At an Oct. 21, 2003 meeting of the nonpartisan Littleton City
Council, Mayor Susan Thornton held up a piece of campaign
literature, calling it “manure” and claiming it was filled with
misleading statements and lies.
The ballot that November included two heated issues: whether to
repeal a 1 percent grocery tax and whether to create a historic
preservation district for downtown.
As Election Day neared, the blows got personal and partisan,
with campaign literature like the one Thornton held attacking not
just ideas, but the people who supported them.
Former council member Ray Koernig, who was on council at this
time, sees what resulted from this literature and other attacks as
personal, partisan politics.
“I view that as Karl Rove moves to Littleton,” Koernig said.
“Misrepresentation was purposefully done. Party politics have no
place in city elections. Instead of bringing the community
together, it’s keeping them apart.”
The election yielded an overturn of the tax, an optional, rather
than mandatory historic preservation district and the reelection of
two of three incumbents. However, many view this election as the
start of something much bigger: a divide in Littleton city
politics, which has pitted one clan of the part-time, citizen
representatives and their backers against one another.
In subsequent years, several other issues came to head, with
close election results. With each one, tension built, signaling an
impending change in city government.
In 2004, council asked residents to allow a mill levy raise to
fund a new police facility. That vote failed 55 percent to 45
percent, after many accused the city of asking for taxes when they
already had the money to build the station.
The 2006 ballot asked citizens to allow council to keep tax
overages from the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Voters rejected the
initiative after the council was cited in a lawsuit earlier that
year for improperly using city funds to send a mailer. Amid more
personal attacks and counterattacks the objective was defeated with
a roughly 60 percent to 40 percent vote.
That led to 2007, with the question of whether or not to rezone
open land for a new Wal-Mart. The council majority wanted the new
business, to increase the city’s sales tax revenue base, but were
countered by large, heated crowds which petitioned to take the
issue to voters.
In the end, the latter group won, again with a 60 percent to 40
percent vote, and it stuck around through the November election,
when many of the same roster worked to get three incumbents voted
out of city council. It was a changing of the guard.
The players
Civic activists cannot even agree on whether there is a division
in Littleton politics. Some say there are no opposing sides to
speak of while others will name names of those they are
against.
At first glance, it may be hard to notice any contention while
walking down the historic, idyllic Main Street. After all, both
sides say they want the same thing: a preservation of Littleton as
a unique city within the metro area. However, when it comes to
achieving this goal, views start diverging dramatically.
On development, city funding and staff involvement, the two
camps are strikingly different. This divide is not limited to
council members and candidates, but representative of a large,
vocal group of citizens invested in the politics of Littleton. It
is a group missing from the audiences of official meetings in many
of the city’s suburban neighbors, but integral to the undercurrent
of Littleton government.
While there are plenty who passionately agree with some views of
one side or another — and even more city residents who don’t care
about either side — many of the active citizenry align themselves
with a group known as the Sunshine Boys. Since 2003 and the grocery
tax issue, this growing group of individuals has met weekly to
discuss city issues, often finding flaw in the actions of
council.
Jack Randall is one of these people.
Randall — now residing in unincorporated Grand County — grew up
in Littleton and still owns several properties in the town, giving
him a vested interest in its vitality. He is a regular at city
meetings, often seen walking in with cowboy boots and an eye to
detail. His observations over the last years have been shared in an
independently produced newspaper called the Littleton Examiner.
Because the publication often does not cite sources for its
information, opponents have labeled it libelous. But Randall
adamantly stands by everything he has published.
Randall likes to get people talking about the issues and said he
likes nothing more than 4-3 council votes, no matter which way they
go, because it shows a diversity of opinions being expressed.
Those close votes have been more common in recent years, but for
some time the status quo was a unanimous vote from council,
generally passing through the ordinances suggested by city staff,
much to the chagrin of many Sunshine Boys. It wasn’t until Sunshine
Boys Doug Clark and Tom Mulvey joined council that those 5-2 or 4-3
votes started happening with frequency.
“The old council was a creature of the establishment and not
overseers of the government,” Randall said. “They’re not bad
people, but that climate just came that way. It’s important that
councils be actual overseers of that which is done and being
proposed to be done by the staff.”
That all changed with the election last November, when the rank
of Sunshine Boys on council more than doubled. Many agree with
Randall that this was a pivotal step for the city. However, there
is another group of active citizens in the shadows of city events
—one with a very different view of the current council, and the
Sunshine Boys.
Stew Meagher is one of these people.
With silver hair and piercing eyes, Meagher has a sharp mind
that is quick to respond with a number of informed opinions. The
former council member and current broker turned back to politics in
the wake of the Wal-Mart election, helping to form Citizens for
Littleton’s Future — or C4LF — a group made up of Littleton
residents and several other former council members. In the last
election the group worked to endorse candidates opposed to the
Sunshine Boys, and now encourages citizens to get involved in and
become informed about city affairs.
Part of this latter objective is due to unhappiness with some of
those currently filling the council seats.
“We currently have a majority of city council that operate out
of a certain fantasy that they have a clearer outlook on what is
going on [than staff or other council members,]” Meagher said. “But
I really don’t think they see the need to promote a viable
community that needs to be fostered, rather than micromanaged. This
fantasy is driven ultimately by a fear of change, galvanizing
people from entering that creative center, rather than pulling on
opposite sides.”
C4LF members don’t meet as regularly or have the years of
background of the Sunshine Boys, but they are gaining momentum,
largely through an e-mail effort. While Randall says he has had no
fodder for Examiner issues since the Sunshine Boys became the
majority on council, C4LF has filled several pages of newsletters
critiquing actions of the current council during this same time
period.
The opposing views in Littleton came to head in two recent
documents: the proposed 2030 Comprehensive Plan and the Business
and Industry Affairs Advisory Committee’s — BIAAC’s — annual report
in 2007.
A comprehensive future
The city of Littleton was founded by Richard Little, an engineer
from New Hampshire who was commissioned to lay out a water system
for the rural lands south of Denver that had grown since the Pikes
Peak gold rush of 1859.
By 1890, the 245 residents voted to incorporate their town. The
name is officially attributed to its founder, but “Littleton” could
just have easily been named for its small-town feel. The town grew
significantly in the 1950s and 1960s, when Marathon Oil and
Lockheed Martin brought in staffs of young, educated individuals
and their families.
Fifty years later, the underlying issue at hand is how Littleton
should handle the prospect of change.
Terms like “high density” and “big box stores” have become
fighting words in conversations about the future, stirring the
emotions of those who want Littleton to maintain its historical
nature and clamor for its sense of uniqueness. While some stick to
the idea that no major changes are needed to face the future,
others favor ideas like transit-oriented and mixed-use developments
to attract a younger demographic, and larger retail stores that
would increase the city sales tax revenue base.
Amy Conklin is one of these people.
An at-large council member from 2003 to 2007, her vote in favor
of Wal-Mart was one of the issues used by opponents to defeat her
in last year’s election. She said she sympathizes with those who
want to maintain the status quo in Littleton, but does not see it
as a viable avenue.
“I don’t want change either,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be nice if
we didn’t have to change?”
Conklin’s resignation is anathema to many Sunshine Boys. Several
candidates endorsed by their members have made strong statements
against high density and developments to promote the tax base.
In 2006, the city sought to bring this conversation to the
forefront, selecting a citizen advisory committee to assist the
planning commission in updating Littleton’s Comprehensive Plan,
which had not been altered since Reagan first took up residence in
the White House. The comprehensive plan is the city’s guidebook for
future use of transportation, utilities, land use, recreation and
housing for the city.
The process of picking the citizens involved was modeled in part
after a similar update in Denver. It included a call-out to all
40,000-plus Littleton residents and an evaluation of each person
that applied.
“It was an unbelievably bad selection of candidates,” Clark said
at a March 21, 2006 city council meeting. “What was being picked
was a pretty exclusive club that would basically function as a
cheerleading section rather than a group of citizens that would
provide advice on the Comprehensive Plan revision.
“If Council was truly trying to solicit citizens’ input, much
better picks could be made than the 17 candidates, where a quarter
of them were former council members and a spouse. They managed to
pick 23 people without picking anyone from the other side. And that
wasn’t an accident. They know who each other are.”
Enter the Littleton Leadership Retreat. For many years a group
of civic activists have joined together for a weekend, often out of
town, to discuss goals and objectives of the city. While the event
has always been open to the public, invitations were only sent to
certain people, leaving those without an official invite — mainly
Sunshine Boys — viewing the event as an exclusive club. In 2006,
invitations were extended to all advisory committee members. Many
of the values discussed at the retreat that year were reflected in
the final recommendations for the 2030 plan.
Because the 2030 plan became associated with the retreat — which
was led by many of the same people who later founded C4LF — many
Sunshine Boys were skeptical of the 2030 plan from the very
beginning.
“The purpose of the Complan is to describe what development
people will tolerate. We have this whole mechanism in place, our
zoning code, that says that’s the document we use,” Clark said.
“And then we’ve got the Complan. The one we have now —while it’s
not perfect — met that definition. And then you have the 2030 plan
that went over here, and they’re creating something completely
different.”
Recommendations from the 2030 plan were broader, suggesting the
consideration of mixed use projects in areas of change, including
the South Platte River and increasing connectivity and transit
throughout the community.
“They viewed the Complan as, ‘if we can force this stuff in to
the Complan, than we can force this stuff into developments,’”
Clark said. “The problem with that is the citizens hold the
ultimate power in government. You can have something in the
Complan, and if the citizens don’t want it, they will do a
referendum on it.”
In a sense, that is what happened. Many of the same people who
opposed the 2030 plan voted for the current council majority. When
the new council took over, the Sunshine Boys more or less rejected
the 2030 plan.
The planning commission was once again tasked with updating the
plan, another controversial issue, as many new members were
appointed to complete this mission. In an unusual move, council
removed three members from the commission when they made their
annual appointment to the city’s 14 boards and commissions in
April.
Much like the Sunshine Boys viewed the 2030 citizen advisory
group as a choir to their opponents’ preaching, Koernig, a
supporter of C4LF, saw this as the council majority stacking the
commission with people who agreed with them.
“When I was on council it never occurred to us, accept for
malfeasance, to fire someone on a board or commission,” he
said.
Council member Jim Taylor saw even greater implications in the
action.
“I am very concerned about the direction this council is going,
with the heavy handed removal of citizens who have done a very good
job for this city, for the past year,” he said at a March 4 council
meeting. “I tend to look at who I think are the strongest
candidates, and we had quite a few of them. But I look also for
candidates that are forward-thinking, that are not stuck in a pit
somewhere, or stuck in the past I guess I should say, and those
that don’t have an axe to grind.
“And I think that in our interviews that we had, some of the
people that got appointed to the planning commission tonight, fit
those categories very well. So, it’s going to be interesting to see
what the future of this city is going to be, but it looks like it’s
going to be a dictatorship.”
Clark justified the dismissal, saying it boiled down to a power
struggle between council and the commission, specifically a request
council issued to televise the commission’s meetings and study
sessions on Public Access Channel 8. He said those that were
dismissed were against this. Plus, a new direction was desired for
the Complan.
“If you give the same job to the same people who messed it up
before,” he said, “you expect the same results.”
Not business as usual
The business community has also gotten caught up in the issue of
change.
The Business and Industry Affairs Advisory Committee, a group
made up of business leaders in the city who volunteer their time
and expertise to address business issues posed by the council,
released its annual report in late 2007 to mixed responses.
“The discussion that we’re hearing in the Littleton community
today centers around the proposition to change or not change,” said
Darrel Schulte, committee president, while presenting the report to
council. “Our committee feels it is a more productive discussion to
focus on what kinds of change and how much.”
The report pointed to housing, economic and cultural trends it
said divides the city in to two distinct parts — one north of Ridge
Road and one south. Specifically, those north of the line are
older, living in older homes, supported by less income. While
Schulte repeated that no judgment was being applied to these
trends, the emotional response to the report was heated.
Many felt the report disenfranchised lower-income, older
residents in favor of younger, well-heeled demographics. Again, it
was an issue of those who favor mixed-use, high density and big box
stores against those who don’t.
The discussion came to a head at a public meeting at the Buck
Center earlier this year. Since summer 2007, Littleton resident Tom
Kristopeit has held so-called Pub meetings, or public forums, to
discuss issues going on in the city.
When BIAAC was the topic of conversation, former mayor Sally
Parsons — and supporter of C4LF — spoke up.
“Change is not new. Change is ongoing. My biggest disappointment
is how this report was rejected,” she said. “If we stick our heads
in the sand and refuse to address this report, Littleton will take
a long time to recover from ignoring this report. Change has been
overcome before, and can be again.”
Clark does not argue with the data, but saw the problem with the
report as a case of faulty cause-and-effect reasoning.
Some of the report’s recommendations include examining the
city’s tax base, supporting business development and taking the
2030 advisory committee’s advice to watch “areas of change,” based
on data of the city’s economic, demographic and housing data.
“The conclusions of the recommendations didn’t follow with the
problems that were stated. And the problems presented were
shallowly presented,” he said. “What you come up with is something
worse than useless, it’s actually dangerous, because if you go off
and form a policy based on an incomplete examination of the problem
you might do something that screws it up.”
No real consensus was ever met on the report, but the issue has
not gone away. When council charged the 2008 BIAAC committee with
the task of discussing options for aging residents, many of the
members rejected the idea — some even threatening to resign —
saying that it was not the critical issue in the city.
What now?
Turnover in political seats and divisive debates among
politicians is nothing out of the ordinary. What many say is
troublesome about Littleton politics in recent years is how
personal it has become — from the vindictive campaign literature to
the reduction of city politics to what one city official
characterized as high school cliques.
In the 2007 election one city resident went so far as to form
The Committee to Not Re-Elect Amy Conklin.
In the wake of that election she feels her council
representatives might ignore any concern she had about the
city.
“If there were a pot hole on my street out here, I don’t know if
they’d fix it,” Conklin said with a laugh. “Actually, they might
not fix it just because of me.”
And the perception of personal vendettas is far from
one-sided.
In the summer of 2007 Littleton resident Norm Brown, a Sunshine
Boy, said he was invited by a council member to a meeting of the
C4LF steering committee. Once the meeting started someone said,
“one of the guys from the other side was there.” Feeling awkward,
Brown offered to leave.
“Broadly speaking, it’s uncomfortable, it’s unfortunate, there’s
times when people’s feelings are hurt, but in the long run it may
be a good thing,” Clark said. “The competition and the questioning
forces everybody to reexamine their own position. If you get
opposing viewpoints together you usually arrive at a better
decision or a better conclusion.”
So far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, members of both groups
have reportedly met privately to plot strategy, in violation of
Sunshine Laws, which require meetings of three or more public
officials to be open to the public. While no one will fully
substantiate such reports on the record, the rumors, in and of
themselves, are symptomatic of the growing distrust between the two
sides.
Members of both camps say they would like nothing more than to
get everyone together and start talking. However, the perception is
that the Retreat is for C4LF supporters, Pub meetings are for
Sunshine Boys, and council members supported by each side have
filled official groups intended to promote diverse opinions with a
homogenous roster of like-minded residents.
The unrest has also spread to city staff.
The new place settings on council have resulted in a tenser
environment inside the West Berry Avenue City Center. Several
longtime staff members and department heads have said, off the
record, they fear impending firings by council.
“We serve at the pleasure of the council” has been cautiously
uttered by staff members during public meetings with much more
frequency than past years, illustrating this strain.
The consensus of these city employees is a concern with the
direction the council is going — a stalling in ideas, rather than
the progressive mind-set that characterized Littleton for many
decades.
Another sentiment is that the staff is being micromanaged by
council more than in past years — from the Complan to BIAAC to
boards and commissions. Clark said he views the Littleton City
staff as a quality group with much institutional knowledge, but
that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to look closely at what they
do.
“One of the biggest differences [in philosophies of governing,]
is whether you question staff,” Clark said. “This council is
obligated to question. The previous council was not so
inclined.”
Sam Mamet, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League,
said bringing in a new council often leads to tension with staff,
but the problems can be worked out with clear intentions.
“A lot of places where councils get elected, a new council comes
in and they have great passion, they have great beliefs about where
they want to move forward, but it doesn’t work if you don’t have
clear direction to the staff,” he said. “I have given this speech
thousands of times. Council should always be sensitive to the needs
of the staff.”
The issue comes down to whether or not these conflicts affect,
or will affect, how the city is governed, something that once again
spurs different conclusions.
“Here we are six months in and we have rumors of being sued by
our neighbors (because of council’s action to raise sewer rates for
customers outside city limits,) rumors of being boycotted by our
neighbors, city staff is bailing out and there’s this constant
drone of conversation that doesn’t seem to go anywhere,” Meagher
said.
On the other side, Sunshine Boy supporter Carol Brzeczek views
Clark as the most objective mayor the city has had, and the
accusations of a change in city direction a sign the community is
being heard in a way it hasn’t before.
Mamet said he’s seen many cities go through such change in
power, with just as dominant of personalities and citizen
“parties,” and he’s told them all about the same thing.
“I tell them, ‘Listen, you’re in a shotgun marriage. Some of you
have never met each other before. Some of you may not like each
other all that much. Some of you ran together. But the fact of the
matter is you’ve got to work as a team, iron out your issues, and
move on to the next issue as a council,” he said.
If Littleton is like any of the other cities Mamet has coached,
he said things will be fine.
“People get together from all kinds of backgrounds and they get
together for all kinds of reasons, but they work it out,” he said.
“Some times it takes a little while to do it, but they work it
out.”
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