Longmont Leads with Love
Amazingly, it’s been a slow news week, at both the state and the national level. Perhaps the country is stunned after the shocking events of last week, or stultified by a Trump rally so formless and meandering that even the MAGA crowd were stultified right into meandering out before the end. The Denver Post today actually ran the following headline:
Trump confuses “t-o” and “t-o-o” During Thursday tweet storm
The Weekly Weathervane has been covering the spring and summer of the Trump era through the eyes of the Eastern Plains of Colorado, the twenty-one counties of Congressional District Four. CD4 has twice sent Kenneth Robert Buck to the US Congress, where he has made a bit of noise but never represented his constituents.
Win the Fourth Colorado, publisher of the Weathervane and sometime meddler in the politics of the Plains, exists because a few people got mad and decided to do something about Buck.
The City of Longmont sits in the twenty-secondcounty of Congressional District 4, Boulder County. The founders of WTF Colorado live mostly in Longmont, or very near it.
Longmont is not having a slow news week at all. We are in the early days of what looks to be a pretty messy municipal election season. So just this once, we thought we’d turn the binoculars around, and take a good look at what’s going on in Longmont.
A Purple Dot on Red CD4
Longmont’s registered voters divide very neatly into thirds: 1/3 Democrats, 1/3 Republican, and 1/3 Unaffiliated and minor parties. That makes Longmont the bluest part of CD4. And the Democrats seem to be in the ascendancy.
Both our State Representatives, The Hons. Mike Foote and Jonathan Singer, are progressive Democrats. So is our State Senator, Matt Jones. They fight hard for the people of Colorado. But somehow or another, we ended up with a pretty conservative City Council.
The City of Longmont is divided into three Wards. Here’s a map, if you care. The City Council consists of one Member elected by each ward, three Members At Large, elected by the whole city, and the Mayor. Ward members, At Large members, and the mayor each have one vote in the council. The mayor presides, and is more powerful only in that he sets the agenda of matters to be considered.
Longmont’s been a well-run little city, with some very good features. We have a diverse cultural scene, the best internet service in the state (municipal, to boot), and good services for the elderly, especially the free public transportation. Then we got blindsided by the 1000-year Flood of 2013, and the consequences of that have changed a lot of things.
Some big decisions are coming up. And now both conservatives and progressives, for Council races are considered to be non-partisan, are fighting hard for the future of our city.
Originally published in The Weathervane No 14 on August 25, 2017. [Subscribe]
