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About five years ago, Ralph R.T.
Taylor stopped
by. He was mayor here then, and had just returned from a
regional gathering, where he had learned that We've got
to do something about our water rates.
He explained
that They're too low, according to everybody I talked
to,
he said, and they encouraged us to raise
them.
I asked Why didn't you just tell them that the city
of Salida is delivering more water at less cost than most
other cities, and thus you're running an efficient system
here that serves the public well?
He replied that That sounds good, but I'm learning
that things don't seem to work that way in government. I
don't think that bragging on cheap water would impress the
other mayors and city managers.
At the time, we were both learning how other things worked in city government; I had just been the lead party (joined by the local newspaper and radio station) in a victorious lawsuit against the mayor and city council for attempting to violate the state open-meetings law. For some reason, litigation strains friendships, so I didn't ask then about what else he and the city could do to impress other municipal governments.
Indeed, I still haven't asked, but I have been observant, and I'm starting to sense that municipal governments in Colorado actually hold contests and give awards, except we never hear about them.
These competitions must vary from year to year, since they follow trends. For instance, when in the 1970s, every town seemed to be competing over which one could build the best Senior Citizens' Center. Just why geezers needed a special place to hang out was beyond me, since our mountain towns offer an may fine saloons, but the pressure was there, and the towns responded.
In the 1980s, Colorado towns competed to build Women's
Resource Centers. This seemed unfair and sexist, since
nobody was building any Men's Resource Centers. My wife,
Martha, explained that Salida already has one. It's
called the Victoria Tavern.
However, publican Peter
Simonson refused to consider changing his establishment's
name to The Southern Chaffee County Men's Resource
Center
when I brought this up with him.
In the next decade, the competition shifted to
Performing Arts Centers, usually involving the conversion
an old building, like a power plant or a bank, into a
theater. While I'd like to gripe about them, the truth is
that I have enjoyed many productions in these facilities;
my favorite is the annual Son-of-a-Gunn,
a satirical
review in Gunnison that is usually staged in March.
Another 1990s unannounced Colorado municipal competition, one that has continued into this decade, must involve skate-board parks, and perhaps the main competition of the '00s will be river parks with play holes for kayaks.
The contests can go beyond construction. Often I get
email complaining about Salida's leadership in the
Canine Repression
category because dogs, even on
leashes, are not allowed in city parks. Dogs were allowed
when we moved here 25 years ago. Our children were toddlers
then who sometimes crawled around when we visited a park.
You can guess why I supported the restriction.
Besides, I don't think it's fair that Salida has this reputation, since you are still allowed to park your leashed dog for reasonable periods. That is, when I'm going to the post office or library, I can take our old dog on the walk, and tie her to one of the bike racks (bicyclists seldom use the racks; they prefer to lean their machines against handrails) while I'm inside on a five-minute task.
That makes Salida less oppressive than Durango, where if the downtown signs are correct, it's illegal to park an unattended pet, even for a few minutes.
Last summer, towns and cities were vying as to which could produce the most confusing restrictions on outdoor watering. Walsenburg just banned it entirely, but in may other places, the restrictions involved circles, diamonds, squares, zones, times, and perhaps even the phase of the moon. This summer, we can look forward to regulations that might be even more difficult to understand than a Republican explaining how the economy has improved since George Bush took office.
In another popular category -- the regulation of tobacco smoking -- Denver appears to be surging to the lead, despite strong competition from Fort Collins, Boulder, and even Pueblo, which in living memory was a place where a fellow could relax in a smoky tavern.
But Denver could still lose if some city finds a way to ban outdoor smoking, and so it's too early to declare a winner. That is, if there is a way to name the winners in these municipal contents. They don't seem to be official public policy; they just happen.
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