Letters: Downtown Denver is struggling and restaurants need a little help

Downtown Denver isn’t doing as well as city auditor claims

Re: “Gutting Denver’s minimum wage is bad for workers, business, and city,” Feb. 16 commentary

With all due respect to Timothy M. O’Brien, Denver’s city auditor, perspective is everything. Thriving? I don’t think so. O’Brien cites statistics outside of downtown Denver, where property and sales taxes have seen a 35% decline, costing the city over $45 million since 2020, according to a 9News report. Yet as property taxes, labor costs, and food costs steadily increase, the city of Denver offers little relief. Crime, homelessness, and declining traffic downtown continue in a downward spiral.

A once-thriving and welcoming city has become a ghost town for most of the last five years. Sure, there are spikes, but too few to matter. No one will come downtown and pay for parking and a $25 hamburger if they can find something similar in their local neighborhoods. Convention traffic has also declined.

Perspective: Your capital city is in disrepair and could use a little help. As a third-generation small family business, it’s not that we forgot how to operate, but we can’t operate on a level playing field. Please don’t tell me I can’t keep people and treat them unfairly. We have dishwashers that have been with us for over 15 years. We treat people well, which is why when you visit one of our shops, you see familiar faces and know their names. This city has some work to do and House Bill 1208 is a good place to start.

Sam Armatas, Denver

Editor’s note: Armatas is vice president and operator of Sam’s No.3 Downtown.

Calling out commentary’s false equivalencies

Re: “Like it or not, Washington needs creative destruction,” Feb. 23 commentary

I’m writing to call you out on allowing a sloppy editorial in your Sunday paper. David Mastio’s op-ed was filled with implied false equivalencies. Because Trump correctly stopped minting pennies, it’s OK to have massive firings of government employees. Because the Pentagon wastes money (and it does), it’s OK to have an incompetent Secretary of Defense.

No one who follows our government believes that it doesn’t need reform, but to imply that stopping the minting of pennies is a great reason for the “creative destruction” of the federal government is dangerous and misguided thinking, and you should use better judgment when you select editorials for publication sources other than your own editorial board. Just saying.

George Burson, Louisville

 The concerns about Senate Bill 3 are “rubbish”

Re: “If Colorado bans some semiautomatic weapons, women will be less safe,” Feb. 23 commentary

The state director of Women for Gun Rights writes with the usual gun lobby hyperbole that Senate Bill 3 will undermine the right of self-defense, especially for women and minorities. Rubbish.

If one actually goes to the Colorado General Assembly website, one will find that the firearms covered by the legislation are quite limited. “The bill defines a “specified semiautomatic firearm” as a semiautomatic rifle or semiautomatic shotgun with a detachable magazine or a gas-operated semiautomatic handgun with a detachable magazine.” Please note that women and minorities can still purchase revolvers, semiautomatic pistols that use the “blowback” method of operation, pump action shotguns, bolt action and lever action rifles, and every other type of firearm not listed above.

One would have thought that an NRA-certified instructor would not have a problem with a training requirement for weapons listed in the bill. Instead, by using classic anti-regulatory language, these are “onerous requirements” that are “burdensome and exclusionary.”  Apparently, the only good gun law is no gun law. Please contact your legislator and ask them to support Senate Bill 3.

Guy Wroble, Denver

Same old tired fear-mongering from the NRA. Now, it’s crime waves involving Venezuelan gangs that are targeting our communities and women specifically, and only the NRA and semiautomatic weapons that increase the rate of fire, essentially assault-style weapons, will keep us safe. If Barbara Miller is dedicated to education and safety, I suggest she take the carveout to Senate Bill 3 for individuals who complete a state-regulated training course. Apparently, essential safety training is too “burdensome and exclusionary” for the NRA.

According to Brady United, during the 10-year period the federal assault weapons ban was in effect, mass shooting fatalities were 70% less likely to occur. After Congress let the ban expire, the organization reported that mass shootings in which six or more people were killed increased by 347%.

Having a gun in the home is risk escalation. Studies have shown that having a gun in the home was linked with nearly three times higher odds that someone would be killed at home by a family member or intimate acquaintance. Post the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, any and all gun safety laws are too burdensome for the NRA. This dangerous and deadly expansive view of gun rights is giving people the tools to injure and kill each other. Maybe a better recourse for women and domestic abuse would be for the NRA to spend time, energy, and resources advocating to strengthening penalties for violent offenders, enhancing mental health support and providing resources for domestic violence survivors instead of promoting gun violence.

Leonard Juliano, Arvada

Car chains are not very helpful when you’re blocked by semis

Re: “Stuck behind spinouts, crashes in I-70 ski traffic? There is a better way for Colorado,” Feb. 21 editorial

Allowing vendors to sell and enable vendors to install snow chains for Colorado drivers by passing Senate Bill 69 makes sense. Sort of.

But what the editorial board doesn’t seem to know, but every driver on the Western Slope trying to get back and forth across Vail Pass and through the Eisenhower tunnel does know, is that selling chains will accomplish only one thing — Colorado cars and trucks will be able to move a few inches forward per hour much easier while stuck between chained up semi-trucks that are not able to negotiate snowy conditions due to weight distribution and size. Period. No matter how skillful their drivers are.

Until CDOT works with federal officials to close mountain passes during snowfall to semi traffic or initiates right lane pilot car guided convoys during snowfalls for semis back and forth across our passes, chains for four, front, and all-wheel drive passenger cars will be useless — because, due to nonstop semi wrecks, there will be no way to move to take advantage of increased traction.

Problems can’t be corrected without actually identifying them.

Leslie Wilson, Collbran

Making the case for Belmar Park open space

Re: “Belmar Park: Going back to the drawing board isn’t always feasible,” Feb. 23 letter to the editor

The answer to the standoff over Lakewood’s Belmar Park property is for the city to use its power of eminent domain and acquire this land before the five-story development is built. The failure of our planning department to do so at the get-go is a major mistake in governance. Eminent domain is usually exercised for a public purpose, and I can think of no more appropriate instance than this, where the majority of Lakewood residents want that area abutting the park to become a part of it. Then, the controversy over fee-for-green space can proceed.

Susan Williams, Lakewood

The citizens of Lakewood should vehemently disagree with the letter. We must all agree that housing affordability is not “a bigger issue than open space.”

Open space is irreplaceable; houses are not.

June Jones Paulding, Lakewood

An example of non-biased reporting

Re: “Neighbors nix plans for homeless facility,” Feb. 23 news story

How lucky are we to have John Aguilar writing for The Post? His article is a great example of what good journalism should be, and at one time was, compared to the biased reporting we get on so many topics — both from the left and the right — these days.

Kudos to John for his ongoing, thorough writing!

Mark Buckner, Firestone

Polis’s mandates are fighting climate change

Re: “Polis’ energy mandates will make heating and cooling costs skyrocket in Colorado,” Feb. 23 commentary

The commentary on energy costs due to Gov. Jared Polis’ mandates ignores the very reason for the mandates: climate change.

The majority of Americans believe that the climate is changing, humans are the primary cause, and many agree that fossil fuels are the primary cause. We are witnessing climate change, with worldwide increased temperatures, storm and fire occurrence and intensity, and drought. All of the sources cited in the commentary are connected to the oil and gas industry, such as PetroNerds (note that name) and the Common Sense Institute (if you look them up, they are hardly non-partisan).

Coal use is rapidly declining due to emissions. While natural gas (methane) will be in use for some time as a backup, it has significant emissions. An MIT study finds that fossil fuel facilities kill many more birds than wind per unit of energy generation.

Marc Alston, Denver