When asked about street infrastructure Pedroe said what his opinion was. What he didn' t tell you was that despite Council's direction for several years to never allow more than a four lane road in Longmont the staff would quietly smirk about how now they would only be able to do center turn and acceleration and deceleration lanes now which would add up to seven lanes instead of the six lanes Nick Wolfrum wanted. I now live at the intersection of a five lane and seven lane road (Pike and Main). Council direction ignored! When the Council approved Prospect they granted me a full access movement onto Main Street. Governor Roy Romer changed the State Highway access code to allow this to happen. Nick Wolfrum and Gordon Pedrow stopped it. Council direction ignored again! On affordable housing Pedrow states that that the builders are whiners. What he fails to mention is how he Kathy Fedler and Karen Roney kept moving the ball on what the requirements were. AFTER I got annexed I was informed that the affordable units would count against my allowed density even though they were part of the detached housing lot they were on which were not separable causing an unforeseen shortage of density in my development. When I applied for more density to make up for the shortage I was told By Pedrow, Kathy Fedler and Karen Roney that even though I was not legally required to provide more affordable housing the City staff would not support my application unless I provided more affordable housing. Council direction ignored!
Then I was required to go to Planning and Zoning to transfer density from one phase to another to keep building even though there was no such legal requirement on the books, Again I was told that the City would not support my application to move my already approved density unless I provided even more affordable housing despite now having twice met the changing Roney, Fedler, pedrow requirements for affordable housing. Now we have an affordable housing task force which is comprised of several people that do not live in the city limits of Longmont even though living in the City has always been a requirement for every other City committee and board in the past. Gordon Pedroe rarely followed policy directives from the City Council.
FYI: pedrow was forced to retire by the previous City Council and is a bitter man because of it. Karen Benker started the ball rolling and the last council with the exception of Gabe Santos finished him off. Katie Witt's weepy farewell to pedrow at last weeks City Council was bogus since she is the one who informed pedro she had the votes to fire him! HOWEVER Gabe Santos was very sincere in his passionate farewell to pedrow and was his biggest and only supporter on the last council. Remember that when he runs for Mayor. Gabe Santos was also instrumental (along with Katie Witt) in making sure the outrageous City impact fees for new development were not discussed when his secret desire for the affordable housing program to continue went down in flames.
As the first developer in the affordable program in Longmont let me make it clear I was happy and committed to provide affordable housing whether it was required or not.
The last eighteen years have been very damaging to Longmont business, retail and smart development because of the tacit understanding we all had to bow down to the self appointed King of Longmont and meet his arbitrary requirements which were all about building a bureaucratic empire and never about supporting City Councils policies. The false King has finally been dethroned!

even though the City Council took a vote to end it, and no it is not just a mistake, because my land is still encumbered by affordable requirements even though the City Council took another vote and instructed the City staff to remove all affordable housing encumbrances in Longmont. This City has been Gordon Pedows personal mission for the poor for eighteen years at great cost to our built environment. The national builders profit at the local builders expense because of the naiveté of the City Council. They (national builders)are happy to pay the added tariff because it gives them a competitive advantage. It is not Economics 101 but Economics 404 that makes it so easy for Gordon Pedrow, Karen Roney and Kathy Fedler to get away with these complex destructive counter productive local housing monetary policies. The profit cycle for local builders is about 60% narrower than it is for national builders. I am right now taking half steps toward the profitability line as the national builders have already crossed that line and they are now taking full steps past it. When we reach the half way point in this profit cycle momentum we will reverse positions and the local builder will be taking full steps towards the economic loss line while the national builders will be taking half steps towards it. A fact that is hard to explain in a comment section. The City was pulling in over twenty million dollars a year in impact/permit fees at the height of the last building cycle and what do they have to show for it except a bigger city empire? This is an exorbitant tax on all new home buyers that stifles competition. If you want more affordable housing I suggest you actually get rid of the inclusionary zoning and then the outrageous impact fees that only Alex Sammoury and ex Mayor Brayn Baum voted to try and do away with last year. Every council in my eighteen years living here in Longmont has supported these hidden new home buyer taxes. The housing industry and other industries are not taxed like this anywhere else in the United States . If we want to support affordable housing then let's put it on the ballot for every one to approve and pay for. I for one would support it. If we want to pay more money for the park systems (which cost each new home $5,000) and sewage and street fees then let everyone vote for it and pay for it if they want to. Right now the impact fee system charged against all new housing is just a covert system for our city bureaucracy to spend more than we have approved as taxpayers. And the price we are paying is not just monetary it is also a lack of local pride because we local builders who care much more about our local built environment are constrained by a City that continues to profit on fees which they continue to increase while local builders stand by idly and watch the National builders go and blow because of their added protection imposed on us by City tariffs. These impact fees are a phony subsidy for our local government allowing our hired officials to behave badly and ignore structural issues with local retail.
.

Good story Tony. It would be nice to see one showing how the City impact and permit fees charged per house were $11,000 per house in 1998 and now they are closing in on $40,000 per house in 2012. In 1998 we had what were considered some of the highest fees charged by any city in the country because Developers were supposed to pay their own way. Now developers are just being taxed out of business because the City has figured another revenue source without raising taxes. It no longer has anything to do with what the actual impact is just what the City can get away with based on surrounding jurisdictions. The price of housing has gone DOWN almost 40% in the past five years and the cost of just the sewer impact fee has gone up 30% in the last six months. Look at the list of builders now pulling permits and they are all national builders. Why is that? It is because they have massive buying power in the billions of dollars and have the advantage to be able to jumpstart their developments crushing local builders because of the added constraints of a tariff on local housing by the city not to mention the affordable housing program that is still in existence at the following City of Longmont URL

Duh! I forgot the price of Utopia in Boulder County is nothing more than free will. A small price to pay for such perfection.

We are in the biggest real estate glut since BEFORE the Great Depression and Rick Hammans couldn't find anything that suited him until less than three months after the election which happened to be out of the district. I voted for Pearlman, Deb Gardner, and Hammans. All three of my wasted votes have unwittingly supported cronyism. One I can live with, two gets uncomfortable, three forget it! I am an independent who has largely supported the Democrats in Boulder County but am disgusted and hope other independents are as well. This is not how a true Republic is meant to play out. And please don't give the lame response of he is in an unaffiliated position since it is clear from the following TC article that he was a Democrat being supported by the Democrats pre election; http://www.timescall.com/news/longmont-local-news...
What an embarrassment... These incumbents and their associates treat the positions as if they are pirates booty.

AsokAsus ·To quote the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan - You are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts-
Oil is 30% cheaper per barrel than when George W. Bush was president and natural gas is 70% cheaper that when George W. Bush was president. The failed ethanol subsidy program was conceived and implemented during the George W. Bush presidency. Obama's failure's have more to do with his lack of backbone to dismantle the previous administrations policies and keeping most of the same people in the U.S. Treasury. Oil exploration and production has increased by 14% in the U.S. since Obama took office according to the Houston Chronicle, hardly a bastion of Democrat and/or liberal support. Obama has probably not dismantled the ethanol industry because of the votes he would lose in his home state of Illinois/Midwest and because it also supports his alternative fuel policy by keeping those specific alternative prices artificially high.

As I said before Bobby seems like a dandy fellow but the resumes above are thin. It sounds like you two know his history more than me so I retract the statement about the first search but stand by everything else. He or any other staff member shouldn't be allowed to have any part of the City manager selection process. Most of the citizens in Longmont vote thinking that our elected officials are actually running our City when what they typically do is just hand the keys over to the City manager and City staff. Listen to Gabe Santos comments in past council meetings. He is clear that he thinks whenever in doubt they should always endorse what the staff recommends. I can see his point since that takes less effort and there is less exposure as a politician. But our City has serious structural and cultural issues and we need strong leadership going forward.

Longmont deserves the best because we pay our City staff equivalent or better compensation compared to better towns in the region and people actually like all of the things we have to offer. Unfortunately it is run like a junta and there is very little if any political representation. There have been glimmers of hope with the past two councils actually attempting to take our town back but so far more failure. Strong managerial governments like Longmonts are going the way of the failed shopping malls. Neither one works but some municipalities have to suffer more than others before there is real change.

"The Longmont Area Visitors Association named three finalists Wednesday for its vacant director position........though none of them are currently employed in the field."
Eighty five candidates and our Human Resources Director Bobby King manages to funnel it down to three people not currently in the field. You have got to be kidding. He is stacking the deck like he did with the LDDA director job search last winter. I went to the final selection of the final three people and there was no choice, two of the people were clearly not qualified and every one said wow one (which we picked) is really great, or geez I know which one is best I hope we pick her. People got the wool pulled over their eyes since there was NO choice she was clearly the only one that had any qualifications for the job. Now here we go again, round two, more of the same.
Hey I have an idea, lets filter through those 85 applicants and see if we can find the only three people with no jobs in the industry and hire one of them. And this is the same guy that is in charge of filtering through the new City Manager applicants. Can he really be trusted to do a good job? I met Bobby and he is a very affable guy but it doesn't seem like he is qualified to be in charge of executive hiring based on his last two selection processes which are the only two I have ever watched.
I didn't watch the following selection but here is what the TC says- "The visitors association briefly found a successor in John Giantonio, but dismissed him in June after 79 days, saying only that "We needed to sever ties, do what was right, fulfill the contract on our end and move in a different direction."
Bobby was instrumental in narrowing down the field for the last LAVA director and he lasted a whopping 79 days. Longmont one more time striving to be mediocre. I hope this new Council asks more question and demands accountability because the city of Longmont deserves the best.

Retail is dead in Longmont would have been a more accurate statement ALLWISEST. Longmont has ignored retail for most of the last twenty years with the lame argument that the only things that matters is jobs, If you get the jobs their mantra went then retail will follow. Well you can see where that got retail in this town. Katy Press is a big step in the right direction and if you have the chance to meet her I believe you will agree. We are finally getting turnover in City staff which is starting to payoff with new approaches to old unaddressed problems. Improving retail in Longmont is analogous to turning a big ship in a small creek. We have several structural problems with traffic engineering such as a policy of no left turns, a policy of getting rid of curb cuts and a policy of speeding up vehicular traffic even more which are all counterproductive to good retail. Everything in this town has been built to existing city codes and specifications which are mired in the seventies. Certain elements of staff have very successfully kept things stagnant here by creating fear with elected officials claiming a plan for Longmont would be government interference when in fact they are protecting there own approved plan which is a failure. All municipalities have zoning and planning ordinances. A decision needs to be made about whether we (Longmont) are going to continue to enforce a failing regulatory framework or create a new one that is supportive of all types of business's.