expenses:

• From the police department, eliminate the criminal impact unit, which investigates gang activity and crimes related to the sale and distribution of methamphetamine; the motorcycle traffic enforcement patrol; and the school resource officer program for a total savings of approximately $1.6 million.

• From the Cultural, Library and Recreational Services department, permanently close neighborhood park restrooms in lieu of portable toilets; eliminate all flower plantings between Laurel Avenue and the Gateway Bridge, with the exception of Old Town Square; eliminate the recreational scholarship program which pays fees for city recreational services for low-income residents; close Gateway Park; and close the library for one day a week for a total savings of $656,000.

• From Transportation Services, cut maintenance at the Harmony Transfer Center in half, which would reduce the schedule for snow clearing, weed trimming and street-stripe painting; reduce the pavement maintenance program by $300,000 for 2007 only; reduce Dial-A-Ride service, which was an emotionally-charged topic during the last round of cuts, to no more than what’s required by the Americans With Disabilities Act, reducing ridership by 30 percent; and end the city-employee parking subsidy for a total savings of more than $1 million.

• From Community Planning and Environmental Services, cut staffing in half at the Historic Preservation Planning department; eliminate the Human Services Program and the Historic Preservation Design Assistance Program; cut a number of positions in the Natural Resources Department, including from Air Quality and Solid Waste; cancel contracts to fund business database subscriptions; eliminate an initiative to host charettes on emerging trends in development; and suspend funding on the South College Corridor Plan for one year for a total savings of $748,500.

• From the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Services department, reduce appropriates for software upgrades, absorb the grocery tax rebate administration into other departments and eliminate $93,000 from the governmental affairs program for a total savings of $213,000.

All told, the cuts would whack $4.3 million from the city’s budget if all of them were implemented. That doesn’t count a possible re-evaluation of employee pay and benefits.

Options for additional revenue that could be generated to make up the shortfall include the Transportation Maintenance Fee which is be expected to yield up to $2.3 million; a Parks Maintenance Fee program that could yield between $2.6 million and $4.3 million depending on if it were applied to only city parks or to both city parks and neighborhood parks; and an increase to the Electric Payments-in-Lieu-of-Taxes program to generate $700,000. These options could be implemented by City Council ordinance; another idea under consideration is the formation of a Library District that could generate another $2.3 million to $4 million depending on the number of mills added to property taxes. That initiative requires approval by voters.

Jones says that although this smorgasbord of options was compiled to address only the $2.3 million shortfall in the pavement maintenance program, City Council has more than enough options to combine to cover the larger deficit caused by lagging sales tax collections.

Although she and Atteberry caution that estimates of a “significant” sales tax revenue shortfall are based on only four months of data, it’s smart to start considering ways to deal with it if the current revenue trends continue.

“We’re following it very, very closely,” she says. “We want to keep everybody well-informed with timely information to get it handled.”

The question likely on many council members’ minds—as well as citizens’—is why was the forecast off so dramatically? Why is the city once again having to consider painful cuts, increased cost of living, or a combination of the two?

The answer is two-fold. The most obvious reason, says Atteberry, is that people aren’t spending as much money in Fort Collins as hoped. The majority of money the city has to spend on things like police patrols, historic preservation and library services comes largely from sales taxes levied on goods bought and sold within city limits.

“The bottom line is retail sales have not come in the way we projected and hoped for,” he says.
The second reason is more complicated and has to do with the way that Fort Collins forecasts its economic health.

“The model has proven to not be the best predictor of our economic forecast,” Atteberry says.
Historically, Fort Collins has based its economic predictions on state data that estimates people’s disposable income. Pointing to a graph tracking state projections versus local collections, Jones shows that Fort Collins’ has more than kept pace from 1992 to 2001.

“As long as Fort Collins mirrored or tracked what was happening statewide, it was a very good predictor,” she says.

Actual collections plunged compared to the state projections after the 9/11 terrorist attacks but have gained ground since. What the forecast model did not predict, however, was regional retail pressure.

“The modeling says we’re still in OK shape,” Jones says. “The disposable income for the state is up, but I guess it depends on where you dispose of it.”

Lately, people have been disposing of it in Loveland and other growing cities in Northern Colorado. The Promenade Shops at Centerra are undoubtedly responsible for some of this retail siphoning, but so too are retailers that open multiple stores in a regional market, she says. In other words, with a Home Depot in Loveland and a Home Depot in Greeley, why drive to Fort Collins to shop at Home Depot?

Jones adds that it was no mystery to city staff that the opening of Centerra would impact sales tax revenue. To account for it, staff reduced the city’s revenue forecast by the margin of error contained in the state forecast, $1.6 million.

“We tried to, statistically, as best we could, address that, but it’s not looking like it was enough,” she says.

Indeed, the news of the looming 2007 shortfall has Atteberry and Jones reconsidering the way Fort Collins conducts its economic forecasts. They will soon be speaking to other regional finance managers to learn their methods.

“We want to explore different tools,” Jones says. “What do they use, what are some of their tools? … It’s really, really important that we have as accurate a predictor as possible because we rely on that to translate into services for our citizens.”

Despite the grim news, both say Fort Collins can weather the change. Preparing for a possible hit to the 2007 budget early is critical to making sound decisions, Jones says. While Budgeting for Outcomes has gotten City Council familiar with trimming the fat and doing more with less, Atteberry cautions that the months ahead are going to be trying.

“From Tuesday through November (when the 2007 budget is adopted), we’re going to have some very, very hard conversations,” he says.

More FOP Follies

The entire City Council writes a soapbox rebutting the claims of the Fraternal Order of Police.

The police respond by essentially calling the Mayor a liar. Classy.

Ray Czaplewski is RIGHT

We may disagree on 98 percent of the issues facing this community, but that remaining 2 percent includes the Fraternal Order of Police ballot initiative. (His letter appeared in the Fort Collins Weekly, but there's no link available.)

Ummm... Okay.

This is the voice of opposition?

Pretty Cool

The Coloradoan is now offering video coverage of local news on its website.

Disgraceful

From the Denver Post:

Holtzman's campaign manager, Dick Leggitt, admitted Friday that he lied to a Denver Post reporter in an e-mail by fabricating poll numbers that purportedly showed Holtzman's name recognition going from "10 percent to 70 percent and his favorables among GOP primary voters are now just slightly less than (U.S. Rep. Bob) Beauprez's (39 to 42)."

Leggitt also admitted he made up polling results indicating that support for ballot measures Referendums C and D was lagging.

"We didn't have any polling results," Leggitt said during the administrative court hearing. "It's what we in the election business call spin."

No, Dick. That's called lying. "Spin" is offering a favorable view of the situation - not fabricating facts out of whole cloth.

This is unethical, disgraceful and unacceptable, and it should be particularly upsetting to anyone involved in politics - especially those who make their living in politics.

Leggitt should resign now. Better yet, Holtzman should fire him - not only because of the complete lack of ethics, but also because he has absolutely zero credibility now that he's had to defend his political lies under oath. Who's going to believe a word that comes out of his mouth?

FOP Follies

Here's my Fort Collins Weekly column from this week. This isn't an issue of how much we value and appreciate our police force. It's an issue of whether or not we want the decision of how much we pay our police force to be taken out of our hands as citizens.

One more thing that I didn't emphasize enough in this column (hey, it's only 650 words): This is a budget buster.

Right now the Fort Collins city budget is a zero-sum game. If the police get a mandated raise, some other project is going to take a hit. If you have a stake in any aspect of the city budget, be it bike paths, public transportation, lawnmower rebate programs, the wood smoke hotline, high-tech crosswalk technology, or even such items as roads, utilities and infrastructure, you should be very wary of the FOP proposal.

Here's the column:

The Fraternal Order of Police is asking voters to vote away the power of their vote.

The police union is asking us to pass a measure that will limit our ability to govern ourselves by taking power out of the hands of our elected City Council and handing it over to an unelected third party.

Right now, the City Council controls how our government spends our tax dollars. Various competing city departments vie for a slice of the city budget. Some departments get cut, some see budget increases. Some employees get raises, others see their jobs eliminated in hard fiscal times. The final decisions are made by the City Council, and the final decisions about who sits on the City Council are made by the voters of Fort Collins. It is a system of built-in accountability, and the ultimate accountability is to the voters on election day.

The police union wants to change that. You might have noticed representatives of the police union standing outside of supermarkets around the city, gathering signatures. They’re trying to put a question on the ballot that will change the City Charter, forcing the city to accept binding arbitration in contract disputes with the union. In other words, if the City Council does not meet the union’s salary and contract demands, the union can declare an impasse and the case will go to an arbitrator. The arbitrator will make a decision about how much the police will be paid, and that decision will be binding.

If the police union gets its way, no longer will the City Council be able to weigh competing budget priorities. They will be forced to accept the dictates of an arbitrator and then divvy up the remaining budget to the other departments. If the decision of the arbitrator means less money for road maintenance, bike paths or cost-of-living increases for other employees, so be it. The City Council – and thus the voters – won’t even have a say in the process.

Two years ago, the voters of Fort Collins voted for a ballot measure that granted the Fraternal Order of Police the right to collective bargaining and the right to binding arbitration. The collective bargaining went into place, but after 58 days of negotiations last year the union declared an impasse and asked for binding arbitration.

However, it turns out that the 2004 measure was flawed. The City Charter clearly stipulates that all decisions on personnel are to be made by the City Council, and the 2004 measure did nothing to change the City Charter. In other words, City Council by law must have the final say over any contract – to give up that right to an independent arbitrator as proscribed by the 2004 measure would be in violation of the law. The police union is now trying to change that law.

Because the 2004 measure passed, the police union is accusing the City Council of ignoring the will of the voters. And it is true that the voters did indeed vote for binding arbitration as part of the 2004 measure. But because that measure was flawed, the police union has to go back to the voters to ask them to change the City Charter.

In other words, the voters get a second chance.

As it is right now, the elected City Council has the final say in contract negotiations. As it is right now, the voters of Fort Collins have the final say over who sits on the City Council. We get to vote every two years, and if we don’t like how the City Council is running the city, we, as voters, have an opportunity to make a change on Election Day.

The Fraternal Order of Police is asking the voters of Fort Collins to take power from our elected City Council and hand it over to an unelected third party.

We, as voters, are the final level of accountability in our community. Let’s keep it that way.

Good Questions

From David May's column in Monday's Coloradoan:

For our part as voters, we have an obligation to pay attention and let elected officials know what we think about their money proposals and service cuts.

We have the ultimate say at the ballot box by re-electing them, or not, and approving their tax measures, or not.

With all of these government entities, it's important to ask them some hard questions and listen closely to their answers.

Before asking for higher taxes, what have you done to scrub the budget of waste and to find efficiencies? Exactly why do you think you need more money, and what will it be used for? How much have revenues grown over the last 20 years and how does that compare to inflation and population growth? How do you compare to other communities and districts?'

Go read the whole thing.

Pure Genius

I actually recommend the Sagamore Bridge rotary. Either way, this guy's right on.

The Fourth Congressional District

Here's my Fort Collins Weekly column this week:

Not All Politics Are Local

By Andrew Boucher

In Fort Collins, politics often revolves around local issues. We have hearty debates on occupancy ordinances, water rates and public transportation. You want local? Our City Council is currently embroiled in fierce debate on how best to euthanize hundreds of disease-infested prairie dogs.

But the famous quote “all politics are local” doesn’t refer to city councils. It was a phrase coined by Tip O’Neill, the legendary Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, to emphasize that even members of Congress need to be responsive to local issues.

In 2006, however, not all politics are local in Fort Collins, especially not when it comes to our race for the U.S. House of Representatives. We have one of the most contentious House races in the country. Democrat state Rep. Angie Paccione is challenging incumbent Republican Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave. To mix things up, former Reagan Administration official Eric Eidsness announced over the weekend that he is running on the Reform Party ticket.

This is a very targeted column, with a very simple message. If you’re a longtime Musgrave supporter, you don’t need to read any further. Likewise, if you’re driving around with a “Bush Lied, People Died” bumper sticker on your car, this column isn’t likely to resonate with you.

Some of you, however, might still be uncertain whether or not you will be voting for Musgrave, and if this describes you, keep reading. Let’s be honest, almost everyone has an opinion about her, and in some circles it’s considered gauche to be a fervent Musgrave supporter. Unless you only spend your time with Republicans, when Musgrave’s name comes up, you’ve probably heard the refrain: “I usually vote Republican, but…”

That’s not going to cut it in 2006. The message this election season is simple: A vote for Angie Paccione or Eric Eidsness is a vote for uncertainty in the war on terror.

Fast-forward to January of next year. Imagine Nancy Pelosi taking the podium and being handed the gavel as the new Speaker of the House. A Democrat-controlled House of Representatives would put Michigan’s John Conyers in the chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Conyers has already signaled that he’s ready to begin impeachment proceedings. While that might be a way for Conyers to score some face time on television and the Democrats to score some political points, it’s not an effective way to fight a war.

What about support for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? Can you imagine what would happen to our nation’s ability to wage war if every battlefield decision were subject to a grandstanding Congressional committee? Would the fledgling democracies in those countries be confident moving forward if they thought that a vindictive and partisan Democrat-controlled Congress might at any point cut off funding for their rebuilding programs?

All of those issues will be decided right here in Fort Collins this November. The national Democrats are targeting Marilyn Musgrave’s seat, and a pickup of only 15 seats nationwide will put Democrats in control of the House. Do you trust the security of the United States to the Congressional Democrats?

Now, I don’t know where Angie Paccione or Eric Eidsness stand on impeachment or security issues. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. If the Democrats pick up those 15 seats, the most important vote our next member of Congress will get to cast will be for the leadership of the House of Representatives. It’s a vote we can’t afford to lose.

So when you head into the privacy of the voting booth next November, don’t think about what your neighbors may say. Think about the image of Nancy Pelosi with a gavel. Think about John Conyers and other Democrat committee chairmen presiding over Congressional inquiries into every minute aspect of the war on terror.

Not all politics are local. The ability of our country to defend itself might just come down to one vote in Fort Collins this November.

Finally

I usually wake up on Wednesday mornings with a sense of dread: "What did the City Council do last night?"

Well, this morning brought a pleasant surprise: "Before implementing any new programs to increase its waste diversion rate from 25 percent to 50 percent, City Council decided Tuesday night the city needs to determine if that goal is appropriate in the first place."

New Media

Want to know what's going on with the elections in the Ukraine?

Bob Schaffer's there, and he's blogging for the Denver Post.