Colorado Springs voters face three simple questions on ballots that should arrive in their mailboxes next week. The outcomes of these measures will play an extraordinary role in maintaining or spoiling our city’s famous desirability.

They will determine whether we continue as the annual “most desirable” city in the United States, as ranked by survey-king U.S. News & World Report, or whether we move toward average. The questions include:

? Shall we allow 114 profiteering retail marijuana establishments to open throughout the city without any neighborhood input?

? Shall we impose a 5% sales tax on recreational marijuana sales?

? Shall we continue improving our roads and bridges?

Here’s what The Gazette suggests on these three measures, in the interest of keeping Colorado Springs an iconic city people desire to live in and visit:

? “No” on retail marijuana sale

? “No” on the proposed marijuana tax

? “Yes” on fixing roads

The two marijuana measures, if passed, would harm our great, family friendly city for obvious reasons. People from around the globe know they can visit the city at the base of majesty without retail pot profiteers pushing marijuana on young adults from storefronts and at gas station counters. The proposed 114 pot stores exist, but they are of no use to most tourists because one needs to buy an expensive “medical red card” before purchasing. That’s a barrier for people who don’t use THC.

Without passage of the recreational pot measure, the metropolitan area has two recreational shops in Manitou Springs. Some ask why we shouldn’t sell it in Colorado Springs if consumers can buy it in a nearby suburb.

Here’s why. Passage of the measure would increase recreational stores in the metro area by 5,600%. What operates as small-scale, niche retail in an eclectic resort town would become more common than coffee shops throughout much of a metro area approaching 800,000 residents.

Exacerbating this concern is the Pentagon’s increasing trouble recruiting personnel into all branches of our military. A major part of the problem includes the shortage of potential recruits who can pass drug tests.

And, yes, we need to drug test them. Let’s not hand over M-16s and fighter jets to young adults who get high for fun. It’s a safe bet 114 no-barrier recreational pot stores would make the Pentagon less interested in Colorado Springs as a basing location.

It’s an equally safe bet the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and various U.S. Olympic governing boards, would find our city less attractive after 114 pot stores go recreational.

There’s another disturbing element of the two pot measures. If recreational sales passes and the tax fails, Colorado Springs taxpayers will get stuck with the significant costs of regulating pot sales and the social consequences of a population high on pot. Those include a shrinking labor pool eligible to work jobs requiring sobriety, more marijuana in the possession of children, and array of other Denver-style problems related to pot.

For these reasons and more, the Colorado Springs City Council approved a resolution this week that “strongly opposes the passage of Ballot Question 300 and Ballot Issue 301, and asks that all citizens strongly consider the negative impacts of retail marijuana and urges the residents of the city of Colorado Springs to vote NO.”

While voting against destructive measures, take pleasure in voting “Yes” to extend the Pikes Peak Regional Transportation sales tax of 55% of one penny to continue improving a long list of transportation projects specified in the ballot language. This tax has delivered tremendous results for much of the past decade and is scheduled to sunset Dec. 31, 2024. A “yes” vote extends the progress until Dec. 31, 2034.

Keep Colorado Springs the country’s most desirable city. Don’t make a Johnny Come Lately effort to become pretentious version of Denver. Vote “No” on both marijuana questions and “yes” on improving our transportation assets. Keep Colorado Springs the country’s most desirable city.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board