Austin/Colorado Springs

The headline in today's Gazette was about a group of local officials visiting Austin, Texas, for some advice on how to improve our local economy. See the story here. For those who don't know, I spent seven years in the central TX area (six at Fort Hood, about an hour north of Austin, and one in Austin), then spent one in Colorado Springs and the last two in Manitou (the mayor of Manitou was one of the local group on the trip). Nice to know that despite the severe cuts the city and county have been making up here (they were fixing every other pothole on Sinton Road yesterday) they still have enough in the coffers to send 30 peeps down to check out A-town.

Some of my favorite reader comments:

enderr wrote:
Step 1: Get rid of FOTF and New Life as well as other religious organizations. Not only do they give the city a bad name, they don't pay taxes. When the local gov't courted all theses fundie groups it was the WORST thing a city could do. Step 2: Load up all of the military retirees and ship them to Florida. Step 3: Boot the USOC. Step 4: Clean house in the local government. Get modern thinkers in there and not just conservatives that have no desire for change or progress. That should be a good start. Once we fix our "image" then we can start to court all of these new businesses.

mpinco wrote:
Well Colorado Springs still has its Intel building [which is vacant, FYI]. Austin on the other hand ...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvcP9_R1Tiw

johnkoury wrote:
Let's see: Austin is the capital, has a major university, a moderate political base, an enlightened city government, major industries, is a magnet for young professionals and is twice as big as we are. And, oh yeah, they aren't dominated by retired military double-dippers and evangelical wackos. Lots in common, all right. Is this some kind of a joke?

eeyore wrote:
This is great! Maybe now Pueblo and Colorado Springs can work together to be the great power house we were meant to be!

solarsam wrote:
Austin is the capital of a conservative red state notwithstanding, Austin Energy has embraced the new energy economy and funded a viable renewable energy program. Colorado Springs Utilities on the other hand published a glossy booklet on how they are good stewards of the environment. They need to walk the talk.

lucius wrote:
Who was playing at Greune Hall?

mananamaria wrote:
three things that seperate us from Austin: A2, Focus, TABOR. Next things: Brown mudpits in parks and no restrooms, potholes, USOC boondoggle. then Austin has governnment employees and we have religious employees who don't make enough money to stay off foodstamps and other assistance. Oh, and the companies they work for pay no taxes.....similarities? INTEL. poor traffic management and sprawl. Also a more public group of ebvangelicals compared to the size of the rest of the population. The willingness to throw public trasit under the bus in favor of ever more cars.....