Boulder is a major street

I live on Cheyenne Ave. It is where the students who go to Palmer park. I have lived in my house for 52 years. Not once has Palmer cared about those students! They cross Boulder and then Weber four times a day. How about Nevada, Platte and Wasatch? They cross there too.

The City Council does not own Boulder Street. It belongs to the taxpayers! It is a major street with a lot of traffic, including ambulances going to Memorial seven blocks away.

Stephanie Cardwell

Colorado Springs

Reflections on the Monument protest

I visited the No Kings rally Saturday in Monument. Perhaps 75-100 people gathered to express their disdain for President Trump, which under the First Amendment, is their Constitutional right. Happy to report that most signs were lacking profanity, and everyone seemed peaceful. There were a couple signs that were offensive, however.

I chatted with a lady and her daughter concerning their reasons for participating. Seems as if their reasoning was nebulous and not focused on verifiable specific issues. They seemed confused by my nonaggressive questioning. We did have a civil discussion, and they left to join the protest. All in all, the crowd was respectful and obedient to the rule of law. And incidentally, I do have a King, My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Bill Crow

Larkspur

Lacking in contract knowledge

In 2024, folks in Woodland Park realized our town had a contract with Verizon to install promised “safe and effective” (heard this before?) technology downtown. A group asked City Council to provide current (not 25+ years old) safety data for the “cell tower” (not its main use); yet never provided. As the contract allegedly expired, the city council said it changed “zoning” so such towers could NOT be placed near schools or other sensitive areas. Resolved? Nope. While the “temp” tower location remains in place, many noticed rebar at the pool. Why is that? This revealed that if the Tel-com contract from 2022 was ever challenged, the city’s contracted lawyers’ claims would result in a lawsuit (coercion?, contracts are not valid without full disclosure, yes?). It appears when the new WP city council assembled in 2024, they did not understand this contract or its terms.

We are currently being asked to vote these people in again, despite their questionable knowledge of contracts. Because we vote these folks in, you’d think they represent the locals, the people, the flesh and blood, not corporations, the entities existing on paper alone. We are currently being held hostage by Big Tech, which will not show any current full-spectrum safety data. BTW, who has remote access to these towers, um? This is not about cell phone service. Our phones streamed fine using those towers away from downtown.

I grew up believing “acting locally” made a difference. I sense no evidence of that in Woodland Park and have lost respect for government actors who claim to be representing “the people.” Also, have parents of our schoolers been properly informed on this deep, far-reaching subject?

Bryan Pratt

Woodland Park

Proposals like these

In her latest column, “Time to break away from Social Security,” Star Parker proposes replacing Social Security with a stock-based investment program, but doesn’t mention how the transition would be done. It’s easy when you’re a pundit to leave out such details, but the money she wants to put in the stock market currently goes to retirees and disabled people. I doubt Parker, or any other compassionate person, would advocate abruptly cutting off benefits for 75 million elderly and disabled Americans, so the money to support them would have to come from somewhere.

How much are we talking about here? Well, the latest monthly statistical snapshot from the Social Security Administration shows payments just over $136 billion in benefits. That’s over $1.6 trillion per year, and how many years would we have to pay that much? It sounds like this would blow up our national debt, because I can’t see Congress raising taxes enough to pay for it.

Is that why proposals like this and others put forth in the past haven’t gained traction? Perhaps we should focus on fixing what we already have, instead of wasting time on expensive replacements.

Joe Loyall

Colorado Springs

Large data centers and water

As tech corporations continue their expansion across the country, Colorado Springs should not make the mistake of welcoming large-scale data centers into our community, especially given the extraordinary strain they place on water resources we simply do not have to spare. We are heading into summer after a record-hot, record-dry winter, in one of the hottest years on record globally. We’ve seen this coming, and cannot deny the reality of climate change; we must be honest about what that means for fire risk, water supply, and the general livability of our city in the coming months and years. The Colorado River, from which we get much of our water, is already in a long-term crisis. Pretending we can absorb additional industrial-scale water demand without consequence, regardless of current stores, is not just optimistic; it is willfully negligent.

Data centers are extraordinarily resource-intensive operations, requiring massive amounts of water for cooling while returning little value to their host communities. This pattern has played out across the country: communities are promised economic benefits and “innovation,” only to find themselves saddled with strained infrastructure and depleted resources. We should not fool ourselves into thinking we will somehow be the exception. These tech companies are not operating out of a sense of civic goodwill; they are driven by profit, not care. In a region as water-scarce as our alpine desert, that profit will come at the direct expense of our long-term sustainability. (For a detailed examination, I strongly recommend recent reporting by Pam Zubeck in the Pikes Peak Bulletin.)
We don’t need data centers taking our already limited water, and I hope our leaders, both in public and private offices, do right by the people of our city by ensuring that cannot happen.

Pierce Gillard

Colorado Springs