Polis can’t bully cities into making housing more affordable
Re: “Housing laws: Most cities make ‘good faith’ efforts to comply, state says,” Oct. 8 news story
Gov. Jared Polis is starting to sound more and more like President Trump!
His plan to punish those cities that don’t agree with his “more, more, more” housing policy is just petty Trump-like vengeance.
And it’s a Trump-like diversion from the underlying failure of this policy. In simple terms, this “growth first” policy never had a solid basis in the housing market for the Denver area.
Any decent look would have shown that the long-term demand is far too great to expect prices to magically come down and stay down.
Thus, the intelligent policy would have been to acknowledge this fact and also that adding too many people will destroy our quality of life. Instead, require a significant portion of new housing to be permanently affordable, and to force new business development to pay for housing for workers whose jobs would not pay enough to meet the market prices.
That would have provided more affordable housing while preserving some of Colorado’s quality of life. But apparently, it is not in accord with Polis’ “bully the market” mindset.
Steve Pomerance, Boulder
Let’s compare Maria Corina Machado to Trump
Re: “Opposition leader wins Peace Prize,” Oct. 11 news story
The symmetry could hardly be more appropriate: the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a Venezuelan woman fighting for the democratic rights of her people while our president feels slighted by the Nobel committee as he and his Republican colleagues work systematically to dismantle our American democracy.
Maria Corina Machado lives in hiding as she voices opposition to autocrats while on the streets of our cities heavily armed agents and soldiers wear masks as they carry out what even they must perceive as a legally questionable mission. The ironies write themselves (Putin advocates for Trump as a champion of peace) while our citizenry is forced to imagine a Venezuelan scenario here at home.
Dan Welte, Highlands Ranch
DIA officials should pay back their ticket costs
Re: “Ethics board clears DIA leader over flight costs ‘appalled’ by conference,” Oct. 7 news story
Bravo to The Post for bringing the article of the DIA Infamous Nine to the community. Once again, the DIA officials stepped on their common sense thought process. It is easy to spend money when it is not yours. Very easy. Stakeholders, the taxpayers are there to pay the bills. No problem. Until the investigation by The Post brought the wrong to light.
What would be the right thing to do is for each of the Infamous Nine to take out their check books and reimburse the taxpayers the difference between their business class and first class tickets and what the price was for coach class and reimburse the taxpayers. While the County and City of Denver are going through deep cuts in funds and services, you have nine “officials” enjoying the good life.
Infamous Nine, do things right and do the right thing.
Jay Weinstein, Denver
The dangers of physician-assisted suicide — normalization
Re: “Here’s how we prevent every youth suicide,” Oct. 10 commentary
I appreciate Dr. Reinecke’s insight into the key factors that trigger, and the key approaches that ameliorate, the youth suicide crisis in America. However, he skirts around one issue. He notes that “suicide becomes a solution, an option, a source of relief.” He fails to draw a line between the growing acceptance of assisted suicide in Colorado and other states, and the epidemic of youth suicide nationally.
When stories of people ending their lives through assisted suicide are glorified in the media and in our daily conversations, we send the message that suicide is indeed a rationale, and perhaps even a preferred, answer to our physical and/or existential suffering. This is a very dangerous perspective that has deadly reverberations in our vulnerable youth.
Tom Perille, Englewood
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