Colorado Springs has never been better positioned. We have the option to stand out as a unique large city that attracts the best and brightest among individuals, families, business leaders and tourists. All we must do is make a reasonable and painless investment in public safety by voting “yes” on Question 2A on ballots that will mail to voters this month.

A combination of COVID-19, rampant violent left-wing protests, commercialization of recreational drugs, and a “defund the police” movement is sadly ripping other large American cities at the seems. Once-idyllic areas of Portland, Ore., Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Denver and other major metros are boarded up, tear-gas stained, graffiti-tagged and segmented with crime tape.

The tragedies of 2020, combined with the anti-cop sentiment, show us what society looks like without law and order. And it could get much worse if problems persist and/or exacerbate.

Colorado Springs, the country’s 39th largest city — a city larger than Oakland, Miami and Minneapolis — has been relatively free of the lawless chaos seen throughout much of the rest of the country. Almost no one in Colorado Springs wants to defund or demonize law enforcement.

Colorado Springs, unlike a growing number of other large cities, rejects efforts to legalize storefront sales of recreational marijuana. We value education, the arts, culture, the military and public safety. All of the above makes this city the envy of the world. Our community constantly tops lists of “best places” to live, visit, and conduct business.

To continue this, we must do the opposite of divesting in the police.

Passage of 2A allows the city government to retain $1.9 million in refunds owed to taxpayers under a formula in the state Constitution’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). All of that money would go toward public safety, including the hiring of 120 additional cops. It would also set the city’s 2021 TABOR revenue cap at the 2019 level, to avoid suffocating local government with an artificially low 2020 cap reduced by the pandemic recession.

Colorado Springs residents must always work to protect the city’s and state’s TABOR laws. These restrictions on government have successfully prevented excessive, over-funded and intrusive governance for almost three decades.

These laws were drafted and enacted with the provision voters could choose to temporarily forego refunds and override revenue limits. Never has there been a better occasion for voters to do just that in Colorado Springs.

Taxpayers in the Springs are fortunate to have city council members and a mayor, Republican John Suthers, who exercise fiscal restraint and keep city government relatively limited in size and scope. They see public safety as a primary function of local government.

In a future post-pandemic, post-rioting, post-anti-cop world, Colorado Springs should tower as the sober and shining city on a hill that did not self-destruct and embrace dangerous chaos. To achieve this, we must support our police, and enhance their morale, by funding public safety. Doing so won’t require a tax increase. We need only vote “yes” on 2A to keep our community stable and safe.