Editor’s Note: The author of the following letter is the founder of Citizens for NO New Debt, a non-partisan public service campaign working to push back on government debt at the state and local level.

Public hearing needs scrutiny

The Denver City Council held a public hearing on Monday, July 28, for the so-called “Vibrant Denver bonds,” during the 3:30 Council meeting.

Amanda Sandoval, council president opened the public hearing by saying that she had more than 100 speakers on the list and that she would go only for one hour.

Total speakers for the hour were 21 or 22. Most all the speakers talked about bike safety and bike lanes.

What would be the odds of most speakers talking about bicycle safety and bike lanes when there were dozens of big projects under consideration in this bond proposal?

Not one single person talked about the cost of the debt or how debt for the city does not make sense because it costs too much in debt service.

Every person on that council knows that I am leading the opposition to their financial nonsense, yet they didn’t have me talk. Furthermore, I signed up to speak, Thursday,J uly 24, right after the 5 p.m. start time. Now, I know this could be the luck of the draw, but nonetheless, it was very unfair

However, having 21-22 speakers, from a list of more than 100, parrot each other — this isn’t about fair or not, this is about corruption. The possibility that the council may have hand-picked the speakers for the public hearing would probably outrage most citizens of the city who care about basic elements of democracy as it pertains to a public hearing.

This public hearing deserves scrutiny.

Jason Bailey

Denver

Winners and losers

As Americans we enjoy being successful winners. When we are winners, we celebrate and move on to the next win or loss. It’s that way in business, politics, family and life. When we lose, we learn from our mistakes and hopefully don’t make the same mistakes again. I have to believe this is just common sense thinking for most people. Also, we need to understand that someone needs to win and someone needs to lose.

In Colorado, we keep losing, losing, and more losing. Our state and local elected officials whether it’s Jared Polis, Michael Bennett, John Hickenlooper, Mike Johnston, the Denver City Council, state legislators or Phil Weiser haven’t been watching the winners. You would think that after watching Donald Trump’s wins, they might like to be winners. For some reason, they don’t. The people running our state like being losers and losing every day. By all of their actions, they haven’t learned anything. They have bankrupted the State of Colorado with all the giveaways. They have successfully eliminated any chances for new business with their silly regulations, work rules and taxes. They claim it’s Trump’s policies that have caused the budget crisis. This crisis has been coming for quite some time. Dirty little secret is that without Trump changing the trajectory of the Obama- Biden administration’s spending, woke and DEI policies our whole country was going broke slowly but surely. At the rate our federal government was giving away our resources, the federal money coming to Colorado would have been gone sooner rather than later. Our country has lost its ability to compete at any level. We were all losers.

I have lived in Denver my whole life and have never seen so much losing for so long. I prefer to win, win, and win. I don’t know why our elected officials choose to keep going down the same losing path every day. All of their programs, tactics, regulations, taxes and work rules are failing. They have successively ruined our state. Wouldn’t it be easier to join the winning team and contribute to making our country great again? Making our city safe again, getting rid of the drugs, thugs, getting rid of the illegals, providing solutions for the homeless that really works, making the state affordable to live? Let alone fixing the roads and bridges.

Trig Travis

Aurora