The City of Boulder would love to be in a position where it could unilaterally 'right size' our energy bills. The City would be as "cost effective" with its residents as it is trying to be with Xcel. The City will try to be as "cost effective" in dealing with us as the County has been in trying to abrogate its responsability to maintain subdivision roads.

Community Cycles web site indicates that they have 1,750 members. If they had 75,000 members that would be three quarters of the entire population of Boulder. I'm guessing that of those 1,750 members, many of them are like me and also drive cars; and that they, like me, are against this hair brained 'right sizing' scheme.

I ride by their Wilderness Place Suite location all the time, and my impression had been that their principal purpose was refurbishing used bikes for people who otherwise could not afford them which I am for.

But I am four-square against converting current car lanes into bike lanes. So MIYADAD, you and I can quit arguing because we are on the same side on this issue.

There is a Boulder Bike Lobby? That's news to me and I have been bike commuting around Boulder for over 25 years. I am an avid cyclist and I am have been against this idiotic 'right sizing' plan from the giddy-up. We already have an excellent biking infrastructure. If you cannot get around Boulder using the existing bike lanes and bike paths then you probably shouldn't be bike commuting. This is just the Boulder City Council doing what it does best - attempting to meddle in every aspect of our daily life because they know better. I am no fan of the Boulder City or County Governments. How they continue to get reelected is beyond me. I wonder how many City Council members ride a bike or walk or car pool or take a bus to their meetings? The City Council is made up of a limousine liberals who would like to prescribe a lifestyle changes for the rest of us while they lead from behind.

I am an avid biker and I do a lot of bike commuting in Boulder, but this idea is just stupid. Boulder already has a very good bike commuting infrastructure that I use and very much appreciate. If a cyclist cannot get around Boulder on the existing bike trails and bike lanes, he or she should probably not be out there trying to bike commute. And when I bike commute or drive around Boulder I do not see a jillion other bike commuters. I see drivers stuck in traffic. So please, as a bicyclist and someone who is keanly interested in improving cycling in Boulder, I beg you not to do this. It won't make things much better for bike commuters and it will make driving a car in Boulder unnecessarily more difficult than it already is. Two more things: !) Sometimes I see a lot of bicyclist versus car driver venom in these post but the truth is that out there on the road most people are pretty nice and almost all bicyclist are also car owner/drivers. 2) I really dislike our local government on both the city and the county level. I do not understand how these turkeys keep getting reelected. I know I'm not voting for them.

Ms. Segal your letter is almost off of the chart on my gibberish scale. I especially liked: "The independent people of Colorado demand the opportunities of the emerging renewable market," Please do not presume to speak for everybody in the State of Colorado, Commissar Segal. I'm pretty sure we can continue working with Xcel without turning control of our power and our power bills to you and the Boulder City Council. I flat out do not trust the Boulder City Council or you for that matter. To me your letter reads like the ravings of a zealot.

Again with the vanishing comments. By way of the miracle of cut and paste I am going to post mine again:

"A visioning exercise? Really? You could not make this stuff up. I hope that when they get done reading their tea leaves, consulting the I Ching, and finally getting a third opinion from their Magic 8 Ball; that the City Council gets back to us and tells us what they plan to Monetize, oops, I meant to say Municipalize next.

I have an idea. Why not envision keeping things simple and providing basic services."

A visioning exercise? Really? You could not make this stuff up. I hope that when they get done reading their tea leaves, consulting the I Ching, and finally getting a third opinion from their Magic 8 Ball; that the City Council gets back to us and tells us what they plan to Monetize, oops, I meant to say Municipalize next.

I have an idea. Why not envision keeping things simple and providing basic services.

Attention cityresident! Please read this carefully. It's Macon Cowles, not Malcom Cowles, as I have told you before. You seem to have a bit of a tin ear when it comes to understanding anything that the people who live in the county are trying to say. As I wrote before in response to Mr. Cowles opinion piece, we don't want your money. Do you get that? We don't want your tax dollars to pay for the roads in our subdivisions. Why don't we want your money? Because we have already paid more than enough of our own tax dollars to maintain the streets in front of our houses. This is not a city versus rural issue. This is about malfeasance and acts of bad faith on the part of our county commissioners who are as tone deaf as you are when it comes to hearing what county residents are saying.

Here it is again, as simple as I can put it: We want to know what the hell the count commissioners spent all of our money on and why they stopped maintaining our roads.

It's Macon, not Malcolm, and you are as right about his first name as you are about people in the county wanting people in the city to pay for their road maintenance. We in the county have already paid more than enough in taxes to maintain the county owned roads. The county commissioners have chosen to squander county tax dollars on their own pet projects rather than taking care of their basic responsibilities, including maintaining the roads that the county owns.

We don't need or want money from the "city folk", as we have already paid our own way. Our argument is not with the "city folks", but with the county commissioners who have abrogated their responsibility to maintain roads that they acquired and that we have already paid more than enough money in tax revenue to maintain.

1) If there is one person in Boulder County that I don't need to be hearing a lecture from on who is and who isn't paying their fair share that person would be Macon Cowles. The fact that Macon got reelected given his well documented willingness to pay less than his own fair share (feel free to look up my and other's previous comments about Mr. Cowles's own sketchy real estate tax history) boggles my mind.

2) Mr. Cowles, like the County Commissioners themselves, does not bother addressing the fact that we in the county have been paying more than enough money in taxes over the years to maintain the roads in our subdivisions and that they have chosen to spend it elsewhere. We, unlike Macon, are not trying to chisel our way out of paying our fair share. We have already paid it and we resent being told we need to pay it twice,

3) I live in a rural subdivision that has about the same density as the neighborhood that I use to live in in North Boulder. We are not talking about paving and maintaining a new highway to the moon here. And the road in front of my house is in pretty good shape. So to me an assessment of over 4,000 dollars on both myself and my across the street neighbor to fix whet really isn't in need of major repair seems like a shakedown by people like the county commissioners and Mr. Cowles. People happy to impose a tax or extract a payment from others knowing that they won't have to pay anything themselves.