Set all your buttons, baby, as Jimmy Ibbotson likes to sing about "Con Games With Michael Conniff" on KNFO. The #1 talk show in the Golden Triangle from Aspen to Rifle to Vail is now available online full-time. Now that the original slogan "making the world safe for liberals" has achieved its mission, there is "liberty and justice for all" available on the Web right here on Aspen Post 24/7. So if you missed all or part of the show--or if you are exiled to your first home in a distant land--you now have a way to keep up with the cognoscenti as said Con Man continues into his fifth year "with liberty and justice for all." Move over, Rush. Foggedaboudit Hannity. There's a new boss in town.
Post blogger Casey McConnell hitt the road and went to Grand Junction for the Energy Forum and Expo. "According to Dr. Economides in 1973," he blogs, "the US was using oil to provide 86% of our transportation needs. Today we use 86% and everything is saying we will use 86% in 30 yrs. What? How can this be? Growing consumption needs will require larger amounts of oil to meet our needs and the notion of alternative fuels playing a large part of that are very minimal.... And we need to wake up to these facts in a hurry. We are looking at a century of oil use with a best case scenario of several decades before we can walk away from it."
The remarkable law enforcement career of Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis continues with the news that his jurisdiction is an enforcement-free zone. "Fifteen hundred pounds of marijuana is a whole lot of pot," writes Post blogger Michael Conniff, "even in Pitkin County, but 1,500 pounds is not nearly enough for Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officials to alert Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis that a major drug ring is doing business right under his nose—until the bust was in the books. The Sheriff is, of course, enamored of those who break the law. Though now only intermittently sighted in his office in the basement of Pitkin County Courthouse—“He keeps his own hours,” explains his secretary—Braudis embraces the criminal element."
Posts filed under 'Silt'
The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan for the Highway 82 corridor has a large number of parts and pieces, but we need to look at the big picture before moving on to the fine detail.
RFTA wants to embark on a major transit expansion plan over the seventeen year period from 2009 to 2025. Total capital costs of the plan are in the range of $180 to $190 million, and annual operating expenses are projected to more than double, from a current $20 million or so to about $40 million.
During various presentations to the public and elected officials, the feedback was that the plan was too large to absorb all at once, both conceptually and financially, and that a phased approach would be more appropriate. The term “BRT Lite” was first proposed, but RFTA board members wanted to stress that the full BRT plan hadn’t changed, just the size of the first bite. So, “BRT Phase 1” is the moniker for the initial plan which the federal government and local voters will be asked to endorse and fund.
RFTA has not received much encouragement regarding federal financial participation, so they have also developed a plan for how to use the revenue if local voters approve a sales tax increase which is not augmented by any federal grants. The sales-tax-approval-with-no-federal-money scenario is really another layer of phasing; let’s call it “BRT Phase 1 Lite”.
Does RFTA need additional tax revenues to maintain current operations, regardless of whether federal funding sets off an expansion plan that will eventually result in a full BRT system? Consultants prepared graphs for public presentation, one of which illustrates a “Baseline” financial forecast indicating that RFTA is solvent through 2019, reaching a spending level that year of about $40 million.
However, a “Likely Trends” graph line, apparently intended to predict what RFTA will need to spend to keep pace with increasing ridership demand in the absence of a BRT system, shows a deficit beginning next year, growing to $6 million per year by 2025.
The latest Likely Trends scenario, a version developed in May, assumes a fleet expansion of 10 vehicles - scaled down from an estimate of 22 a month earlier! This sudden downward adjustment is difficult to understand, and the ability to do so doesn’t lend much credibility to ridership projections. Despite this, there has yet to be any official questioning of ridership assumptions, or the need for additional rolling stock.
Contributing to the sense that the definition of Likely Trends is highly flexible are those items on the latest budget that went up in price, even after the number of buses went down. The line item “ITS/Transit Priority”, a key technology feature of the BRT system, is on the Likely Trends budget for $12.3 million, as is a maintenance facility expansion at $10.25 million – only $0.5 million less than would be required to accommodate BRT Phase 1.
RFTA’s Likely Trends scenario has become indistinguishable from “BRT Phase 1 Lite”, a significant evolution from its original function as a number representing the response to projected ridership growth. The conclusion can only be that BRT is a fait accompli - even if the proposed sales tax increase is needed just to maintain the current system. The real “likely trend” is that RFTA will continue to grow beyond its revenue base, evidenced by the fact that if they do successfully secure approval of both higher sales taxes and the requested federal contribution of $21.3 million, they will need another round of tax hikes as early as 2013.
The likelihood that additional tax revenues may be needed to simply keep running in place, with no new service expansion, is illustrated by actual trends:
Between 1997 and 2007, RFTA operating expenses increased by 130%.
Population in the RFTA service area grew by 38%.
RFTA Ridership grew by 21%
The most peculiar wrinkle in the financial reporting has to do with the aforementioned $10 million maintenance facility expansion. In a presentation to Aspen and Pitkin County officials last April, RFTA indicated that current maintenance facilities are already operating beyond design capacity by about 19 vehicles.
How then did RFTA develop a Baseline financial forecast that doesn’t indicate a budget shortfall for maintenance expansion and the operating and maintenance expenses associated with the additional buses and vans? This is one of the serious perception problems that need to be addressed by RFTA, and another has to do with federal financing rules.
As explained by Dan Blankenship and Kristin Kenyon to the RFTA board: “FTA doesn’t want the VSS/SS program to be used by transit agencies for supplementing funding for existing services…” Don’t worry about the acronyms, the message is clear. If you want federal assistance you need to be creating a new service, not just shoring up an existing system.
The appearance that the perpetual expansion of service may be related to a persistent underreporting of financial reality is disturbing. Neither local taxpayers nor federal regulators should be subjected to a scheme to finesse current financial needs in the guise of an entirely new service proposal. If RFTA cannot maintain current service at current tax levels, they need to address that situation head on, and completely separate from any new service proposals. Consolidation should precede further expansion.
Assuming local taxpayers are willing to be taxed again to keep RFTA solvent at current service levels, it appears they will be unable to accomplish that goal without simultaneously launching a chain of events intended to increase transportation spending by additional hundreds of millions of dollars.
It may be more appropriate to offer voters a chance to choose between the two.
Next: Part VI
To BRT or not to BRT?
September 24th, 2008
Public investment in highway efficiency should always be the first priority for transportation funding, so long as there are still significant gains to be made. For example, there is no question that improved traffic flow at the Entrance to Aspen, and possibly other locations along the Highway 82 corridor, would save more fuel than an increase in bus service.
In addition, and unlike those transit expenditures which only benefit bus riders, highway upgrades benefit 100 percent of the traveling public, improving our experience regardless of whether we are using private vehicles or public transportation.
It is a huge missed opportunity that RFTA does not exercise its full potential to plan for, propose, and fund highway based transportation solutions. Projects as diverse as the Entrance to Aspen, Glenwood Springs bypass, or grade separated access to Basalt could move forward regardless of state funding delays, and would set us up for future reimbursements from the state that could then be applied to transit services.
It is doubly sad that the RFTA board could not bring itself to even discuss the possibility of creating a petition process as part of their charter so that private citizens could propose plans and funding options to present to the voters.
When advocates for a new Entrance to Aspen were sent packing by the RFTA board, petition organizers pursued the second best option and proposed a Pitkin County road fund property tax that prioritized spending to deal with the worst problem first. While the RFTA sales tax proposal would have required the creation of a petition process from scratch, citizens of Pitkin County already have the right of petition, as established by the state constitution.
For whatever that’s worth.
It is not credible that the county clerk and county attorney believe that the Pitkin County Charter supersedes the state constitution, but that’s what they claimed in rejecting the proposed road tax petitions. They took a purely political stand in order to protect the county’s own property tax proposal from having to face a competing ballot question offered by citizens.
Commitment to democracy among area officials extends only far enough to allow us to pick from their list of choices. The collateral damage of their collective mindset against direct democracy has been the suppression of common sense proposals that achieve their own stated objectives more effectively than the policies and projects they currently support.
*This space was originally intended for “Discussing Mass Transit Part V – What is RFTA Proposing?”, but RFTA is still working on whatever they are about to propose. We pause from that series long enough to offer this background information.
September 17th, 2008
RFTA is organized under Colorado state law as a Regional Transportation Authority (RTA). An RTA is a tax district which can fund projects related to “any highway, road, street, bus system, railroad, airport, gondola system, or mass transit system”. In contrast, the RFTA board, made up of elected officials from eight different jurisdictions, effectively limits our RTA to being nothing more than a mass transit authority.
The first major RFTA planning effort, the Corridor Investment Study (CIS), did go through the motions of examining the full range of transportation possibilities intended by state law. Although identifying future traffic congestion as the problem to be addressed, the “technology options” considered by the CIS managed to include “automobiles on new lanes” on the same list as extravagantly silly items like “jet packs”, “dog sleds”, and “automobiles on flatbed trucks”, and then treated these ideas equally by dismissing them all with no further comment.
Claiming that reduced bus travel time would result in huge ridership increases, the CIS authors did not examine any highway option beyond “passenger cars or trucks using Highway 82 in its present configuration,” despite the potential for highway capacity increases to provide both congestion relief and improved transit performance. The CIS set out to show that “the region’s growing traffic congestion cannot be solved with just one mode of transportation or by highway expansions alone,” but ended up confirming the exact opposite by showing no congestion improvement even with unrealistic projected transit ridership increases.
Last year, RFTA was approached with a request to create a petition process for the district that would allow local citizens to propose “outside the bus” traffic solutions. For example, the use of local tax sources for highway construction would allow us to cut through state level funding delays, and set us up for future reimbursements from the state that could then be applied to transit services.
This year, taxpayers could have had the opportunity to weigh the relative benefits of doubling bus service on the Highway 82 corridor, or fixing the Entrance to Aspen (for example), and voting accordingly. But the RFTA board never discussed the idea of allowing citizen initiated petitions for the use of our own tax money. It requires six out of eight votes to make such a change, and representatives of the three upper valley jurisdictions - Aspen, Snowmass Village, and Pitkin County – made it clear they would never vote to allow such a process.
Until RFTA expands the scope of its vision in respect to our private vehicles, transportation planning will continue to be a process akin to viewing the ocean through a glass bottom bucket - and the results will continue to be shortsighted.
*This space was originally intended for “Discussing Mass Transit Part V – What is RFTA Proposing?”, but RFTA is still working on whatever they are about to propose. We pause from that series long enough to offer this background information.
September 9th, 2008
Fifteen hundred pounds of marijuana is a whole lot of pot, even in Pitkin County, but 1,500 pounds is not nearly enough for Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officials to alert Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis that a major drug ring is doing business right under his nose—until the bust was in the books.
The Sheriff is, of course, enamored of those who break the law. Though now only intermittently sighted in his office in the basement of Pitkin County Courthouse—“He keeps his own hours,” explains his secretary—Braudis remains enamored of the criminal element.
Continue Reading December 17th, 2007
Mexico has more than tripled its population numbers over the last 50 years, and by 2050 it is projected to add 43 million more to its numbers, to 148 million. Studies have shown that the opportunity—even just the prospect—to emigrate for citizens of nations and members of cultures with unsustainable population growth rates keeps them from implementing the necessary measures to stabilize their population growth.
Not surprisingly, Mexico has no substantive population stabilization policy, and it is unlikely it ever will, given current mass immigration levels from Mexico into the U.S. Meanwhile, Mexico has three-million come-of-working-age citizens each year being dumped into a non-existent Mexican job market.
Mexico, with a GDP larger than most European countries, will not invest its financial resources into primary education, although it does pamper the children of the elites with virtually free education at the University of Mexico.
Continue Reading August 5th, 2007
Shortly before 11:00 pm last Thursday night, Representative Michael R. McNulty (D-NY) gaveled the vote on H.R. 3161 closed. What appeared to be a final tally of 215-213 Nay, McNulty declared a 214-214 tie. This was followed by a chorus of "shame, shame, shame" and House Republicans walked out on the proceedings.
So what did the Democratic leadership do? While Representatives argued over the two different vote tallies, the Democrat leadership strong-armed Democrats who voted Nay. In a creative application of parliamentary procedure, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) then offered a “motion to reconsider,” which was seconded. This un-did McNulty's gavel and reopened the tally. In the time it took to “reconsider” the vote, the Democratic leadership managed to flip three votes. The final tally was recorded 216-212 Yea.
Continue Reading August 3rd, 2007
In an email to the Con Man, Oldman writes:
Well it seems that we are destined to live in a gang land type setting in the near future. The peaceful valley is not very peaceful anymore.
Who is responsible for this problem?
Are the people that hired the illegals to cut their grass and clean their houses to blame for the shootings? Are the children of the peaceful gardners and maids that do work in the area the culprits ? Or are the companies that hire the illegals to do the labor that they say no one else will do responsible?
Continue Reading August 2nd, 2007
There is a false set of choices to solving illegal immigration being perpetuated by the illegal-alien amnesty crowd They claim that our only options are to institute a draconian and implausible mass rounding up of illegals or to give them amnesty, or its euphemistic equivalents (e.g., “regularization,” “earned legalization”). Among those spreading this nonsense are the worse president in U.S. history, Jorge Bush; the notoriously fowl-mouthed presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, and Sen. Ted Kennedy, the killer of Mary Jo Kopechne. Quite the cabal.
Continue Reading August 1st, 2007
If you are in sales, in a relationship, want to be in a relationship, in customer service, a presenter; this event is for YOU!!‘Presenting Yourself Powerfully’ from 7-8:00pm on Wednesday, May 9 This monthly event is hosted by the Aspen Club & Spa. Directions
“When you open your mouth, you tell the world who you are.” It takes less than 10 seconds to make an impression in a conversation or presentation. Have fun while improving business relationships and sales, dating, interviewing or presenting. Join us for this interactive monthly workshop. $15.
info@worksmartlivejuicy.com or Kim at 970-948-5791 for questions or to rsvp; no membership required (yet).
MAY TOPIC for presentation and feedback:2 minutes on "A Turning Point in Your Life"
May 8th, 2007
The cool thing about running the Laugh Your Aspen Off! standup comedy troupe is working with such a great variety of funny, interesting comics, each of whom has strong ties and lots to say about life in Colorado and also life in general.
Case in point is our show coming up this Saturday, April 7, at the Winchester Nite-Club in north Rifle. In addition to the local comics who have filled rooms from Steve’s Guitars to the Wheeler Opera house, we are fortunate to have as headliner this week a comic fresh off a one-year tour of Asia. Former Aspenite Dan “Gonzo” Mechanic has played to sold-out audiences of expatriate Americans, Australians, Brits and more in a dozen countries across the Far East.
Continue Reading April 5th, 2007
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