Addiction is a symptom of poverty. Poverty is a highly treatable condition.  The most deadly addiction in Cortez is the addiction to the poverty profiteering industry. We need to switch our addiction to helping people Bridge themselves out of poverty. Hundreds of cities are doing it. Bridges out of poverty. Circles USA, asset-based Community Development, getting ahead. Go to the library, find the stack.  https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18tMZVGPdx/ "I'm leaving for treatment.... " he said..... [this in the vestibule of the rec center this morning early.]  Over on the west side of Denver. And then I'm not coming back. I'm going to learn to understand my addiction. B*******, I said. Yes, don't come back, didn't judge McLaren tell you that in loving way? He nodded yes. Pinon project, judge padilla, judge McLaren are all helping me get into treatment. I told them that's what I want. I said, this understanding your addiction stuff is b*******. Someone can t...

Today I've searched for and found articles that suggest that visionary medium-term planning is not impossible for cities. Please see initial sources below.  If you want to destroy any thriving organization, be it City or private, or individual, destroy their ability to plan more than 12 months out. Thriving is not possible without medium and long-term reality based envisioning. Thriving is also impossible for any living entity individual or collective, if the vision is not rooted in reality. Not to be confused with bound or chained by reality, blindness. I am exploding with passion, sometimes visible in City Council meetings and elsewhere in City hall. Why? Objectively, like maybe most of america, we are gripped by denial, instead of vision. I think we can do better. I know that we need to do better. I won't rest until I see that better is impossible, or we get on with developing our reality based vision for Cortez thriving. 7 days a week, every waking breath, I'm trying to...

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1JBLsyaccM/ STATE OF CORTEZ 4/2026: In the absence of qualified staff support, what I can offer is a back of the napkin estimate: a city with approximately $30 million dollars in annual revenues for everything, needs ADDITIONALLY half a billion dollars and maybe much more to replace it's decades now crumbling water system and roads, and to preventatively remediate and maintain its Rec center, pool, Park, housing stock, ball fields... etc. We are mid to late stage dying City unless we roll up our sleeves and try and improve the outlook. Starting now. [just sent to current Council people, people on the ballot, and all senior City staff, and media, and retired mayors. my soul woke me up early this morning and then kept me waking and sleeping about 4 to 6 hours, a Harbinger that I was supposed to do something today. smh.]  City council leaders, STATE OF CORTEZ 4/2026: In the absence of qualified staff support, what I can offer is a back of a napkin est...

Cty cncl, cty mgr: I need to be coached hard, and I coach hard. Viral "Hard Coaching" clip: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1LRWirASjh/ [I am not "running" for City council. I'm making myself available if citizens want me there. I AM RUNNING FOR 9000+ CITIZENS TO BE THRIVING, as I have been since day one in Cortez, and as will continue as long as I am functional.]  City official. "James, it's hard not to be defensive when you imply that city council has been asleep at the wheel."  http://www.apprentice-james-4-cortez.org/2026/04/invisible-100m-invoices-letter-to-editor.html In the neighborhoods of cortez, 100% of the verbal feedback to my face regarding this horrible 'CORTEZ SINKING' graphic below is, that's great! Meaning, that's exactly how it is! Wonderful, valuable, constructive feedback (above) from a senior City official this morning, almost unprecedented, to the earlier post here, "James, it's hard not to be defensi...

Letter to the editor. Journal.  A confession: As diligent as I am, I'm not always diligent enough. Same with you? Same with the city? Purchasing a house in Cortez recently, it was mumbled to me maybe several times about inspecting my sewer pipes. I did, but I could have done better. And now I've got a $9,000 project I didn't anticipate. The house is worthless without sewer pipes that work. And it didn't occur to me to look at the financial health of Cortez with respect to future home value.  I wanted the house. I wanted a nice story. I had other things to invest my time in. So I denied to myself that maybe I should have done deeper. And now do I understand we have $100's of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance, repairs, replacement of everything from our water system, roads.. to our rec center? Not prominently acknowledged and wrestled with  in our public dialog? March 10th the City said that we're in great financial shape! And there was no mention of the...

The following letter was submitted to the journal yesterday. They strike me as a friend of the status quo, and I'm not. Cortez is sinking. Letter.  Honest question:  Did the people of Cortez decide that the rec center, the ball fields, the park and other amenities are expendable? That City Hall is doing a great job while these are going deeper and deeper into disrepair, with no end in sight? That they are outside of the purview of City hall? That the sole measure of City Hall is that they don't go into the red? Because the state of Cortez address in the council chamber on March 10th suggests just that. In that same address it was stated that all of us have to live within our means. [My credit rating is 770 something. It lowered recently when a loan company at my direction contacted a credit agency. I need a $9,000 loan because my pipes are more than 30 years old and they're crumbling. Point being, I live within my means.]  Earlier in my life I decided I needed more means...

  City Council: Half of our residents are invisible in this chamber. 4/14/26. Version 2. No, I will never self-censor to avoid hurting your feelings. Not now. Not then, not ever. A citizen on or off council should not be here to please you with what they say. Constitutionally I am unable, and intellectually too limited to try and see and speak the truth as best I can and figure out how to avoid hurting the feelings of an otherwise overprivileged adult. To try and resolve differences two council people, a senior City executive and myself met for an hour and 15 minutes last week. Although maybe they were simply extending me the courtesy of the opportunity to mend my ways. Toward that end I accepted some homework assignments gladly, they accepted none. A one way street. One of those homework assignments was to get more knowledgeable in the history of City Council actions. It had long been on my agenda but now it was time. My first stop was articles in the journal covering city co...

 We're dying from willful blindness. [By the way, it continues to be true that the police force in Cortez so far, are going to have a major portion of heaven. They are freaking saints. Incredible discipline, humanity, decency, courage, moral clarity. A maggot just tried to run over a crossing guard. Police in the other lane did a UE to stop the individual.]  ........ A mile from here I waved to a fella on the street, f*** you! That's what he said. As I arrived at the Welcome Center Parking lot, I said hi to a fella, f*** you, he replied. And all these clueless sanctimonious middle and upper class folks, rich in their education and Resources by every comparison, don't have a fricking clue. Why? They don't need to have a fricking clue. They don't want to have a fricking clue. If they did have a fricking clue they'd have to stand up and face that they need to roll up their sleeves and help the 90% that their presence and lifestyle have pushed off of the dock into s...

[Don't tell me we're draining the swamp. Don't.  Show me, explain it to me like I'm a 3-year-old.  Show me the life or death passion.  I'll wait.] It could be deliberate, it could be just lazy habit. Who has the time and resources internal and external, to entice city council and the city manager, or to make their life uncomfortable? Those in the middle and upper income brackets, the top 10%. What do they care if the swamp fills? They're up on dry land. They are not going to be eaten. The 90% are being eaten, and they lack the means to fight for the swamp being drained. No? This is wrong? The middle and income bracket folks aren't stupid. They aren't blind. They don't have to care. Fact is, if the 90% get eaten, driven out of the city, it opens up land for the middle and upper income brackets to bring in more like them, Rising real estate values, real estate and contractor revenues from tearing down crumbling houses and replacing it with more expensi...

Impossible for me:  1. To be against anyone.  2. To not fight for those most suffering. And that sets up the likelihood of major collisions. If I'm pitting my very life for the thriving of the least fortunate half of our population of 9,000, and some of the most fortunate put themselves in the way of that, there's going to be a collisions. As many as it takes.  Until I'm stopped, or the bottom 4,500, and the top 4,500, are thriving.

 Pt 1. City Council meeting, 4/14. 1st draft. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18DV3GD3cR/ Why for goodness sake with any citizen bother engaging with City hall? https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17RhT6y82F/

The new Council must reinvent itself as the leader we're dying for. 3/26 Cortez Community Final Chance. City council tonight, draft 4.  The new Council coming in and making of itself the leader we have been dying for is our last best chance.  Just because I do it a lot, doesn't mean I like to stand up here as the fool. I don't. But I suspect it will continue. On or off the council.  I got my MBA at Syracuse University in marketing, and I spent the next 27 years in high tech industry causing floundering organizations to thrive, and starting up new ones. New products, new businesses, new markets. I hurl myself in to the point of drowning, because the answers, solutions, are to be found nowhere else. Not in time.  I don't have time for blaming, complaining. And there's no time to be quiet or to wait until you're sure.  Whoever comes in in the new council,  it's Cortez one final last best chance. To dig ourselves out of many decades of decaying, deep in a bubbl...

"James, I may have to leave due to rising taxes. We can't afford it here anymore." This from someone that does magnificent Blue Collar labor in the city. Moments before, an elder gentleman came where I was parked, and double parked in the street, I was concerned. I had just come through neighborhoods for several hours respectfully taping the card on hand railings Etc introducing what I'm concerned about. Yesterday, for the first time, someone called the police, when the officer found me, we know each other, oh, james, what you're doing is perfectly legal. I just had to come and check. So I thought, this older gentleman is going to chew me out for taping a card.  He said, do you have a yard sign so I can put it in my yard? I replied with a laugh, sir, not one person has come alongside me in this campaign. Not one. Zero.  So no I don't have any yard signs. He saw a bunch of cards in my hand. May I have some please? I'll tape them all over my mailbox. And I g...