The City of Greeley has cancelled the annual fall cleanup. Street superintendent, Jerry Picket, stated the attendance has been down by 48% so it’s not worth doing.

This move is going to save the city $30,000. Maybe they can use that money to start offering graffiti cleanup service - since they can’t seem to get a handle on the gang problem and related acts of vandalism.

So the Greeley City Council agreed to allow the Rancho Libirio grocery store to build on 43rd Ave.

All in all, they made the right decision. Traffic studies said the streets will handle the new store and the property is zoned correctly. This may not have been good for the cities overall growth and property values, but that has more to do with the zoning allowed by the current council’s predecessors zoning decisions.

The decision that I really question (and this is more for the owners of Rancho Libirio itself) is the viability of a latino themed grocery in that location. If the goal is, as it seems, to cater to traditional type latino cooking wouldn’t the location be better suited further east? The neighborhoods surrounding the new Rancho Libirio site are predominantly modern families that, even if they are from hispanic descent, are probably not going to spend the majority of their food preperation time creating traditional type dishes. Guess that’s the burden of owning a business and not the responsibilty of the City Council. They did their job, made sure the site was allow was properly zoned and protected the property owners rights.

The Greeley City Council voted yesterday to postpone a vote on the controversial Rancho Liborio Market.

For those of you not from the Greeley area, the proposed market is slated to be built off 43rd ave a block from the local country club. The area is right off the main (only) artery into the city and in an area where the nearby housing prices are upwards of $275k (median prices in Greeley for August 2006 are $165k).

While rights of the individual property owner are very important, so are the responsibility of local city planners and zoning authorities. The Greeley City Council doesn’t seem to have a grasp on the perpetual impact on property prices and traffic patterns that allowing high volume retail establishments like Wal-Mart (who is across the street from the Country Club) and Rancho Liborio Market can have on the areas. Greeley already has a reputation as a cow town with a gang problem, yet our local government fails to take steps to keep the nicer parts of town nice. Ranto Liborio is quite probably a fine establishment, but Greeley is a big town. Why do they have to build a grocery store that wants to slaughter live chickens smack dab in the middle of one of the nicer neighborhoods in the city?