This is a sort of convoluted story that without the background is difficult to explain, but I’ll try my best.
As you probably know, Colorado has been in the limelight as far as national politics go. We had the Democratic National Convention here and Barack Obama made his acceptance speech. In the past couple of years we have had “W” himself visit Greeley, twice. And just this week we had Palin in Loveland (Monday) and Biden in Greeley (Tuesday). We are a hotbed for politics because we are a fairly “purple” state, especially Northern Colorado. (All this talk about red, white, black and blue makes me certain that politics is just one big brawl with a huge bruise in the end!)
This picture has not been edited in any way- It’s hilarious!
Anyway, while Greeley is generally pretty conservative, it has (surprisingly?) been one of the more progressive cities when it comes to tobacco policies (which is part of my job). Greeley passed the strongest smokefree policy of the state, led the way for Tobacco Free Schools and prohibited cigarette vending machines. Last year, around this same time of year, we took on US Smokeless Tobacco and along with huge community support and Tobacco Free Weld County Coalition, the City Council passed the ‘No Free Tobacco Giveaway Ordinance’ which prohibits giving away free tobacco to anyone in Greeley. One city councilwoman, Debbie Pilch, led the charge to help move this ordinance to the point where it would be voted on. In the end, this was a huge victory for the health of the public, and while this explanation gives it no justice, suffice it to say that it was not without controversy (and very stressful).
http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=79148
This is a link to the article when I was on the news, I’ll put the video up once I can find it
Fast forward to this year. We decided to support Debbie Pilch in her run for County Commissioner and placed one of her signs saying as much in our yard. This weekend we went to get our mail and noticed a ticket from our Home Owner’s Association’s management company that basically said, “Please remove your political sign from public view”. This is incredible! Whatever happened to freedom of speech? Well, it turns out that this ticket is completely illegal and the Colorado state congress even passed Senate Bill 100 (SB 100) for just this reason; that is, to protect homeowner’s rights that HOA’s were systematically ignoring. Now we have to contact our Management Company and explain this to them. And THIS is after we had to kick out the last management company (a neighborhood coup d’etat) for essentially stealing from our neighborhood (collecting unauthorized fees, fines, and much more).
The Sign in Question, Can you Even See it?
The Ticket
The moral of the story: I don’t think you can ever get away from Politics -especially without a fight!
Update: Still swinging away, Britton’s conversation with the management company went a little something like this:
So I called.
Me: “I live in clover creek and got a notice to take down my political sign”
her: “yep”
Me: “well….I don’t think you can do that. Its part of SB 100 that protects me”
her: “well its in your covenants”
Me: “well that’s not how it works (aka SB 100 trumps our covenants and bylaws) ”
her: “its in there”
Me: “that isn’t what I meant….tell ya what. Why don’t you send me the part in the covenants, we’ll start there