I went to the post office yesterday. No big deal, you drive in the terrible parking lot off 29th, wait in line, get good friendly service and then try to get out of the same terrible parking lot. Oh wait, I didn’t do that, I went downtown, to the old post office. Parked right across the street, went in, was only behind one person, at noon, and got great service. The one person in line was someone I knew and we talked a little business in the lobby. It was a great, pleasant, let’s go back 30 years in Loveland experience. I go to the 29th street post office a lot, and the folks there are very friendly, and the service is good, no doubt. It’s just nice to go downtown once in  awhile.

   Then I went across the street to City News to grab a magazine, and off to lunch at Sports Station. A very pleasant lunch, a nice relaxing experience in downton Loveland. Made me feel really good about Loveland.

   The day before that I had to get some car repair work done. Took my Subaru to the dealer for it, and you know what that now means to anyone in Loveland; a trip out east. All the new car dealers in Loveland are now in the Centeraa Autoplex. Ugh. What used to be an easy thing, dropping a car off for repair, now becomes a long trip. It took 45 minutes travel time just to get there and back. I did receive very good service from the dealer, and was pleased to see some familar faces there. Then I paid the bill and found lovely little add on at the bottom equating to a Centerra tax. Now it wasn’t much, because most of my bill was labor, but that’s not the point. All those business got great deals from the City to move out there, and we the people end up paying higher sales taxes to account for it. That just rubs me the wrong way.

   The last time I saw the figures for Orchards Shopping Center, which I believe was 2005, the property taxes here went up 28%. That’s a huge amount. Meanwhile tax breaks are being handed out to the east side of town, and consumers end up footing the bill. Now I’m not trying to start a political riot here, I don’t even have all the facts, nor have I researched this very well. All I know, and all I’m saying is that this irritates me. Downtown Loveland relaxes me. So what I’m saying is that we need to shop and eat more downtown. I know you can’t get everything you need downtown (after all, there’s no hardware store downtown), but give it a try. If you haven’t been downtown lately, you just may be suprised.

-Clark