It’s not that too many people are moving to Colorado — it’s just that too many recent arrivals are jerks, and there aren’t enough chairs, so to speak.
Sorry if that sounds offensive, and if it does, it could be targeted at you.
I get a say here in the recent resurgence of the Colorado “NATIVE” movement because I am one, and I think anyone who takes it seriously is stupid.
I’m guilty, too, in playing the Five-Diamond Native card, taking shots at everyone who makes me miss first chair on a powder day or sit in my car on the Valley Highway for hours instead of minutes while I endure my dreaded daily commute.
But I’m just kidding. I don’t really think that being born and raised in Rocky Ford and North Denver gets me anything other than excellent cantaloupe from family farms and endlessly entertaining stories from the ‘hood.
The “NATIVE” fist-shakers are back on the scene, this time stirring it up online at change.org. Someone calling themselves “The City of Denver” created a petition last week demanding that the state do something to turn back the tsunami of people moving to Colorado, because Colorado is “full.”
“We are sick and tired of everyone flooding into our beautiful state and destroying it,” sayeth “Denver” in the petition, approved by almost 3,000 people as of Tuesday. “This is where we draw the line! Gov. John Hickenlooper, it is time for you to show us that you really care about Colorado and stop all of these transplants from invading our state.”
Huh. “Denver” apparently doesn’t know that Hick hails from Narberth, Pa. If you’re one of the hundreds of people who have chimed in on the petition, listing ad nauseum all the ways the recent flood of transplants are supposedly ruining Colorado, don’t look to elected leaders for help. Many, if not most of them came from someplace else.
Colorado has long been a welcoming place with friendly westerners, proud of our state’s stunning public lands and resources, and our special, pseudo-libertarian way of life. With very few exceptions, the only people I know born and raised here are my family. And those who moved here are every bit as passionate about making sure Colorado keeps what’s made it so desirable for so long.
“NATIVE” critics on the Change.org petition primarily blame their woes on a flood of miserable millennials who’ve made the trek primarily for the legal weed.
I’ll grant you that the biggest bump in metro-area population growth has been transplanted millennials, and that many of them are just downright mean and nasty, but Colorado has been a weed-friendly state for eons and, folks, it’s not like there isn’t easily available dope everywhere else in the country.
I don’t know why so many of Colorado’s new millennial residents are so wretched. It’s not your imagination that many of them drive like absolute ass hats. They come across as indignant, entitled and hugely self-absorbed. But clearly it’s not just our millennials with that reputation. Libraries have been written about their aggressive annoyances all over the country. And I’m positive it’s safe to say there are plenty of home-grown millennial creeps in the mix.
But the bigger problem is that Colorado leaders promoted growth, solicited growth, but never planned for growth. Despite what petitioners say, Colorado isn’t full. Our infrastructure, however, is way over capacity.
Who’s to blame? Start with the leader of the last big anti-immigrant push: Governor No-Growth himself, Dick Lamm. Lamm, who is from Wisconsin, once swore to drive a silver spike through the metro 470 beltway, as a way to limit growth. And he did. He was king of Colorado being “full” — back in the in the 1970s when the state’s population was about half of what it is now.
For decades, getting Colorado to plan for what we’re dealing with right now has only gotten harder. When the Southern California transplant wave came to Colorado, it was led by now-convicted tax-protester Doug Bruce. He brought us his brand of misery from L.A. — the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights — as a tax clamp. It put a virtual end to the already insufficient smattering of needed public works projects. Despite some clever financing and improvements on the Valley Highway, led by former Gov. Bill Owens — who hails from Texas — Colorado hasn’t built much of anything except homes, apartments and overpriced restaurants.
As to being overrun by miscreant millennials, my theory is that they are actually OK people as long as everything goes their way, because my generation has raised them ensuring that everything goes their way. You put someone in front of them in a car or a ski-lift line and they revert to their primal age of unreason that we now all wished to God that we’d ignored like our parents told us to.
Too late for that and turning off the transplant spigot to Colorado. Cool begets cool, and what we started about 20 years ago is now self-sustaining.
We don’t need fewer people — a drive from Aurora to Kansas will help you understand that. What we need are more dollars for roads, and a drive from Aurora to Denver will help you understand that.
Sure, we need to school the newcomers and our own homegrown brats on the golden rule. Somewhere along the line it was misinterpreted as making sure people treat you the way you demand to be treated, because no one and nothing else matters.
The indigenous people who lived here and those who homesteaded set the scene for a state unlike any other. Generations of reverence for independence, community, diversity and kick-ass mountains and plains will always set Colorado apart from the rest of the country. We just need the roads, schools and water to help the next generation keep it all together.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com.