Lakeside Municipal Offices

[koganbot]

This photo* is not up-to-date; the sign now reads "Town of Lakeside MUNICIPAL O," with the rest of "OFFICES" broken off.

My friend Nathan says he once met the mayor of Lakeside.

Lakeside had a population of 8 as of the 2010 census. A greater number of people work there, however, as it has an amusement park and a Walmart. But there's a scary amount of vacant, undeveloped space: if the photo were tilted northeast rather than southwest, so as not to get the businesses across 44th Avenue (which are not in Lakeside but in Mountain View**), you'd see a large swath consisting of nothing but a fence and stunted wild grass.

The town incorporated in 1907. Says Wikip, "Both town and park were founded by a syndicate led by prominent Denver brewer Adolph Zang, who endeavored to build the resort just across the county line from Denver, and incorporate to move beyond the reach of Denver liquor laws."

Denver law having been revised since 1907, I'm no longer aware of the town's raison d'être. I'm even less aware of Mountain View's reason for being. Mountain View, across the street, from where you can see the mountains (as you can from every town on the front range), puzzles me even more. It is a tiny 0.1 square mile to Lakeside's 0.2 (ends at Fenton Street on the west rather than stretching another two blocks to Harlan Street), has a population (in 2000, anyway) of 569, but a very small tax base. (I'm guessing the cleaners don't pull in what Walmart does.) "[Mountain View] relies primarily on traffic tickets to pay its police and municipal employees" (Wikip).

What intrigues me, though, is that Google Maps shows the border between the two towns as running lengthwise through the middle of 44th Avenue. Is it at the median divider?*** So, can the Mountain View police collect money only from speeders racing east on 44th, whereas Lakeside extracts the moolah from those going west?

*Which Wikipedia credits to Jeffrey Beal, if I understand Wikip's crediting system correctly.

**One of the businesses on the south side of 44th is Lakeside Cleaners, but don't let the name fool you.

***EDIT: I misused the term "median divider," as there is no median area, just center lines.

[UPDATE November 1st: They've fixed the sign!]

Comments

[koganbot]

On the bus ride home today I observed some cops with guns drawn outside the We Buy Diamonds pawn shop on the Mountain View side of 44th. One can never be too careful when confronting traffic violators.

Fact checking

[koganbot]

What I called We Buy Diamonds is actually We Buy Coins, Silver And Gold.*

And there is no Lakeside Cleaners; it's actually Lakeside CarWash, and it's a block west of Fenton, at 44th and Gray; so it's in Wheat Ridge, not Mountain View. It's still not in Lakeside.

*There is at least one We Buy Diamonds somewhere in the west 'burbs, maybe down in Lakewood.

(Town names give the false impression that there are a lot of lakes around here.)

Business Opportunity

[koganbot]

And Lakeside Liquors isn't in Lakeside either; it's on 44th and Fenton, on the west side of Fenton (Wheat Ridge), rather than the east side (Mountain View).

Meanwhile, on the Lakeside side of 44th, our Municipal offices share their small building with three other storefronts: Primary Dental, Great Clips, and one that is currently vacant. So if you would like to locate your own business at this prestigious address, there may be an opening for you.

Revenue Collection

[koganbot]

And last Friday, to my delight, I saw a car pulled over, a patrol car behind it, on (the well-named) Chase Street, just south of 44th Avenue; therefore, in Mountain View.

Systemic...

[koganbot]

Two and a half years on, this post and comment thread feel a lot less funny than when I wrote them, my now understanding (many many decades late) how law enforcement is being pushed into the position of extracting money from poor people and minorities to support municipal coffers, with sometimes fatal results (e.g., in Ferguson, Missouri), and oppressive results, and lives hindered or wrecked.

Not that I didn't know a lot of this in principle, that money flows from poor to rich (the slogan goes, "the rich get what they spend, the poor spend what they get"), but I was lazy on details, never having been caught in the dragnet myself.

(My mentioning of "decades" doesn't mean to imply "This is something that never changes" and that it's all equal. Yes, social systems tend to favor the rich and powerful - that's what being powerful is - but the tax revolts of the 1970s followed by the Reagan years made revenue systems more regressive and destructive to the poor.)

This doesn't mean that I have information that Lakeside and Mountain View are predatory or destructive in how they enforce their laws, or that I have knowledge as to what the laws are.