Colorado Springs’ police department can’t afford to fly helicopters and has cut back on pursuit of vandals, drug dealers and juvenile offendersall in the name of fiscal frugality.
But lap dancers better watch their step. Apparently the city’s severe budget cuts won’t curtail the Springs’ stripper patrol.
It’s all about priorities, you see.
The Colorado Springs Gazette reported on the situation in stories and an editorial this week, explaining the city’s police department had to trim $4 million from its budget.
The department never considered asking its vice squad to give up going undercover to bust exotic dancers, a police spokesman told the Gazette.
Noooooo, that would be the first step on a “slippery slope.”
A slippery slope toward what? Strippers opening up shop near middle schools and hiring lobbyists?
Oh wait, those would be medical marijuana dispensaries.
Get a blade for your pickup, senator. Most Coloradans accept that we get a lot of snow here in the winter, so we were a little surprised that several Republican lawmakers were up in arms about the Colorado Department of Transportation’s reasonable approach to plowing less-traveled roads.
CDOT leaves the 2,800 miles of rural roads that get fewer than 1,000 cars a day unplowed overnight. The exception is for roads on a school route or that access a hospital, and, of course, during very heavy snows.
The practice saves money and seems reasonable. But some conservatives, led by Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, are demanding overnight plowing of all roads.
And yet Brophy, normally a champion of cost-cutting, has offered no solution to pay for overnight plowing of rural roads. Unless he can find a workable solution, he ought to realize that sometimes you just have to suck it up.
Picture of the year, it ain’t. Speaking of CDOT, the Colorado Department of Transportation is investigating an employee for using her government e-mail account to send an inappropriate photo. The photo was altered to show a kneeling President Barack Obama shining the shoe of former veep candidate and presidential wannabe Sarah Palin. The caption in the e-mail says, “It appears he has found his niche,” referring to the president.
First, it’s not even funny, but it’s also racist and in poor taste to refer to the president as a shoe-shine boy. C’mon people. Don’t use state resources for personal pursuits. It’s not that onerous of a rule. Of course, we may have found a CDOT worker who suddenly has time to plow Brophy’s rural roads.
Short Takes is compiled by Denver Post editorial writers and expresses the view of the newspaper’s editorial board.
