2003 Denver Mayoral Election
John Hickenlooper get's the in-depth look today from the Rocky Mountain News. From the article, "In a sense, say people who know him, Hickenlooper is like the Wynkoop personified: unpretentious, creative, upbeat in a kind of understated way. Nothing fancy, but perfectly comfortable with his image." The Rocky has an interview with Hickenlooper and a short bio. In the interview Hickenlooper mentions that he doesn't plan to fire all of Mayor Webb's appointees as Webb did when he took over from Pena. He then takes on the decision by Public Works to raise parking meter rates, "If you look at government, what it should be is some combination of that good that you see in nonprofits - the slower pace, the minimum tolerance for risk - but also the common sense of business, so that when revenues decline you don't raise taxes. If you want to talk about an epiphany, I went down with Joyce Meskis, who owns the Tattered Cover - there were five or six of us - and literally beseeched Mayor Webb not to raise parking meter rates by 50 percent. But the people that he was surrounded with, his political appointments, have never made payroll and have never had those experiences to tell them that when things get tough you just don't raise prices - you market more, you incentivize people, you find ways to motivate people to do more with less. When those parking meters were raised and people talked about how they wouldn't come downtown anymore, that affects our tax base."
Phil Perington believes that Don Mares should have resigned from his office as Auditor to run for mayor according to this article from the Rocky Mountain News. Mares really needs to be on the ball right now and should not be splitting time between running for Mayor and auditing contracts. Perington says that Mayor Webb is, "going to start slipping contracts to all his buddies." A Webb spokesperson, C. L. Harmer, was quoted as saying, "Even a response from the mayor won't help him get to 2 percent,' referring to Perington's last-place finish in several polls." Ouch. Perington has generated little support so far.
Penfield Tate's transportation plan is the subject of this story from the Denver Post.
5:56:50 AM 
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