Public Meeting - They want to listen

For Colorado’s Future

Lorraine Anderson

Ken Fellman

Rich Ferdinandsen

Mark McGoff

May 03, 2011

Dear XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX,

You are respected as someone who is thoughtful and who cares about our community.   As such, we’d like to invite you to participate in a discussion with other community leaders to explore a way to build a better Colorado for all of us.

We want YOUR help to explore a new way of developing good public policy for our state – a way that engages community-minded individuals like you in a constructive discussion to help solve some of our state’s most pressing problems.  Our state’s public policies are developed primarily in the state legislature and at the ballot box. These are necessary and important processes in our representative democracy. 

But both of these processes are heavily influenced by political agendas, organized special interest groups, and sometimes well-funded campaigns.  The result is that some of the public policies that we adopt are motivated more by a short-term desire to help a narrow constituency rather than by a collective vision to build a better state.

We’d like to bring together a group of 100 community leaders in Arvada to discuss the question of ballot reform and the process of how we as citizens pursue changes to Colorado’s Constitution.  Other topics on the agenda include trust in state and local government and managing for the impending fiscal gap in our state.  We’d like your feedback on these agenda items and the merits of these ideas.

Would you please join us on Wednesday May 11, 2011 from 3pm to 6 pm at the Copper Fields Events Chateau to participate in this discussion? Your time and input will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your consideration of this invitation!

Sincerely,

Lorraine Anderson   Ken Fellman 

Rich Ferdinandsen   Mark McGoff