Our new President was inaugurated this past Friday. In one of shortest acceptance speeches in history, all of 16 minutes, Donald Trump, said among other things “ Today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, we are transferring power from Washington DC, and giving it back to you the people” A rather strong indictement of many of the people that were standing behind him on the podium, both Democrats and Republicans. It was refreshing to hear him say what he meant and not a lot of fanciful platitudes that would indicate more of the same old. I believe there will be a new day in government. Now only time will tell and I know many of you are skeptical. Let us see what happens. Just be prepared for the pace because I just do not believe Washington believes it can happen. It will be interesting to watch.
Our own Colorado State officials began work on January 11th. Let us see what they can do. On the Democratic side I believe there is some genuine effort to get some things accomplished. On the Republican side I am afraid the enthusiasm about Trump may have reinforced the Conservative Republicans to back to their same old hard conservative line. Listen to Trump. You represent the people, do not forget it. Get something meaningful accomplished! People of Colorado (most of them) want to see solutions, not never ending rhetoric.
Tough to understand how the Governor can talk about a $100 million dollar bike path improvement plan when our road and bridge maintenance and development are in such sad shape. It is great to see folks coming to Colorado, both in terms of visitors and moving, but it is just irresponsible not to have a road and bridge development and maintenance plan that adequately supports that growth. That lack of a viable plan negatively effects every Colorado citizen one way or another.
Our elected officials have a responsibility to represent all the people of the districts they have been elected to. It is sad to see the Weld County Commissioners in the situation they seem to have found themselves. Strong personalities have good and bad points. We are getting to see some of the negative effects. No one in Weld County is well served by what is going on. It needs to be resolved.
I recently attended a town meeting that had over 60 members of the public attend. That is usually indicative of an issue that is not popular. The town trustees involved responded differently. Some were frustrated with the citizens as they were complaining about an issue in a Town that has many vacancies on the various Town commissions. Having been a Town Trustee I can understand that frustration. Good leadership is important. The danger in not having active citizen participation is that officials and staff sometime forget why they are in office, to serve the best interest of the people. I think you can make that statement applicable to the federal, state, county and local government as well as the many commissions that exist out there. Being an elected official is not any easy job and usually not well rewarded and often not well appreciated by the citizens. Nobody ever said it is easy.
We should our expect our elected officials to do the best job they can. If they do not meet your expectations they should not be reelected. The voting public should decide. In our county however, the establishment usually picks who runs in a very selective process. Similar to other counties controlled by the other party. It will be interesting to watch the impact of open primaries and maybe seeing a broader base of qualified candidates coming to the forefront. Wishful thinking, maybe.
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