QUID HAS HEARD the unmistakable sound from City Hall, that dull vibration of hands rubbing together as yet another dastardly plan to steal something out from under our neighbor’s noses is hatched. Before all the usual suspects could line up at Jeff Bezos’ front step to audition for the trophy of home city to digital-retail behemoth Amazon’s second headquarters city, rags like The New York Times already were calling the municipal horse race for the Queen City of the Plains. Naturally, the official line from every elected hoo-haw from the 303 and 720 is that there will be a sober and concerted effort at a regional level to help sell the billionaire owner of the website where you buy that special protein powder that you can’t find in stores on the Rocky Mountain Way. Now, ole Quid has pulled up MapQuest a couple of times this past week looking for huge tracts of land in Denver proper for Prime real estate and, lo and behold, it’s just not there — unless they plan on going beyond the plan to bury I-70 through Elyria and Swansea and just bury most of Stapleton in the process to make space for a major e-commerce campus and the 50,000 folks who could end up working there. So where, oh, where are there untold acres of developable land that isn’t about to be sucked up by a NASCAR racetrack? You guessed, it — the prairie known as northeastern Aurora, lovingly referred to as the “gateway to western Kansas.” Hizzoner Steve Hogan got busted for explicitly trying to steal an El Salvadorean consulate out from its intended landing spot in the Mile High City — we’ll see if he can keep his lips any less loose about this chance to poach a big get away from Big Brother. If the Winter Olympics are possibly in play for the Front Range (as some learned types have opined), playing nice on this one could be the foot in the door for A-Town to land — who knows — a curling venue?
AND QUID HAS HEARD that Aurora Public Schools’ long, electoral nightmare is almost over — give or take a few months. It seems that with all his credentials and lengthy track record of public service as a reviled school board director, Duke Eric Nelson, first of his name, the Unimpeached and Breaker of Truths, is taking his talents to some other position of importance rather than stand for re-election to the APS Board of Directors. Nelson, who presumably is assembling his lawsuit against Steven Spielberg for appropriating his life story in “Catch Me If You Can,” has run his final campaign and leaving this snarky scribe crestfallen. Quid won’t have Eric Nelson to kick around — until his next invention or exaggeration.
AND THAT’S ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS.