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It is possible that another run at the so-called public safety building is in the wind for this year’s off-year elections, so it has a better chance of passing. Do we need new facilities? Probably yes, but the right facility for our city, not for New York.
Voters dodged a financial bullet last year by defeating the previous ballot measure and TABOR tampering, and we did so without knowing the details of the plans. In fact very few folks in town knew the details of the construction and dimensions of this budget blasting building. I do, and it was a hideous, arrogant, massive and nearly criminal waste of our tax money.
Now, nearly all of our City Council, many citizens and the media know the details of the 2008 attempt (having erroneously trusted city planners, consultants and administrators). Hopefully our elected officials will do their homework this time and trust no one.
But it is up to voters to get involved, too. We should attend planning sessions and any meetings any time this project is discussed. Check the plans and measurements and make your concerns known. Tell the city we want local companies to get the business, because our city habitually contracts nearly everything to out of the area companies. In this economy, we cannot make a taxpayer mistake. Get involved and spread the word.
JIM SHULTS
Grand Junction
4 Responses to “Public safety building should be appropriate for Grand Junction”
Posted June 27th, 2009 at 10:47 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Thanks Jim! A well reasoned statement, good advice.
Posted June 28th, 2009 at 11:30 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Letter writer: “Tell the city we want local companies to get the business, because our city habitually contracts nearly everything to out of the area companies.”
Whenever a public contract is awarded, it should be given to local companies if at all possible. However, when “local” companies’ prices are not “reasonable”, there is no reason to do so.
As one who watches local govenment budgets carefully, and line by line, (not leaving it totally in the hands of public officials) I have, and on several occasions found that so-called “local” companies will “jack up their price” two to three times what non-local companies will submit on a contract, and they are seldom, if ever, lower.
On I found to be almost 4 times what was available out of the local area. Fortunately, when that was pointed out to the officials in charge of the budget, they went “outside” of the local area for the same service, and it is the people who benefited from that process. To have done otherwise would have been to “subsidize” local companies for either their own inefficiencies or greed.
Yes, by all means use “local” contractors, but only when feasible to do so. To do otherwise is to be fiscally irresponsible.
Posted June 28th, 2009 at 4:47 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
And then there are the local businesses who depend on a wider geographic area than Mesa County for their type of business. They should be shut out of that business on the basis of “Buy locally, no matter what?” The only “well reasoned” part of Shults’s screed is that people should get involved and find out for themselves what the issue, if put on the ballot again, is all about. They’ll find that Shults is hardly the most rational and thoughtful guy around.
He seems to be very anti-government and he has a vendetta and obsession over this issue. He offered suggestions–effectively demands– to the city over the police and fire HQ bulding. He is neither a policing expert, architectural expert or an efficiency expert but he was mightily put-out that the city didn’t change everything per his “suggestions”. His proposal envisioned a fortress sort of building in anticipation of Islamic terrorists targetting Grand Junction. He also seems to think that employees of the city are sub-human and should not “enjoy” things that are part of any rational private businesses accomodations for employee efficiency and productivity. Contrary to his frequent rants the building, and all other parts of the November ballot issue were not excessive or Taj Mahal-like. If it comes up again, or rather when it comes up again, check out for yourself what it is all about. Call the City Managers office or the Police Chiefs office for a complete rundown on why everything in the November ballot issue will have to be built. Depending on a man with a massive ego and axe to grind for accurate information will lead you astray The longer we wait the more it will cost.
Posted June 29th, 2009 at 9:14 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
As I recall Jim you wanted the last one built underground in some sort of post apocalyptic bunker. I believe your reasoning was that Grand Junction was first on the terrorist hit list or was it the intergalactic alien invasion was going to happen here? I cant remember which.
So when everyone got done snickering at your tajmabunker idea you went ballistic and began attacking any plan to fix the 60 yr old facilities that our police and firefighters are trying to work out of today.
Yes we need to keep our Local Government honest and review all plans thoughtfully. However we should review the facts and not the rantings of a guy who has read one to many Tom Clancy novels and was considered to out there for magazines like Solder of Fortune and Gung ho.
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