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Welcome to the Kim Monson Show podcast. Kim Monson is your host. In 2004 Colorado voters approved FasTracks, a RTD proposal to build six new rail transit lines and complete three extensions to existing lines for $4.7 billion. Guest host Marshall Dawson talks with Randal O’Toole. O’Toole explains that “finishing” FasTracks is just throwing good money after bad. Longmont Airport Advisory Board Member Tara Menza discusses consequences of the new Longmont Airport landing fee. Jon Boesen with Boesen Law notes the importance of prompt action if you have been injured. ————————————————————————————– The Kim Monson Show airs on KLZ 560
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It’s the Kim Monson Show, analyzing the most important stories.
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That seems to me like government is establishing a religion.
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The latest in politics and world affairs.
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If you give people rights, women’s rights, gay rights, whatever, there can’t be equal rights if there are special rights.
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Today’s current opinions and ideas.
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Surveys show that people still really prefer freedom over government force.
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Is it freedom or is it force? Let’s have a conversation.
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Yes, indeed, let’s have a conversation. Welcome to the Kim Monson Show. I’m Marshall Dawson. I’m guest hosting the show today, and we will have that conversation. Thank you to Kim for trusting me with the chair. Thank you also to Brad Beck for filling in yesterday, and Kim will be back tomorrow. Listen, thank you for listening to us. Each of you are treasured, you’re valued, you have purpose. Today, strive for excellence. Take care of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body. You were made for this moment. And thank you, Producer Joe. Thank you for unlocking the door this morning. As we say, good morning to you.
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Good morning, Marshall. How are you?
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I’m excellent. Thank you for asking. Listen, you and your team just do great work. I really appreciate how you can keep the plates spinning as well as you do. Visit the website, which is KimMonson.com, K-I-M-M-O-N-S-O-N.com. Sign up for Kim’s weekly email newsletter, and you can get a first look at her upcoming guests as well as the most recent essays. I checked yesterday. Kim still has her voter’s guide up there. So if you still haven’t turned in your ballot, you have until 7 p.m. today, and you can download that guide and see what Kim’s opinions are on various issues. And thank you to the Harris family for their gold sponsorship of the show. It’s because of great people like you that we get to have these conversations and we enjoy our freedom of speech. We’re going to be talking a little bit about freedom of speech here shortly. And thank you to Hooters Restaurants for their great sponsorship. There are three locations, Aurora, Westminster, and Loveland. They have great lunch specials Monday through Friday for dine-in or to-go. Wednesdays are wings days. Buy 20 wings and get an additional 10 for free. And that offer is good for to-go or for dine-in. Hooters Restaurants, a great place to get together with friends to watch your favorite teams. Let’s get to the word of the day today. It is cognate. It’s an adjective and it’s spelled C-O-G-N-A-T-E. Cognate is used to describe things that are similar in nature or quality. A couple of examples that I found are music and math are cognate because both are rooted in patterns and structure. Or a novel’s themes are cognate to those in the author’s earlier works, exploring identity and belonging. Today’s quote comes from Silence Do Good. Does that name sound familiar? Well, it was in a letter July 9th, 1722 to the New England Courant. Still don’t know? Silas Duguid was a pen name of 16-year-old Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin lived from 1706 to 1790. He was one of our founding fathers, of course. He was a scientist, a publisher, a statesman, and so much more. They call him a polymath, which means that his expertise and his studies go across many different topics. So that tells me he was a lifelong learner. And yet even at the age of 16, Benjamin Franklin wrote this, he said, And so let’s look at a couple of headlines. There was a request to form a Turning Point USA chapter at Fort Lewis here in Colorado, and this is from the Rocky Mountain Voice. The new chapter was denied as a registered student organization, and this was done by the student government. It came about when they started with a session called Debate a Conservative on October 16th. And Jonah Flynn, who was a senior studying philosophy and Spanish, held this event. And he said that they had braced for hostility, but insisted on dialogue, which I think is just wonderful. And opposition began the day after the debate. They had gained 400 signatures on a petition saying that marginalized students were feeling unsafe. I don’t think they know what that word means. And I can infer, I think, that Jonah was going to be the Turning Point USA president at Fort Lewis. And supposedly he did a wonderful job. And at the presentation, not only did he give his presentation, but he took questions from the audience. So I want to give kudos to Jonah for that effort. And thank you. I think it’s important that we say just how valuable standing up and speaking your values is. I didn’t have to deal with that when I was in college. It was a little weird, but my goodness, what a world we live in. Another headline, I have to say, I chuckled at how Politico spun this. They said, Tom Cotton blocks the Sunshine Protection Act. Well, the Sun Time Protection Act is seeking to get rid of daylight savings time permanently. And in the sense that they try to slip this through by unanimous consent, Tom Cotton simply showed up, it sounds like, and said, well, I don’t consent, so it’s not unanimous in the way that politicals fund this. They talked about how Trump was in favor of this back in the spring, and it was kind of funny. They said that we have – I mean, here’s really the nut of it, right? We can’t decide on do we want daylight savings time or do we not. I think we all just about agree that the clocks shouldn’t be changing, but we cannot agree on which setting they should stay at. This day in history, does the name Mary Todd ring a bell to you? Well, on this day in 1842, Mary Todd married Abraham Lincoln. In 1871, the city of Boulder incorporates and becomes the county seat of Boulder County. And speaking of Boulder… Recently, Boulder enacted a new fee. It’s called a Boulder Transportation Maintenance Fee. This is from the Daily Camera. It’s designed to generate $6 million in revenue, pulling fees, taxes, if you will. They have to call them fees to… Get it past Tabor, but it’s $54 for a single-family detached home, $42 for multifamily homes, and they’re trying to fill a shortfall roughly of that amount in a $521 million budget. It occurred to me that this was first discussed pre-COVID, and now we have more people working from home. This was pointed out by the chamber there in Boulder. More people working from home, so the transportation needs aren’t quite what they used to be. They have office vacancies. It also occurred to me, Boulder had a bag tax before Colorado banned them. That tax raised about $260,000 a year. Boulder also has a sugary drink tax, which raises about $220,000 a year. And they also have an $11 per square foot fee if you want to replace your home with something larger. Well, it occurs to me that Boulder really dissuades and gets in the way of revenue-generating activity through their coercive policies. I think that’s one thing that they ought to consider. Boulder is interested in punishing people as opposed to raising revenue. Another thing that I should mention, I don’t know if you had caught this already. I’ll leave this out there without comment, but last night, former Vice President Dick Cheney passed away. In the next segment, I’ll talk about the shutdown. I think we have plenty to talk about there. I’ll go ahead and mention, however, that we’re now in the 35th day. And if you are a news junkie, you’re probably already aware that we could surpass this evening the benchmark of this being the longest shutdown ever. In other news, we have, I found this fascinating. We have a wind farm which is being taken down in Wyoming. The 11 turbine Casper Wind Farm that sits north of Evansville, Wyoming is on its way out. The Chevron Power and Energy Management Company has confirmed this and they’ve notified the Board of Commissioners there in March that the company plans to decommission Each of the 240-foot-high, 450,000-pound wind turbines on the farm. I know that Wyoming is our neighbor, right? And maybe isn’t as close to many of you all as it is to me. But as I drive through Wyoming, as I hike in one of my favorite places in northern Colorado, just seeing how much those turbines have polluted the beauty of the environment, I’m glad to see that they’re coming down. They don’t fulfill the promise that was made to us. We do have a problem, of course, with what do we do with all those materials? You know, a lot of them are not readily recyclable. They have to be buried. And so that’s another challenge that decommissioning wind farms requires. Okay, also on this day, 1922, there were a couple of things that happened that I want to mention. 1922, the entrance of King Tutankhamen’s tomb was uncovered by Howard Carter. Although in Colorado, it was not such a happy day. 1922, we had deadly tornadoes here, which killed five or six, depending on on what reporting you look at. The first tornado was reported near Sugar City in southeast Colorado. It moved northward to near Genoa. This is at 5 a.m. local time. The second formed in Yuma County and moved north by northeast. And that one was reported at 9.30. These were really unusual because of how early in the day they occurred. And there was a blizzard that came along right after, so I’m sure that was just horrible and miserable. Well, look, I do want to tell you, the Roger Mangan team will create personalized insurance plans to cover all your needs, from protection for your cars to your home, your condo, your boat, your motorcycle, your business, and renders coverage. So contact Roger Mangan’s team now at 303-795-8855 for a complimentary appointment. Like a good neighbor, Roger Mangan’s team is there.
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Today, particularly in Colorado, your Second Amendment right to keep and bear firearms is under relentless attack. The Second Amendment is in our Bill of Rights to ensure that each individual has the right to resist oppression, stand firm against government overreach, and protect our right to defend ourselves, our families, and our freedoms. Colorado’s premier grassroots Second Amendment organization, the Second Syndicate, is exposing the most pressing threats to the Second Amendment and providing education, resources, and tools to stay informed. There’s so much noise coming at us.
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Sometimes it is difficult to make sense of it all. How can you sift through the clamor for your attention and get to the truth? The Kim Monson Show is here to help. Kim searches for truth and clarity by examining issues through the lens of freedom versus force. Force vs. Freedom. Tune in to The Kim Monson Show each weekday, 6 to 8 a.m. with encores 1 to 2 p.m. and 10 to 11 p.m. on KLZ 560 AM, KLZ 100.7 FM. The KLZ website, the KLZ app, and Alexa. Play KLZ. Shows can also be found at KimMonson.com, Spotify, and iTunes.
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And welcome back to The Kim Monson Show. I’m Marshall Dawson. I’m filling in for Kim today. Check out Kim’s website at kimmonson.com. You can email Kim at kim at kimmonson.com. And thank you for contributing to support Kim’s independent voice and the exercise of our freedom of speech. And through all of Kim’s work with veterans, she’s honored to highlight the USMC Memorial Foundation and all they are doing to raise the money to remodel the official USMC Memorial, which is located right here in Golden, Colorado at 6th and Colfax. Paula Sorrells is the president of the foundation. She’s a Marine veteran and a Gold Star wife. Paula and her team are working diligently to make the remodel a reality. You can help by donating at usmcmemorialfoundation.org. That’s usmcmemorialfoundation.org. All right, I promised before the break we were going to talk about the shutdown. I almost feel like I’m cheating because this is too easy talking about the shutdown. It’s the biggest news. I think the last time I was here, I even said, look, it’s unbreaking that the shutdown is still going. Of course it is. And we’re expecting another vote in the Senate today to get the government reopened back up. But one of the things that has jumped out at me is just how much money we spend. No, let me not put it that way. Not the money that we spend, the number of people that we spend it on at the federal level. This is from Breitbart. Nearly 6 million households depend on the $4.1 billion low-income home energy assistance. There’s probably a way to pronounce this, Joe. I don’t know if it’s Lee Hype or something like that. In Colorado, we just simply call it LEAP. But 6 million households depend on $4.1 billion with this program, and some states are now warning that funding for the program is delayed because of the federal government shutdown now in its fifth week. I looked into this a little bit for Colorado. I’m no expert, but here’s what the state website said. That you are eligible for this if your income is up to 60% of Colorado’s median income. That is a lot of people there. Now let’s talk about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. You probably know this as SNAP. From CBS News, Trump will now use the contingency fund, $4.6 billion, to pay out partial benefits for November. However, it takes $9 billion to fund this for November. So that means that the $4.6 billion is going to be used to cover roughly 50% of eligible households’ current allotments. And this comes from the USDA official, Patrick Penn. This is a statement. And so now they’re… Trump has said, look, we want to get this paid. We want to get the money into the hands of the people. But it’s going to face delays, likely, because so many states are unable to deal with partial payments. Now, let me give you a couple of observations from the shutdown. When I first heard how many people are on these programs, SNAP was 42 million people. What is the proper role of government? A Democrat might look at this and say, my gosh, we are feeding 42 million people. And so the proper role of government is to feed these people. Look how successful we are. 42 million people fed. I have a different take on that. Now, look, set aside some of the memes and jokes and things like that that you’ve probably seen about somebody saying, well, if you don’t give us our SNAP benefits, we’re going to go and just steal from the stores anyway. Okay, I get it. If you’re able-bodied, you can go and steal. You could probably, I don’t know, maybe go work. Okay, let’s set that aside. What are we doing to these 42 million people? It breaks my heart that we are trapping them in essentially poverty. Because when you get these benefits, often these programs are set up so that you can’t achieve any higher than that. Right? So if you, let’s say you go out and you do get a job or you make more money, your benefits might be reduced. Now, 42 million people is a high number. Okay, let’s assume that there are some that are really in poverty. One of my favorite stories to tell from when I was campaigning was somebody who I’m absolutely convinced deserved to be on SNAP, was struggling. But that’s not everyone. I don’t believe that there are 42 million people in our country who are incapable of feeding themselves. Okay, let’s also assume that there’s some number of illegal aliens that are in that 42 million people mix. Okay, so all that to say, I don’t know what the real number is. However, for those that are being trapped in poverty, as I mentioned, What happens just above that line? What happens to that 42 millionth and first person? Well, they’re on the bubble. It is extraordinarily difficult being on the bubble because we subsidize so much at the bottom end. If you don’t qualify, if you’re trying to make a go of it and you don’t quite qualify for those, I hate to call them benefits, that’s what we call them. If you don’t qualify for those benefits at the low end, it can be a real struggle being on the bubble. You’re not quite wealthy yet. You’re trying to get there, but because everything else winds up being so much more expensive, that is the toughest place to be. Listeners, that is our middle class. Those are the people who are getting out there, trying to make it work every day. And it hurts my heart seeing what we do to them. So I think once all of this is over, we need to have a real conversation Not about how many people can we feed, but how many people can we empower? How many people can we stop robbing them of their dignity and that joy that comes from working and getting the rewards from that and receiving and trying to pursue your American dream? This weekend, perhaps you saw Ted Cruz on Fox News talking to Maria Bartiromo. What did Ted Cruz say? Senator Ted Cruz. I should be kind about this. Senator Ted Cruz said, we expect to see the shutdown end Wednesday or Thursday. Okay, great. And then he said, just like a great politician, right? He said, okay, maybe late this week or early next week. Senator Cruz might be correct here. Marshall has an alternate way of looking at this. Take this with a grain of salt because, look, I make a point of not prognosticating, easy for me to say. My predictions don’t necessarily come true, but as I said before, my faith in the Democrats is not high. We know that from a political point of view, the Democrats want to hurt President Trump as much as possible. We know that the Democrats are struggling right now in popularity. We know that the midterm elections are not that far away. In fact, I have it written down here someplace. I think it’s 364 days away now. We can assume that the Democrats are worried that they won’t perform as well in the midterm elections as what the party that doesn’t hold the presidency typically does. So I think that the Democrats will fail to vote and fail to open the government as long as it takes to hurt President Trump and his popularity and And I think also that they will do whatever they can to change the sentiment of the general population, those who are not necessarily affected by the government shutdown. Look, I think they don’t mind using the SNAP recipients and the people who have the low-income energy assistance and heating benefits. I don’t think they mind using them as pawns. What they really need is to affect the economy, because if they tried to do the same things in 2026 as they did, say, in 2020, you know, if they sent their minions into the street to start rioting, I think they know that we would see through that. Donald Trump’s economy is doing very well, and they need to change that. So it wouldn’t surprise me if we see the shutdown go even longer. Hard to say how long at this point. Senator Cruz might be right. We might see it by the end of next week. I don’t know. We’ll see if Marshall’s predictions come true. Listen, thank you for letting me vent on that. And these conversations happen because we have great sponsors. One of those is Karen Levine. We do want to say thank you to Karen.
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Colonel, the British are raiding Danbury and burning the town. I’ll go tell them. Sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington mounted her horse and rode 40 miles through night and pouring rain. That’s twice the distance of Paul Revere to sound the alarm.
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Quickly. Assemble at my father’s house.
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All Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmonson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 13 :
And welcome back to The Kim Monson Show. I am Marshall Dawson. I’m filling in for Kim this morning. Sign up for Kim’s weekly newsletter at her website, KimMonson.com. You can email Kim, and that’s Kim at KimMonson.com. And thank you for contributing to support our independent voice and the exercise of our right to freedom of speech. Are you ready for financial freedom? Call our friends at Mint Financial Strategies. As an independent firm and an accredited investment fiduciary, they always put your interests first. Mint means more than money. It stands for meaningful relationship. information sharing, a network of smart strategies, and a thoughtful advisor who puts you in control. No cookie cutter plans here. Everything is tailored to you. Call Mint Financial Strategies today at 303-285-3080. And on the line, we have Tara Menza. You know, I have to say, Tara, first of all, welcome to the Kim Monson Show. Thank you for waking up and doing this.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thanks, Marshall. It’s good to hear your voice on the radio this morning.
SPEAKER 13 :
Now, in Longmont, we have this push going on to impose landing fees at the airport. And I looked into this a little bit. I got confused, and I thought, there’s nobody better for me to check in with than Tara. So, Tara, talk a little bit about your connection with aviation and what you do for the city of Longmont.
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Sure, so I sit on the report advisory board for the city of longmont I was selected by city council to fill a six month vacancy back in July, so my term is expiring, but I joined the board because. My whole family is an aviation family. My husband is a retired combat naval aviator. He’s been flying for the past 30 years. He was a test pilot in the Navy. He’s got almost 400 carrier landings flying the EA-60 Prowler. He was a test pilot for the F-18 Growler. We own two airplanes that are currently hangared at Longmont Airport, Vance Brand Airport. And we are just a huge aviation family. We love aviation. We’ve donated flights to various nonprofits to help them raise money for their nonprofits. We love to share our aviation experience with the community. And we are very much invested in the community. All our kids love to fly. So the airport in Longmont is very important to us. And I decided to join the board because I wanted to make sure that we keep the vitality of the airport front and center in the community.
SPEAKER 13 :
When I first heard about landing fees, I think the argument sort of resonated with me of, you know, paying as you play or pay as you go, whatever, you know, there’s the argument that, well, if I go and play on a Longmont city golf course, I pay greens fees, and that’s partially how the golf course is funded. And so I had trouble kind of understanding this issue and all the nuances that go into it. I don’t know if you have any initial comments. I’ve looked into this. I can also say what I think is the case, but what do you say to that?
SPEAKER 03 :
So the airport is completely different. It’s funded differently, and it’s a public entity that the Federal Aviation Administration or the FAA retains exclusive authority of the use of navigable airspace, including the types of operations allowed. So local sponsors, that would be the city of Longmont, cannot unilaterally ban or restrict any touch and go operations without FAA approval. So funding comes from the Aviation Improvement Program. So Longmont has taken federal funding monies to support the airport. And when you take that money, you are bound by what’s called grant assurances that require the airports to remain open to all types of aeronautical activity, including training operations. and any restrictions must comply with faa regulations and when you talk about noise complaints which i feel that’s where this whole landing fee conversation started any restrictions must comply with faa regulations and may require a part 161 study which is airport noise and access restriction if noise is truly the justification so You can’t really compare an airport to a golf course because it’s funded completely differently. And it’s part of the, it’s part of the department of transportation.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, and that’s really why I wanted to chat with you, Tara. Because of all these different layers of the way things are funded, the way things are regulated, and I have to say, Tara, it’s been an odd year for aviation in Longmont. Many listeners may or may not know that There was a – help me get the details right, but there was a lady who self-reported herself to the sheriff or the police for firing at airplanes over top of her property, right? And then she said, well, okay, I was just shooting blanks.
SPEAKER 03 :
Correct. Yeah, when I first heard about – There’s been a lot of noise complaints. There’s been – When I say a lot of, it’s the same people over and over. So we have a complaint management line that you can call in, and that’s run by Levi Brown, who is our airport manager. And he logs and tracks all the complaints. And the history has shown that it’s been the same handful of people who are complaining about aircraft noise. And now, Marshall, when I tell you aircraft noise, I’m talking about single engine piston aircraft. We only have a 4,799 foot runway. The majority of the aircraft that fly in and out of Longmont are your Cessnas and your Pipers and your Cherokees. They’re not Big business jets. We’re not talking about citations and Learjets and things like that that are constantly coming in and out that would come at bigger airports that might run charter operations. We’re talking literally just your single-engine aircraft.
SPEAKER 13 :
And these might be something like 180 horsepower, right? I mean, fairly small. Most people who are listening in their cars right now are driving something with 180 horsepower or more.
SPEAKER 03 :
And your leaf blower typically makes more noise than an engine that’s going to be taking off from a Cessna 172 that climbs up to 1,000 feet and then turns out maybe over some houses. And, I mean, I’ve been woken up in the middle of the night by trains and motorcycles and cars doing drag racing. Airplanes don’t typically wake you up in the middle of the night. And yet we have people calling in and complaining that airplanes should not be taking off before 9 a.m. It should be illegal. They should not start up after 8 p.m. It should be illegal because these residents need their sleep and these pilots aren’t being kind and understanding that people need their sleep.
SPEAKER 13 :
So I think when I first heard about the landing fees being talked about, I thought it was just, as you say, the usual suspects, the same activists who are complaining, I didn’t really take it very seriously. And those complaints I don’t think have necessarily died out. But when city council started talking about landing fees, It shifted, didn’t it? It shifted from reducing traffic and cutting down on noise to funding. Do I have that correct?
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s correct. I have emails that go back to… you know, September of 2024, where our mayor talks about being in meetings with residents who are complaining about touch and goes and constant circling. And it’s true, the Front Range is the mecca for aviation training. And Longmont gets a lot of airports or a lot of aircraft traffic from the flight schools that come out of, we have our own flight school that come out of, uh, Rocky mountain Metro or BJC. And, and so people are going to, it’s a non-powered airport. So people are going to hear, uh, the flight schools coming in and doing touching.
SPEAKER 13 :
You said that pretty quickly. I’m not sure everyone understands when you say a non-towered airport. Can you explain what that is?
SPEAKER 03 :
Sure. And we do not have a control tower at our airport. Our airport is considered a non-powered airport where pilots are expected to self-regulate. And they are very regulated when it comes to what they are allowed to do. They have to come into the traffic pattern a certain way at a certain altitude. And they learn all of this through their training. Towered airports, air traffic control tells the pilots when they can come in and land, which direction they have to come from, which runway they have to use. And so Longmont does not have a tower. So our pilots self-regulate themselves when they come in to land or do touch and go’s.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, so continue then talking about the flight schools.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, so our mayor is on record talking about meeting with groups of anti-airport people and wanting to discuss landing fees. And so when that came to light, and then after that there were several other council members who have gone on record showing that they are also getting noise complaints, and now they want to discuss landing fees as a solution to the noise complaints. When the pilot community got wind of that, we pushed back and said, no, you do not want to implement landing fees to reduce noise. That’s That’s not how we want to see this go down because now all of the flight schools are going to have to go somewhere else, and it becomes a safety issue in terms of the flight schools taking their aircraft to other airports and then saturating them. And so we’re trying to spread the love around to the different airports in the Front Range. And so then after the pilot community pushed back, then the city came back and said, oh, well, the airport’s running at a deficit, and we need to find ways to fund the airport so that it can fund itself. And that’s when the conversation shifted from noise complaints to now the airport needs to be fully funded. And as it sits right now, the airport is funded. It’s funded except for 50% of the administrative transfer fee that the city requires, and that transfer fee involves things like when city staff work on things that have to do with airports, they bill the airport for their time, and that’s the administrative transfer fee. Currently, the airport only pays 50% of that.
SPEAKER 13 :
And thinking about funding, right, I didn’t quite get, you know, they’re saying, well, we’d like to raise either 200 and some odd thousand or 400 and some odd thousand, depending on, you know, the policy. Maybe that’s that 50% transfer that you mentioned. But I also screenshotted what they had displayed during the city council meeting and some of the other areas where the airport gets revenue. Fuel tax refunds. 7956, let’s see. I should have checked. These are not in millions. This is probably in actual dollars. So $7,900. Airport hangar leases and rentals, 504,000. Fuel flowage fee, 8,300. Cell tower, 100,000. FBO lease, 42,000. So there’s all these other ways that there is money going into the city for the airport. Correct. And it kind of occurs to me, if you are really, really concerned about income, why would you coerce, why would you penalize the pilots for each time that they’re landing? Look for ways to actually raise revenue.
SPEAKER 03 :
So that was my conversation. Yes, that was my conversation at the airport board meeting, exactly.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, so Tara Menz, we’re going to go to a break here in just a second. Tara is with the Airport Advisory Board in Longmont, Colorado. We’re going to go to a break. And coming back, I want to talk a little bit about the city council shenanigans, and that’s probably being too harsh, but their behaviors and why they were trying to rush this through. So here we go.
SPEAKER 04 :
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SPEAKER 19 :
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SPEAKER 16 :
Do you strive for excellence as you work with your clients and customers? Does it make sense for you to add a unique and focused branding opportunity to your marketing portfolio? Would you like to access a broad customer base that loves our country and wants to make life better for ourselves, our neighbors, our colleagues, our children, and our grandchildren? Then you may be a perfect fit as a sponsor slash partner of The Kim Monson Show. To learn more, reach out to Teresa at 520-631-9243. Teresa would love to talk with you. Again, that number is 520-631-9243.
SPEAKER 13 :
And welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. I’m Marshall Dawson filling in for Kim today. Kim is out of the studio, but check out our website, KimMonson.com. And the Center for American Values is located in Pueblo on the beautiful Riverwalk. The center is focused on the foundational values of America, honor, integrity, and patriotism. Through their K-12 educational programs, training for educators, and portraits of valor of over 160 Medal of Honor recipients, the Center is helping to instill honor, integrity, and patriotism for our next generations. Check out their website. It’s AmericanValuesCenter.org. That’s AmericanValuesCenter.org. And we’re returning with Tara Menza on the phone. Tara is part of the Longmont Airport Advisory Board and has been going through a number of machinations here lately with landing fees at the Longmont Airport. So welcome back to the show, Tara.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thanks, Marshall. Happy to be here.
SPEAKER 13 :
Now, let’s talk about what’s happened just in the last few weeks. So, talk about the AAB meeting that happened, and you all took a vote there. So, run us through that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Correct. So, on October 23rd, the Airport Advisory Board met, and landing fees were on the agenda. And because the city had told the airport advisory board that the airport was running on a deficit, that we need to vote on landing fees. And they had put out a request for information for different companies to come back with thoughts on if they could if there was a business that could assess landing fees for the Longmont Airport.
SPEAKER 13 :
Essentially how we could collect the fees, track the landings and collect fees, correct?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it was, is there a business out there that could exactly track and collect landing fees? And what does your business model look like? And so they had told us that at a previous meeting in August. And then we didn’t meet in September because Because there wasn’t a quorum. Several airport board members were sick and various reasons they couldn’t meet. So the board rescheduled to meet October 23rd. And at the August meeting, we knew that landing fees discussion was coming down the pipe. And a board member and I both spoke up and said, if you want us to discuss landing fees based off of a budget deficit, nobody’s ever showed us the airport budget. We have no idea what you’re talking about. And now remember, I had been sitting on the board since July and I had never seen a budget. And I don’t know the last time the airport advisory board had seen a budget. We’re just getting told this information. And so for the September packet, before we realized that we didn’t have a quorum and weren’t going to meet, they gave us a packet. And in it was only expenditures. They just sent us a snapshot of airport expenditures. And I quickly emailed the airport manager and said, hey, this isn’t the whole budget. There’s not even any revenue in here. I had no idea what’s going on at the airport except what you sent me for expenditures. I don’t even know what the revenue is. And so he shot back with, we’re going to get a presentation. And so come October 23rd, we get a presentation with the airport budget and budget. expenditures and revenue. But in the revenue line, it only said miscellaneous. That was it. There was no broken down parts of what the revenue actually was. And then, obviously, because this was the first time we’re actually seeing a budget, most of the meeting consisted of the airport board asking questions about certain items in the budget, especially expenditures and things like that, because nobody had ever had seen it. And then they gave us a presentation about landing fees. And in this presentation with the budget and then subsequently on to landing fees, they had forecasted all the way out to 2034, showing us that our expenditures are going to increase significantly. The airport needs to be fully funded. There is no 100% administrative transfer to be calculated in here. They calculated out what that would look like and how much of a deficit the airport would have if we were running. way 100 and then the city manager said oh and by the way we want you to have a 90-day reserve you don’t have a reserve we want you to have a 90-day reserve but all the other city entities are only going to have a 60-day reserve but we want the airport to have a 90-day reserve and he just kind of arbitrarily pulled that out and said you know this is what we want
SPEAKER 13 :
And then let me interrupt just briefly, Tara. I mean, here’s here’s what he said during the city council meeting regarding the reserve, which is that that revenue is coming from a part of Longmont, which is, you know, so I don’t know what you would want to call it. Tightly compact. Here’s a better way to put it. If we had a major weather event, for example, it could damage the airport sufficiently that the city would not have that revenue. So that’s partially why I think he wanted the reserves. But, you know, talking about what you received at the AAB meeting, I thought it was also very notable when I was watching the city council meeting and the staff said, oh, these aren’t the same numbers that we gave to the board. Well, why was that? Well, because they asked different questions. So… I don’t know if you had the answer to this, or if you do, if you’d be willing to say it on the air, but I just found that really fascinating. I don’t want to say it’s incompetence, but if you were going to be presenting, number one, to a volunteer board whose job it is to advise the city council, wouldn’t you give them the same information as you’re presenting to the council?
SPEAKER 03 :
Correct. yes and back to your your really quickly your city manager the 30 60 90 day reserve um we is our insurance do we not have insurance on airports stuff and then are the infrastructures so expensive that it’s going to cost so much more to replace we don’t have a whole lot at this airport that is going to need a 90-day reserve for airport operations Our buildings are very rundown and dilapidated. There’s not a whole lot at that airport that is going to shut it down. We have an AWOS system, which is the, you know, when you fly into the airport, you hear the weather and the advisory and what it looks like to land at that airport. But there’s not a whole lot at that airport. Right. That’s probably not going anywhere. So that’s kind of my beef with what I think was happening. The city manager is trying to paint a picture that isn’t of an airport budget deficit that really isn’t. Would it be great to have a reserve? Sure, it would be great to have a reserve. Do we need a 90-day reserve? I’m not entirely sure we need a 90-day reserve when everybody else only needs a 60-day reserve. And then on top of that, in order for us to get grants, in this part I can see we need a 5% matching. So there are grants that require us to have a 5% match to it. 30 seconds, Tara.
SPEAKER 13 :
Sorry. There’s so much. We only have about 30 seconds.
SPEAKER 03 :
There is so much, yes. There’s a lot to cover. But basically, yes, the airport board did not get the same information the city council got, which I found extremely frustrating. And it looked like they were trying to pull a fast one on the airport board. And then you have a group of experienced people who are there to give recommendations. And city council basically took our recommendations and threw them in the trash.
SPEAKER 13 :
And the frustrating part with that is why would you ask people to volunteer for these advisory boards if you are simply going to ignore their advice and vote your agenda? So where does this stand now? That was first reading that passed the other night, and they’re trying to get the second reading in, I believe, and get it signed then before the new council takes effect on the second. Is that about the long and short of it? All right.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s pretty much it. And city council had no idea what they were voting on. They were quoted as saying, I don’t even know what we’re voting on.
SPEAKER 13 :
That is a great point. I wish we had time to get into that much more because it was a spectacle to watch that. Teremenza, thank you so much for your time talking about landing fees in Longmont. To the listeners, don’t forget that you have until 7 p.m. to get your ballots in. And our quote for the end of the show comes from John Locke. John Locke lived from 1632 to 1704. He was an English philosopher and physician and one of the Enlightenment thinkers, the father of liberalism. And he was a very strong influence on many of our founders. This comes from a 1690 essay concerning human understanding. He said, it is one thing to show a man that he is in an error and another to put him in possession of the truth. I love that so much. So today, be grateful, read great books, think good thoughts, listen to beautiful music, communicate and listen well, live honestly and authentically, strive for high ideals, and like Superman, stand for truth, justice, and the American way. You are not alone. God bless you and God bless America.
SPEAKER 17 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
SPEAKER 12 :
It’s the Kim Monson Show. Analyzing the most important stories.
SPEAKER 07 :
The socialization of transportation, education, energy, housing, and water, what it means is that government controls it through rules and regulations.
SPEAKER 12 :
The latest in politics and world affairs.
SPEAKER 07 :
Under this guise of bipartisanship and nonpartisanship, it’s actually tapping down the truth.
SPEAKER 12 :
Today’s Current Opinions and Ideas.
SPEAKER 07 :
On an equal field in the battle of ideas, mistruths and misconceptions is getting us into a world of hurt.
SPEAKER 12 :
Is it freedom or is it force? Let’s have a conversation.
SPEAKER 13 :
Let’s have that conversation. Good morning. This is Marshall Dawson. I’m sitting in for Kim while she’s out of the studio. And thank you for listening. Each of you are treasured, you are valued, and you have purpose. And today, strive for excellence. Take care of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body. We were made for this moment in history. And I want to say thank you to producer Joe and the rest of the team for all your good work. Joe is keeping the hamsters running in their cages back behind the glass. Go visit Kim’s website, which is KimMonson.com. You can sign up for Kim’s weekly email newsletter. You get a first look at all her upcoming guests, as well as the most recent essays. You can email Kim, Kim at KimMonson.com. And thank you for contributing to support our independent voice and the exercise of our right to freedom of speech. And thank you to the Harris family for their gold sponsorship of the show. From Parker to Golden, Little Ricci’s Pizza and Pasta is your go-to for real New York-style pizza, hearty pastas, and that unbelievable and unbeatable local vibe. Little Ricci’s is serving up daily specials, quick and tasty weekday lunch specials, and a happy hour the locals actually build their plans around. Whether you’re bringing the crew, catching up with friends, or flying solo for a hot slice, Little Ricci’s is your neighborhood hangout. Let’s get to the word of the day. The word for today is cognate. It is an adjective and it’s spelled C-O-G-N-A-T-E. And this is used to describe things that are similar in nature or quality. And a couple of examples that I found are music and math are cognate because both are rooted in patterns or in structure. A novel’s themes could be cognate to those in an author’s earlier works, which might explore identity and belonging. Today’s quote for the day comes from Benjamin Franklin, who lived from 1706 through 1790. He was one of our founding fathers, a scientist, publisher, statesman. I could go on and on about Benjamin Franklin. He wrote this in July 9th, 1722. It was a letter under the pen name of Silence Duguid. This was printed in the New England Courant. He said, without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech. Let’s hit a couple of the headlines today. I’ll run through these more briefly without too much comment. On this day… I mentioned this in the first hour. I do want to call out that in 1922, we had deadly tornadoes in Colorado. In 1979, the Iran hostage crisis began. Also, happy birthday to Will Rogers, Loretta Swit, and Matthew McConaughey. From the Denver Post, Colorado Representative Jeff Hurd asked the U.S. Energy Department to order that the local coal plant stay open. This is the Comanche Coal Plant. Also from the Denver Post, Amgen sues Colorado over state’s first in the nation price ceiling on arthritis drug Enbrel. I presume that I pronounced that correctly. Last year there was a lawsuit as well with our drug affordability board declaring the drug unaffordable and that allowed Colorado to set a cap. This new lawsuit, which was filed in district court on Denver on Thursday, argues that the board’s action conflicted with federal patent laws. Also from the Denver Post, Casa Bonita cliff divers and actors in strike to resume negotiations. This apparently was a three-day strike. And from the AP, Prince Andrew loses his title and his home. He is being stripped of the title Prince. And he is losing access to the mansion near Windsor Castle. These are seemingly due to his what was being called a lapse in judgment over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. And on the line with us, we have John Bozen with Bozen Law. Welcome to the show, John.
SPEAKER 06 :
Good morning, Marshall. Lapse in judgment. That’s being delusional and kind at the same time, I guess.
SPEAKER 13 :
I try to take the wording that I find in these articles. I’ll tell you also, John, a lot of people might say, Marshall, what are you, some kind of leftist, getting your news from the Denver Post? Actually, I go to extra lengths, because if I’m going to have a conversation with somebody who doesn’t agree with me, I want to be able to cite sources that they might be going to. So that’s why I cite the Denver Post or Politico, things like that.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, very wise. You have to do that. I… Read the New York Times yesterday while I was in New York because I wanted to just see what are they talking about.
SPEAKER 13 :
I’m laughing with you, not at you, John.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, yeah. No, you’ve got to know what your opponent’s doing. And to know where folks are getting their information is super important so that you can try to break through that, oh, what would I call it, that shield of ignorance? Because they’re not getting the right information.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, what’s the over-under on New York going with Mondami?
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, my gosh. You know, I had an opportunity while I was out there, and I took advantage of it to talk to all kinds of different people. A lot of people on the subway. I rode the New York subway for the first time. Got to see a New York City rat. But talked with people in the restaurants, on the street. When the opportunity presented, it’s not looking good, Marshall. It’s not looking good. I think he’s going to get elected.
SPEAKER 13 :
Do you think that people don’t know what they’re voting for? Do you think they’re going into it uninformed?
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, the vast majority of people don’t. They hear free. They hear he’s going to make a difference. He’s going to tax those billionaires. And they don’t think about, really, I think, what the consequences ultimately are going to be when some of this stuff may or may not happen. But just the fact that he wants to do the things he’s talking about are scary. And… Too many people don’t take the time to educate themselves, to look a little bit deeper at statements and what ultimately may result from the vote that they cast.
SPEAKER 13 :
I think that… Unawareness, I’ll call it that. I don’t want to say lack of education, but I think that that can permeate into all different types of our lives, not just people who are voting in New York. John, I took a look at your website yesterday and saw a number of things. And as I was thinking about it, I thought, gosh, I… I’ve had some of these scenarios that never even occurred to me to seek legal advice. You know, you have injuries from skiing, you know, from, say, collisions or equipment, instructor negligence. I know we’re getting into ski season, workman’s comp. So, you know, give us a few comments here on educating yourself for the need for legal advice if you find yourself in a situation like this.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I tell folks, and I’ve said this before on Kim’s show, time is of the essence. I think most folks have a natural inclination to kind of see how things develop, talk with if there is involved an insurance company, see what they have to say, and kind of just kind of let things go a little bit before they may think about reaching out and talking to an attorney, and that’s a mistake. because every case has different laws and notices and requirements that need to happen to make sure that the person who’s involved in that motor vehicle collision or hurt on the job or attacked by an unleashed dog in the park, whatever it may be that hurt somebody, you’ve got different statute of limitations, different notices, different steps that should be taken immediately following an incident. And so really it is about getting an education, getting the information that one needs when something has happened to them or a loved one, or people call me on behalf of friends and neighbors and ask questions, and those are really good people that care about their friend or their neighbor to the extent they’d call an attorney to get the information that that person may not be willing to get for whatever reason at that time. But it’s the information that we provide or myself or one of our other senior lawyers that will inevitably— make a huge difference in the outcome of the situation someone finds themselves in. So it’s really, it’s talking to us quickly and it’s getting that information. For example, if you’re injured on the job, there’s a requirement that you notify your employer. And sometimes employers don’t know and they have to be told, hey, Joe got hurt, you know, or, you know, something happened and they need to be very specific about in their description of what happened and they need to be very specific in their description and their reporting of what got injured what body part got injured failure to do just those those couple things can be really in some situations devastating for the injured worker they figure out what he knows or they they saw what happened and Now, you’ve got to do it the right way, and if you don’t, there can be severe consequences.
SPEAKER 13 :
And I assume devastating not just physically, not getting the care that you need, but perhaps even financially as well.
SPEAKER 06 :
Absolutely financially. I mean, claims have been dismissed because people haven’t done the proper things on the front end. And that goes across the board, any kind of a situation where someone finds themselves hurt or their their loved one hurt they they need to call they need to find out why they need to do certain things and take certain steps very quickly after something happens so i take away that time is of the essence and we need to we need to get that information quickly and you said to call john how can they call The phone number for our main office is 303-999-9999. And again, without hesitation, anybody listening out there that has a situation, call. Don’t hesitate. If it’s a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker, push them hard to give us a call so we can get them the information that they need so that they can be properly compensated down the road. 303-999-9999. Now it’s forever in your head, Marshall. You’ve got my number.
SPEAKER 13 :
You can count on it. Thanks, John. And also thank you to the Roger Mangan State Farm Insurance team for their partnership with the Kim Monson Show.
SPEAKER 08 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 14 :
There’s so much noise coming at us. Sometimes it is difficult to make sense of it all. How can you sift through the clamor for your attention and get to the truth? The Kim Monson Show is here to help. Kim searches for truth and clarity by examining issues through the lens of freedom versus force. Force vs. Freedom. Tune in to the Kim Monson Show each weekday, 6 to 8 a.m. with encores 1 to 2 p.m. and 10 to 11 p.m. on KLZ 560 AM, KLZ 100.7 FM. The KLZ website, the KLZ app, and Alexa. Play KLZ. Shows can also be found at KimMonson.com, Spotify, and iTunes.
SPEAKER 13 :
Welcome back to the Kim Monson Show. I’m Marshall Dawson. I’m just so thrilled to be sitting in the studio today hosting the Kim Monson Show, filling in for Kim. I expect her to be back tomorrow. By the way, Kim, that fire that got started earlier, Joe and I are going to get that painted over before you get back, so you can ignore that. Listen, go to Kim’s website. That’s KimMonson.com. You can sign up for Kim’s weekly email newsletter, and you get the first look at all of our upcoming guests, as well as the most recent essays. You can email Kim, Kim at KimMonson.com. And thank you for contributing to support our independent voice and the exercise of our right to freedom of speech. Through all of Kim’s work with veterans, she is honored to highlight the USMC Memorial Foundation and all the work they do when they’re trying to raise the money to remodel the official USMC Memorial, which is located right here in Golden, Colorado, at 6th and Colfax. Paula Sarles is the president of the foundation. She’s a Marine veteran and a gold star wife. And Paula and her team are working diligently to make the remodel a reality. You can help by donating at usmcmemorialfoundation.org. And this came in on the text line a little bit ago. And it says, The comment came from Jenny, and she said, this was another example of when the left doesn’t like what you enjoy, they want to tax it or outright ban it. When you do what they favor, they will subsidize it. That is progressivism in a nutshell right there. Thank you, Jenny. Well, on the line, we have Randall O’Toole. He’s known as the anti-planner. And Randall is an expert regarding public lands, land use regulation, transportation, and particularly light rail. Randall, welcome to the Kim Monson Show.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, I’m glad to be here.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, I’m just happy to have you. Randall, I have to admit that I read a lot of your work in Complete Colorado, and you do a lot of really good stuff there. Your latest was called Finishing Fast Tracks, Just Throwing Good Money After Bad.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, the… RTD says it’ll only take $1.6 billion to operate three trains a day in each direction between Longmont and Denver, and then finish a couple more light rail lines that it wants to complete. And doing so will carry hardly any riders. I mean, if you’re only running three trains a day, you’re not going to really capture that many riders. And so they’re ending up costing, for the Longmont line, $135 per rider. Of course, they’ll only ask the riders to pay $2 or so of that, which means the cost to the taxpayers will be around $130 every time somebody gets on board one of those trains. Why do they want to do that? Well, Longmont says they were promised a train when Fast Tracks is on the ballot in 2004, and they don’t have it, and they’re angry, and they’re not going to take it anymore, and they want RTD to build them a train no matter how much it costs and no matter how few people ride it.
SPEAKER 13 :
That’s right. Look, I don’t know if Kim prepped you, but I live in Longmont. And this is good news, right? Because I’ll get to ride the train and I’ll get essentially a $133 subsidy, it sounds like, from the other taxpayers in Colorado. Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Except for the train’s going to be so slow, you’re not going to want to ride it very often. And that’s why the ridership is going to be so low. And this is just an example of what’s been happening with urban transit for the last, really the last 50 years. Congress started funding local transit agencies in the 1960s. And since then, transit agencies have spent more than two trillion tax dollars, either building new transit lines or operating those lines. And the result has been that transit ridership has declined. And the share of people riding transit has declined. The capital costs have increased. Fare revenues have declined. Operating costs have increased. Bureaucracies have been bloated. One of the fastest growing operating costs is called administrative overhead or general administration. It means the bureaucracy is getting bigger and bigger so they can plan more and more rail lines that people aren’t going to ride.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, speaking of not riding, Randall, I noticed another piece that you had done where you said that Phoenix should abandon its light rail plans. And forgive me, I forget the percentage, but the number of people that that’s actually serving is really low. And I don’t think it speaks very well to planning.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, Phoenix is a classic example of, let’s build light rail, and that’ll relieve congestion. And so voters say, okay, anything to relieve congestion, and they vote for it, and they build the light rail, and ridership immediately declines because, of course, there are cost overruns. So they end up cutting bus service to build the light rail, and they lose more bus riders, and they gain rail riders. This has happened in San Jose, it’s happened in Phoenix, it’s happened in St. Louis, it’s happened in Baltimore, it’s happened in Los Angeles. Los Angeles loses six bus riders for every rail rider it gains when it opens a new light rail line. Denver, it isn’t quite so bad. Basically, when Fast Tracks is on the ballot in 2004, transit was carrying 4.8% of commuters to work in Denver. and they passed fast tracks, and they built six new rail lines, and they supposedly built a bus rapid transit line from Boulder to Denver. And in 2019, after all this work, after spending $5 billion on all these projects, transit was still carrying just 4.8% of commuters to work. So all this money didn’t take a single car off the road. It didn’t relieve congestion. It didn’t reduce greenhouse gases. It did increase the cost of riding transit because trains cost more than than buses. And so low income people weren’t helped by it. And since the pandemic, transit ridership has fallen to well below the national average and well below what it was before the pandemic. And so now it’s about 3% of people are taking transit to work in Denver. So the Denver transit was not helped by fast tracks, was not helped by all this light rail and commuter rail lines. In fact, it was hurt by it.
SPEAKER 13 :
And Randall, I also looked at some of your other numbers. We’re going to go to break here in just a few moments. But looking at the number of drivers that we have, we continue to go up in the number of drivers and are now well above where we even were in 2019, which was pre-COVID. So let’s go to break. Let’s set it up with that. And we’ll be back with Randall O’Toole.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 18 :
All Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of The Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmonson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.
SPEAKER 13 :
Welcome back to The Kim Monson Show. This is Marshall Dawson. I’m sitting in for Kim while she’s taking the day off. Visit Kim’s website, kimmonson.com. Sign up for Kim’s weekly email newsletter. You’ll get the first look at all her upcoming guests as well as the most recent essays. You can email Kim, kim at kimmonson.com. And thank you for contributing to support our independent voice and the exercise of our right to freedom of speech. We’re back with our guest, Randall O’Toole, who is a public lands, land use regulation expert, transportation, and particularly light rail. And we were talking about ridership of RTD as well, Randall, as the number of people who are actually driving. And the number of people driving in America is continuing to increase.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, it increases because cars give you access to far more resources than you can get with any other form of transportation. On average, you can reach more jobs in a 20-minute auto drive than in a 60-minute transit ride. On average, the average resident of Denver or other urban areas in 60 minutes can reach any job in the urban area. But in transit, they can only reach about 7% of jobs. So if you have a job or if your job changes its location or if you’re changing jobs, it doesn’t pay to be dependent on transit. Automobiles liberate you. Now, here’s a fact that people are going to find startling. About 5% of people who work in the Denver urban area live in households that have no cars. How do they get to work? Well, only 16% of them take transit to work. 33% of them drive alone to work, twice as many as take transit. Now, if they have no cars, how do they drive alone to work? They drive in cars that are supplied by their employers. Maybe they’re plumbers or electricians, and their employers provide them with vans that have all their tools and parts in them. And they drive those vans home, and they drive them to work every day. So even if you don’t have a car, transit doesn’t work. And if you don’t have a car, you end up being more likely to drive to work alone than you are to ride transit. So driving gives you access to resources that you can’t reach by transit. One of the funny things is the University of Minnesota researchers have found that you can reach more jobs on a bicycle than you can by transit within trips of 50 minutes or less. So transit just doesn’t work for people. And that’s why people aren’t riding it. And yet we keep throwing money at it.
SPEAKER 13 :
I’ve never heard that you can reach more jobs by bicycle than by transit. I mean, if that is true, that is just it’s really remarkable. And, you know, your point about personal transportation and autonomy is – I think it’s so important. The people who are trying to jam us into trains, jam us into buses, really are trying to take away freedom because I feel that if you – If you can force people into a certain hallway in a maze, right, if you can take away freedom, then you can set people up to being further controlled. So for me, that personal freedom of travel is part of and a very important part of freedom in general. So I really like how you make this personal. And Randall, I mean, just so that we’re clear, you say that transit doesn’t work. I mean, it simply doesn’t work for and it doesn’t serve the needs of the people. But it’s also not cost effective either, is it? I mean, it’s not the cheapest way to provide transportation, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, subsidies to driving, and there are such subsidies, and I think we should get rid of them, but we drive so much. We drive 4 trillion passenger miles a year. and the subsidies to driving are about 50 or 60 billion dollars a year so you figure it out uh some of those subsidies go to trucks and some of them go to cars you figure it out it’s about a penny a passenger mile subsidy so if suddenly you had to pay another penny a passenger mile to drive your car and the average car has one and a half people people in it so that means one and a half cents a mile every time you drive that’s not going to really change your driving habits that much Subsidies to transit before the pandemic were averaging over a dollar a passenger mile. So that means if you take a five-minute transit ride and we got rid of the subsidies, suddenly your fare would jump by $5. That would really change how people ride transit. Since the pandemic, subsidies have climbed to $2 a passenger mile because ridership is so much lower. And yet, despite the lower ridership, costs have dramatically increased because transit agencies have bloated their bureaucracies and they’re paying their employees more than ever before. They took… federal COVID relief funds and increased worker pay, even though there wasn’t much demand for transit anymore. And so the costs are dramatically increased. So these subsidies are gigantic and it’s really not a sensible thing to do. Now, I’m not against transit. If we got rid of subsidies, there would still be some transit because some transit makes sense. I’m just against these gigantic subsidies that don’t really increase transit ridership.
SPEAKER 13 :
Randall Atul, when I was reading your latest article about finishing fast tracks, there was a link in there to an article from 2020, which was fast tracks built on deceit, delusion, and other people’s money. And I was reminded of this as you were talking about the costs increasing. And I think it’s not just the costs increasing. I think there tends to be a challenge with honesty with some of the planning, right? Do you have any favorite stories from back in the day when we were actually talking about FastTrack’s
SPEAKER 05 :
I had a chance to debate Cal Marcella, who was the CEO of RTD, Denver’s Regional Transit District, when Fast Tracks was on the ballot. And he would say things like, there’s absolutely no chance we’re going to have any cost overruns. We’ve engineered these things, so we know how much these lines are going to cost. as soon as the measure passed, they discovered 50 to 100% cost overruns on almost every single Fast Tracks line. He would say things like, I would point out that it would be cheaper to give every low-income person who was riding transit a new car every three years than it would be to run just one of the fast tracks lines. And he would say things like, well, we can’t give poor people cars. That would cause too much congestion.
SPEAKER 13 :
Too much freedom.
SPEAKER 05 :
We can’t have that. His goal was to keep people dependent on slow, inefficient, costly transit because it would cost too much congestion to give people freedom to drive. So I did not appreciate the way that he essentially perjured himself over and over again during these debates, claiming that fast tracks would relieve congestion when it wouldn’t and it didn’t, claiming that fast tracks would reduce pollution when their own data showed that it wouldn’t and it didn’t, claiming that fast tracks would help poor people when their own data showed that The sales taxes are regressive, which means that poor people disproportionately pay them, and yet 95% of poor people don’t ride RTD to work. They drive to work, or they use walk or bicycle or use some other form of transportation. And so that 95% of poor people, low-income people, are having to disproportionately pay for fast-tracks rides that they don’t ever take.
SPEAKER 13 :
Another one of your stories that I recall, this comes back to the argument that fast tracks would reduce congestion. And forgive me, I don’t have the numbers in front of me. But if I remember the story right, you had a PowerPoint slide of – One level of maybe it was congestion without fast tracks and another with fast tracks. And you flip back and forth, right, and ask people, hey, can you tell where the difference is? In other words, how are we actually reducing congestion? Did I get that story right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, I came to Denver to participate in several debates on fast tracks. And I attended one session by the proponents of fast tracks when I wasn’t debating. And they said, oh, fast tracks is going to take 260,000 cars off the road each day. And that’s going to significantly relieve congestion. And I looked at the numbers and heard out most of those cars are going to be taken off the road by T-Rex, not by fast tracks. T-Rex is already under construction. And so Fast Tracks is only going to take about 100,000 cars off the road. And since there are 12 million automobile trips per day in Denver, 100,000 cars is nothing. compared to 12 million. It’s less than 1% of all the cars. So I showed these slides showing that it wasn’t going to have an influence on congestion. And after I debated these people several times, one of them came up to me and said, why are you always saying that fast tracks isn’t going to relieve congestion? We never say it’s going to relieve congestion. Well, you were saying it before I got there. And just days before the election, the mayor of Denver, Hickenlooper, said, well, Fastrax is going to take 260,000 cars off the road. That’s gun relief congestion. And I imagine him saying that persuaded some people to vote for it. So people voted for fast tracks. They voted for light rail in Phoenix and other cities because they’re told it’s going to relieve congestion when it’s not. And it never does. And in fact, light rail usually increases congestion because you run light rail in the streets and you make the streets more dangerous. Running light rail on one-way streets going the wrong way? Denver, RTD, you’re crazy. You know, I know people who were hit by those trains because they thought they only had to look in one direction because they were on a one-way street. And, you know, people were killed by those trains, and RTD just says, oh, well, they were trying to commit suicide, so it doesn’t matter that they were killed by our trains. They weren’t trying to commit suicide. You put the trains going the wrong direction on a one-way street, you know, and yet they think that makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER 13 :
Randall O’Toole, expert in light rail, do you have any opinions that you can share with kindness as to why it is that these projections are always so wrong? Why is it they can never get the projections for costs and both budget and time? Why is it that they are never right? I’m scratching my head.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, it’s a phenomenon known as optimism bias, where you make all the most optimistic expectations of assumptions about costs and about ridership and things like that. And there’s also some kind, sometimes some deceit going on here where the planners know that their projects are more likely to be funded if the costs are lower and their projected ridership is higher. So they start out with low costs. In order to get federal grants, you have to meet certain criteria. And so in order to meet those criteria, they underestimate costs. They overestimate ridership. And then after they get the federal grants, they say, oh, guess what? We discovered the costs are higher. Ridership is going to be lower, but they’ve already got the money in hand. So it’s too late for the federal government to do anything about it. And then local taxpayers have to pay the extra costs and you end up with these expensive systems that people aren’t riding. So it’s partly optimism bias and partly just deliberate deceit aimed at getting the funding when they know that in some cases they wouldn’t get the funding if they were honest about the costs and the ridership.
SPEAKER 13 :
So optimism, bias, you know, I hadn’t thought about the federal grants and certain criteria. We were talking with Tara Menza, who’s part of Longmont’s airport aviation board. We were talking with her in the first hour. And, you know, there’s so many intertwined things that just don’t occur to me. I assume they don’t occur to the normal person. And the criteria that the federal government can put on things. We’re going to go to break here shortly. Randall O’Toole, and then we’ll wrap it up. And I did want to read a quick text that came in. Thank you, Jenny. She says, this is an example of they, the PBIs, who are politicians, bureaucrats, and interested parties. They have a dream, and the rest of us pay. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back with Randall O’Toole.
SPEAKER 19 :
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SPEAKER 13 :
Welcome back to The Kim Monson Show. I’m Marshall Dawson. Thrilled to be sitting in for Kim today while she’s out of the studio. Kim’s website is KimMonson.com. And while you’re there, you can sign up for the weekly email newsletter. You’ll get the first look at upcoming guests as well as the most recent essays. I would bet that Kim still has her voter’s guide up if you need that, if you haven’t gotten your ballots in. And something that should be on your bucket list. is a visit to the Center for American Values, located on the beautiful Riverwalk in Pueblo. The Center for American Values was co-founded by Medal of Honor recipient Drew Dix and Emmy Award-winning documentary maker Brad Padula. The center is focused on honoring our Medal of Honor recipients and teaching and upholding the principles of America, honor, integrity, and patriotism. For more information, check out their website, AmericanValuesCenter.org. And we’re coming back here with Randall O’Toole. Welcome back to the show, Randall. I was just looking at another piece that you did, and this kind of dovetails with what we were talking about before the break. In October, you wrote, How Transit Leaders Learned to Manage Politicians. And if you recall, I asked questions about why do they always get it wrong, and it sort of reminded me of this. Is there a transportation industrial complex? Why do they always get it wrong? And give me some more data on how transit leaders manage the politicians.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, transit agencies and transit advocates have four basic arguments for transit. They claim it’s gonna relieve congestion, it’s gonna reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it helps poor people, and it promotes economic development. None of those are true. Let me just say that it’s easy to prove that none of those things happen. When transit ridership is declining, you’re not gonna do any of those things, and that’s exactly what’s happening. Transit ridership has been declining. for decades, despite all the money we’ve thrown at it. instead of uh accomplishing those things they transit agencies want to please politicians they get most of their money from taxpayers they don’t get their money from fares and so they have no incentive to try to increase transit ridership instead their incentive is to please politicians and you do that by doing things like building grandiose urban monuments such as light rail lines But you also do it by following urban planning fads. And, you know, your comment before the break from somebody said that, you know, people have dreams and politicians have other dreams and they’re trying to force their dreams on us. Most Americans dream of buying and living in a single family home. And yet the current urban planning fad is to force more and more people to live in multifamily housing. You see all the four and five story buildings springing up all over the Denver metropolitan area with housing in it. Most of them are subsidized. Most of them are along transit lines because they’re trying to get people to live in these high density housing projects and then ride transit. It’s obviously not working because transit ridership has declined. But we’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars subsidizing these projects. And at the same time, there’s an urban growth boundary around Denver and the Denver urban area that’s made housing a lot more expensive. It’s made housing about twice as expensive as it ought to be in order to force people to not live in the single family homes that people dream of living in. They’ve even gone so far as to try to get the legislature to pass laws to force cities to rezone single-family neighborhoods for multifamily housing in order to cram more people into the urban growth boundary. So all these things are about disrupting the American dream, about taking away people’s choices for how they live, what kind of housing they live in, how they get around, whether they take transit or drive their own cars. And like you say, it’s getting somebody else’s dream and imposing it on everyone else.
SPEAKER 13 :
Certainly here in Colorado, we have our own problems with legislation, and it’s really had a very, very depressing effect on the number of condos that are built, homes that people can actually have real ownership in and start that American dream with. Randall, I wonder if you are aware of some of the successes or failures, let’s call it occupancy rates, of those high-density projects that they’re putting in near transit. Are they filling those up at the same rates as what other housing projects are?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, in general, I suspect they do because most of them are subsidized using what’s called low-income housing projects. subsidies or affordable housing funds. So if you’re a developer of these projects, what you do is you go out and you get grants for low income housing. And those grants can cover 80 to 90% of the cost of constructing the projects. In exchange for the grants, you rent the apartments to people at well below the market rate. So you rent them for like 60% of the market rate, or in some cases even less than that, and only low-income people are allowed to rent them. But there’s a lot more low-income people than there are apartments, and so it’s easy to fill them up. You don’t get much return because you’re charging less in market rates, but since you only spent 10 or 20% of the cost of constructing it, you don’t need much of return to make a profit. And this has become a racket. I call it the affordable housing industrial complex. And the people who build these things end up going to the legislature and saying, oh, we have so many homeless people, we need to spend more money on affordable housing. And so you see the federal government and state governments and local governments spend more and more on affordable housing. Between 2004 and 2019, the amount of money spent on affordable housing more than doubled. And yet the number of affordable housing units built declined. So the cost per unit increased by 130%. And so the developers are raking in huge profits doing this. And yes, they’re renting them out, but they’re not making much money doing it.
SPEAKER 13 :
I had no idea that the grants were so high. I mean, you cited it could be 80 or 90%.
SPEAKER 05 :
and well it’s because they get multiple grants you know one grant fund that gives them 70 another one gives them 20 another one gives them 10 so they just keep getting brand after grant after grant until they decide the project is feasible which might mean in some cases 95 of the money is coming from grants rather than coming from the developers themselves
SPEAKER 13 :
And, Randall, before we got you on the phone, I was railing about creating dependency earlier during the very first part of the show. I think these grants, especially if you look at the municipal governments, it could be city, county, and their dependence on certain grants and certain transfers coming in, it’s mind-boggling how – Even our local governments, and I’m sure we set up some taxing districts or something. Well, I guess we wouldn’t set up a taxing district for low-income housing, but we act like we simply can’t get by, that life will cease to end if we don’t get these grants and these transfers. It’s just wildly frustrating.
SPEAKER 05 :
Actually, if you look at it, you’ll find there are taxing districts for low income housing, but they’re hidden. And it differs from community to community. But in a lot of places, they’ll have like a tax on new homes for new home construction. They charge a tax on each new home and then to dedicate that to low income housing. But guess what? When you tax new homes, you make housing more expensive for everyone else. So they’re making housing more expensive, but then creates demand for more affordable housing, more low-income housing.
SPEAKER 13 :
You can always find more poor people.
SPEAKER 05 :
So it’s all right in the hands of the developers who then go to the legislators and say, we need more money for low-income housing.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, yep. Randall, I could just go on forever. This is wonderful. We have about a minute left. I was joking earlier that I do live in Longmont. I appreciate the taxpayer’s generosity of paying for $133 for me to ride that train. Of course, once it finally gets finished in 2040. When I was talking to people in Longmont about this, and for the record, I voted against this tax and against that initiative. As people in Longmont were saying, hey, we got cheated. We need to force RTD to do this. Or, you know, some people were even talking about an additional tax. My position was, look, that money is gone, right? We are not going to get that back. We are not going to get the benefit of it. We’re not going to get the train. Certainly, I don’t want to say in my lifetime, but not in a reasonable amount of time. So, Randall O’Toole, wrap us up here. How do you want to leave this with the listeners?
SPEAKER 05 :
well the one fast tracks line that made sense was the bus line between downtown denver and boulder and if they just extended that bus line to longmont it is faster it’s as frequent it’s more comfortable than light rail uh and it gets you where you want to go at a faster speed so they should just extend that line to longmont it wouldn’t cost hardly any money compared to Building a rail line could operate much more frequently than the three times a day they’re planning to run the commuter trains. So that would help Longmont a lot more than a train. And so it’s just this ego thing that I have to have a train that is driving the whole Longmont thing. It has nothing to do with transportation. If we think in terms of transportation, there are much better ways than trains.
SPEAKER 13 :
Randall O’Toole, you’re a master at this. You know right when we’re going to wrap it up. Thank you so much, Randall O’Toole. Listen, ballots have to be in by 7 p.m. tonight, and we have 364 days until the midterms. I always have to throw that in there, too. Our quote for the end of the show is from John Locke. He was an English philosopher, physician, one of the enlightenment thinkers, and is known as the father of liberalism. He was an influence of many of our founders. This comes from the 1690 essay concerning human understanding, and he says, it is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth. I just so love that when it comes to having conversations. So today, be grateful, read great books, think good thoughts, listen to beautiful music, communicate and listen well, live honestly and authentically, strive for high ideals, and like Superman, stand for truth, justice, and the American way. You are not alone. God bless you and God bless America.
SPEAKER 17 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
