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Pikes Peak Metropolitan Community Church | Old Colorado City | Church/Religious Organization | Public Places
Note to readers: this article was written as part of our April Fools' Day package. Enjoy accordingly.
In a move that's likely to bring Colorado Springs renewed national attention, city officials will hold a press conference Friday to unveil their strategy for repurposing parts of local community centers.
Under the new plan, the Deerfield Hills, Hillside, Meadows Park and Westside locations will debut medical methamphetamine dispensaries in early 2011. All four facilities will include on-site meth labs.
Since the city's Jan. 1 Request for Proposals (RFP) submission deadline, applicants' identities have been carefully guarded. But a source within City Council shared documents with the Independent earlier this week confirming that RFPs were submitted by dozens of local institutions, including The Broadmoor, Memorial Hospital and Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center.
The ambitious plan will be administered by the Medical MethaMphetamine Awareness Program (M-M-MAP), which has already released a list of 32 qualifying medical criteria for would-be clients. These include:
"Especially in these challenging times, methamphetamine dispensaries offer our city a wide range of benefits with virtually no downside," says Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp. president Mike Kazmierski. Emphasizing that the winning bidders will be required to use locally sourced hydrochloric acid and "the red, white and blue method" of manufacture, Kazmierski has praised M-M-MAP as "the kind of long-range stimulus plan that will get our area's economy back on track.
"It's nice to have something once again that we can promote to the rest of the country as Colorado Springs setting an example for America."
Other civic leaders agree that the program offers another way to "brand" Colorado Springs as a unique destination spot.
Reached at the Dutch Mill Tavern while having lunch Monday, Experience Colorado Springs executive director Terry Sullivan was surprised to hear the news, but quickly shifted into a spirited pitch on behalf of the new initiative: "This will result in at least 20,000 medical meth tourists visiting the Pikes Peak region. These are people who, in many cases, rarely leave their own houses — and now they'll be making our city their No. 1 destination spot."
But not all public figures are in agreement when it comes to the concept and execution of the nascent medical meth program. The highest-profile holdout continues to be Mayor Lionel Rivera.
"As a recreational meth user, I speak from personal experience when I say that the drug has many benefits and very few side-effects," says Rivera. "At the same time, I deeply oppose this program and everything it stands for."
In addition to the announcement, the press conference will feature an extensive PowerPoint presentation by newly appointed director Dave Hughes, a west side activist who also invented the Internet. Community leaders credit Hughes with convincing Woodmen Valley Chapel to scrap its own plans to adopt the Westside center.
Hughes will also do his best to dispel the persistent rumor that City Manager Penny Culbreth-Graft's surprise resignation two weeks ago was a personal protest against City Council's secret measure. While Culbreth-Graft will not appear at the event, Councilwoman Jan Martin is expected to read what she describes as a "heartfelt endorsement" from the outgoing city manager.
One person who has made no secret of his opposition to the program is local meth dealer Robert "Skip" Armin. A former Shakespearean actor who claims to be a direct descendent of Spencer Penrose, Armin insists the government-run program will be engaging in unfair business practices by selling the drug at up to 40 percent below street value.
"I don't dislike competition — I thrive on it — but the government isn't providing us with a level playing field," says Armin, who shares his Manitou Springs bungalow with a feral cat named Sprinkles. "I'm out here trying to make an honest living by consistently providing a quality product that's keeps my clientele coming back again and again. And now what happens?
Armin has since found an unlikely ally in Doug Bruce, the former House District 15 state representative who now makes his living suing the Colorado Springs city government and renting properties to people who circulate his petitions.
Bruce, who recently credited meth with giving him the courage to kick a newspaper photographer during a 2008 prayer meeting on the floor of the House, has said he'll take the city to court if his own RFP application is turned down.
"Once again, government is undermining the entrepreneurial spirit of people who are working hard to achieve the American dream," says Bruce, whose personal Web site includes a 41-page blog entry detailing how the current plan violates key passages from the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Convention and the Magna Carta. Bruce says he's pleased that Armin is "on board" for what he expects to be the biggest class-action suit Colorado has ever seen.
The Indy has also learned that the U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. Air Force Academy have threatened to relocate if they don't get the medical meth contract. But some believe the benefits of medical meth for training purposes would provide a powerful incentive for both organizations to stay put, regardless of where M-M-MAP facilities are located.
As one highly placed Olympics official told the Indy, "Having the lab on site would obviously save everyone valuable training time, but in a worst-case scenario, we could always run a shuttle service between the Training Center and the nearest dispensary."
U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun was not available for comment earlier this week. However, in an interview conducted back in January, he expressed early support for the initiative that's now coming to fruition: "With this program, our athletes will be able to use the drug for training purposes, just as long as it's out of their system by the time they're actually competing."
Blackmun also said that, during his years as a sports and entertainment attorney, he worked closely with people who took meth, cocaine and other narcotics.
"Based on that experience and a recent study conducted by the Nike corporation, it is my belief that pure, safe, affordable crystal meth will enable our athletes to train an extra four hours every day," he said. "That is huge."
In spite of objections from anti-tax advocates, drug dealers and three local chapters of Toastmasters International, M-M-MAP continues to enjoy overwhelming support from the local business community. Richard Skorman, a longtime advocate of medical meth behind the scenes, has expressed hope that his own Poor Richard's emporium would be chosen as one of the dispensaries.
"Cutting-edge research at Pfizer and Eli Lilly will soon make methamphetamines the cheapest, cleanest most renewable form of energy yet developed," notes Skorman. "And besides, who wouldn't want to smoke, snort or even inject meth while enjoying a delicious caramel macchiato, all in a comfortable environment where kids can shop for fun, educational toys right next door?"
Although current zoning regulations restrict meth labs from locating within 150 yards of elementary schools and day care facilities, M-M-MAP still plans to make kids a big part of the program's educational outreach component.
In fact, Friday's press conference will boast the first public appearance of the meth program's "Map-scot," Sniffy the Squirrel.
"I'm telling you, everyone's gonna just love this tweaky little guy," predicts Hughes, who points to the ongoing legacy of anthropomorphic advocacy icons like Smokey Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog.
(According to Hughes, the city has also hired a Denver-based consulting firm to work out licensing deals for a line of doll houses, action figures and car fresheners.)
Sniffy has a more serious side, as well: "He's really our tribute to Sniffy the Sniffasaurus," says Hughes, referring to the Colorado Springs Utilities mascot who perished in a gas explosion last November. "An homage, if you will."
While the law dictates that meth users must be at least 18 years of age to qualify for the program, younger members of the community will be encouraged to take advantage of numerous volunteer opportunities.
Hannah Tooley, who attends North Middle School's International Baccalaureate program, is pleased that M-M-MAP will be part of the school's community service requirement.
All sales taxes collected from the dispensaries will be earmarked for the improvement of roads and bridges.
The other day, a friend confided to me that, as a result of the World Trade Center and Pentagon catastrophes, she found herself benumbed, distracted, tired, and assigning less importance to things that have always given her pleasure."I've always loved to cook," she reflected, "but now we simply eat out, or I cook rudimentary meals as a practical necessity."
I immediately identified with her perceptions. "Everything seems devalued," I remarked, and then I considered the ways that this has been true for me. Even taking a walk in the Maine woods at this beautiful time of year has become less a means of enjoying nature than of evading recurrent media images and ubiquitous talk about the tragedy.
For me, this emotional funk was, at the least, most untimely.For a year now, my adoptive son, Alyosha, and I have been working toward a second adoption.Alyosha is 16, and, like a candle waxing in intensity, he has steadily warmed to the idea of having a little brother in his life.
Shortly before the incidents, I received word of a 6-year-old boy in Eastern Europe, and suddenly the die was cast, our common future found focus, and both of our lives inclined toward welcoming new life into our home.
And then, Sept. 11. Everything became diminished:what to eat, what to wear, what activities to pursue on the weekend, what color roofing we should choose for our new garage.What could these things possibly matter in light of a nation's suffering?
I tried to think about the adoption, but it was no-go.A much-anticipated event had become an abstraction, in a league with fretting over the vacuuming while the rubble in Manhattan was still smoldering. In my mind, I retreated from what I wanted and came to a more comforting focus on what I already had.
Like the wanderer who moves closer to his campfire when the night grows dark and cold around him, I pulled closer to Alyosha.
Curiously - for like most teenagers, my son spends a great deal of time defining independence in terms of the distance he keeps from parents - he allowed this.We ate out together, discussed the books he was reading in school, and I even sneaked in a furtive hug, as if he were still the waifish 7-year-old I had brought home from a Russian orphanage.
One night, while watching the news together, we listened to reports of the many ways people were pitching in to assist those affected by the disaster.Money, clothing, food, and labor were being donated.
The underlying philosophy of the helping hand is that human charity, if of sufficient magnitude, can take something wrong and make it right. If you give money to the poor, you make them less poor; if you give food to the hungry, you sate their hunger.
But what on earth can one do for the dead?Not the physical dead, mind you, but the hearts and spirits deadened by events?
I looked at my son as he stared at the TV screen. "I want to do something," he said, but my mind was on the adoption, which had been put on emotional, if not functional, hold.
"Alyosha," I said softly, "we need to talk about this adoption.Is this something we want to do now, at this time, when we're feeling like this?It's not too late to call it off."
We have to?And then, suddenly, I caught his meaning - or the meaning I wanted to catch in his statement.Yes, we had to do the adoption.But not because we felt committed, not because we had completed the requisite paperwork, and not because we had prepared a room for the little boy.For me, it was not a long stretch to assert that in the face of catastrophe, despair, and death, the antidote was life.
And so, with eyes wide open, with the support of my son, and with an energy that only hope can inspire, I will put one foot forward, and then the other. I will fly east out of New York's battered heart and return to it holding life firmly by its little hand, for it is an appropriate time to adopt, a fine season to rebuild, the perfect moment to begin anew.
Few people realize that agile squid are, in fact, shell-less mollusks and distant cousins of mussels, scallops, and clams.
But squid is rarely prepared so that it tastes as delicate and mouthwatering as fresh steamers or pan-seared scallops. In most restaurants, and, I'm sad to say, my own kitchen, it's often rubbery and nearly tasteless, a textured complement to whatever else it was cooked with. Many eateries simply toss it in the deep-fryer and let salt, oil, and tartar sauce take over from there.
From the cobbled streets of Kotor to the snowcapped mountains of Slovenia, even the lowliest bistro serves a calamari dish that's delicate, tasty, and straightforward. The people of Yugoslavia disagree about a lot of things, but when it comes to squid they're all on the same page: Cook it quickly, they say, with olive oil garlic, and basil and serve it with wedges of lemon.
For nearly two decades, restaurateur Leo Licof has been serving traditional- style calamari to diners at Okarina in Bled, Slovenia, long regarded as one of the best restaurants in the region.
"It's simple to prepare, but is praised by our guests," says Mr. Licof, who learned the technique decades ago while working on the island of Hvar on Croatia's Dalmatian coast.
The people of Hvar and other parts of the eastern Adriatic honed their squid recipes out of necessity.
These days, tourism draws hordes of visitors to the Croatian and Montenegrin coasts, where picturesque Venetian-style towns perch between stunning mountains and bright shining sea. But 50 years ago, there was little tourism, and the people of Dalmatia and the Bay of Kotor were extremely poor.
"It was a starving place, worse than Ireland," says Licof, recalling the stories told to him by old-timers in the early 1970s. "Peasants often had no boats and were dependent on fish that came close to shore like calamari."
You can usually catch cleaned squid at supermarket fish counters. This saves the inconvenience of cleaning them. But if not, here's how it's done: (1) Remove the innards and plastic-like quill from each body. (2) Cut the tentacles just beneath the eye and, if you find a hard beak attached, remove it. (3) Rinse and retain the tentacles and now-hollow body piece and discard the rest.
Smaller squid are more tender, so for this recipe, select ones whose rocket-shaped body section is about two inches long. Some swear by frozen squid because freezing tenderizes it, but Licof prefers fresh.
Either way, prepare by cutting the body in half, lengthwise, and flattening the resulting pieces. The tentacles of a small squid can be cooked as one mop-like piece.
The calamari should be cooked in olive oil in a hot saucepan or wok. "Too much liquid makes calamari rubbery," Licof warns. "They have enough water in and of themselves, so don't add any liquid other than the oil."
After just a couple minutes, any additional ingredients are added. The traditional recipe calls for chopped garlic and basil, but Licof adds soy sauce and salt to bring out the taste. After waiting a few moments to let the garlic turn slightly golden, the dish is served with lemon and parsley.
Of course, the Adriatic region has produced many alternative recipes. On Hvar, islanders who don't want to deal with the bother of cleaning simply bake the entire mollusk and sort it out on the plate. At Venice's Trattoria da Remigio, one of the city's better seafood eateries, they cook squid uncleaned in its own ink, which gives it a distinctive black color and a strong sealike flavor.
Larger squid tend to be tough when pan-fried, so Licof recommends baking and stuffing the cleaned bodies with diced tentacles, vegetables, and prosciutto. Really large squid can be softened by stewing them in tomato sauce or fish broth. The flesh will toughen at first, but after a half-hour or so will become tender.
Cook 5 to 7 minutes, stirring periodically, then add the garlic, basil, soy sauce, and salt. Cook for a few moments, allowing garlic to brown slightly. Put on plates, and serve with lemon wedges and parsley. At the table, add a few drops of extra-virgin olive oil.
His identity? Here's a hint: After you clear the guards and the chain-link perimeter that rings the complex, turn right at the Robert C. Byrd Metals Fabrication Center. Continue up the hill – stopping for forklifts carrying explosives – to the gleaming Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex, including the Robert C. Byrd Institute and the Erma Ora Byrd Conference and Learning Center.
Since 1985, Senator Byrd (D) of West Virginia has directed $250 million in earmarks to upgrade the Allegany Ballistics Laboratory (ABL) here in his state's eastern panhandle – $26 million this year alone.
For the Senate's "king of pork," it's a drop in the bucket. After 47 years on the Senate's powerful Appropriations Committee, Byrd has mastered congressional earmarks – add-ons to spending bills for projects back home. Since 1991, he has steered $3 billion in earmarks to West Virginia, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.
Sums that vast show Byrd's effort to boost the Mountain State's economy. But they also obscure the sometimes tense synergy between Congress and the Pentagon over the merits of military earmarks.
Money for ABL is one of 2,847 congressional earmarks in the FY 2006 Defense Appropriations bill. It includes $1.6 million for Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Activities, $850,000 for a memorial park in Des Moines, Iowa, and $1.7 million to do something about brown snakes in Guam. In all, member projects added up to $9.4 billion in this year's defense spending bill, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Critics, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, say that such "member adds" force cuts in more important priorities. They are "simply things that we need to spend on that we don't want," Mr. Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee Aug. 3. "The combination of all of that is big dollars, and it hurts."
But not all pork is equal – and not all earmarks are bad, say analysts close to the process. The key questions with any defense earmark are whether the Pentagon really wants it and, if so, why it isn't included in the Pentagon budget. Also: What doesn't get done in order to pay for it?
"What I've learned from doing this for eight years is that every earmark, for good or bad, has a story, and before you comment on it you should know that story," says Keith Ashdown, vice president for policy and communications at Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington, which has produced the most comprehensive analysis of defense earmarks.
In fact, defense earmarks are among the toughest in any federal spending cycle to track down. It took analysts more than six months to even identify earmarks in this year's defense spending bill, because most are not identified by location or the name of the congressional sponsor.
"It's a very straightforward system, but very few people understand it," says Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington and a former national security analyst on Capitol Hill. "Most people think earmarks are bad stuff that Congress stuffs in against the will of the Pentagon. In fact, 99.9 percent of the earmarks in the Defense Appropriations bill and Defense Authorization bill are put in with the compliance of the Defense Department – not at the level of Rumsfeld's office but at the project manager level," he adds.
Consider the Allegany Ballistics Laboratory. Twenty years ago, the site had a few Quonset huts, cinder-block buildings banked with earth (in case of explosions), and enough contamination to qualify as a Superfund site. Today, it's a state-of-the-art, diverse industrial complex employing some 1,000 people across 1,628 acres.
About 80 military products are made here, including: 30mm shells for Apache helicopters, composite parts for F-22 jets, training grenades, fuze-proximity sensors, mortars and warheads, tank ammunition, and many other weapons components.
"This plant is the sole producer of more than a dozen critical weapons systems," says Pat Nolan, executive vice president for ATK Tactical Systems, which operates ABL under a contract with the Navy. "There's not one dollar spent on this plant that's not delivering value back to DOD.... We're a very critical part of [its] industrial base."
At the Robert C. Byrd Complex on the hill, other companies have rented space to do secure research. Information Manufacturing Corporation, for example, is digitizing data on hurricane cleanup, avian flu, and weather records.
From the hilltop complex, surrounded by mountains and flanked by the North Branch of the Potomac River, you can still see some of the World War II-era buildings on the flood plain. The ABL was established in 1944 on the site of a former ammunitions plant on land owned by the Army. After the war, the plant was transferred to the Office of Scientific Research and Development, where it helped build propulsion devices and engines for the solid-rocket industry. Then, it was transferred to the Navy. The Navy expanded the ABL in 1962 to help develop the Fleet Ballistic Missile, but further investment dried up. By the 1980s, industry in the region was in trouble. Coal and steel, paper, tires, and textiles were going or gone. No new sector appeared to take their place.
Then came Byrd. He saw an opportunity for growth at the ABL and secured a $2.3 million earmark to "jumpstart the restoration and modernization of the complex," he wrote in his recent autobiography, "Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields."
"As the Cold War began its final phase, I saw that the continuing evolution of our nation's armed forces into highly technical units presented opportunities to serve the national defense, as well as to expand West Virginia's economic base at ABL," he added.
Drawing on his clout as the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Byrd requested and won earmarks for the lab from 1985 to 1997, when he prevailed on the Navy to pick up funding for ongoing improvements. During the next seven years, the Navy poured $111.9 million into the site. And when the Navy opted to end that line of funding, Byrd picked it up again as an earmark.
ABL is still owned by the Navy, but ATK (Alliant Techsystems), a $3.4 billion corporation based in Edina, Minn., has operated the facility since the 1940s. The ABL site now accounts for about 10 percent of those annual sales.
"Senator Byrd saw this potential years ago," says Stephen Hoffman, head of Naval Industrial Reserve Ordnance Plant and Equipment. "Every project has a business model and a return on investment or we don't do it."
ATK has continued to invest in ABL because of the "strong partnership that has been formed between the Navy and ATK, supported by Senator Byrd," says ATK's Nolan.
It's misleading to describe that support as "pork," says Byrd spokesman Tom Gavin. "ABL is doing work that the Defense Department has bought into both from a budgetary standpoint, a contractual standpoint, and a use standpoint."
But critics say that defense earmarks come at the expense of maintenance, training, and other Pentagon priorities. Earmarks overall, they charge, are out of control – especially ones for defense. While it's difficult to ferret them out of defense spending, it's even harder to figure out their opportunity cost.
"Earmarks are a drain on the military because of the way they pay for it," says Mr. Wheeler, author of the 2004 book, "The Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages U.S. Security."
Before breaking for August recess, the Senate added $10 billion to the FY 2007 Defense Appropriations bill to cover the shortfall in maintenance and equipment. "Congress needs to compare this facility to other like facilities" to see if it's performing a useful mission, he adds.
Defense earmarks are also at the heart of corruption scandals threatening to sink Congress to new lows in public esteem. In November 2005, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) of California resigned from Congress and was later convicted of conspiring to take $2.4 million in bribes from two defense contractors for whom he sponsored earmarks. Reps. Alan Mollohan (D) of West Virginia, Rep. Katherine Harris (R) of Florida, and Rep. Virgil Goode (R) of Virginia are also fielding questions over their acceptance of campaign contributions related to defense earmarks.
But locals glad to see an economic rebound aren't concerned about the controversy over earmarks. "ABL is a tremendous asset to this region," says local historian Albert Feldstein.
Children no longer have to leave the region to find a job, says ABL program manager Paul Corwell, who says he has two brothers, a brother-in-law, two first cousins, and the wife of a cousin all working on site. "This plant really is a national asset and the reason people don't appreciate that is because they don't know about it," he adds.
• Previous articles in this series ran July 25 (Alaska's "bridges to nowhere"), Aug. 1 (Mississippi State University's earmarks) and Aug. 8 (Franco-American Heritage Center in Lewiston, Maine).