.

For days after the Waldo Canyon fire, my Jeep smelled like smoke. I couldn’t get the stink out.

The entire Pikes Peak Region is experiencing the same phenomenon. It can’t shake the stink of the fire.

Images on the national news of forests and homes burning led to widespread cancellations at area tourist-related businesses.

Now we’re all being urged to take “staycations.”

Terry Sullivan

Experts say if we all explore our own backyard, we can help our economy.

And we’ll have fun.

I asked Terry Sullivan, longtime tourism guru, if staycations can really help.

“Absolutely,” Terry said. “And there’s a lot we can do by inviting our friends and relatives to visit, too.”

Terry offered this staycation tip:

“One of my favorite things is to get up early in the morning and take a family up the Pikes Peak Highway,” he said.

But he only pays to go to three reservoirs — Crystal Creek and North and South Catamount — where he stops and fixes breakfast.

“I bring premade pancakes and either bring a grill or use the barbecue pits, with caution of course,” he said.

“There’s nothing like having breakfast and looking up on Pikes Peak.”

He’s even been lucky enough to have friends catching fish while he’s cooking breakfast.

My favorite staycation also involves the mountain.

My wife, Cary, and I spent a morning riding down the highway with Pikes Peak Mountain Bike Tours and then had lunch along Fountain Creek at Wines of Colorado in Cascade. Epic!

We also had a great staycation exploring Victor and Cripple Creek. We spent the night in a haunted room at the Victor Hotel, rode the Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad and we lost an hour wandering the Victor Cemetery. (We’re strange like that.)

Our staycation list also includes rafting the Arkansas River, a day trip to Green Mountain Falls and hiking at the Crags.

Susan Edmondson, executive director, Bee Vradenburg Foundation and staycation expert

My friend, Susan Edmondson, had tons of staycation ideas involving the arts.

“If you can’t find something fun, brilliant, mind-blowing and great for the whole family in our local arts scene, then you’re just not looking,” Susan exclaimed. (She exclaims a lot.)

Her list includes taking the kids to Millibo Art Theatre’s “Double Bubble” Ice Cream Theatre.

Susan also highly recommends catching James Turrell’s “Trace Elements: Light Into Space” opening Saturday at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Susan called it ”a mind-blowing installation light sculpture.” And she exclaimed: “This is a must-see for everyone, and I really mean everyone.”

And she recommends Theatreworks‘ “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” at Rock Ledge Ranch, Aug. 2-26, which she described as “Shakespeare in a spectacular setting.”

Susan also touted all the free concerts in the great outdoors pretty much every night of the week – about 125 concerts total throughout the region in the summer. For a great downloadable concert guide go to COPPeR.

Finally, friend Warren Epstein, who seems like he’s on permanent vacation, urged folks to consider an overnight in the Cliff House in Manitou Springs (he loves the signature suites), a visit to the Penny Arcade and maybe a nightcap at the Keg.

“Manitou, especially, caters to people wanting something unusual and unique,” Warren said. “You’ll get a real vacation experience.”

Here’s some other staycation ideas and coupons from area attractions and other businesses:

To get more information from the Colorado Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau, follow this link.

Click here for Manitou Springs area information.

You can find more deals at the Pikes Peak Country Attractions group.

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HELP THE PIKES PEAK REGION SHAKE THE STINK is a post from: Side Streets

Hello, neighbor!

Time again for one of my favorite topics: homeowners associations, or HOAs.

The HOA Information Office and Resource Center just released a year-long study of Colorado’s HOAs. Results are not pretty.

The HOA office fielded 3,053 inquiries, of which 478 were complaints.

Guess what area produced the highest number of complaints.

The Pikes Peak region, of course, with 21 percent of all complaints!

Are we a bunch of whiners, or what?

Not really, says Aaron Acker, the Colorado HOA Information Officer.

“We started with the presumption we’d get a lot of ticky-tack complaints,” Acker said. “We were wrong. Most of the issues were major ones.”

Complaints like HOA boards and managers hiding financial and governing documents.

“Transparency is a big issue,” Acker said. “Homeowners trying to get information are getting significant blow-back from their management companies or HOA boards.”

Aaron Acker, Colorado HOA Information Officer, spoke to a group of Pikes Peak region property managers and HOA board members on Feb. 15, 2011.

“People want to know what’s going on with their money. And HOA boards have a legal obligation to produce records at the behest of members. But we’re seeing a lot of complaints about them not responding, producing incomplete records, fighting requests or charging very high fees for documents.”

Access to HOA board meetings came up often in Acker’s study, as did failure to listen to homeowners — whether by property managers or HOA boards.

“These are pretty major issues, in my estimation,” Acker said.

Acker and his office were created by the 2010 Colorado General Assembly.

Upon opening the office last January, Acker was told to find and register all Colorado HOAs.

 (I used that abbreviation to describe single family resident neighborhoods, condo and townhome associations, voluntary improvement associations, property owners associations.)

So far, he has registered 8,037 asssociations, representing 838,211 homes, condos and townhome units and 2 million residents.

Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak region are grouped in the South Central category, which has 661 registered HOAs. That’s about 8.2 percent of all HOAs registered. In other words, that 8.2 percent accounted for 21 percent of all complaints!

 (Industry experts believe upwards of 25 percent of Colorado HOAs remain unregistered.)

Acker said he hopes HOAs will use his findings as a wakeup call to reform how they interact with homeowners.

Lawmakers are digging into the data, as well, and likely will use it to decide whether it’s time to license property managers or give Acker greater power to police HOAs. Stay tuned!

Here is a link to a column and blog I wrote recently about the issue of licensing property managers.

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PIKES PEAK REGION LEADS STATE IN HOA COMPLAINTS is a post from: Side Streets

Amy Filipiak is watching for the skies to turn white.

When they do, if all goes according to plans, teams of Snow Angels will emerge to clear sidewalks within at least 1,500 feet of a half dozen schools in the region.

Filipiak and a group of neighborhood leaders and city officials have spent a year organizing Snow Angels around these elementary schools: Steele, Carver and West in District 11, Pikes Peak in D2, Frontier in D20 and Odyssey in D49.

Eventually, Filipiak hopes to see similar teams spread to all elementary schools in the Pikes Peak region.

“We put together a pilot program to see how best to get people to participate,” she said.

Amy credits the idea to bicycling advocate Al Brody. Both believe snow should never block a child’s path to school so they set about organizing teams of Snow Angels to clear the way.

Amy Filipiak, leader of the Snow Angel army

Brody sought out Amy because of her role as volunteer coordinator for the area’s Safe Routes to School program, which program promotes walking and biking to school by building sidewalks and bike paths, training crossing guards, installing bike racks at schools and encouraging students and families to participate.

Since Congress authorized it in 2005, the program has distributed $612 million in grants to more than 10,400 schools nationwide, covering 4.8 million children.

Filipiak then approached the city’s traffic engineering department and the Council of Neighbors & Organizations, the umbrella organization for area neighborhood groups.

CONO president Dave Munger said his folks quickly saw the potential and began contacting neighborhood associations where they might test the idea, such as the Old North End and the Organization of Westside Neighbors.

“Part of being a good neighbor is making sure kids can get to school safely without slipping and sliding,” Munger said.

CONO treasurer John Nuwer said the city embraced the idea and printed door hangers to help get the word out to residents within a radius of the six schools in the pilot program.

“They also printed some nice decals to give people who shovel their sidewalks to let people know you are a Snow Angel,” Nuwer said.

The program benefits more than just school children, said Vic Appugliese, president of the Old North End group.

Nobody wants to see Grandma out plowing her own sidewalk.

“This will help elderly neighbors who can no longer pick up a shovel. It will help us identify those folks and get them help,” he said. “This is a great program. We have a lot of pedestrians in our neighborhood. This is about helping everybody.”

There’s just one problem.

It hasn’t snowed enough to trigger the program.

When it does, the group is ready.

“We’re hoping a little bit of awareness will get people out to shovel their walks,” Filipiak said.

Are you ready, Snow Angels? The kids are counting on you! 

Here's the 1,500-foot radius around Steele Elementary in the Old North End Neighborhood. It's approximately three blocks in every direction. Organizers hope Snow Angels will clear all sidewalks in the zone each time it snows.

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SNOW ANGELS TO APPEAR WHEN SKIES TURN WHITE is a post from: Side Streets

xx

A couple months ago, I was surprised to read in the Quality of Life survey that fewer than 50 percent of Colorado Springs residents surveyed feel “very safe” walking their neighborhoods at night.

This is the Springs, not Oakland, I snorted.

Well a headline last week on Forbes.com gives comfort to all those scared-y cats: Colorado Springs is the eighth safest U.S. city!

I’ve always thought the Springs was a great, safe place to live. But I didn’t think the Pikes Peak region ranked among the elite safe cities in the nation.

So I looked at Forbes’ criteria. It started with metropolitan areas of 250,000 or more and looked at the FBI’s crime data for 2010. Forbes then ranked each city’s rate of violent crime — murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — per 100,000 residents. (There are some big omissions because Chicago and other cities did not submit complete reports to the FBI.)

From the 72 metro areas with complete FBI reports, Forbes then factored in traffic-fatality data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Forbes averaged it all out and, POOF, the Springs metro area of El Paso and Teller counties ranked eighth.

According to the FBI report, the Pikes Peak region area had 462 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2010. That’s based on a  population of 626,259.

By comparison, if you pull Oakland out of the San Francisco Bay Area metro report, it had 1,532 violent crimes per 100,000, based on a population of 409,723.

That is far higher than even Detroit, which ranked No. 1 on Forbes’ “Most Dangerous Cities” list in October. Detroit had 1,111 violent crimes per 100,000.

Pueblo, with 156,522 residents, had a rate of 585 violent crimes per 100,000. (Chalk up one more reason to be glad you don’t live in Pueblo!)

While I was not surprised at our relatively low violent crime rate, I was shocked by our ranking as a safe place to drive. The  Springs’ car fatality rating was 11th overall.

Based on what I see each day from behind my windshield and bicycle handlebars, I’d have guessed our streets were much more dangerous to drive.

Not so, says Forbes and the highway safety folks.

Our region had just 43 traffic fatalities in 2010. That’s up from 33 in 2006 but it’s still far fewer than the rest of the nation.

Consider Pueblo’s rate of 11.91 per 100,000 residents is nearly double the El Paso County rate of 6.54. (See earlier snarky comment about living in Pueblo.)

Forbes explained that its safest cities shared several characteristics: wealth, civic involvement, heavily used public spaces like parks, shopping districts and museums, and a strong tax based that invests in public safety and police.

It’s easy to find things to criticize and the Springs has its share of problems.

But maybe it isn’t such a bad place after all. Ya think?

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MAYBE COLORADO SPRINGS ISN’T SO BAD AFTER ALL is a post from: Side Streets

It makes perfect sense that professional landscapers would celebrate Earth Day.

After all, landscapers are all about protecting the environment.

Planting trees and shrubs and flowers is not just a fad with these folks. It’s their lives.

And it makes perfect sense that landscapers, under the leadership of PLANET — the Professional Landcare Network — decided to launch a National Day of Service on Earth Day.

What better day to promote their profession, to reach out and remind everyone there are plenty of certified professional landscapers out there who care about their communities and their customers.

After all, we’ve all heard stories — I’ve written a few myself — about crooks claiming to be landscapers who take half your downpayment and disappear.

In our area on Friday, professional landscapers from around the Pikes Peak region will be volunteering their time and using donated materials to build a healing garden at Memorial Hospital for Children on Boulder Street east of downtown Colorado Springs.

If you have any doubts about the sincerity of these landscapers and their commitment to this day of service, consider this:

They are taking on a project that the hospital had budgeted $100,000 to complete.

And they will be moving all the materials — 50 tons of dirt, 5 tons of sand, 24 tons of sand/gravel roadbase, 2.5 tons of drainage rock, and uncounted tons of flagstone, boulders, pavers, trees and shrubs — by wheelbarrow to the site.

It will take volunteers a day just to haul all the stuff the length of a football field down a narrow ramp to reach the place they will build the healing garden.

I’d say that qualifies as a true day of service for these members of the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado.

.

Here’s a look at the $110 million Memorial Hospital for Children on Boulder Street. The seven-story east tower opened at Memorial Health Systems’ downtown campus in December 2007.

.

Volunteers from the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado's southern chapter will build a healing garden using donated materials on Earth Day, April 22, 2011, at the base of the Memorial Hospital for Children east tower. The garden will be built behind the retaining wall and railing.

The garden will feature three large circular patios, a fountain, benches and tables and a variety of plants.

The patios represent hope, life and healing. The area will be a retreat for children and their families as well as Memorial employees.

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WHEELBARROW BRIGADE TO HELP HEALING is a post from: Side Streets

Here’s how Helen Hunt Falls normally looks . . . 

Helen Hunt Falls

But lately, its received a paint job it didn’t need. 

Others call it graffiti. 

In this case, it appears to be the work of gangbangers. 

Spray paint mars the signs, rocks along the trail, timbers and around the falls itself. 

It’s an ugly stain on North Cheyenne Canon Park and the falls. 

And it is disturbing to folks who live nearby and those who travel from all over Colorado Springs and  the Pikes Peak Region to hike the canyon. 

It bothers them to think they are at risk of encountering Surenos or Chihuahuas or Maderas or Prospect Lake Barrio or Blythe Street X3 gang members when they walk, run or bike the canyon and its popular trails. 

But the signs are unmistakable. 

x 

x 

But gang graffiti, or just random forms of graffiti, are not confined to Helen Hunt Falls.

After a couple quiet years of relatively little graffiti, city parks maintenance supervisor Tim Pluemer reports an ugly bloom of the vandalism is underway.

He says it is a chronic problem at the three city skate parks.

And it is spreading to neighborhood parks from Briargate to the Broadmoor area.

No park, it seems is immune.

And it’s a shame that when budgets are so tight, the one member of the parks maintenance staff has devote two days a week simply to scrubbing away the often profane rants and taggings by graffiti vandals.

Graffiti tags of the Surenos gang, based in Southern California, mar a skate park in Colorado Springs.

Graffiti on a playground in a Colorado Springs neighborhood park.

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EVEN OUR WATERFALLS AREN’T SAFE! is a post from: Side Streets

It’s silly season, I mean election time again. New homeowners association boards are being elected all over the Pikes Peak region.

An especially contentious race is for three seats on the Woodmoor Improvement Association board.

 The nine-member board governs the sprawling, wooded and affluent golf-course community of Woodmoor, which has 3,000 homes on 2,000 acres east of Monument.

It oversees $1.3 million in assets, income and spending and enforces covenants.

One of the big issues this election is a recent decision by the board to spend $20,000 to build a 10-space parking lot and trails on a 13.7-acre marsh on community property in Woodmoor. The marsh is in the middle of this photo from FlashEarth.

Here’s a look at the planned trails and parking lot under construction on the site.

Critics say the board should have gone to greater lengths to inform the community about the project, gathering neighbor input and holding public meetings before spending such a large amount of money.

They also criticize the board for spending thousands on beer and food for neighborhood parties. Critics say the board spent $9,000 last year. The board says it was $5,300 and a justifiable expense because so many homeowners attended.

The board has been in turmoil for a couple years. Critics say the conflict erupted with the rise to power of George McFadden, the current WIA board president. He is a polarizing figure in Woodmoor.

Although McFadden is not up for re-election on Jan. 25, three allies are on the ballot. And his name always comes up in conversations about the board, the election and the issues facing the community.

McFadden, however, declined to talk to me about it. He did the same thing a year ago when I wrote about a string of resignations from the board. At that time, as now, his name came up over and over. But he didn’t want to talk. Instead, he ripped me in emails and letters after the column ran.

Check it out my Feb. 11, 2009 column at this link. And here’s the blog I wrote, with his flaming rebuttal attached.

McFadden did write me Tuesday, pointing me to the Web sites of the competing camps: one for his allies:

The other is for the opposition group: 

And here’s McFadden’s e-mail to me on Tuesday:

Mr. Vogrin,

I have no desire to become more involved in the WIA Elections as I am not one of the candidates running, so I offer “no comment”.  I would advise all interested in the elections to review the various campaign websites.

George Labesky, Gary Marner, Bill Brendemuhl – www.woodmoorfacts.org
Jim Hale, Nick Oakley, Paul Lambert – www.savewoodmoor.org
Ed Miller is the other candidate.

I would also point out that both Nick Oakley and Jim Hale were appointed, by the “so called Majority”, to committees with the purpose of looking at our rules and regulations and design standards manual and suggest changes to the board.  George Labesky was appointed to the Legal Audit committee by the board to review our governing documents (Declaration, Articles, and bylaws) and to bring them into compliance with the various state statutes (they are woefully out of date).

I think any and and all of the candidates running for election will serve the owners well, but the two incumbents have the experience and proven track record that the others do not.

All the info you need is either on the websites mentioned above or on the WIA webpage at www.woodmoor.org. 

I hope this article will be more balanced than your last one on Woodmoor.  I regret that the Gazette did not cover the very successful WIA Community Events, attended by over 1000 owners this year.  If you want to review what was provided in terms of recreation (which is the first listed use of Assessments per the WIA Declaration) the newsletters which provided announcements for the events are available in PDF form on the WIA website.

Thanks,
George McFadden

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WOODMOOR ELECTION — who do you believe? is a post from: Side Streets