What Happened to Lakewood’s TABOR refund?   In recent years our robust economy has resulted in the City taking in more revenue than it is allowed to keep under TABOR.  This Lakewood surplus is separate from the state surplus.  The standard rule in politics is never give back money they have squeezed out of taxpayers.  For politicians it is imperative to find a legal way to keep this windfall.  Colorado is…

The Action Center Insiders Complain Wiechman’s donations are too Slow          In the latest chapter of the strange and bizarre saga of former city council woman Sue King’s personal vendetta against sitting city councilman David Wiechman, Ms. King stooped to “looking the gift horse in the mouth” by complaining Mr. Wiechman’s charitable donations were too slow for her.             The latest story begins with…

Is Single Hauler Trash Coming to Lakewood, CO?   Buried in all the flowery talk about saving the environment and getting the city into social engineering, Lakewood’s new “sustainability plan” is the first step on a long-range goal to convert the city to a single hauler trash system. The mayor and his allies have made it clear they would like to move Lakewood to a system like Golden that eliminates residents’…

When Mayor Murphy got his city council to pass a “construction defects” ordinance last October, the fiscal conservatives on council objected the prohibition on suing developers for shoddy construction was illegal and would probably result in the city being sued by homeowners. The Mayor assured the City Council that Lakewood’s trail-blazing (and potentially reckless) action would put pressure on the state legislature to pass a state law similar to Lakewood’s….

  Lakewood’s recently passed comp plan (comprehensive plan – vision statement for future city zoning decisions) relies heavily on higher population density. The plan is predicated upon the assumption that the city’s population will increase 20% in the next ten years. Knowing that Lakewood citizens don’t want more crowding, the mayor is selling the plan on the promise that the higher density will be limited to special areas and that…

The same night that city council nearly doubled people’s storm water fees they also voted to grant up to $600,000 to an out-of-state nonprofit corporation called Artspace.  The group builds affordable housing for low-income artists who usually work out of their subsidized space.  In addition to the city money which will be used to pay for design and financial analysis studies, the group plans to do fundraising and is seeking…

           In a 7 – 4 vote Lakewood City Council nearly doubled (87%) the storm water fee assessed each year. For homeowners the increase means the annual fee will jump from $23.76 to about $40. For churches, nonprofits, schools, homeowners associations and businesses their current annual fee will be proportionally increased by 87%. The increase will take effective on January 1 and will not have any…

  Council voted 7-3 (Johnson, Roybal and Wiechman were the no votes) to approve a new plan to give taxpayer money to the mayor’s favorite charities. $100,000 was part of the budget approved in late 2014. This subsequent action creates a evaluation committee selected by the mayor. The committee will make recommendations to council at a meeting in May about which groups the city should support. The make-up of the…

One of the City Council’s declared core values is transparency. Although the city talks up a good game when it comes to actual practice the record is dismal. The average citizen has no idea what the city council is doing and only learns about what happened weeks or even months later. Standard practice for upcoming city council actions is to include them on a meeting agenda which is listed on…

Approval of the 2015 budget took an interesting twist when some of the councilors questioned the appropriateness of spending nearly a million dollars on studies of the Denver Federal Center. The mayor is proposing the city take possession of the northwest corner of the Denver Federal Center inside the loop created by the RTD line serving the Federal Center light rail station. Called the “horseshoe property” it is owned by…