Tag: Grand Junction City Council

City of Grand Junction, Cronyism, Ethics, Grand Junction City Council, Housing, Local concerns, politics

City Councilor says he sees cronyism creeping into G.J. City Council

by Anne Landman • May 4, 2024 • 3 Comments

Scott Beilfuss

At the regular May 1 meeting of Grand Junction City Council, Councilman Abe Herman was voted in as the new mayor of Grand Junction and Randall Reitz as Mayor Pro Tem for the next year by all attending city council members present except one, and that hold out was perhaps the more important story that Grand Junction citizens should know about.

The vote was 5-1, with current Mayor Anna Stout absent from the meeting.

The lone hold out vote was Councilman Scott Beilfuss.

Curious about the vote, I contacted Beilfuss to ask why he didn’t vote for Herman and Reitz along with the rest of Council.

The Orchard Mesa Community Center Pool is barely afloat

by Anne Landman • February 21, 2024 • 6 Comments

Orchard Mesa Pool

Guest blog post by Mariann Taigman, co-founder of the Save the Pool Committee, and Nick Allan of Orchard Mesa United

Three different agencies—the school district, the city, and the county—are involved in managing the Orchard Mesa Community Center Pool (OMCCP).

Prior to 2020, a Pool Board was created that was comprised of one official from each of these entities to discuss the pool at joint meetings. In 2020, the pool board convened to discuss the pool’s future, including the possibility of demolition, marking the last “official” meeting of the Pool Board before it dissolved. In response, the Save The Pool Committee emerged as a grassroots effort, championed by concerned community

Kids and adults enjoying the OM Pool

members passionate about keeping the OMCCP operational. During that final Pool Board meeting, the Save The Pool Committee presented proof to the three entities that the community wanted the pool to remain open. Our efforts included: obtaining 7,000 online petition signatures and 1,000 paper signatures; collecting over 70 letters from school children; encouraged community engagement by distributing flyers as to the fate of the OMCCP, and having groups of community members speak at city council meetings.

Schwenke is helping realtors and developers oppose City plan for more pedestrian & bike-friendly development

by Anne Landman • December 4, 2023 • 8 Comments

Many Grand Junction streets lack curb, gutters, sidewalks and other pedestrian and bike-friendly amenities. City Council is trying to fix this by making transportation corridors safer and more user-friendly for pedestrians, bicyclists and people using public transportation. Realtors and developers oppose the effort, assisted by former Chamber president Diane Schwenke.

Former Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce President Diane Schwenke, who has a consulting business now called “Schwenke Solutions,” is working as a consultant for the Grand Junction Area Realtors and Homebuilders Associations, helping them oppose the City’s new proposed Transportation Engineering Design Standards (TEDS) that are designed to make streets safer for pedestrians, bicyclists and people taking public transportation.

Diane Schwenke lobbies against higher wages

Former Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce President Diane Schwenke appears in a 2016 TV ad opposing an increase in Colorado’s minimum wage

To that end, Schwenke authored a strange letter to the editor to the Daily Sentinel November 26 that praised a new housing development on former farmland in Nebraska that lack curbs, gutters and walkable sidewalks. She praises the beautiful agricultural setting of the development, saying it has “a layout that maximizes the view of fields of corn and soybeans on the adjourning hillsides,” but doesn’t seem to understand that such developments destroy the lovely fields and farms she likes to look at, and will cost taxpayers in the long run as cities have to add curb, gutter, drainage, adequate sidewalks and other amenities to make them safer and more attractive.

Learn more about the candidates running for Grand Junction City Council at this online event tomorrow @ 6:00 p.m.

by Anne Landman • February 23, 2021 • 0 Comments

Are you wondering who wants to call the shots on City Council? Are there candidates for City Council that draw red flags?

If you have an internet connection, you can attend this free online event to find out more about the candidates for Grand Junction City Counci. It’s tomorrow at 6:00 p.m.

The event is sponsored by the Western Colorado Alliance of Mesa County, the Western Colorado Latino Chamber of Commerce, Cleantech Business Coalition, and other community organizations.

The link to sign up and get the Zoom link for the forum is here.

The election is April 6, 2021. There are also measures on the ballot to approve the sale of retail marijuana, and if it is approved, to tax those sales. The city’s portal for more information on the election is here.

Get involved, tune in, determine who the over-the-top extremist candidates are (because this is Grand Junction, and you know some of them are), and who the reasonable candidates are who deserve to serve on the next City Council.

Advertising, Cronyism, Diane Schwenke, Diversity, Embarrassing Republicans, Ethics, Ethnic/Minority, Grand Junction Chamber, Grand Junction City Council, Racism, Weird Grand Junction Stuff

Shadowy Chamber “social welfare” group funds billboard thanking racially tone-deaf members of G.J. City Council “for their service”

by Anne Landman • July 24, 2020 • 8 Comments

The Chamber and WCBA’s billboard thanking the most tone-deaf city council members when it comes to racism in Grand Junction

The little-known, seedy political arm of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce, the Western Colorado Business Alliance (WCBA), has appeared again in Grand Junction, this time funding a billboard praising four sitting Grand Junction City Council members who recently earned the reputation for being the most tone-deaf regarding racism: Philip Pe’a, Duke Wortmann, Phyllis Norris and Kraig Andrews.

Pe’a was the councilman who was so threatened by what he claimed was the presence of G.J. Police Department’s “swat team” at the June 3 Council meeting that he proclaimed he thought he might need to bring his Glock handgun into the meeting. That was the meeting that was attended by a crowd of City residents who showed up to protest pervasive racism they had seen or experienced in Grand Junction, or to support friends who had experienced it.

Grand Junction’s Police Chief later confirmed there were no SWAT team members at the meeting that day.