The city’s new Oil and Gas Committee is going to have to drill right into its task when the City Council announces who will serve on the committee during the Jan. 24 council meeting.
The committee, previously called a task force, has only until May to submit a report with recommendations to council.
Even though the task force … er … committee was formed a month ago, it wasn’t until today that the city issued a press release asking for volunteers.
“It is not moving slow because we’re having our consultant work on a lot of stuff while we’re going through the logistics of the task force. At our first meeting on the 26th we’re going to already have the gun loaded. We’re probably going to splatter the task force with several live buckshot,” said City Councilman Val Snider, who is the committee chairman.
Wait, did Snider just call the committee a task force?
Snider couldn’t explain why the task force is now being called a committee. He said City Attorney Chris Melcher was involved in the decision, but he couldn’t remember who suggested the change.
“We just thought it would be better to call it a ‘committee’ than a ‘task force,’” he said.
Why?
“I’d have to get back” to you, Snider said.
Most likely because of the negative feelings the community has associated with the Memorial task force. Same reason why we could never ask for a streetlight fee. People would relate it to the stormwater fee and probably say NO. let’s hope this task force or committee has some rules and procedures in place, shares information with the rest of Council and instills confidence in it’s purpose to the community.
You can do more than just “hope” that this task force (oops . . . committee) isn’t the ad-hoc and amateurish farce the last one was, Lisa, my insisting, as a member of council, that it be done in a professional, organized, unbiased and DISINTERESTED way. It would be nice to have some people on the committee who actually know something about energy and land use and can think these issues through objectively and rationally, rather than defaulting to knee-jerk opposition and nimbyism. I personally think the city is getting in way over its head in trying to regulate something this complex, even with a consultant as hand-holder, and should leave this is state and federal regulators who actually have some experience in this arena. Arapaho County today or yesterday did what this city will eventually do, after Val’s committee does its thing — which is to confine itself to dealing with possible infrastructure impacts, on roads for instance, and allow the many regulations already in place to work. We could save ourselves a lot of time, and shorten the learning curve, by looking at how other local governments are dealing with it and cutting right to the chase. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19669319
We HAD a streetlight fee. Previous councilmembers actually ran on a campaign on getting that $1+ a month removed and Doug Bruce sued the city over it. short memories around here.
Lisa said: “let’s hope this task force or committee has some rules and procedures in place, shares information with the rest of Council and instills confidence in it’s purpose to the community”
Lisa, you are on the council, dont you think it would be a good idea for you not to “hope” you get this information and insist you get it? I hope they have rules and procedures too, that would be a good start right after getting the name right.
Lisa, if YOU dont know and trust these things how can WE trust the information we get from this committee of cronies.
The city council is setting up this task-force committee not to find the best policy, but to use it to reaffirm the decision they have already made. If they want to find the truth they should hire subject matter experts. That would have been a better use for the tennis court money.
Lisa, why are you guys leaving industry experts and prior knowledge out of the process and stacking the committee with people you know will give you the answers you want?
My confidence level in these eight stooges to do anything including and above mural painting and tennis court maintenance is way past zero. They should leave these important decisions to be decided by subject matter experts, not cronies & housewives.
Making up rules for a situation that does not exist is like having the cart in front of the horse. The land that Ultra purchased is annexed by the City of Colorado Springs and not zoned for oil and gas exploration and production, How does Ultra plan to go in to this annexed area and start drilling without proper City annexation zoning? The annex documents state that anyone who purchases land on Banning-Lewis must abide by the annex master plan. If Ultra applies to the State of Colorado drilling permit the State should not grant it and if they do and Ultra attempts to set up a drilling operation Code Enforcement should be on site and shut them down. Here is the plan for the land that Ultra purchased. http://www.springsgov.com/Files/MasterPlanOnly.pdf
Sean, me and my colleague Angela, repeatedly pointed out publicly numerous problems with the Memorial task force. All i ended up hearing about is from idiots complaining about the removal of a task force member having no idea of his or any of the other appointed members credentialing, biases, etc. Then again there wasnt any since they were all appointed by Jan Martin for the exception of the two regional leadership members appointed at a request from the Mayor. I requested more than once to the City attorney Chris Melcher to have the official bids delivered to the Councilmembers who were not on the task force prior to the December 1st public release and was denied because I did not have a majority vote in support from my colleagues. Several of us on Council do speak out but the community chooses to ignore or focus completely on irrelevant information rather than what is important . Example, ignoring that the money for tennis courts is really about the bad policy the City has adopted in deferring maintenance on so many things and paying more for it down the line. Even though the City spent a fortune on seeding last year and it died because of poor maintenance and lack of watering. Mayor starts out asking Council to allocate $800,000 and Council agrees. Our parks are green so everyone is happy. Just like ignoring all of the money being spent by this new Mayor and the creation of highly paid new City jobs and Spirit of the Springs initiative. Hope all of my fellow conservatives dont mind the 200,000 plus of annual salaries for economic vitality and 50, 000 to handle personal social media accounts. Thats a quarter of a million dollars in newly created City jobs. The hypocrisy of people in this City is overwhelming. Being a true conservative is trying to save the taxpayers more money on delayed repairs and asset loss why is it being villanized?. I have offered to work on rules and procedures for Council appointed task forces and already have gotten little support from colleagues in doing that because they do not feel it is necessary and that whoever is running a task force “can do whatever they want”. I disagree. Several of us on Council are talking and objecting and trying to speak out about what is really going on but our voices are deafened by all the petty crap written about individual Council members and stories delivered inaccurately.