Growth proponents maintain that those opposing growth, in particular those opposing the "City for Champions" proposal, will "cost the city thousands of jobs and a bright future." They're wrong; more of the same, adding taxpayer financing, won't fix fundamentally-flawed policies.
This is my letter in the 3/26/14 Colorado Springs Independent that they titled "Welcome to C4D".
Note they edited out the most ideologically-threatening sentence:
- Charging the public through a Stormwater Enterprise and Southern Delivery System should obviously be called "cost-side socialism."
Not C4C; it's C4D (City for Champions vs City for Developers)
John Hazlehurst ("C4C: Extreme measures," City Sage, March 12) makes it seem downright traitorous to oppose C4C.
He writes: "C4C supporters believe that killing the projects would send the city into a long downward spiral." Sorry, too late. Look around. Growth policies pursued for decades have already seen to that.
The rationale, as usual, is that opposing growth will "cost the city thousands of jobs and a bright future." But more of the same, adding taxpayer financing, won't fix fundamentally-flawed policies. (For what's wrong and some of what to do see, A Broken Region, CS Indy, November 11, 2010.)
Further, he writes it's "bizarre or crazy" to oppose the projects. Opponents on Council "should not betray their masters."
And he names the "masters." Among them: the Housing and Building Association, the Pikes Peak Association of Realtors, the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Regional Business Alliance.
Exactly. These are members of what's known in urban dynamics literature as the "growth machine": entities "naturally organized" by the profit motives they share.
Hazlehurst is correct that many on the "conservative" side reject the deal based on a flawed, anti-tax mentality; but at the core, they're correct: it uses taxes to subsidize C4C.
Many on the liberal side oppose it because they understand that growth has only led to massive infrastructure backlogs. Needed infrastructure to support growth wasn't paid for by those who profited from it. Charging the public through a Stormwater Enterprise and Southern Delivery System should obviously be called "cost-side socialism."
Now, in addition to implicit subsidies that redistribute the costs of growth onto the public, project proponents want to add explicit subsidies by way of "tax-increment financing."
Development interests promote C4C. The primary reason for the "strong mayor" initiative was to strong-arm projects like C4C through for the "masters" who control the Mayor and, usually, Council.
That's why C4C should be known as C4D: City for Developers.
Bob Powell
Colorado Springs