Lights Out...let the fun begin, Colorado Springs Way

Colorado Springs is providing a good case study for the rest of the country on how to deal with the budget crises.

Voters Refuse To Pay Bill; City Shuts Off Lights : NPR: "As a cost-saving measure, Colorado Springs is turning off streetlights. Flipping the switch on about 1/3 of the city's 24,512 streetlights is expected to save $1.245 million in electricity. But that's just a down payment on a $28 million budget gap for 2010.

Perhaps the most noticeable change for Colorado Springs' 400,000 residents will be in parks, where budgets have been slashed by nearly 75 percent.

'We've taken all the trash cans out. We're not going to be doing any litter collections in the parks,' says Larry Small, vice mayor for Colorado Springs. 'We're hoping the citizens will pack it out themselves.'

All the restrooms have been closed. There'll be very little watering, and crews will mow just once a month instead of weekly.

The city even trimmed its police and fire budgets and is auctioning three of its police helicopters on the Internet. Still, that's not enough.

'We did have a transit system,' Small says, 'That's gone almost completely now.'

The city sold nine buses and will use the proceeds to pay operating costs this year. On Jan. 1, 2010, busses stopped running on evenings and weekends."