A version of this article was published in YourHub/Denver Post for Adams County on Thursday, July 31, 2014.
by Dave Chandler
Lipstick on a pig … well, like lipstick on two pigs, actually.
Two impending Arvada government failures were highlighted in the Thursday, July 17, 2014, issue of YourHub/Denver Post … with all the positive spin that the city hall propaganda machine could muster.
First, the great deficiency of the RTD light rail plan is made abundantly clear in the latest city government scheme to try and make it work: little busses to cart people to the train station. [Arvada looks at shuttle system in advance of Gold Line commuter rail] As has been noted many times by particularly wise people with that rare trait of common sense, the problem with fixed rail is that it is, well, fixed — the train tracks cannot be moved to accommodate changes in where people live and work. Of course, on top of that is the problem that the Gold Line was in the first place always a political tactic to get FasTracks approved by the voters; this route never did pass through places where lots of people live and it only has one destination point, downtown Denver.
So the city council and Arvada Urban Renewal Authority (AURA) have been trying like the dickens to force high density residential into the Olde Town area — even if they have to manipulate and contort the free market with heavy-handed planning and taxpayer subsidies to ‘private’ developers.
But apparently it is dawning on the government elites that this Soviet-style central planning for Olde Town is still not going to be enough to make Gold Line ridership look like a success. Now we’ve got a “citizen-run transportation committee” to figure out just how to haul people from Westwoods, Sunrise Ridge, Lake Arbor, Five Parks, etc., to the light rail depot so that they can take the train to a Rockies or Broncos game. And honestly that really is the score, FasTracks is costing us a trillion dollars to make our Denver roads on game days about two percent less congested (although with projected population growth, you’ll not notice any difference whatsoever).
Here is reality — very few individuals in northwest Arvada, for instance, who actually work in downtown Denver, are ever going to wait around to pay a fee to take a shuttle bus to the Olde Town train station; then pay for a ticket and wait for the next train; then reverse the whole process to get home again.
You know it; I know it; and the bureaucrats at city hall, AURA and RTD all know it — it will always be cheaper and faster to drive wherever you have to go in the Denver area than taking the train. Period.
In the meantime, government plans proceed apace to essentially raze historic Olde Town Arvada, replacing it with a run-of-the-mill RTD parking garage (for which you are paying $13 million), predicted increases in auto, truck and bus congestion on Wadsworth, high density apartment buildings, and lots of boutique shops. As of yet, no successful government handouts to induce a drug store, dry cleaners, a clinic, daycare, or a regular grocery store into the area. The new Olde Town apartment dwellers are evidently supposed to hop on a shuttle bus, go to the Arvada-city-government-subsidized Walmart down the road, and then lug home their daily living necessities.
The Gold Line is coming, that cannot be helped now. However, the vast majority of Arvadans would likely best be served by a change in city policy that would get the government-subsidy vampires of RTD and developer special interests off our necks and let the free market determine when, if and how Olde Town should be turned into an enclave of urban transients.
Secondly, the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities has been hemorrhaging dollars for years, which is fine if the Center is to be operated as a service to the public like the police department. [Arvada Center closer to plan to move to nonprofit operating model] However, the government then needs to justify that expense and keep its spending in line with the expectations of the community and taxpayers.
However, the city government ‘solution’ to the problem looks to be a public-private partnership created through a non-profit Arvada Center. We all know how those deals tend to workout in the long run: corporatization, indifferent service, more cronyism, less answerability to the citizens … and we’ll still get stuck with the tab when there is a financial shortfall.
All of this is on the city's agenda regardless of citizens’ desires that free enterprise be allowed to function and that government be transparent and accountable — the cronyism and favoritism that dominates city politics is going to prevail unless Arvadans finally decide to demand open, honest, principled government for a change.
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