Fort Collins Now
November 2008
It gets worse.
Remember the Climate Action Plan? You know, the one that will devastate the housing market, expand the size and reach of government, raise fees and utility rates, force “conservation” and generally wreak havoc on the Fort Collins economy?
It has an addendum. It’s worse.
Don’t believe me? Let’s start off with the addendum’s call to use as much as $1.5 million per year of taxpayer money to purchase “carbon offsets.” Did that get your attention? Does that seem like a wise use of your money? Purchasing carbon offsets is a fancy way of writing a check to absolve you of your environmental “sin”. The Climate Action Plan wants up to $1.5 million of your money the city can feel good about meeting its arbitrary and unattainable goals.
What else is in the proposed addendum to the Climate Action Plan? How about a “C&D deposit system” for construction projects? The “deposit system” would require businesses to write a check to the government (oops… I mean “submit a deposit”) for each construction project. The government would then hold that money as ransom (oops… I mean “in deposit”) until the government certifies that the construction project has met new recycling mandates “of at least 50% of materials”.
I’ll say one thing about the “deposit system.” It’s a pretty creative way of levying a fine: After all, the City of Fort Collins will be getting their money up front.
The addendum gives the “deposit system” a 2012 cost estimate of $282,000 for “users”. “User” is the new term for someone who pays a fine? Does this make me a repeated “user” of the Fort Collins parking violations “system”? Am I supposed to feel better about all of those parking tickets now? I’ve got to re-read my Orwell if I’m going to keep up with this crew.
It gets worse. Remember when I wrote that the City was going to audit you before you could sell your house and then force you to pay to “upgrade” it to meet their new climate regulations? Well, they now couch that part of the plan with the word “explore”; they are going to “explore” ways to drastically reduce the resale value of your home. Unfortunately, in the process, they added a whole bunch of new things to “explore”. Now, in the addendum, while they’re still planning to “explore” the exact same “mandatory upgrades at the time of sale,” they’re also planning to “explore” a way to “add the cost of upgrades into property taxes” and finance the program with a “revenue bond issue”.
So we have the same mandates, but they’ve added in the not-so-helpful suggestion of raising your property taxes to pay for them.
But the addendum is not entirely without the same belly-laugh-inducing humor of the original Climate Action Plan. (Remember the part in the original plan where they were worried that it was just too darned easy to park in Fort Collins?) In the addendum, we have the bizarre notion that if we want people to reduce their CO2 production, all we have to do is set higher goals.
If we just double our goals, it “could inspire citizens and businesses towards greater action…” This alone – this doubling of our CO2 reduction goals – is projected to reduce our CO2 emissions by 3,000 tons per year. The addendum asserts that we can save another 7,000 tons if we just increase our participation goals in the Colorado Carbon Fund by 150%. In other news from 1933, thanks to a simple increase in goals, the city is expecting much better production from the Ukrainian wheat harvest.
So let’s have a very clear up-or-down vote when this whole mess comes before the City Council on December 2. Let’s find out where our elected City Councilmembers stand. Let’s find out which members of City Council want to devastate the housing market, drive down the resale value of homes and cripple the construction industry. Let’s find out which members of the City Council want to raise fees and utility rates and use that money to build an even larger bureaucracy. It will be very helpful next April.
