As a cost-saving measure, Colorado Springs is turning off streetlights. Flipping the switch on about 1/3 of the city’s 24,512 streetlights is expected to save $1.245 million in electricity. But that’s just a down payment on a $28 million budget gap for 2010.
Perhaps the most noticeable change for Colorado Springs’ 400,000 residents will be in parks, where budgets have been slashed by nearly 75 percent.
“We’ve taken all the trash cans out. We’re not going to be doing any litter collections in the parks,” says Larry Small, vice mayor for Colorado Springs. “We’re hoping the citizens will pack it out themselves.”
All the restrooms have been closed. There’ll be very little watering, and crews will mow just once a month instead of weekly.
Sounds to me like most of this stuff can be replaced by private merchants offering the same thing. If people really care about the parks, they’ll pay to have them maintained, if not maybe the land will be repurposed for something else. Either way, keeping taxes relatively low has taken priority in this part of the country and I, for one, am glad to see it. Liberals are pissed about this and predictably so. Which makes it doubly satisfying for me. Either way, I see this as a small victory for small government.
I don’t see much progress here. The Colorado Springs government overspent, got into debt, and now it’s trying to avoid bankruptcy by taking some short-term measures to cut spending. Allowing the parks to be homesteaded would be real progress and auctioning off the parks would at least be a start.
you mean big government approach? No, they tax people and increase services.
I’m not necessarily in favor of eliminating taxes, just reducing them and at the same time reducing services until the ones that I think are essential remain. I already know what your response will be to this it’s not worth arguing about.
Without looking at the specifics I would be careful about believing this story.
Where I live in Oregon, we were recently faced with the option of a tax increase or a “cut” in “essential services.” Every talking head from the Governors office, the Legislature, and the media made predictions of falling skys and indeed, Armageddon if these “cuts” were made.
A quick search of the state budget reveals that even after these supposed “cuts” the State of Oregon is still making expenditures of about 6% over those in the last 2 year budget cycle.
In otherwords these cuts are in reality cuts of the planned increase.
So much for smaller government. The best part is that the ciitizens swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. They passed 2 tax increases to plug the budget gap.
Actually, they tax people to put money into raising compensation for “civil servants,” and then they cut back on services when they have to start paying for huge pensions.
Progress is a reduction in the burden. If you consider thanking the slave master as not giving you more work to do, all of a sudden that is progress towards freedom? lmao.
What is going to happen now do you think that the streetlights have been turned off? Safer streets at night? What’s the bet crime and assaults go up?
Progress would be de-socializing / de-statizing / de-regulating.
What needs to be said and hammered home… the state can’t even provide the most basic of services, not that it ever could, nor should even try. So how about they stop getting in the god damn way, and allow free enterprise to work, instead of continuing to be parasites?