The Council of Neighbors and Organizations, or CONO, is trying to alert residents of Colorado Springs and El Paso County about the budget crises facing the local governments.
So CONO – a volunteer umbrella group for the city’s neighborhoods - is sponsoring a series of free community forums where folks can come and listen to non-partisan experts discuss the economy and how it is crippling local governments.
Dave Munger, president of CONO, said the group wants to dispel a lot of the misinformation floating around about the city using “scare tactics” to justify a property tax increase and allegations of “socialist conspiracies” and the like.
The first forum was in August. The second was 6:30-8:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 17, at the Fire Department Complex, 375 Printers Parkway, east of downtown.
The final forum will be held 6:30-8:30 p.m., on Tuesday, Oct. 13, at the West Intergenerational Center, in the old Buena Vista Elementary School at 1628 W. Bijou Street. It will feature a lengthy community discussion of the implications of the previous two forums.
Initial comments will be made by by: 
Dave Csintyan, CEO of the Greater Pikes Peak Area Chamber of Commerce;
Jan Doran, past president of CONO
Steve Pope, publisher of the Gazette. Ample free parking is available on site.
The Pikes Peak Library District is showing the sessions online and on Comcast Cable Channel 17. Below is a screen capture of Dave Munger at the first CONO forum.
CONO’s first economic forum featured Colorado Springs City Manager Penny Culbreth-Graft and El Paso County Administrator Jeff Greene. That session can be viewed on cable on this schedule:
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CONO needs to refocus its efforts on what its original mission is all about, back when Jan Doran was CONO’s leader. There are plenty of other groups covering the “scare tactics” and “socialist conspiracies.”
The city ISN’T using scare tactics and just trying to justify a tax increase? Ah, the push-poll style survey of how much value we gain from city “services” and the anti-TABOR “education briefing” on the city website must be my imagination. The stories last spring about how the parks would die because we couldn’t water them this summer must have been an indigestion-induced nightmare. The city council and manager’s budget proposing to cut fire and police services and close revenue-producing facilities before reducing underused bus routes, no, that wasn’t intended to instill fear in the populace …