Colorado Springs City Council will hear all the details about a potential ballot issue for a TABOR retention of $4.8 million of taxpayer funds on August 7th. Mayor Mobolade wants to use the funds as “seed money” for a new police academy. As a reminder, neither the mayor, nor the police chief have any idea how much this police academy might cost, they just know they need your money. We can’t wait to learn the details about how they plan to spend the money that you are rightfully entitled to, per TABOR law.
It recently came to our attention that an unknown group is paying for an automated telephone poll about this possible ballot measure. Here is an audio copy of that automated poll.
We’ve filed several Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) requests about the matter with the City of Colorado Springs. The CORA resulted in no information regarding this poll. It seems reasonable that someone within city government would want to know how the matter polls with voters before they spend the $200,000-300,000 to put the issue on the November ballot. Yet, all indications are that either the city knows nothing about it or they aren’t disclosing the information. Interesting.
Regular readers may recall, we’ve seen this type of mystery poll activity before. In 2020, the El Paso County commissioners used taxpayer funds to conduct a similar poll to keep TABOR refunds.
We reached out to Mayor Mobolade and Colorado Springs City Council and asked if any of them know about this polling. So far, we’ve received no response.
The polling may be an attempt to try to figure out how best to word the ballot measure and sell it to the public. Do you think voters will be convinced by the strategically-crafted message they can create with information gathered from this poll? Or will they question where all the excess money is from all the previous times voters agreed to give up moneyfor more CSPD officers who were never hired?
We’ve reached out to other folks within the community who might have employed Triton, the polling company being used for this project. No one we’ve contacted knows anything about it. Isn’t that strange? It’s clear that someone out there wants to learn what the public thinks about citizens pitching in for a police academy. So, who is it?
What’s your guess about who is funding the poll? Is it someone who isn’t happy about Mayor Mobolade’s recent election win? Is it a developer who wants to cash in on developing the new police academy? Is it a group who wants to defund the police? Inquiring minds want to know!If any of our readers have details about the poll, we’d love to hear what you know. We’d love to see the poll results, too. Keep the tips coming our way. We’ll keep looking out for you, Colorado Springs.