Before Colorado Springs City Council appointed Sean Paige on Wednesday to fill its empty seat, much of the debate in the Council chamber was over whether Paige, a libertarian activist and frequent critic of the Council, could mesh with the other eight members.

Vice Mayor Larry Small put a stop to such talk.

“We’re not picking someone to be compatible with this council or to be different from this council,” Small said.

“We’re picking someone who can represent the people of that district.”

Paige’s new constituency is District 3, which includes Old Colorado City, the southwestern quadrant, downtown and central neighborhoods as far east as Academy Boulevard and as far north as Constitution Avenue.

From leafy Broadmoor to gritty Knob Hill, it’s the most diverse — and the most liberal — of the four Council districts (the other five seats are at-large).

Paige, who is no liberal, is a poor fit, Small said.

District 3 residents “have to be represented by someone who can see their points of view and think the way they think, and they’re not all the same,” Small said. Paige’s ideology, he added, is “somewhat rigid.”

It was for that reason, Small said, that he backed someone else to replace the retired Jerry Heimlicher.Small lost that argument, but the question remains: Will Paige be responsive to neighborhood concerns? When a constituent wants a pothole filled, will Paige — who relishes policy debates but has little background in constituent service — make the phone call?

“I’m an appointee,” Paige said. “There’s going to be a certain segment of that district that’s going to say, ‘Well, wait a minute, I didn’t vote for this guy.’ You have to redouble your effort to convince people that you can represent their interests, and I’ll be doing that.”

He will have some convincing to do.

Stephanie Johnson is president of the Platte Avenue Business and Neighborhood Association, in the Knob Hill area. She was concerned that Paige has lived in Colorado Springs for only seven years and wondered whether he “will pay attention to the neighborhoods.”

“All of southeast Colorado Springs is in very bad condition,” Johnson said. “We certainly need somebody who will listen to the neighborhoods and the people, and care. Jerry Heimlicher did.”

State Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs, represents many of the neighborhoods in District 3. He said City Council’s selection of “somebody who is as extreme and opinionated and non-compromising and in-your-face aggressive about his views — I’m trying to be as nice as I can here — and as deliberately offensive as Sean Paige has a record for being, I think is a slap in the face of Jerry Heimlicher’s council district.”

Paige has long opposed tax incentives or other inducements to attract or keep business, and has lambasted the city for the $42 million it is forking over to keep the United States Olympic Committee from leaving town.

Ron Butlin, director of the Downtown Partnership, described the USOC’s move downtown as “fabulous” and Paige’s stand on the USOC deal as “a concern.”

“I hope he’s open-minded,” Butlin said. “I don’t know if he’s going to vote rigidly along the lines of what he has written in the past, or if there’s more to it than that.”

“We have to get to know each other,” Paige said of his new constituents. “People who have doubts have to come to me, and we’ll talk. I think most people, when they sit down with me face to face, they find out that I’m a very reasonable person. Yes, I have strong opinions, but I listen.”

Welling Clark, president of the Organization of Westside Neighbors, said Paige had much to learn about the district, but in that regard was no different from any other newcomer to a City Council district seat. “Everybody,” Clark added, “starts off as a rookie.”

—Contact the writer at 476-1654

Colin McIntosh Photo by