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Gold medalist Henry Cejudo, a Coronado High School graduate, will be featured on a giant mural the City Council wants to put on a downtown building facing Interstate 25.
The council already voted 7-1, with Councilwoman Angela Dougan opposed, to spend up to $28,800 on the mural. The expenditure is up for second and final approval on Tuesday.
The new council has been talking about ways to promote Colorado Springs as the home of the U.S. Olympic Committee, especially before the U.S. Women’s Open in July.
The mural is among those efforts.
The USOC recruited Vladimir Jones, a marketing and advertising agency, to create designs that were presented to council at a special meeting Tuesday.
“Rather than have (the mural) painted, which we originally thought, Vladimir Jones recommends we have it produced in vinyl because it lasts longer,” council President Pro Tem Jan Martin.
“We’re waiting now to get some costs estimates on what that will be, and at Monday’s informal meeting, we will have a presentation on the costs,” she said.
Dougan explained her opposition to the expenditure Tuesday on Facebook.
“Please understand the art work is wonderful and I thank the USOC for providing the design cost but we are still spending at least 20,000 TAXPAYER GENERAL FUND DOLLARS on a mural that will last a minimum of 6 to 8 months,” she wrote.
Dougan noted that efforts to place USOC signage on the entryway signs along I-25 on either side of town were funded by “private citizens who stepped up and donated their own dollars.” She said she believed the mural could have been funded the same way.
“This was just heartbreaking to watch pass,” she said.
Martin said a vinyl mural is expected to cost less than the $28,800 that council approved.
“Our goal is to have it up prior to the U.S. Women’s Open, which begins July 4,” she said.
“That’s another advantage of the vinyl. It’s a matter of them just taking the design and then creating the vinyl from that,” she said. “It’s much quicker than actually hiring an artist.”
Heartbreaking — really?
I can only imagine the crush of despair that must be flooding the Dougan household. My prayers and hopes are with Angela in her time of grief, while I only hope the rest of us in the city can bear the staggering burden of the city finally promoting itself as something other than dead meat. But, as they say in other heartbreaking situations — tornadoes ripping through Joplin, mothers drowning their children in Florida, penile units being exposed via Twitter — this too shall pass.
By the way, darling Angela, that eternal feedback loop of “taxpayer money may only be spent on basic crap” and “voters hate taxes” is false, and it’s a betrayal of the city to put any intellectual consideration on the shelf and swallow what you’re fed.
We’re shuttering the City’s Lake for the lack of $75k Operating Costs and $3k of needed repairs, and buying a vinyl mural for $28k?
One project will provide a safe and healthy alternative to kids getting into mischief this Summer, the other project may cause a visitor traveling I-25 at 65 miles per hour to ponder, “Why would anyone plaster a big mural of an Olympian on that building?”
One need not look far to determine that the inmates are indeed running the asylum in Our Fair City.