Council Kills Community Garden

On Monday night January 25th, Arvada City Council voted to include the plot reserved for the "Arvada Community Garden" in an Urban Renewal District. The garden will be moved if council has it's way

The Community Garden has been in Arvada from World War 2 era, over 40 years old. Extra vegetables and food grown at the garden is donated to the Arvada Food Bank. It is an integral part of Arvada. Yet, on Monday our newly aimed sustainable city government voted 4-3 in favor of including the community garden in the Urban Renewal plan for the Triangle Redevelopment Project. See technically the City owns the land that the garden is on, yet for 40 years, most of which Lorraine Anderson was in council, the gardens have remained untouched. But no longer, watch out Community garden, Caterpillar may be coming and I don't mean the little yellow kind I mean the big yellow ones. 

Hopefully, the gardeners will have time to organize and fight this decision, but many a Arvadan have lost their homes to Arvada Urban Renewal Authority, heck they even went after Shrine of St. Anne. I'm sure a garden will be easy. 

Sustainable City Kills Jobs

Arvada is trying to become a sustainable city. They recently installed solar panels on City Hall. If you walk into the building you will find a computer reading out how much energy is saved 7 days a week. Yet, if the the City is so concerned about saving energy and helping the environment why do they leave all the lights on in the whole building at night? Don't think so, drive by city hall any night after 5:00pm. You will see all kinds of lights on all over the building.

Furthermore, if the City is so concerned about sustainability in Arvada (in 2011 for the first time the city council is starting a "Sustainability Advisory Committee") why are they cutting down all of the trees in the Garrison Street Park? To build a new park? I don't know when the last time it flooded in Colorado, but it was well over a hundred years ago.

It seems the City of Arvada is planning on using "sustainability" to do what they want against the wishes of their citizens. How many trash companies will the City of Arvada put out of business if they implement their "Waste Hauling Study". The answer is all but one private business in the waste hauling industry of Arvada would be put out of business and many people would lose their jobs.

Ken Fellman was a bad Mayor for Arvada, but it seems to me that he didn't try to kill jobs. He only went after churches. The current council may be somewhat worse if they target private sector jobs.

Contact Information

Many of you may want to contact your representative regarding a certain ordinance or other matter. The information to do so is listed below:
Mayor Bob Frie
303-420-1234

Mayor Pro Tem, Councilmember, District Four
Bob Dyer
303-423-8080(w)
303-456-4646(h)
bdyer@arvada.org

Councilmember, District One
Rachel Zenzinger
303-748-0770 (cell phone)
rzenzinger@arvada.org

Councilmember, District Two
Mark McGoff
720-898-7000 ext. 2196
mmcgoff@arvada.org

Councilmember District Three
Shelley Cook
720-935-9224
cooksj@attglobal.net

Councilmember At-Large
Don Allard
303-420-6559
dallard@arvada.org

Councilmember At-Large
Marc Williams
303-424-4486 (w)
303-940-7593 (h)
mwilliams@arvada.org