Well, the city of Boulder’s heavy-handed puritan leaders are at it again.
Despite the fact that Boulder voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of Amendment 64, the measure allowing recreational use of marijuana statewide, city council members and other city leaders — including City Attorney Tom Carr, shocker — are already scrambling to see how they can restrict the implementation of that new law, even if it means passing a moratorium while they plot their new oppressive strategies.
Um, last we checked, Amendment 64 was aimed at regulating marijuana like alcohol. Why not just use the same rules that we have for liquor stores?
Our city leaders need to loosen up and stop legislating morality, whether it’s about public nudity or alcohol on the Hill.
Maybe they should all smoke a bowl before going into their meetings.
MORE DECEPTION FROM JOE
We’ve been making a big deal lately about the need for being able to quickly and inexpensively access public records, and here’s another example why it’s important.
Emails obtained through open records requests by fractivists in Erie cast even more doubt on the findings of a recent study that Erie Mayor Joe Wilson heralded as giving the town a clean bill of health.
A consultant hired by the town told Erie leaders on Feb. 12 that her review of a study conducted last year by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment indicated that health risks from emissions by local natural gas wellheads was low.
“This is terrific news for Erie families who may have been misled into believing they were at significant risk,” Mayor Joe Wilson crowed after the presentation.
But a July 17 email from Martha Rudolph of the CDPHE to Erie Trustee Mark Gruber shows that state officials acknowledged that the original study was flawed.
“We will not be able to use these samples to perform long-term risk calculations, because a critical element in performing these calculations is sufficient data: in this case there will be too few air quality samples to provide sufficient data,” Rudolph wrote. “These findings and analysis, therefore, won’t provide the oil and gas industry with a clean bill of health and won’t go against the industry — the sampling is not being done to determine health impacts from oil and gas emissions.”
Put that in your gas pipe and smoke it, Joe.
FINDING OUR HAPPY PLACE
Did anyone else find it curious, but pleasantly surprising, that Longmont was named the third-happiest city in the country based on a study of Twitter content?
Nothing against Longmont. In the past two decades, that city has made tremendous strides, it’s just that the likes of Boulder and Louisville tend to make these types of national lists.
This time around, Longmont bested its richer and more liberal sister cities when it came down to a geographical analysis of words contained in tweets done at the University of Vermont.
Amazingly, Front Range cities took four of the top 12 slots in the country: Lafayette/Louisville/Erie came in eighth, Boulder was 10th and Fort Collins was ranked 12th.
We’ve started speculating about the possible reasons for Longmont’s unreasonably happy tweets. Having a mayor who owns a local brewpub? Perhaps, but on second thought, our governor owns a brewpub and we wouldn’t insult Longmont Mayor Dennis Coombs by comparing him to Frackenlooper, or suggesting that our state at large is happy because of that oil and gas shill.
Maybe it’s because there is no elk hunting allowed within city limits by anyone in uniform.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
