{"id":9652,"date":"2016-01-04T17:38:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T17:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/?p=9652"},"modified":"2016-07-20T21:51:02","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T21:51:02","slug":"building-a-better-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Better Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Building a Better Colorado is a series of community summits across the state and is coming to Vail on Thursday, January 14. It is an opportunity to share your views on Colorado\u2019s fiscal policy, elections and initiative process. As pulled from their website <a href=\"http:\/\/www.betterco.org\" target=\"_blank\">www.betterco.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Colorado is a state with remarkable people who have done remarkable things. We can\u00a0be pleased by our historic leadership in so many areas, but today, our state faces some\u00a0real challenges, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The ease with which our constitution can be amended.<\/li>\n<li>Decreasing citizen confidence and involvement in the election process<\/li>\n<li>The imbalance between citizens\u2019 expectations of services which their state government provides and the ability of their government to meet those expectations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A growing and diverse coalition of concerned citizens, including Republicans,\u00a0Democrats and independents, is coming together under the banner &#8220;Building a Better\u00a0Colorado&#8221; with the shared belief that Colorado can be better.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBuilding a Better Colorado\u201d is a diverse, nonpartisan coalition of Coloradans that has come together with the shared belief that Colorado can do better than the divisive arguments that have come to dominate our political discourse.<\/p>\n<p>By engaging citizens of all political ideologies in honest conversations, we&#8217;ll better understand the scope of opinion and perspective, and use that input to form workable solutions to key challenges facing Colorado:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>More than 1 million voters can\u2019t participate in primary elections, turnout is dropping, and people are increasingly selecting \u201cunaffiliated\u201d when registering to vote;<\/li>\n<li>Our state constitution is cluttered and conflicted because rules make it easy to amend the constitution, but difficult to change those amendments down the road; and<\/li>\n<li>The state\u2019s fiscal policy \u2014 as mandated by voters per the constitution \u2014 is unsustainable given competing revenue and spending mandates.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To keep the conversation focused on the very real challenges facing Colorado, and to increase opportunities for success, we will not carry forward any ideas that seek to undo the right of voters to approve all tax increases.<\/p>\n<p>Building a Better Colorado is not advocating for specific policy recommendations &#8211; instead, we want to facilitate constructive dialogue among Coloradans who want to see better and more responsible governance.<\/p>\n<p>And once everyone&#8217;s had a chance to participate in the conversation, we&#8217;re committed to supporting consensus-driven policy recommendations.<\/p>\n<p>Having a forum to discuss statewide issues is important, and regardless of your political leanings and beliefs, Building a Better Colorado provides such an opportunity for us here in the mountain region to have a voice within the state. Improving the governance of the state might be an uphill battle, and it shouldn\u2019t be a political fight (even in an election year). A desire to improve our governance is something on which Republicans and Democrats alike should agree.<\/p>\n<p>After all, Colorado, for all its positives, has some serious challenges, and we\u2019re unlikely to solve them with partisan bickering. It just might take a collaborative, across-the-aisle partnership with feedback from throughout the state.<\/p>\n<p>Colorado is an anomaly \u2013 we\u2019re one of the few purple states, resulting in an influx of dollars spent on political advertising for our statewide races as well as during presidential election years. Unaffiliated voters currently make up the largest voting block in Colorado (and growing). In fact, 67% of newly registered voters in 2014 registered unaffiliated and we\u2019re on pace for unaffiliated voters to exceed Republican and Democratic voters combined. Yet these voters are not able to participate in primary elections, which determine our candidates for office.<\/p>\n<p>You might say that is politics and who can participate in primary elections doesn\u2019t concern me. Consider this: based on state demographer and federal census figures, Colorado\u2019s population is expected to grow by an additional 2.3 million people by 2040. That alone is going to impact the way we live (traffic congestion, I-70 infrastructure funding, water, schools, overall quality of life). These issues certainly concern everyone regardless of party affiliation.<\/p>\n<p>Add to our population growth the fact that Colorado&#8217;s constitution is one of the most easily amendable in the U.S. Because of this, we have voted on more ballot initiatives than almost any other state, resulting in the occasional state amendments that conflict with each other &#8211; with one amendment requiring spending caps and another requiring spending increases.<\/p>\n<p>Nonpartisan political dialogue in an election year is an ambitious goal; join Build a Better Colorado on January 14 from 4pm-6pm at the Grand View Room in Lionshead to share your feedback and be part of the dialogue on these issues and more. RSVP at <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/BBCOEagle\">http:\/\/bit.ly\/BBCOEagle<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Building a Better Colorado is a series of community summits across the state and is coming to Vail on Thursday,&#8230;<br \/><a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1831,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presidents-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Building a Better Colorado | Vail Valley Partnership<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Building a Better Colorado | Vail Valley Partnership\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Building a Better Colorado is a series of community summits across the state and is coming to Vail on Thursday,...Read More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Vail Valley Partnership\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/VailValleyPartnership\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-01-04T17:38:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-07-20T21:51:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"aalbrecht\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"aalbrecht\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"aalbrecht\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/#\/schema\/person\/16d22cb49550e00ffe40219752cb632c\"},\"headline\":\"Building a Better Colorado\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-04T17:38:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-07-20T21:51:02+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/\"},\"wordCount\":761,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"President's Post\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/\",\"name\":\"Building a Better Colorado | Vail Valley Partnership\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-04T17:38:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-07-20T21:51:02+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/2016\/01\/building-a-better-colorado\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Building a Better Colorado\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.vailvalleypartnership.com\/\",\"name\":\"Vail Valley Partnership\",\"description\":\"Support. 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