In the last two columns I've been trying to map out ways Colorado Springs can grow its general fund budget without increasing taxes. Voters showed Nov. 3 they aren't willing to increase taxes, and the ideas I've mentioned have their critics already, as well. The first idea was a way to reduce the city's watering bill for parks. Utilities charges our parks a commercial rate for water. Watering the parks adequately would cost $2.5 million a year. We are literally pouring tax money on the ground. Other cities, as I showed in the column, do not do this.

The second piece may be even more controversial, because it suggests taking the TABOR lid off of our budget for five years. This would not be a tax increase. It would just allow the city to keep all of the revenue that comes in for the next five years. TABOR constantly decreases the size of government in relation to the rest of the economy.

Brad Young was a young GOP fiscal conservative when he represented his district in Lamar. he served on the state's Joint Budget Committee as chairman in 2004.  In an email he wrote to me he said:

"The fundamental economic fact is that the economy grows faster than the population plus inflation by about 2-3 percent a year due to increases in productivity. The consequences of this simple fact are enormous. TABOR shrinks government by 2-3 percent per year every year, as a percentage of state personal income. If you shrink an enterprise as a percentage of the economy on an ongoing basis, service must eventually be cut."

Young wrote a book: "TABOR and Direct Democracy: An Essay on the End of the Republic." Most officials who must balance a budget eventually come to the same conclusions Young did. TABOR is not designed to keep government in check. It is designed to destroy government. Most of its supporters don't really understand it. If they ever had to balance a budget with it, they would change their minds.

We are reduced to the point where small declines in sales tax revenues are what passes for good news. Eventually the economy will snap back, but when it does, the restraints built in by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights will prevent Colorado Springs from reaping the benefits. As that part of the city government shrinks that is supported by the general fund, it is inevitable it will bring pressure on the city's self-supporting enterprises.

Citizens unhappy about deteriorating infrastrucutre or brown parks, or decimated bus service are bound to start the call for liquidating city assets, such as the hospital or the electric company -- enterprises that many cities do not own.

Hundreds of Colorado Springs workers will be laid off. Next year, when it appears likely the city budget will have to endure more cuts, we're going to go through the painful process all over again.

Unless we make basic changes. Vote for your choice right here:

There's more to the report discuss in my column today. It discussed challentges facing this region, including the flight of young profesisonals -- something that has been reported in The Gazette before -- and the burden created by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights.

The report said:  "The region benefits from some of the top high school graduation rates in the country and extremely
positive employer perceptions of K-12 school systems. High college attainment rates and growing
university and community college presence offer significant opportunities. However, the region is
rapidly losing the critical young professional demographic (25-44 age group). Reversing this trend and
establishing the Pikes Peak region as a talent magnet will be critical component of this action plan."

Make no mistake:  Our current problems have mainly to do with the recession. When it ends, though, TABOR will slow down our recovery. The report:  "TABOR legislation limits public sector’s ability to fund critical programs/projects
Colorado Springs’ Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) legislation has a significant impact on local
government’s ability to fund critical projects and programs which many businesses view as critical for
their operations. The region’s low tax rate is a double-edged sword which is exacerbated by TABOR
legislation. Low local tax rates are a positive factor for many companies when making a site location
decision. However, the region’s significantly low tax rate, ratchet down effect and particularly heavy
impact on city services in this economic downtown and the revenue adjustment following the economy
presents a challenge when local governments try to address future projects and programs critical to
economic development."

It's ironic that in a city whose leaders claim to embrace small government and a free-wheeling private sector, the only really consistent economic drivers in recent years have been the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and our military installations.

Pioneers Museum is more than a neat building with cool things inside. We can close it, although even with the doors locked, it costs money, because utilities must be maintained to protect artifacts. We can close the museum, let the parks go to seed, shut down the bus system, close swimming pools and community centers.  We can honor public safety above all things, and there's no doubt the city council will always do that. Ultimately, though, what's left? The city fathers want big companies to move here and they think having the lowest property taxes will bring them in. That hasn't worked for a very long time. It turns out that these days, a lot of big companies worry about competing for workers. They want to locate in a city workers will like. When a large prospective employer looks at Colorado Springs, there's no doubt they see low property taxes. But they also see a city that can't do the little things any more, a city that can't furnish basic amenities that are routine everywhere else. They have to wonder: If this city can't  take of itself, how are they going to take care of me and my workers?

Save the clock tower. It doesn't just keep time and chime. It's the keeper of many days gone by.

Here are a couple of examples of the decorated used parking meters that will be used for Homeward Pikes Peak's program for the homeless. Many groups and organizations were involved in this and to read about them, click right here.

This idea will take money out of the pockets of panhandlers, and that seems cruel. Consider, though, that most of the money panhandlers get is spent on supporting substance abuse habits that simply keep them on the street. Money from the meters will be spent on a self-help program designed to get folks sober and off of the streets. It's not going to work for everybody, of course. But because of the recession, there are many on the streets who are younger than the usual population, and many who may be older but who have not been homeless before. Because they have not yet become accustomed to living on the street, become somewhat comfortable with it, they are good candidates, people who can be helped.

Homeward Pikes Peak has been in business for a while. The meters program was developed on a shoestring. Maybe it won't work. But if it does, even a little, the tiny investment would deliver tremendous bang for the buck.

City Hall tried to scare the hell out of us. City Manager Penelope Culbreth-Graft provided a draconian list of proposed budget cuts she said would be necessary if the proposed property tax increase did not pass Nov. 3. The list included suggested layoffs of 243 workers, including dozens of police and firemen. The firefighters' union parroted these numbers in its campaign for the tax. They say they're all about public safety, but they clearly were trying to scare us, and we didn't go for it.

On Tuesday, only a week after the property tax measure got drubbed at the polls, the city released the list of cuts approved by the council to balance the books. Here is the list, from the city's public information office:

Along with the required 10 day furlough for civilians, which equates to a 3.8% pay cut, there will also be:

1.   Approximately 125 layoffs.  Still same number of layoffs in Parks and Transit, although a few of the parks positions will get a three month extension.

2.   PD will initially eliminate 40 POSITIONS with approximately 6 civilian layoffs.

3.   VAR (voluntary retirement, which was incentivized due to budget cuts) will eliminate 60 to 90 positions.  Due to

the timing of acceptance of applications this number has not yet been finalized.

4.   Swimming pools were not restored

5.   Restoring the community centers, Starsmore Discovery Center and Rockledge Ranch is ONLY for 3 months, leaving $35,723 available for all park maintenance.

By the time the council got through with the budget cuts, the list looked far different from what the city manager suggested. This isn't a particular surprise, but remember that the entire tax increase campaign was based on the city manager's list of cuts. So if people object that city hall uses scare tactics, maybe there is some truth in that.

Recall elections seem to be more popular than they used to be. Locally, we've seen them at Colorado Springs School District 11 and there was a recall attempt at  Falcon School District 49 this year. Very often, local recall elections tend to be about a conflict of personalities that is not resolved by the recall election. Economic hard times like what is being experienced now can be a driving force behind a recall election, but when the dust clears after election day, a newly constituted board or commission still faces the same economic realities that the old one did.

Economic downturns routinely spawn radical politics. The fringe parties are always around, but it isn't until we get desperate that they get any serious attention. Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party candidate for many years, garnered more than a million votes in 1932, the first presidential election after the stock market crash of 1929. A million votes was a lot back then. In the early 1990s, when Coloradans faced a recession and a high foreclosure rate, they approved the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, another example of the public's typical reaction to hard times. Hundreds of special districts, cities and counties have fled from the restrictions of TABOR since its passage in 1992.

Much of the forest on Pikes Peak is poor health; some of it is plain sick. There hasn't been a major fire there for more than a century. Because the city of Colorado Springs has11 reservoirs on the mountain, the utilities department is  afraid the of the damage that would be done to water quality if a major fired stripped away vegetation around the reservoirs. That fear is one of the reasons the city has kept the South Slope under lock and key for decades.

The flaw in this strategy is that there has been little in the way of forest management on the mountain. That, coupled with a fire-free ecology, has menat that the forest on Pikes Peak is less diverse as time goes on. Aspen, a species that often comes back in after a fire,  has been slowly disappearing as the mountian's forest is increasingly dominated by shade-tolerant species, especially spruce. Any forester will tell you that the fewer species a forest has, the more susceptible it is to disease. The thinning planned by the forest service won't do much to help that aspect of the problem, but simply removing fuel for a potential fire is a good step in the right direction of making Pikes Peak less vulnerable to a fire. To read about thinning and other project, click here.

Although the Pikes Peak forest might be a fire waiting to happen, there are a few factors that mitigate the danger, if you compare Pikes Peak to other forested places. For instance, the mountain is hardly remote. During the fire season, thousands of people are on the mountain at any time. That means any fire would be reported quickly. Also, although the South Slope is locked away from the public, there are roads there, so getting firefighters to any blaze would occur more quickly that in more remote locales. The city's reservoirs could be used by firefighters as a water source as well.

Many Americans have some money in the stock market now, thanks to 401(k) and IRA investment vehicles. When history looks back, it will mark the creation of these tools as a very significant change, because before it occurred in the 1980s, very few Americans owned stock. One of the reasons for the stock market's rise in the 1990s was the cash infusion from this new source.

Is it a good thing for a broad swath of America to be invested in the market, to have a direct stake in the nation's prosperity? For the most part the answer is yes. Should we get hung up on electing a president because he/she will be good for our mutual funds?  No, but as everyone knows, cash is good.

Oh, October has a reputation for market crashes for a reason. But when you look at what caused them and what happened afterwards in the market, there are all kinds of differences. The crash of 1987 turned out to be a great buying opportunity and within about a year, the market recovered fully. The crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression. Although times have been tough, most experts now say there is little likelihood of a reoccurrence, because of regulatory steps that were taken and because our economy is much more diverse and global now than it was in 1929. The economic engine is much bigger than it was. It still can suffer breakdowns, but there are good reasons why they are likely to be shorter in duration, and much of that happens to do with economies elsewhere in the world.

Depression? The unemployment rate is bad now, but it is only about half what it was in the 1930s. We've had bank closures, but the existence of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation means that Main Street bank customers were not destroyed. Of course, the FDIC was created in 1934 in resposne tothe steep market plunge.

There's rarely a shortage of people complaining about activist courts. In the absence of the legislature, city councils and county commissions  doing their jobs, Colorado courts will have no choice but to create the new law governing medicinal marijuana. On Thursday, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that to be a caregiver under the state law, someone must have personal contact with the patient. That sounds like common sense, but the term "caregiver" was never defined, either by the proponents of the medicinal pot law or anyone else.The Colorado Department of Health earlier this year tried to limit the number of patients for each medicinal marijuana caregiver to five. That would have put medicinal marijuana out of business in the state, and it seemed an arbitrary limit, since doctors are not limited to seeing just five patients. No doctor could survive with such a limit. The health board declined to pass the regulations proposed by the Colorado Department of Health.

Colorado Springs officials sway they are about to try to tighten enforcement of medicinal marijuna dispensaries. They're also going to begin a process on what regulations are appropriate by initiating an ad hoc group. The first meeting for the group is Thursday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. in the Pikes Peak Conference room at City Hall. It's a good idea to make easy-to-understand local rules. How the city will try to proceed with enforcement without them is a mystery.  How can a medicinal pot business be expected to comply with rules when the rules don't exist? For instance, will a medicinal pot dispensary be deemed illegal if it is an in-home business? Will they be required to be zoned commercially? How close can they be to schools? How could a code enforcement officer rule on such an issue when no code exists? Because medicinal pot is constitutionally protected, what court would allow a city code official to just make it up as he goes along? What would you prefer, an activist judge or an activist code enforcement official?

These questions can mostly be swept away by the creation of reasonable local rules. "I think we should learn to regulate  and tax it," Councilman Sean Paige said.

Colorado's medicinal marijuana registry has come under much criticism from many sides of the issue. No where can a patient find a list of doctors who will prescribe marijuana for one of the ailments on the list for the drug.