Improving road safety Soon new potholes will appear after the winter freeze-ups. Where will the money come from to make the necessary repairs? How about a nice stiff fine on all the scofflaws driving around with expired plates? On my street there is a vehicle with no front plate and no expi ration stickers on the rear plate. Around the corner are three vehicles with long expired plates, two from 2024 and one from 2025. A few days ago I stopped behind a vehicle with temporary plates that expired in May 2025. A fine of a dollar or two for each day past expiration would bring a good amount of revenue and go a long way to improving road safety. Wes Taylor Colorado Springs A prudent modification I have been a residential Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) ratepayer for 17 years. While now retired, I have dealt with data and decision-making based on factual realities for my entire career in the private sector, which is why I applaud the cooperation of our utilities’ management to join with Senators Mark Snyder and Cleave Simpson and Representatives Amy Paschal and Jarvis Caldwell to present SB26-022 to the state legislature for consideration and passage. Senate bill 26-022 describes a prudent modification to the current deadline in state greenhouse gas emissions, by extending it to no later than 2040. The bill also prohibits state agencies from taking action that would impair CSU’s ability to maintain reliability standards or increase electricity rates above 1.5% annually. Attempting to meet the current state goal of 80% carbon dioxide emission reduction by 2030 is unrealistic, uncompetitive, and harmful for our city’s citizens and businesses. Maintaining the current legislated reduction deadline severely curtails the operational life of the Ray Nixon plant, resulting in increased costs for residential and commercial ratepayers in order to substitute new energy generation. In addition, grid reliability will be impaired, because available energy generation substitutions do not guarantee the 24/7 base load power provided by the Ray Nixon plant. Being municipally owned, CSU does not make a profit from services. The State of Colorado should not be able legislate that the utilities’ ratepayers spend exorbitant funds to meet an arbitrary guideline when the emission goal has minimal impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels but results in significant short-term economic and quality of life disruptions for the utilities’ residential and commercial ratepayers. Susan Luenser Colorado Springs A successful program Joe Scott is a phenomenal basketball coach. Some people who have posted negative things about Coach Scott seem to have forgotten that he took over a program that hadn’t had a winning season in decades and hadn’t been to the NCAA tournament in over 60 years. He built the program the right way and won a Mountain West championship and nearly knocked offNorth Carolina, a team with several future pros on the roster, in the first round of March Madness. I guarantee that Coach Scott’s players from that 2004 team including AJ Kuhle, Antoine Hood, Matt Mccraw, Tim Keller, Jacob Burtschi and Nick Welch would swear to Coach Scott’s character and would scoff at the fact that in the year 2026 that coaches have to now be so soft with their players that even student athletes at a military school can’t handle some old school in your face coaching without running to administration. Air Force is the toughest job in Division 1 basketball, bar none. The new portal and NIL rules have made the job next to impossible and they are the only service academy that plays in a high major conference. Players have not been leaving Air Force in recent years because of Coach Scott. They have been leaving for the same reasons every kid in the country is bouncing from school to school. Money, greed, lack of dedication and loyalty and a me first mentality. There is no question that if the portal and NIL rules weren’t in place that players like Jake Heidbreder and Rytis Petraitis would have stayed at Air Force and the program would be in the upper half of the conference standings competing for a post season bid. Instead of suspending Coach Scott, Air Force administration should be looking into ways to offer some kind of financial reward upon graduation as an incentive to keep the quality student athletes that Coach and his staff successfully recruited to assist the program to be more successful. Alex Groothuis Coral Springs, FL Peaceful Christians Monday was Martin Luther King (MLK) Day. He was an ordained Christian minister and – like Gandhi – one of the most powerful and successful Civil Rights leaders this world has ever seen. He was a man of peace. He was killed and that’s why we remember him. Yesterday, Don Lemon (a disgraced journalist who claims to be a Christian!) and a group of anti-ICE protestors invaded a Christian church and disrupted a religious ceremony. They committed a civil crime by violating The FACE Act (18 U.S.C. § 248: “(a) Prohibited Activities.—Whoever—(2) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship. . .”). They also committed a sacrilegious act. The intimidated, peaceful Christian faithful did nothing! When all Christians are killed – because they are peaceful and refuse to defend themselves – who will pray to Jesus Christ? Who will teach our children about Jesus Christ? Self-defense is not a crime and it’s not a sin.Pray? Yes! But there comes a time when one must get up off one’s knees and act! Never forget that Jesus Himself acted when:“He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.” Matthew 21:12-13 Charles M. Prignano Colorado Springs ...read more read less