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News Article ---- RV Dust-Up Just a Peek Under The Pressure Cooker's Top?

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At a recent Englewood City Council meeting "a more than usual number of citizens" showed up to voice their opposition to the Englewood City Council's push to eliminate boats, snowmobiles, recreation vehicles and RV's from the city by threatening to ticket those type vehicles that are currently being parked in Englewood citizens' own driveways. Mayor Jim Woodward and District 2 Councilperson Linda Olsen were quoted as saying "...the flyers[s] distributed to the community contained 'half-truths'". 

Of course these charges were leveled without any evidence that the flyers were not accurate, and in fact used the councilmember's own words. The two council members have also claimed that the original flyer "[W]as intended to attack Council members and cause "negativity" in our city...". 
It seems that after the first batch of 30 or so flyers were passed out to people who had the vehicles in question, one alert citizen who recognized a larger principle in play - printed many more copies of the original and made sure the public was made aware of the problem.
Some members of the City Council haves expressed - "[G]reat concern over the number of people that have been informed and are involved in voicing their opinion in this matter."

What?

An "Informed Citizenry" is cause for City Council concern?

And they are voicing their opinions? - More cause for concern?

If comments like those by City Council were not worrisome enough, records show that Englewood City Council members have taken it upon themselves to patrol the city on the lookout for any code violation to which they can then report (some anonymously) people to the Englewood Police. For the first half of this year (2010), and even further back on the calendar, reports of "Code Concerns" and "Code Violations" and other complaints of this nature have significantly increased. Coincidently, these reports began growing in volume shortly after the City Council began using a special Code Enforcement Dept. Officer dedicated to the City Council. Known officially as "Nuisance Abatement" some believe this to be a "private code enforcement officer" beholding more to City Council than to Englewood's Citizens. 

Yes, there seems to be a real disconnect between Englewood's City Council and the people they were elected to serve.

 

Recreational Vehicle Flyer

 

Englewood City Council - "Council Requests"

Friday, 17 July 2009 23:42

The below documents were received from a records request process through the City of Englewood.  These documents show all of the “Council Requests” submitted for the last two years (A “Council Request”, is a formal document submitted from a City Council Member to the City Managers office requiring immediate action on a specified issue).  

Some of the requests below show legitimate use of the Council Request process, and is a good insight into what your elected officials have been doing off of the record for the last two years.  

Although, there are some interesting requests in these documents and if you look closely it appears that Englewood City Council members themselves (your elected officials) are actually patrolling the community and anomalously reporting people to the Englewood Police Department for a myriad of code violations.  It appears that over the last 6 months the requests of “Code Concerns”, “Code Violations”, etc… have increased significantly.    This was right about the time that Council reorganized the Code Enforcement department to include a dedicated code enforcement officer for “Council Requests” and “Zoning violations” this position is currently called “Nuisance Abatement”. 

 

 (Partial - 1/1/09 to 7/6/09) 2009 Council requests:

 

 

2008 Council requests:

 

 

(Partial) 2007 Council requests: