Aggressive Bureaucracy in Manitou

[Article by Paotie Dawson, for The Voluntaryist]

Last Tuesday night inside the Manitou Springs City Hall lobby, I stood and watched as mayor Nicole Nicoletta addressed a group of protesters upset and concerned about the direction the city administration was headed. Most folks stood quietly; a few individuals said a few things, though nothing outrageous was said as far as I know (and I’ve talked to others who were there that night.)

Earlier that night, the same group had protested outside City Hall, waving signs and shouting for support. They were upset with the way the mayor and city council had handled a sidewalk reconstruction project approved by the council that would eliminate a row of trees on Canon Avenue. Evidently, emails, phone calls and other forms of public outreach to the council and mayor had fallen on deaf ears; and because the trees would be cut down the next day, the group’s sense of urgency was obvious to all.

As someone who has been heavily involved in politics over the past several years, which includes knocking on doors for my own campaigns and a recall election in 2013, I thought the group inside the City Hall lobby exhibited courteous frustration.

Then the civility was shattered. Whatever goodwill the mayor may have wanted to generate between herself and the group of protesters quickly evaporated: The mayor offered this pronouncement to the group: “ARE YOU GOING TO BE ASSHOLES TO ME?”

And so it went.

The crowd reacted in a predictable manner. Fingers were pointed; the mayor pointed back; and each time the mayor pointed back at the crowd, she would retreat and stand next to the MSPD chief and another police officer. The mayor stood by the two men with guns, at times offering aggressive commentary towards the group before retreating next or behind the police officers.

The scene reminded me of last spring and summer, when numerous folks complained about allegedly aggressive panhandlers, musicians, and transients/homeless folks. At the first Town Hall meeting held by the mayor inside the city auditorium to address those complaints, she aggressively shut down folks with, "Shut up. Shut up! Everyone shut up! Shut up!"

The second Town Hall meeting went a little smoother, although by this time, the complaints had been upgraded from “bothersome” to “harassment.” The MSPD chief of police basically told the crowd at the Manitou Art Center, site of the Town Hall meeting, “You’re worried about minor things we cannot do anything about.”

A few weeks later, a single city employee allegedly approached the Soda Springs park pavilion and engaged in a shouting match with a group of young people. The city employee would allege “aggressive harassment,” and soon, the mayor and council voted, during an emergency meeting (and without public input), to shut down the park and institute a zero tolerance policy for the downtown area.

“A mayor is a symbol and a public face of what a city bureaucracy provides its citizens.” ~ Governor John Hickenlooper

The zero tolerance policy is another way of saying aggressive policing disguised as political action. The police aggressively cited folks for the pettiest of offenses. A local musician alleged he was roughed up by the police, a consequence of the aggressive stance the mayor, council, and MSPD had adopted. Fortunately, the MSPD recently pleaded to the Council to end the aggressive policy, and it was terminated.

A few years ago, the parking enforcement program, which is directly under the supervision of the MSPD chief, began an aggressive form of enforcement. So bad was the aggressiveness of the parking enforcement policies that someone created a Facebook page dedicated to calling out a single parking enforcement employee for, among other things, aggressive harassment. One incident involved the same employee posting a negative review on a local business’s Facebook page after its owner complained about questionable parking enforcement practices.

At one point Tuesday night, the mayor feigned exasperation as she indicated to the group that she had provided lots of public information about the sidewalk project, among other things. She cited the Pikes Peak Bulletin (which I don’t normally read), and then added, “I shared the info on my Facebook!”

Well, well, well. This is the same mayor who instructed folks last summer to not read Facebook for news about city government. This is the same mayor who whined that she spent five days trolling Facebook because people disagreed with her or the council’s statements and actions. I checked the mayor’s Facebook account this morning and it is still closed to the public and to me.

The pattern of aggressive control by the mayor, the council and MSPD is concerning for all. Due process, civil rights, and a general respect for differences in opinion have all been pushed to the side in favor of aggressive bureaucracy over gentle governance. But above all, the most telling sign of the mayor’s style of leadership can be summed up by her Ask the Mayor column in the Pikes Peak Bulletin. The mayor wrote two, short paragraphs praising an employee of the month winner and then spent the rest of her column complaining about Tuesday night. Missing from her column was any mention of her own aggressiveness, hypocrisy, and worst of all, her inability to address issues in a straightforward manner.

The mayor’s column was rather remarkable not for what she wrote, but that there were no questions asked. A most fitting example of a mayor who does not want to be questioned, criticized, and held accountable, and if you so much as think to do any of those things, expect aggressive behavior from the mayor, the council, and even the MSPD.

Manitou Springs deserves better.