Here is something for you to try ...
As an average Arvada householder or local Arvada business owner, when you are at that point when you think you want to sell your house or business -- go down to city hall or to the offices of the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority, and ask them to buy your property or at the very least ask them to pick up the tab for marketing your property.
Or say you want to renovate your kitchen, or say, you want to open a small restaurant in Arvada, how far to you think you would get asking the city government to assist you in paying for the remodel or help drive potential competitors out of business?
Of course, that is exactly what the city government does for the politically connected rich and powerful.
This practice is a version of corporate socialism and we see a lot of it in Arvada. Government manipulation of the market place and government (read that taxpayer) subsidies for special businesses and/or developers is the whole story behind the planned Walmart in the Arvada Plaza; it is the scenario happening in Old Town with the five story so-called Park Place apartment complex; it is the mechanism by which taxpayers are buying new air conditioning for Conn's Electronics in the Arvada Market shopping center; and it is exactly what is happening with the old Safeway property in the Arvada Triangle.
Arvada's city government picks business winners-and-losers, rigs the market for its chosen 'winners' and then even finds ways to funnel taxpayer dollars to ease the capital burden on its favorites.
It's socialism.
Another way to put it: redistribution of wealth from average Arvadans to the cronies of the city council and urban renewal authority.
The acquisition of the old Safeway on Ralston Road is the most recent Arvada government exercise of corporate socialism: Arvada Urban Renewal Authority buys former Safeway property by Emilie Rusch in the December 26, 2013 edition of YourHub (Denver Post). The Safeway property bought and owned by the government -- not for a new public building -- but as a way for government to direct and control the market place.
Of course, commissars Marc Williams (mayor) and Maureen Phair (executive bureaucrat of AURA) and their apparatchik government comrades will scoff and sneer at the notion that they are socialists. They look down their noses at regular Arvada folks and insist that we just don't understand how business development is done these days ... they will dismiss us and ask that we please not bother them and let them do what they conceitedly know is best.
A further irony is that a lot of the members of Arvada's city council, board members of Arvada Urban Renewal and staff, are registered Republicans and undoubtedly think of themselves as great advocates of free enterprise, capitalism, and limited government. We can clearly see, however, that their political rhetoric and how they actually behave in positions of power are two very different things.
More Arvadans are beginning to recognize exactly what is going on in the 'Council Politburo' and the 'Secretariat of Urban Renewal' -- a return to free markets and free enterprise in our city is long overdue.
Truly, we can be more principled and do better in Arvada.
Dave Chandler