Welcome to the new Council

Tonight, Christina Dirkman, a resident of Evans, said it best when she said, "the difference between boiling water and hot water is one degree."

The City Council is now composed of five new members: Tom Norton, John Gates, Sandi Elder, Donna Sapienza and three returning members, Charles Archibeque, Mike Finn and Maria Secrest. With so many new members it could be really easy to hit a snag and push that one degree. So far, the six (Tom Norton was not present due to prior obligations) work well and eased their feet into the Council experience.

The Council's agenda tonight was cut and dry but was a good start, especially for the many members who have had no prior government experience.

Carolyn Benton, a Greeley resident, boosted the morale of the Council and the city by giving praise to the many departments responsible for making Greeley great. From the City Manger, Roy Otto, to the board member that brought a wrench to her home to fix a water leak problem. She ended her speech by asking the Council, "please don't embarrass us."

Election Night Newsroom

Tonight I had my first experience with being in an official newsroom setting at The Tribune.

The funniest part about it? I realized that, even though there was an important job to get done, people have to have fun. It's human nature. I always believed that once you entered the newsroom, you were strictly business until you were done and away from the job.

To put this story in context, our Contemporary Issues class was at the trib instead of the biweekly City Council meeting because of the elections being held in Greeley. It was a good chance for us to take a change of pace and see what a newsroom feels like, on a busier night.

My important realization came during the editorial meeting. As soon as I got into the room, I thought that an air of business surrounded me. I thought that there would be no wisecracks, laughing or happy thoughts allowed. I quickly realized I was mistaken as the strict business air was expelled out of the room and into it came an air of "busy, yet fun" as the meeting proceeded with many a wisecrack, many more smiles and all around enjoyable time ensued.

After the meeting, we set about observing the staff gather information, write stories and put together the paper while having a non-stressful time with many jokes and witticisms added in to keep things fresh.

Looks like I’m going to enjoy my time as a journalist.

Budgeting Woes.

A budget is a hard thing to plan.

As evidenced by the Oct. 20 City Council meeting, not everybody can have a say in where the money goes and certainly not everybody is going to be happy. An issue that popped up at the Oct. 6 meeting was that three organizations in Greeley weren't going to be funded in the 2010 city budget and it would be extremely hard for those organizations to find the money in order to provide their services to the community.

To work around that issue the City Council is putting the city's Senior Planner position on a temporary hiring hold. This hold is going to provide the city with an extra $7,500 a month. That money is going to help the Weld County Food Bank, Envision and The Transition House, all of which provide services to the community. However, not everybody got what they wanted A Woman's Place ended up losing money to help out the other services.

Another Issue brought up by Greeley resident, George Metcalf, is that the City Council should have a bigger part in the budget process. As it stands the 2010 budget was created in 2008 during a Budget Retreat. Circumstances change and now a lot of what was planned has been revised. Roy Otto, Greeley's City Manager, oversees a great deal of this change along with Greeley's Finance Director, Tim Nash.

This process didn't sit well with mayor Ed Clark and Council members Maria Secrest and Mike Finn, who voted against approving the 2010 budget because they'd like to be able to work more closely with the budget. The budget was approved by four votes but there may be a change in that process over the horizon.

Not all problems can be solved at once, and often times dealing with money will cause more headaches than it solves.

Great. From the ground up.

Tony Belfiore put it best tonight when he said that there aren’t any constructions jobs for his company for the first time in 30 years. When a company with 30 years of clientele can’t find an opportunity to build and expand, that’s saying something about the times we are facing as a city

The first time the impact cuts were brought up in City Council, the members were hesitant about increasing the amount a new company would have to pay to build. Within good reason, increased money spending on their part will affect the number of employees that that company can hire and will drive the prices up on goods that are manufactured by the company that needs to pay the higher prices.

The issue at hand is that Greeley needs new blood in its system; it needs to find new companies that can take up residence so that we can begin to find a foothold in the economy. This isn’t the time to doll up the city of Greeley by putting more money into the trails and storm water funds, it’s time to create a stronger city that will pull potential residents from all around, whether it be business or residential.

If the Council reduced those impact fees there is a good chance that we can bring new jobs into the city. New jobs will bring people and with new people come new ideas.

That is what this city needs.

Blogging Woes

Here I am again.
This is the third "blog" that I've created. One of them was used to upload writing assignments, and the last two have been a place to collect my thoughts over two of the journalism classes I've attended at the University of Northern Colorado.

Am I afraid to blog? Yes, and that is only because I am publishing something that everyone can see without a bajillion other people scrutinizing it first. It's a weird process. You submit what you want, without even having to approve it, spell check it or write in the first or third person.

All of the blogs that I have written have been graded but the content has been solely up to me. They have all been graded at the end of the semester without the teacher ever taking a look at it or with the teacher casually mentioning that I have a few errors.

Now, I am going to delve further into the 2009 Greeley Mayoral/City Council elections.