Mayor Steve Bach hosted a town hall meeting Wednesday night that highlighted his 2013 budget priorities and gave students at Eagleview Middle School a real-life civics lesson.

About 200 people, including a few dozen middle school students, attended the mayor’s fourth and final town hall meeting of 2012. The meeting was geared toward residents of northwest Colorado Springs, where one neighborhood was devastated by the Waldo Canyon fire.

“I’m so proud and thankful how all of you conducted yourselves through that horrific experience,” Bach said at the beginning of the 90-minute meeting.

“This town showed me, more than in my whole life, that we are one people. I’m so proud of all of us,” he said.

The meeting was, as one observer noted, “tightly orchestrated.” The mayor and his staff did most of the talking, touching on a long list of topics that included street projects in that part of town and a $7 million federal grant to improve the timing of traffic signals.

Most of the questions came from the students, who wanted to know such things as when Blodgett Peak would reopen, how they could volunteer to plant trees in the mountains or if the city planned to clean park restrooms.

The meeting ended with a tense encounter between the mayor and Mountain Shadows resident Dr. Mary Harrow, who lost her home in the fire. Harrow asked Bach to resign.

“We weren’t evacuated at all. I felt like that was a huge mistake on your part. Two people died. In my profession, when two people die, you know what happens to me,” she said, adding that she wanted to know how City Council President Scott Hente’s house survived the fire when hers didn’t.

Bach said he was sorry that Harrow had lost her home.

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” he said.

Bach said “public safety people put everything humanly possible to save as much as they could.” His comment generated applause from the audience. Bach offered to meet face-to-face with Harrow.

“I would like to have more chance to listen to your thoughts. Maybe I can learn some things from you,” he said.

After the meeting, several people said the mayor handled the situation “extremely well.”

During the town hall, the mayor urged residents to support ballot question 5A to extend the portion of the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority sales tax that is set to expire in 2014.

The mayor, who signed a no-tax pledge before he was elected, was silent on ballot question 1A, a proposed sales tax increase to fund the county El Paso County Sheriff’s Office.

“That’s a county issue,” Bach said in a brief interview afterward. “I trust the voters to make a good decision.”

Mayor Steve Bach talks to an upset resident during a town hall meeting Wednesday at Eagleview Middle School. Photo by DANIEL CHACON/The Gazette