The city wasn’t content simply to reject a tax increase. That’s when people started paying attention to a city that seemed to be conducting a real-time experiment in fiscal self-starvation. In response, city officials (some would say almost petulantly) turned off one out of every three street lights. To fill a $28 million budget hole, Colorado Springs’ political leaders-who until that point might have been described by most voters as fiscal conservatives-proposed tripling property taxes. For a city that was founded when a wealthy industrialist planted 10,000 trees on a shadeless prairie, the suddenly sparse watering of the city’s grassy lawns was a profound and dire statement of retreat. Trash cans vanished from city parks, because when you cut 75 percent of the parks’ budget, one of the things you lose is someone to empty the garbage. Out went some police officers along with three of the department’s helicopters, which were auctioned online. Gone were weekend bus service and nine buses. Faced with massive shortfalls, the city’s leaders began slashing. During the recession, like nearly every other city in America, Colorado Springs’ revenue-heavily dependent on sales tax-plunged. It was its jut-jawed conservatism that not that long ago made the city’s local government a brief national fixation. It’s a right-wing counterweight to liberal Boulder, just a couple of hours north, along the Front Range. It’s also a staunchly Republican city-headquarters of the politically active Christian group Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs is nicknamed “the Evangelical Vatican”) and the fourth most conservative city in America, according to a recent study. An hour’s drive south of Denver, it sits at the base of the Rocky Mountains’ southern range and features two of the state’s top tourist destinations: the ancient sandstone rock formations known as Garden of the Gods, and Pikes Peak, the 14,000-foot summit visible from nearly every street corner. Colorado Springs has always leaned hard on its reputation for natural beauty.
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