Many Weld County residents met last night to discuss the extension or elimination of the State mandated two year term limits on some Weld County officials.

Paul Branham, former Greeley Police Chief, said he is opposed to term limits.

“They’re elected by the people,” Branham said. “If they’re not doing a good job, they should be voted out.”

Branham added that he doesn’t think there’s political support for a removal of term limits so he proposed that the limits be raised to three terms instead of two.

Anyone who knows anything about politics know it doesn’t work that way. Elected officials don’t get voted out just because they aren’t doing a good job. If that was the case people like Marilyn Musgrave, Ted Kennedy and Ted Stevens would be looking for work. Politically, one of the great things about the state of Colorado are it’s term limits. A change of elected officials every four years is a great idea and doesn’t hurt the system at all. Many things can be improved in Weld County, but this is not one of them.

The committee examining term limit extensions will meet for the final time at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 6 in the Weld County Attorney’s office to decide on a recommendation to present to the Board of Weld County Commissioners.

Greeley City Council Member is in hot water with her fellow members of the Weld Technical Advisory Committee for talking too much.

After a few meetings, it became apparent to some committee members that Shaddock was speaking with the media about many topics, something the group had tried to stop after appointing Stan Everitt the de facto chair and spokesman of the group. Shaddock also submitted a short opinion article to the Tribune about the committee’s work, which was published July 15.

While Shaddock and I are not on the same page politically, I have to give her some respect for her stance on this. Her opinion article published July 15th does little more than encourage public involvment. Does the Technical Advisory Committee not want the public to know about their scheduled forums? What can they possibly be discussing that is not fit for public consumption?

On October 2nd there was a terrible accident in Weld County. A 17 year old girl was driving with her brothers, 15 and 12, and her 3 month old daugther. This girl was speeding, ran a stopsign and was hit by a pickup truck. The 15 year old, 12 year old and 3 month old were all killed.

Now, because of the actions of the liberal Greeley Tribune and conservative state Representative Dave Schultheis. Representative Schultheis sent an email to the reporter that covered the crash and asked the following questions:

• Was the driver properly licensed?
• Was the vehicle properly registered, and insured?
• Why aren’t these facts part of your published article?
• Was this person the child of parents in the U.S illegally?
• Or was she here illegally?

Rather than answer the questions, the Tribune just printed the Representative’s letter with these questions:

• What do you think of this?
• Why would Schultheis ask these questions?
• Does it have anything to do with something besides the victim’s surnames?

Now the story has been picked up by 9news, the Colorado Springs Gazette and who knows who else. Representative Schultheis is being accused of racism and the Colorado Democrats are demanding an apology from Schulthesis (not from the Tribune who actually made all of this public and is brazenly using the Bustillos family to boost their revenue).

The ironic thing is that Representative Schulthesis’ questions appear to be right on the money. Last night 9news interviewed Susanne Villarreal who said the Bustillos were in her husband’s citizenship class and were ‘just’ legal (whatever that means).

This is not a racial issue at all. This is a real, valid problem with illegal immigration. We cannot have illegal immigrants in this country driving without a license, without insurance and causing accidents. If this is the case with Miss Bustillos, as tragic as the situation is, she should face criminal charges for the deaths of her family members.

I challenge hispanic ‘activists’ in Weld County and across the nation to wake up and recognize that the illegal immigration issues in this country are not (yet) racially motivated against latinos. There are valid reasons to restrict the widespread immigration of undocumented people into this country and the Bustillos case is just an example of one of these reasons.

As part of the upcoming election process I would like to come up with some questionnaire for our elected officials. I would encourage anyone visiting the site to leave comments about the major issues we face in Northern Colorado and what we expect out of our federal, state, county and local elected officials and specific questions you, our readers, would like to have answered by candidates for office.

Once we have a good list of questions I will post them here and email them to the appropriate candidates to see if we can get some dialog going.

Fredrick and Firestone are Weld County hotbeds for population growth. Many Denver people are looking to move out of the city and Fredrick is a perfect option. One of the side effects of this growth is the increased traffic flow to Denver. To help alleviate congestion Weld County wanted to expand WCR 7 to four lanes through St. Vrain State Park. The city of Fredrick opposed this change and annexed the park to stop the road construction.

The most amusing part of this whole article is the comments of Weld County Commissioner, Mike Gile.

Firestone’s action negates the county’s plans to expand Weld 7, county commissioner Mike Geile said.

“(The annexation) takes away the option to look at a future arterial that will be needed, and we’re confused as to why that’s their intention,” Geile said.

The County Commisioners are ‘confused’? Confused? They don’t understand why routing traffic through a State Park might be a bad thing? I’m no environmentalist, but this still makes perfect sense. We have hundreds of acres of farmland in Weld County and they want to build a road through a State Park? Should be a no-brainer.

If the Weld County Commisioners want my advise (and I’m sure they don’t), maybe they should try a different tactic. Rather than increasing traffic into Denver, perhaps they should focus on

1. Improving public transportation so there are fewer cars on the road
2. Increasing economic growth in Weld County so those of us that have professional level skills don’t have to commute to Denver.

Fortunately the Fredrick city officials are a little less shortsighted than our County Commisioners.