The Open Forum
Re: “Keeping liquor out of grocery stores good for state,” March 11 commentary
Chris Fine pointed out a number of really good reasons to keep wine out of grocery stores. All of the arguments are good. However, there are two more things to consider. First, the quality and variety of the wine will never be as good because the large wholesale vendors will mainly represent the large producers.
For me, however, there is another important argument that no one has made. Many of our grocery stores are finite size. We already have lost at least an aisle to beer. Wine can be expected to probably take up two or more, if you judge from other states where they sell wine in the grocery stores. The amount and variety of food is limited in our area, and with the addition of wine sales, it will be even more so.
Re: “‘Megadrought’ in the West,” Feb. 15 news story; “Need for water,” Feb. 27 news story; and, “State: Save water; cut lawns from yards,” March 12 news story.
Water is clearly an important topic to all of us in Colorado and the West.
Recently there have been three front-page articles with this focus regarding the current megadrought, the proposal to pipe water from the San Luis Valley to Douglas County, and legislation to pay people to rip out their existing Kentucky bluegrass lawns and replace them with native and low-water plants.
I fully support removing existing waterthirsty lawns in commercial and residential settings. But what about new developments? It doesn’t help that thousands of houses are being built around the state where the contractors will slap one tree in the middle of a postage-stampsized front lawn and lay down Kentucky bluegrass sod everywhere else. This makes the landscaping inexpensive for them in the short term, but we all pay the price in the long term.
We should all be more forward-thinking in our water usage. Developers should be required to plan their communities and landscaping to reflect current drought and long-term water projections. This way Colorado can continue to grow without making the water problems worse than they are.
Re: “Drivers in closed express lanes face new fines under bill signed by governor,” March 16 news story
Jon Murray’s story reported that House Bill 1074 allows for the fining of people for using the Interstate 70 mountain express lanes when they are closed. This is troubling to me.
I specifically enrolled in Expresstoll so I could drive in the new express lanes and have yet to drive in them: Every time I drive this mountain corridor, these lanes are closed!
Why? CDOT spent good money and a lot of time to build these lanes to have them closed much of the time. Really?
The answer to this issue is to open the lanes all the time and riders will pay the toll.
From the article, there were 47,828 drivers who used the lane when it was closed. If it was open and you were charging $10 a car, then the state would have made almost half a million dollars? Would this not make sense vs. creating a bill to charge drivers for driving in a closed lane that should be open? We need some critical thinking here instead of bureaucracy!
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