The city of Evans is having elections for city council on April 4. There is a debate scheduled for tomorrow night. I encourage all Evans residents to attend.

The Evans Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a City Council Candidate Debate Forum on Wednesday, March 15 at 7:00 p.m. at the Evans Community Center. All candidates running for office for the Regular Municipal Election will be invited to attend this debate.

OK everybody, in case you missed the memo, the Greeley City Council is holding their quarterly Town Meeting tonight. The meeting will be from 5:30-6:30 pm at Billie Martinez Elementary School.

Interestingly enough I am going to attempt to attend this meeting. To date I have attended exactly ZERO town meetings in my life. Fortunately this blog has seemed to have a positive effect on at least one person - it’s author.

I encourage you to attend the meeting, if you cannot, I will attempt to have a summary tomorrow - that is if it’s not a complete yawn.

Update: Unfortunately, my employer needed my assistance at the end of the day today. As a result I wasn’t able to attend the town meeting. Hopefully it went well…

On March 10, 2006 Greeley had it’s very own protest. Local college students carried signs and chanted in downtown Greeley to express their displeasure with a recent decision by Weld County District Attorney, Ken Buck. The district attorney decided to not take a sexual assault case to court due to the circumstances surrounding the incident. It’s a long, complicated story involving an ex-lover and alcohol that I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that Buck found the case to be unprovable based on his many years in the legal profession.

The thing I find interesting, and dissappointing, about this story is the way the protesters went about their demonstration. Appearantly it wasn’t enough just to express their views on the issue, they also felt the need to make personal attacks on the District Attorney with slogans like “Ken Buck, You Suck”. Hmm… maybe I should re-read the story. Sounds more like third graders in a school yard than university students at a serious protest.

A new group called El Voto Latino has been created in our fine city. It’s goal is to register 5,000 new Latino voters before the next election. This is a fantastic initiative, and wholeheartedly supported by Greeley Elections. I believe that EVERY eligible citizen should register, educate themselves and vote on election day- especially on local issues.

So many people today think their vote doesn’t make a difference, and when it comes to federal elections they are often right. Local elections, on the other hand, can often be influenced by by a mere handful of people. Take a look at the most recent election returns for Weld County. Many of the races were decided by very few votes and 5,000 votes could change nearly all of them.

I wish the best of luck to El Voto Latino in meeting their goal, and if there is anything I can do to help out, please let me know.

During research for my previous post on the new city noise ordinances I thought I would look at the minutes from the city council meeting and see exactly what went on. To my chagrin, the minutes weren’t available yet. Now I’m sure that the webmaster for a city like Greeley is probably really busy, so I thought I would check and see how other local cities were maintaining their websites. Both
Minutes and voting records from both Fort Collins and Loveland’s city council meetings on March 7, 2006 were already available.

Even more disturbing was this statement:
Because there is a sizeable cost associated with the storage of these files on-line, generally only one month of agendas and minutes will be maintained on this web site in an effort to minimize the cost to Greeley taxpayers.

Sizeable cost? For my websites I currently pay about $25/month for 5Gb per space. The cost works out to about 1/2 cent per month per Megabyte. I downloaded the most recent minutes file from the city council website just to see what the size was. The pdf file for February 21, 2006 is 650Kb. The city of Greeley should be able to store each file for about 3.9 cents a YEAR. Not what I would call a sizeable cost. OK, maybe they are paying more than I am, so again I went to the Fort Collins and Loveland sites. Fort Collins has Agendas and Voting Records available back to January 2000. Loveland has archives all the way back to November of 1997.

I, for one, would encourage the City of Greeley to step up their online documentation. Lets make the information about the city council’s activites more accessible to the people of Greeley by keeping their website up to date.

On Tuesday, March 7, 2006 the Greeley City Council passed two new noise ordinances. The first, in response to a complaint by Merv Davies, requires city businesses to get a special license if they have live music and are within 100 feet of a residence. Mr. Davies and his family live in a loft above a local restaurant/bar in the downtown area named Corleone’s and he appearantly thinks the establishment is too noisy.

Anyone familiar with the city of Greeley knows that the downtown area is not exactly what would be termed residential. There may be lofts above the businesses, but it is primarily a commercial district, in fact a commercial district that the city has been attempting to revive for the last 20+ years. If the Davies family has such a problem with the noise level from Corleone’s why didn’t they just move to a quieter location? This ordinance will do little to encourage downtown businesses to stay open and improve the area.

The other problem with this ordinance is it’s citywide implications. Greeley is not exactly a town booming with entertainment options. The city council has decided that the peace and quiet of one man that has chosen to live in a commercial area is more important than the rights of businessmen, the ability for musicians and artists to perform and the entertainment of thousands of local patrons in a city of nearly 80,000 people. This is a matter between a business owner and a resident that should have been settled privately between them. This is not an issue that is even worthy of the attention of our City Council.

In a related item, the city council also passed an ordinance raising the fine for a first time noise ordinance to $1000. Greeley is a college town and as such there are often college parties in the student’s off-campus residences. These loud college parties were the motivation for this ordinance. Maybe it’s just me, but $1000 for a first time offense of a noise ordinance seems a little out of control. I have been to college parties before, as many of us I’m sure have, and sometimes they get a bit out of control. Attempting to raise the fine to a level that is out of reach for most university students will only further encourage these students to leave this town and seek entertainment elsewhere. Greeley residents need to take a hard look at the policies their city council is engaging in and take an active role in setting these policies. Greeley will never outgrow the stigma of being a stinky cow town if we continue to discourage our students from spending their time here and convince local businesses that they should move to a more friendly city.

Last November the city of Greeley Colorado held their general elections. As a civic minded citizen who tends to vote in every public election I was saddened when I realized I had to pick some candidates on a completely random basis. I realized there were people running for elected offices that I had never even heard of before. As a response to that I’ve decided to start this blog. So many of us are concerned about politics at a national level, but barely concern ourselves with the elected officials that make decisions effecting our everyday lives.

The purpose of this site is to educate and document the actions of our city council, school board and Weld County Commisioners. In accordance with that intention I welcome any comments or submissions directly related with governmental actions. We will discuss things like city planning, traffic patterns, public transportation, CSAP tests in our schools, pet restrictions, noise ordinances and any other relevant topics. We will not discuss religion, federal politics and any other completely unrelated issues. If you would like to discuss other random topics with local residents I highly recommend starting your own blog at the Greality website. Anyone who has any comments or articles for the site, please send them to me. As long as they are well thought out and non-inflammatory I will post them. This includes informative information from our elected officials or candidates themselves. I’m looking forward to many lively discussions.