3 days Ago By Gazette readers
Thank you, members of the City Council, for approving Class 1 (pedal-assisted) e-bike use on our trails. By voting yes: you recognize their current, widespread use you provide aging trail-users a legal way to remain active you support local bike shops where e-bikes are keeping the doors open you follow other Colorado cities and counties where Class 1 e-bikes are treated like bikes This vote does not threaten TOPS. Expecting the program to pay for more than it was designed to is a far bigger threat.
Let’s move beyond e-bikes, find more sources of funding and work to make our trails safer for all users. Susan Davies Monument I’m easily confused, and this really has me stumped: e-bikes being declared nonmotorized vehicles. You see e-cars and e-trucks are considered motorized and pay for annual licensing to use state highways, which includes fees for various programs and road projects.
There is even an option to pay additionally for access to state parks. Personally, I don’t think bikes should be allowed on city park trails due to their trail maintenance impacts. If all bikes were licensed annually in the city, the funds could go toward trail and bike lane maintenance.
After all, what is next? Gas-powered trail bikes? ATVs? Where does it end? Vic Ecklund Colorado Springs This is written to encourage the citizens of Colorado Springs to oppose the Karman Line annexation and sign the petition to send this decision back to the City Council. I would also like to address the one-sided and misleading statements by Travas Deal in his OP/ED on Feb. 7 titled “Factors impacting our future water supply”.
First let me remind everyone that the Karman Line annexation proposes to add a 1,900 acre, “master-planned” community by flagpole annexation, and that this proposed annex is three miles east of the Colorado Springs city limits. The proposal is to build 6,500 homes along with businesses, schools, parks, fire and police stations. This will require additional water rights the city does not have.
I attended the council meeting on Jan. 28 and listened to the comments of farmers from the Lower Arkansas River Basin and learned a lot. Mike Bartolo, an agricultural research scientist and long-term farmer, spoke eloquently about the continued decreased water quantity and water quality this annexation will cause.
Decreased quantity due to Front Range cities buying farm property water rights, leaving those farms to dry up and grow weeds (buy and dry). According to Deal, “what we know is that additional water supplies will be needed to meet future growth and mitigate Colorado River risks.” And “Right now we estimate an additional 34,000 acre-feet of water will be needed by 2070”.
This is water that will be needed to build out property within the city limits. Water conservation will help, but the city will need to purchase more water rights, and this will negatively impact the amount of water available for Lower Arkansas River Basin farmers. Decreasing water quality was not mentioned in Deal’s OP/ED but was explained very well by Bartolo.
When the city buys water rights from farmers, the water is taken from Pueblo Reservoir or other reservoirs higher up in the Arkansas River watershed. By extracting this water higher in the watershed, the remaining water in the Lower Arkansas River Basin has a higher level of salts, pollutants and sewage discharge causing farmers to sometimes have to test this water to make sure it is safe to use for irrigation. This is not a “win-win” situation, the city gets clean drinking water while the farmers get water with higher concentration of pollutants.
The Karman Line annexation is too far away from Colorado Springs. Increased utilities, police, fire, roads will create a tax burden for Springs residents. And worst of all, it will negatively impact the water quantity and quality available for farmers in the Lower Arkansas River Basin who grow our food.
We need our elected representatives to start limiting growth and say no to huge development plans well outside the city limits of Colorado Springs. We owe it to the farmers who grow our food to be better stewards of this scarce water resource. Stephen Lenzo Colorado Springs Citizens of Colorado Springs: It is fairly evident, at this point, your City Council is not representing you, the citizen.
They continue to do what they want without regard to what you want. Recent examples include the amphitheater, the marijuana amendment, the high rise apartments downtown, and now Karman Line out east. Some of these projects involve the same developer, which makes me suspicious.
There is a petition going to place the Karman Line project on the April ballot. If you are a registered voter, I implore you to sign this. If it is on the ballot, you get to say if you want the added burden of higher utility rates, worse emergency services and possibly even more water restrictions.
Please use your voice and help us get this on the ballot. Sara Shipley Colorado Springs Eric Sondermann makes a pretty good case about why Democrats lost the last general election. He tends to avoid the dirty details about the corruption in the Democratic Party ranging from selection of the presidential candidate who never received a single primary vote to the party’s mantra being that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy.
Sondermann is correct that most of the 40 largest cities are controlled by Democrats and that is where most of the very poor and homeless in the USA are concentrated. He mentions that across Denver there is broad sympathy and support for the homeless as well as immigrants. I read that The Coalition for the Homeless in Denver strives to help homelessness by offering many services to help families and individuals.
I read that 17 members of the staff make more than $100,000 per year. Do you think these people want to see the homeless go away? I also read that in 2023, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Denver metro area increased by more than 30% compared with the previous year. If you want to stem the tide of homelessness and illegal immigration, then stop subsidizing them.
Sam Taylor Colorado Springs.
