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08/28/08 @ 11:32:00 AM MDT
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In 1983 at the beginning of the oil shale bust, when seemingly overnight the oil companies and their legions of carpet baggers left Colorado, a young hispanic State legislator named Federico Pena ran for Mayor with the campaign slogan of "imagine a Great City". Many scoffed at his campaign slogan as not having substance and only an election gimmick. Republicans and critics howled as they labeled the articulate and energetic Mexican Mayor and his coalition of progressive supporters as "Feddy and the Dreamers".
Our wildest imaginations have become our fallen aspirations in Denver. Thank you Mayor Pena for imagining a great city with hope we could believe in and the commitment to get it done.
George Bush was Vice President and his son Neil Bush was a member of the board of directors of Denver-based Silverado Savings and Loan during the 1980s' infamous Savings and Loan banking crisis. Silverado's collapse cost taxpayers $1 billion and devastated the Colorado economy into a deep recession that many old timers still call: The Denver Depression.
Some things never change.
Now is the time to imagine a great country. |
| Brahman Colorado :: Thank you Denver...A great city Imagined |
| How does one imagine a great country with campaigns of hope and slogans of "yes we can"?
- Thomas J. Noel:
During two terms as mayor, from 1983 to 1991, Peña persuaded Denverites to reinvest billions in their city-even though the city was then in the worst recession since the 1930s. In the spring of 1989, voters approved a $3 billion airport. Two months later residents approved a $242 million bond issue to rebuild streets, provide infrastructure for redevelopment of the South Platte Valley, improve parks, plant 30,000 trees, expand the National Western Stock Show Grounds, update Denver General Hospital, and restore Civic Center Park and the City and County Building.
In 1990, Denver completed the $126 million Colorado Convention Center, with almost a million square feet on a 25-acre site between Cherry Creek and the Central Business District. That same year, the electorate approved a $200 million bond issue for the Denver Public Schools. Another $95 million bond issue won overwhelming support to enlarge the central library and restore and/or expand many branch libraries. Voters narrowly approved a 0.1 per cent sales tax to build a new baseball stadium for the Colorado Rockies. Many fiscal conservatives became horrified as Denver's gross bonded indebtedness climbed to over $1 billion.
Naysayers such as Rocky Mountain News columnist Gene Amole complained that "Feddy and the Dreamers" were on a ruinous spending spree." A majority of voters, however, proved willing, as Mayor Peña put it, to "invest in Denver's future."
And now we face the same prospects as a country, with beautiful and vibrant Denver as our Democratic model, to re-invest and rebuild America from a ruinous Bush administration of failing banks, falling real estate, struggling businesses, a corporate led war profiteering conflict and Oil company shenanigans.
Deja Vu... 1982.
Let the people of Denver remind all the naysayers and pundits around the country, "Been there done that." Now is the time to embrace Hope that we can believe in.
Now is the time to re-align our priorities (again) and re-invest in America. |
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