Arvada Press 0702

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July 2, 2020

JEFFERSON COUNTY, COLORADO

A publication of

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INSIDE: VOICES: PAGE 8 | LIFE: PAGE 12 | SPORTS: PAGE 19

VOLUME 16 | ISSUE 5

Arvada PD aims to build trust Some changes, but department hopes to continue current best practices

BY CASEY VAN DIVIER CVANDIVIER@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Just a handful of years from now, fruit trees planted at the Arvada Community Garden on June 22 will be ready for harvesting.

After receiving a grant from the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation — a Pittsburgh-based charity dedicated to planting fruit trees all over the world — the garden hosted an arborist from the foundation, James Kaechele, to oversee the planting of 10 fruit trees and 10 fruit shrubs at the community garden on West 57th Avenue.

In response to Colorado’s police reform bill signed by Gov. Jared Polis on June 19, the Arvada Police Department plans to make changes and continue practices that it believes have built trust between the department and community.

The bill was introduced in the wake of widespread protests against biasbased police brutality, with the cause gaining momentum after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officers on May 25.

One change to the APD’s policies is an immediate outlawing of the use of vascular neck restraints, which have been permitted but rarely used over at least the past ten years, said police chief Link Strate.

The use of chokeholds, which is a different technique than the vascular neck restraint, was already prohibited by the APD because “it just wasn’t something that we felt was valuable to our officers,” Strate said.

The bill also mandates that law enforcement agencies must require officers to wear body cameras, effective July 2023.

APD is planning to make changes because of the bill, as its officers do not currently wear body cameras.

The department conducted a study just over five years ago focused on exploring the potential benefits of

SEE FRUIT TREES, P3

SEE POLICE, P2

Westminster resident Jillian Millard, left, and Arvada resident Hannah Cochran plant a nectarine tree at the Arvada Community Garden on West 57th Avenue.

PHOTOS BY CASEY VAN DIVIER

Fruit trees planted in Arvada Community Garden Fruit will be given to gardeners, community organizations

BY CASEY VAN DIVIER CVANDIVIER@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Arvada resident Frank Yost plans a nectarine tree on the east side of the garden.

A TOUGH HAUL Arvada disposal company wary of future after city decision P4

DOCUMENTING A PANDEMIC A new effort underway at History Colorado is tracing COVID-19’s impact on the state with material from unexpected places P12

IN-SCHOOL OPTIONS

Jefferson County makes the call for elementary students P5

2 Arvada Press

July 2, 2020J

Residents invited to meeting on racial equality in Arvada Group behind daily protests organizing meetings for change

BY CASEY VAN DIVIER CVANDIVIER@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

After dozens lined up outside Arvada City Hall every weeknight for weeks, peacefully protesting racial inequality and police brutality, the group’s organizers are planning a series of meetings with the aim of spurring change.

Organizers, including PJ Travin and Alisha Fleming, held an initial meeting on June 18 to plan the group’s next steps, with an overall goal of ensuring equitable policies and practices are in place within community organizations.

Now, the group invites residents who are interested in its cause to attend a second meeting on July 9.

The group has been going by the name Arvadans for Equality and Social Advocacy but plans to change its name at a later date. It has col-

POLICE FROM PAGE 1

utilizing body cameras as well as expected costs.

The department’s best estimates suggest that a body camera requirement would cost around $1.5 million in initial investment and about $1 million in annual ongoing costs, Strate said.

The study showed the benefits of utilizing body cameras — including enhancing transparency and reducing legal costs — are particularly seen in law enforcement agencies that are distrusted by the community and have a history of contentious community interactions or bias-based police actions, such as bias-based use of force.

But the study’s findings showed the APD was not distrusted by the community and that it had few biasbased use-of-force complaints, Strate said. Because of the evidence in the study, the department concluded that for the APD specifically, body cameras would not significantly improve the department’s relationship

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303-424-7333 11651 W. 64th Suite C4 Arvada, CO 80004

ment’s use of force policies; and lected feedback from protesters others. and other community members on “Many of potential action those items items to pursue. are completely In its upcomfluid and were ing meetings, merely a startthe group says it ing point for will form subconversations, committees to stemming from research how either the BLM some items on (Black Lives that list might be Matter) agenda implemented. or about the The list inwork people cludes starting are passionate business incento take on,” tives for Black Travin said. and Indigenous “But while people of color, some items are or BIPOC fluid, sticking business-ownas closely to the ers, to come to PJ Travin, BLM agenda Arvada; collecting statistics on protest group organizer as possible is a salient goal.”

Arvada crime as The group it relates to race also has a focus and ethnicity; exon working ploring the role with organizations in the broader of the police and school resource Jeffco area. officers, or SROs, in local schools; “There is substantial impact that reviewing the Arvada Police Depart-

happens under the county umbrella that reverberates into racial injustice in all of our neighborhoods,” Travin said. “This connects to the Jeffco DA, Jeffco Sheriff ’s Office, all policies for Jeffco schools and having Jeffco police and SROs in Arvada schools, just to name a quick few.

“From each of these sectors arise extremely important issues in which we need to be on the same page with our neighboring communities,” he continued.

Residents can RSVP for the next meeting after signing up for the Arvadans for Equality and Social Advocacy Facebook page. Because of health guidelines, a maximum of 20 residents will attend the July 9 meeting while others will attend via video conferencing.

“Arvada is full of hope and support, and this gives us excitement for change,” Travin said. “I hope those people that feel defensive seeing us when they drive by realize we are not there to attack them. We are there to show support to people that have been held in a disadvantaged system for far too long.”

“There have been no real discussions about a settlement,” added Erica Grossman, one of Cook’s attorneys.

In the years since the body camera study was conducted, the department has continually reviewed its circumstances and evaluated whether to utilize the cameras, Strate said. While it has not chosen to implement them up to this point, with the change in state law, the department plans to require the cameras by 2023.

“I think the officers of the Arvada Police Department will be absolutely accepting of body-worn cameras,” Strate said.

Strate also highlighted the department’s accreditation through CALEA, the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. The APD has maintained its accreditation for more than 30 years and has been named a CALEA Flagship Agency, or a model for other agencies to follow.

‘From each of these sectors arise extremely important issues in which we need to be on the same page with our neighboring communities.’

with citizens or impact its use-offorce instances.

Over the past five years, “we haven’t paid a penny in a civil liability case,” Strate said. “We don’t have a history of payouts because we don’t have a history of excessive use of force.”

The department’s use of force most recently attracted media attention in January 2020, when a 24-year-old Arvada man named Travis Cook filed a lawsuit against the City of Arvada and three of its police officers. Cook alleged officers used excessive force against him when he was arrested during a domestic assault investigation.

The APD said in a statement that Cook resisted officers during his arrest and officers were required to use the force they used to take Cook into custody and protect the alleged domestic assault victim.

As of June 25, the judge in the case had issued a discovery stay, awaiting rulings on motions to dismiss by two of the defendants, Arvada officers Scott Thomas and Ryan Clark. Thomas and Clark have moved to dismiss claims against them based on qualified immunity.

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Policies already in place Meanwhile, the APD plans to continue many of its policies, including mandatory bias in policing training that has been required of all sworn personnel for at least 20 years, Strate said.

The anti-bias training covers topics including profiling, implicit bias and microaggressions related to gender, disability, race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Training focuses on how cognitive biases impact community interactions and the consequences of biasbased policing.

Personnel are regularly trained in topics that include the ethics related to the use of force and effective deescalation techniques, Strate added.

The department also utilizes what it calls an early warning system to recognize questionable conduct from officers.

Keep the conversation going As discussions around state policy changes have continued, Denise Maes, public policy director with the ACLU of Colorado, highlighted the importance of law enforcement agencies reviewing their policies and changing them when needed.

“It’s always good for police departments to look at their practices and procedures to make sure they are aligned with acceptable practices and not consistently involved with officer-involved killings,” she said.

“They might be (looking at them now) because police officer-involved killings are a little more prominent in the news, but I think it’s always good to look at.”

Strate similarly said that the department hopes the community conversation continues.

“I hope this sparks continued involvement and sustained interested by the community in law enforcement, and instead of an accusation against policing in general, I hope there’s a desire to seek understanding of what their police department is,” Strate said. “We want to make sure we hear their voice and understand how they want to be policed.”

ONLINE: RESULTS OF THE 2020 STATE PRIMARY ELECTION Coloradans voted in the state primary election that ended June 30. Across metro Denver, voters weighed in on party races for county commission, the state legislature, district attorney, the University of Colorado Board of Regents and other seats. The winners advance to the November ballot.

For results, visit ColoradoCommunityMedia.com.

Arvada Press 3

0July 2, 2020

FRUIT TREES FROM PAGE 1

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“I think this will bring more gardeners,” said gardener Frank Yost, who volunteered to plant at the event. “They’re going to see nectarine trees and they’re going to see peach trees and they’re going to want to help be part of that.”

More than a dozen volunteers attended the event, where Kaechele demonstrated the tree-planting process before gardeners planted the trees throughout the garden. The types of trees planted include apple, cherry, nectarine and plum trees, some of which will be ready three years from now and some as early as two years from now, Kaechele said.

The community garden initially applied for the grant about a decade ago, with the foundation hoping to award a grant to the Arvada garden if and when continued efforts showed the garden would be here to stay, Kaechele

Volunteers plant several trees in the orchard on the west side of the garden. said.

2020 seemed to be the perfect year to put the plan into action, with the foundation already scheduling a visit to Denver this summer, he said. Through a partnership with vitafusion, a vitamin company, the foundation selects four cities each year to plant new orchards in. This year, it selected

CASEY VAN DIVIER

Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Counting the trees planted in Arvada, the foundation planted a total of 135 trees in Denver during its visit, Kaechele said.

As the Arvada planting got underway, many volunteers tried their hand at fruit-tree-planting for the first time,

having come to the event for a variety of reasons.

“I’m a huge supporter of small nonprofits and I love the foundation’s enthusiasm,” said gardener Jillian Millard, who started with the Arvada Community Garden this year.

She added that she supports the fruit tree planting idea, particularly as it relates to the broader community: “The garden donates produce to the food bank and this will be a great addition to that,” she said.

The fruit produced by the trees will go to the gardeners, Arvada’s Community Table, the Arvada Veggie Van and be used in some of the garden’s events, including its fruit pressing event and annual garden open house, according to information from Arvada Community Garden.

“It’s something the community will share,” said Arvada gardener Hannah Cochran, who also started gardening at the community garden this year.

“It’s really fun we’ll be able to give back in that way.”

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Discover Geos Community, Where Your Home Energy Costs Are Essentially Zero That’s what it’s like for Jim & Patty Horan, who bought their 3-bedroom, 3bath, 2,135-sq.-ft. home at 15062 W. 69th Place in Arvada’s Geos Community. They paid $525,000 for it three years ago (in July 2017).

Like all Geos homes, this one has no gas service. With only 6kW of solar panels on the roof (included by the builder), the home is heated by a ground source heat pump. It draws heat from the earth via a 300-foot-deep loop under the home. The heat pump uses very little electricity during the summer to further cool the 55° fluid in that loop, and not much more energy during heating season to heat that fluid to 100 degrees.

On Saturday, Jim Horan gave me a tour of his home which I recorded for this fall’s Metro Denver Green Homes Tour. You can view the 11-minute video on my YouTube channel, jimsmith145.

Geos Community is the only subdivision that I’m aware of being built entirely “net zero energy.” Sure, there are developers building “solar-powered” communities like the KB Home subdivision on the northeast corner of Highway 93 and 58th Avenue, but they don’t come close to being net zero.

There’s a term for such homes — “greenwashing,” which Wikipedia defines at “a form of marketing spin in which green PR and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization's products, aims and policies are environmentally friendly.” I’ve always marveled that those KB Homes were built with many

of the solar panels installed on northfacing roof surfaces.

Getting back to the Horans’ home, there’s more to going net zero than having solar panels and a groundsource heat pump. Those features must be coupled with energy saving features so that the limited number of solar panels are enough to meet all the home’s energy needs — with energy left over to charge the owner’s electric car.

Here are some of those features which I covered in my video tour with Jim Horan.

First and foremost, the building’s “envelope” has to be very tight. That starts with foam insulation blown onto the interior surfaces of the roof and exterior walls, replacing more conventional blown-in cellulose and fiberglass batting. The windows are Alpen triple-pane windows which also have foam-insulated fiberglass framing.

(Fiberglass is better for this than vinyl.)

Those elements make a house too airtight for healthy living, so an energy recovery ventilator is installed which constantly brings in fresh air, using a heat exchanger designed so that the heat (or coolness) of the air being exhausted is used to heat or cool the fresh air being brought into the house. A heat pump within this device, called a CERV (Google it to learn how it works), provides further heating or cooling of that fresh air as needed.

In the townhomes at the Geos Community, the CERV works with an airsource heat pump mini-split instead of a ground-source heat pump to heat and cool the home year-round.

This Home Is Close to All That Makes Golden ‘Golden’ This 3-bedroom, 3½-bath home at 538 Canyon View Drive is in Canyon Point Villas, a $573,000 small community of paired homes within walking distance (via pedestrian bridge) of Clear Creek, the Golden Rec Center, downtown Golden and the Colorado School of Mines. There's a city maintained park with playground within the subdivision, and Mitchell Elementary is just a few blocks away! This 2-story unit is nicely isolated from the noise of Highway 93 to Boulder and Highway 6 to Denver or the mountains. It’s in move-in condition with all new stainless steel kitchen appliances and windows throughout. It has new paint top to bottom, inside and out! View interior and exterior still photos and take a narrated video tour, include drone footage, at www.CanyonPointVillas.com, then call your agent or Jim Smith at 303-525-1851 to arrange a private showing.

Have you heard the term “indoor air quality” or “sick building syndrome”? It refers to high levels of CO2 or volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which can build up in a home, especially in a home as air-tight as the Geos homes.

The CERV monitors both CO2 and VOC levels in the house and will bring in additional fresh air when those gases exceed the level set by the homeowner.

(The Horans have the level for each gas set at 950 parts per million, or ppm.)

What are VOCs? If you can smell it, it’s probably a volatile organic compound. Examples include new carpet smell and, worst of all, cat litter smells.

Two appliances in Geos homes also contribute to their low energy load. One is the Bosch condensation clothes dryer, which pulls in cool, dry air from the room. The air is heated and passed through the clothes; but instead of being vented outdoors, the air travels through a stainless steel cooling device or heat exchanger. It does heat the room it is in, so the Horans choose to dry their clothes on an outdoor line during the summer, even though their heat pump could handle the additional cooling load if they didn’t do that. Home Depot sells the Bosch 300 “ventless” dryer for $989.

The other appliance is the heat-pump water heater. It has a heat pump above the tank which transfers the heat from the room into the water. I’ve written about this product before. Home Depot

sells one for $1,200 which earns a $500 rebate from Xcel Energy. Because this appliance emits cold air, it’s in a pantry which the Horans keep closed in the winter and open in the summer. (I would put it in a wine cellar or in a room with a freezer, which emits hot air — a symbiotic arrangement within one room.)

As you are beginning to gather, building a net zero energy home is best done from scratch, when the additional cost is less than retrofitting a home. (My home is net zero in terms of electricity, but we still burn $30 to $50 of natural gas each month, and it takes twice as many solar panels for my home, which has about the same square footage as the Horans’.)

You may be wondering how much more it cost to build the Horans’ house, which they bought new in July 2017. To answer that, I searched all the comparable homes (2– or 3-story, between 1,500 and 2,500 square feet within 1 mile radius) sold during the summer months of 2017, and I found that the $246 per finished square foot paid by the Horans was actually below the median price ($253 per finished square foot) for the seven comparable sales. And those homes probably pay thousands of dollars per year more for electricity (and gas) than the Horans.

If you want to learn more about Geos community, give me a call at 303-5251851 or visit the community’s website at www.DiscoverGeos.com.

Geos Neighborhood to Include Cohousing Community Wikipedia defines cohousing as “an intentional community of private homes clustered around shared space.” Such communities have been built in Golden and Boulder, and one will be built as part of Geos, incorporating the same net zero energy design elements described above. In fact, Norbert Klebl, the developer of Geos, is one of the 10 members already signed up. When there are 12, design and construction work will begin.

At www.RalstonCreekCohousing.org you can learn about their monthly video chats and events (currently virtual) and find contact links to express interest.

The community will consist of 20 or so units in a U-shaped condo-style building with main-floor common spaces and a courtyard facing Ralston Creek. If you like the idea of cohousing, check out this one which has the additional feature of being net zero energy.

Jim Smith

Broker/Owner, 303-525-1851 Jim@GoldenRealEstate.com

Every article in this ad is also posted at www.GoldenREblog.com

Broker Associates: JIM SWANSON — 303-929-2727 CARRIE LOVINGIER — 303-907-1278 CHUCK BROWN — 303-885-7855 DAVID DLUGASCH — 303-908-4835 ANDREW LESKO — 720-710-1000 CAROL MILAN — 720-982-4941

4 Arvada Press

July 2, 2020J

Local trash company bracing for Arvada’s waste hauling changes Crush Disposal staying in Arvada, company says

BY CASEY VAN DIVIER CVANDIVIER@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

A council decision that has left a business owner uncertain about the future of his local trash hauling company has sparked an outpouring of customer support for the business.

Crush Disposal has just over 3,000 customers, with most of them in Arvada. The employees of Crush, which also serves customers in Westminster and Wheat Ridge, knew it had a lot to lose when it came to the single hauler decision the city has explored over the last 18 months.

Through 2019 and into 2020, Arvada contemplated whether to enter into a contract with just one waste hauling company.

Under the contract, non-HOA residents would automatically be billed for trash and recycling services through the city’s hauler. Republic Services, which was among three other haulers that applied for the contract, was selected as the potential hauler mid-2019.

The contract drafted allows residents to choose another hauler and pay a monthly $5.13 fee to the city and Republic.

Hundreds of individuals spoke to the city council leading up to the June 15 meeting regarding the contract, with Crush’s owner, Matt Mazotti, urging the council to consider the “small pieces” in addition to broad benefits that proponents of the contract have cited.

“I’m nervous and I do care and all I’m saying is, you guys have got to look at the big picture here,” he said.

“Let the people who know trash take care of trash.”

After hearing from numerous residents on either side of the issue at that June 15 meeting, the council cast a 4-3 vote to approve the contract.

Outpouring of support But despite the potential drawbacks this could have for the local hauler, “we’ve gotten a lot of calls and emails from our current customers saying they don’t care what the opt-out fee is — they’re staying with us,” Mazotti told Colorado Community Media.

He estimated that about 10% of his customers called to say they’d stay with the company within the first 24

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A trash truck from Crush Disposal, a local waste hauling company that has between 3,000 and 4,000 customers, with a majority of them in Arvada.

COURTESY OF MATT MAZOTTI hours of the ordinance passing.

“Our customers want to stand behind us, so we want to stand behind them,” he said.

The city has estimated that between one and 3% of about 32,000 nonHOA households will choose to pay the minimum monthly fee and find services through a trash company that is not Republic. It has also predicted that multiple HOAs will opt into the program in the coming years.

“The switch to a single hauler will probably disadvantage some of the other community haulers in Arvada. There’s always advantages and disadvantages to every decision we make,” said City Manager Mark Deven. “People were concerned about noise and air pollution, they were concerned about truck traffic, they were concerned about our recycling rate. Those were the things we had to value against the potential impacts to businesses and customer choice.”

Residents prepare Though the program with Republic won’t officially begin until July 2021,

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residents are already making decisions about whether they will participate.

Some, including residents Nancy Eddins, Cambri Hilger and Heather Taormina, say they hope to stay with Crush, both because they like its services and did not like their previous services with large companies, including Republic.

For others who have been skeptical of the switch to a single hauler, pricing has been a major factor.

“I’m on a tight budget and can’t afford anyone else,” said resident Jules Thrower, a current Crush customer.

“Crush is amazing and takes all my trash I put out. I have unlimited pickup with them … I will not change to Republic.”

Resident Rick Dalley likewise outlined a plan to stay with Crush, at least in the immediate future.

“I’ve been using them for a while now and pay about $20 per month without set limits. As my dad always said, `if it’s not broke, don’t fix it,’” Dalley said. “That being said, I will keep an open mind. I’m not against moving to Republic Services in the future. I will wait and see how satisfied people are with their service.”

Meanwhile, others, including residents Suzan Livengood, Joyce Richardson and Kathryn Wallace, find themselves excited about saving money through the city contract as well as the program’s benefits that Deven highlighted.

“We currently have Crush and we will likely stay with them until the city officially transitions, as we do feel for their small business loss in this change, but we do feel this change is for the greater good,” said resident Tom Sisnroy. “We love that this will reduce pollution and increase safety by reducing the number of trucks on our roads.”

Resident Iris Horowitz agreed.

“The new organized waste hauling system is fairer in that you would only pay for how much you trash,” she said. “It is not a choice between haulers, but rather a choice between an

COMPETING FOR THE CONTRACT The city of Arvada met with Crush, along with eight other haulers, when it started exploring the single hauler idea, city manager Mark Deven said.

“They provided us with some input and we encouraged them to be involved in the process and submit a proposal,” Deven said.

Ultimately, Crush did not submit a proposal, with four of the nine haulers submitting before Republic was chosen as the best option for the city, Deven said.

One of the reasons Crush chose not to submit was because the small business did not feel it could feasibly take on tens of thousands of new customers, Mazotti said. Further, because of the details of how Crush operates — for instance, the company does not provide trash cans to customers and brings cans back up to customers’ doors after emptying them — the company’s model did not fit the model the city outlined in its request for proposals.

Deven said the city is in the process of finalizing the contract with Republic now, with plans to officially start running the program in July 2021.

inefficient and costly system versus an updated system that provides lowcost trash hauling, recycling at no additional cost and tons of community benefits.”

As for Crush, Mazotti said the company is preparing for some customers to leave but is hoping to see no more than a 20% loss in its Arvada customer base. He added that he isn’t sure what the future of Crush looks like five years from now; he hopes that Crush’s efforts to provide services that fit Arvadans’ specific needs will keep customers with Crush, but he acknowledged that within several years, the effects of the contract may leave the company with no choice but to shut down.

Even so, the company aims to stay in Arvada as long as it can.

“Our drivers really do care about the area of Arvada and we’re going to keep doing what we need to do,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

Arvada Press 5

0July 2, 2020

Schools make early call on in-person classes for fall Union requesting greater teacher involvement in future decisions

BY CASEY VAN DIVIER CVANDIVIER@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

For months, district leaders at Jeffco Public Schools have been discussing what next year’s balance of in-person and remote learning will look like.

That conversation has included the entire community, with individuals weighing in at school board meetings and through an online survey, which has been open since late May. The survey was scheduled to remain open through the end of June, with the district planning to release its final Restart Jeffco plan on July 8.

But on June 19, the district announced that while the survey would continue as scheduled, one element of next year’s plan had officially been determined: Elementary students would have the option to return for full-time in-person learning in the 2020-2021 school year.

“Because we operate in a competitive school environment where families have options, we felt it in the best interest of our schools to not delay the announcement at the elementary level,” Superintendent Jason Glass said.

By June 18, the district had already received more than 16,000 survey responses, he said.

In the days leading up to that, the survey was receiving less than 100

responses per day. The overwhelming majority of existing and new respondents were indicating that they were either certain or likely to send their child back to school for in-person instruction if public health partners gave their approval, Glass said.

Based on its collaboration with Jefferson County Public Health “and the development of numerous public health and virus mitigation strategies the district plans to employ in the fall, we have developed a workable model for opening elementary schools safely,” Glass said.

Pondering the plan With the plan, parents can either send their elementary-aged children to school every day or keep their children at home for a 100% remote experience.

The plan addresses concerns for some parents, particularly those who would not have child care without the 100% in-person option, deputy superintendent Kristopher Schuh said in a June 4 school board meeting.

Jeffco parent Brandi Hawkins, a Golden resident who spoke at the meeting, added to that the academic benefits of such a plan. She said she felt an 100% in-person option would be integral for all children, especially those who have fallen behind during months of remote learning.

“The toll that this lockdown has taken on students of all ages … will be felt for years,” she said. “I have a first-grader with an IEP (individualized education program). Before the close-down, she was almost caught up with her class. She has regressed

so much.

“No amount of Zoom meetings or my limited ability to offer special education in my house matched the quality that was provided in school,” Hawkins said.

Her thoughts appeared to echo the majority of parents who spoke at the meeting and who responded to the district survey.

That said, as of June 18, about 10% of the roughly 16,000 survey respondents said they were likely or certain not to send their children back for in-person learning.

And for some, the most recent announcement has raised concerns.

“Social distancing and kids don’t go together very well. My first thought was, ‘how do we do that safely?’” said Kay Slater, who has two students at Littleton’s Dutch Creek Elementary and a student at Columbine High.

Slater is a caretaker for a family member who is undergoing intensive chemotherapy. By attending school five days per week, her children would be much more likely to come into contact with someone who has COVID-19 and potentially spread the virus to Slater, putting her immunocompromised family member at risk, she said.

At the same time, she feels her children would learn more in an in-person environment.

“That choice is almost impossible,” she said. “We’re still talking about it and just watching what happens in the community.”

The district previously discussed a hybrid model, in which students would attend school in-person only one or two days a week. That model

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might have worked better for families like hers, Slater said.

But without knowing what the future holds, she added it’s difficult to know what the best option for everybody would be.

“We’re too far out to know what’s smartest to do,” she said. “I wish I knew. I’m not genuinely worried about the safety of my students, but I am genuinely worried about the safety of the adults and teachers that will be interacting with them.”

Teachers call for more collaboration Brooke Williams, president of teachers union Jefferson County Education Association (JCEA), echoed the sentiment. The union has weekly meetings with district leaders and while they have discussed some possibilities for the restart plan, the union did not weigh in specifically on elementary students returning full-time, she said.

“We don’t want things happening to us, but with us,” Williams said.

“We love our students and we want to be back with our students, but we also want to ensure our students and employees are safe.”

Williams said she has heard from teachers on both ends of the spectrum.

Some teachers say they are excited about the prospect that an in-person environment will better meet many students’ needs.

Others are concerned over current circumstances. Widespread COVID-19 testing is not currently available. The district has not yet secured all of the SEE SCHOOLS, P6

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July 2, 2020J

Jeffco’s census response rate is 2nd highest in state

BY PAUL ALBANI-BURGIO PALBANIBURGIO@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

As the ever-important 2020 census approached, many of the staff members involved in Jefferson County’s effort to get residents to respond to the national survey knew they would be facing a landscape that had change significantly since the last census in 2010.

“There’s been the growth of social media and cell phone usage and just the way media in general has changed,” said Jeremy Fleming, an employee in the county’s public affairs office who is helping coordinating census outreach. “A lot of different things have changed in 10 years.”

After discussing the strategies used during the 2010 process and the successes and failures of that effort, Fleming and other county staff members decided they wanted to bring as many community groups and stakeholders as possible into the county effort to encourage county residents to respond to the census.

Those discussions led to the formation of the Jeffco Complete Count Committee, which consisted of representatives of 35-plus organizations, nonprofits and other stakeholders along with individual residents who wanted to be involved.

“So we got people from the cities, the school district, the business community, the faith communities,” said County Commissioner Casey Tighe.

“We just tried to get different people

with different networks all together to try to get involved in getting the word out about how important the census is.”

The members of the committee then broke up into different subcommittees with varying focuses, including communications and non-profits.

But while the committee thought it had a good infrastructure in place, the COVID-19 pandemic, which arrived in Colorado just as the census process was getting underway, was one challenge they had not anticipated.

“When everything started shutting down with COVID-19, we were all really bummed because the timing was just really bad, it was right when we had been planning for months to hit it hard with our communication,” Fleming said.

But while COVID-19 has presented challenges, including the need to rethink certain ad buys at movie theaters and on RTD transportation, Fleming said the “numbers are starting to speak for themselves when it comes to the county’s census outreach efforts.

The number Fleming is referring to is 76.2%, which was the county’s census response rate as of June 25.

That number gives the county the second highest response rate in the state among counties (just slightly behind Douglas County’s rate of 76.7%) and the 52nd highest in the nation.

That also means Jefferson County has already nearly matched its overall

2020 CENSUS RESPONSE RATES Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the nation census continues. Here are census response rates as of June 25 among metroDenver counties and cities, followed by their rank statewide.

COUNTIES Douglas-76.6% (1) Jefferson-75.9% (2) Broomfield-72.6% (3) Boulder-72.5% (4) Arapahoe-70.8% (5) Elbert-70.3% (6) Adams-66.2% (10) Denver-63.6% (16) CITIES AND TOWNS Arvada-79.7 % (7) Castle Rock-75.9% (17) Parker-75.5% (18) Wheat Ridge-73.6% (21) Golden-73.2% (23) Lakewood-72.6% (27) Westminster-72.5% (29) Littleton-71.19% (31) Thornton-69.8% (38) Englewood-67.9% (48) Northglenn-67.4% (52) Denver-63.6% (72) response rate from 2010 which was 77%.

Kirk Hagaman, a Planning and Zoning Department supervisor who is involved in supplying county addresses to the census bureau, said that while he thinks the option to respond to the census online that was added in the wake of COVID-19 has increased

numbers, he attributes the increase largely to the committee.

“In 2010 we did have a committee outreach effort but it was much more a grassroots effort and this time around it was a lot more organized and we have so many organizations involved trying to get outreach out to the undercounted and hard to count areas of the county,” Hagaman said.

The county has also benefitted from a $63,000 state grant secured by the city of Lakewood that was spent on promotional materials that were distributed around the county.

In light of COVID-19, the census will now continue through Oct. 31, giving people three additional months to respond. The nonresponse follow-up phase, in which census takers attempt to interview households in-person that have not already responded, is now scheduled to begin on Aug. 11 after being previously slated to run May 13-July 31.

The county also continues to try to “get creative” about new ways to reach those remaining holdouts, including more social media posting and one plan in the works that will involve purchasing COVID-19 face coverings that will display information promoting the census on them.

“I’m happy that we are amongst the leaders but I would like to be No. 1,” said Teague. “But these last folks are the toughest so it is going to take a real hard push to get us over the finish line at the end.”

Red Rocks nursing students navigating pandemic Courses adjusted, but students still aiming to finish semester

BY CASEY VAN DIVIER CVANDIVIER@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Diane Nagel, who practiced as a nurse in the 1990s, had been out of the field for 20 years when she decided to enroll in the RN Refresher Program at Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood.

The semester-long course, which was originally scheduled to run through mid-May, prepares previous nurses to re-enter the field through 10 weeks of lectures and five weeks of on-site clinical work with a local medical center.

With the lecturing component of the

course completed, Nagel was ready to put her skills to the test at Lutheran Medical Center when she learned that, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, her 20-year wait may last a little bit longer.

“We went all the way up until the day before clinicals were supposed to start and then we got an email that it was canceled. It all happened so fast,” Nagel said. “The most important thing has been being patient.”

The pandemic has introduced some unexpected obstacles for nursing students at Red Rocks Community College, said Katie Hall, a teacher in the refresher program for spring 2020.

With clinicals initially canceled, “we looked at alternate options like simulation, but in the end, we felt like that wasn’t going to give them what they needed,” Hall said.

As the COVID situation contin-

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ued to shift, the school worked with Lutheran to organize for half of the refresher course students to complete their clinicals in-person on the medical center’s non-COVID floors, starting at the end of April. The students were not working with patients who had COVID-19 but did have to take extra precautions, such as wearing masks and going through symptom-screening when they arrived for their shifts.

The remaining half of Hall’s class is scheduled to complete their clinicals starting in mid-July.

“It’s really important we focus on continuing education throughout the pandemic,” Hall said. “It (public health crises) is something we deal with in the medical field, so I think it’s great experience for them to build on.”

Student Delaney Hanson, who was out of the nursing field for almost four years while living overseas, was one of the students who participated in the first round of clinicals in late April and May. “I’m super grateful for Lutheran letting the students come in. We were just very fortunate,” Hanson said.

Seeing the effects of the pandemic and the uncertainty surrounding it has given her more motivation to

SCHOOLS FROM PAGE 5

personal protective equipment it needs and has not issued a statement on whether masks will be encouraged or required.

“We’re not sure if the district really has the capability to protect us,” Williams said.

Glass said the district, to the extent it is able, aims to accommodate staff

return to nursing so she is available to help when needed, she added.

“I kind of felt a sense of urgency,” she said. “I wanted to try and have my license so I could start working.”

Hall highlighted that, like Hanson, all of her students have begun weighing how the pandemic affects their future plans.

“I have students who are like, `this is what being a nurse is about,’” Hall said. “And I have some students who are in that high-risk category who have those reservations of, `is it worth it for me?’ The students are on both ends of the spectrum.”

As her classmates have evaluated where they fall, Nagel, who was not in the first group of students who participated in the Lutheran clinicals, acknowledged the changing landscape of the healthcare field. There are new health risks involved and because of the pandemic’s effect of the economy, many of her friends in healthcare cannot find jobs, Nagel said.

Even so, she looks forward to seeing the course through.

“I’m excited to do the clinical, get back into that and see if it’s something I’m willing to risk,” she said. “I feel like I have to finish it and see where it goes.” members with comorbidities and health concerns. He also highlighted that the district is continuing to gather input on the remaining elements of its restart plan, including the learning model for secondary students, symptom-screening procedures and cleaning procedures.

For the JCEA’s part, the teachers hope to play a bigger role in the decisions made about next year, Williams said.

“We may need to clearly define what collaboration is,” she said.

Arvada Press 7

0July 2, 2020

Developer wants to build rentals near North Table Mountain Community group vows to fight 26-acre project

BY PAUL ALBANI-BURGIO PALBANIBURGIO@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

A Phoenix developer has submitted an application to Jefferson County that calls for rezoning about 26 acres of land on the north flank of North Table Mountain near Golden in hopes of eventually constructing a community of 235 rentable homes.

The project could help to address the “missing middle” affordability challenges that currently plague Golden, the developer says.

In response, a group of residents from the surrounding area have formed a group called No Rezone North Table Mountain that promises to fight the rezoning and potential development.

The group says the project would be incompatible with the existing character of the area and have negative impacts on their health and welfare.

Both the developer and members of the opposition group got their first chance to weigh in on the proposed rezoning at a virtual community meeting held on June 25. The application is being considered by the county because the property is located just outside of Golden city limits, although it has a Golden address.

That meeting began with a presentation from the developer, Phoenixbased NexMetro Communities, whose representative said it has built about 30 such communities throughout the U.S. He said such rented homes have proven a popular option for people who want a suburban-feeling neighborhood environment without having to take on the burdens of homeownership.

“If you look at the benefits of having a professional maintenance staff on-hand, luxury finishes, quartz or granite countertops, windows on all sides with a really efficient footprint we feel we are creating attainable housing, quality housing for the hometown heroes that instead of driving a half-hour or hour for affordability actually get to live in the communities they serve and continue to remain in them,” said Tyler Elick, a development manager with NexMetro Communities.

A view looking west onto the property where the rezoning is proposed toward North Table Mountain.

A view of the property that developer NexMetro communities wants to rezone in order to develop a rental community with a combination of attached and detached dwellings.

PHOTOS BY PAUL ALBANI-BURGIO The community would consist of one-, two-, and three-bedroom homes that Elick estimated would start at $1,400 rent for a one-bedroom and go up to $3,000 for a three-bedroom. The plan calls for a mix of detached and attached dwellings.

The site, which currently consists of sections zoned for agriculture and new development, had previously been seen as a potential location for a 90-home subdivision similar to those in the Candelas and Leyden Rock subdivisions.

Elick said it was listed for sale over the past year before going under contract with NexMetro. He also said that the previous owners, who both live nearby, chose their bid because it presents several advantages over a traditional home subdivision.

Those advantages, Elick said, include the fact that the homes would be one story and about 12 feet shorter than a traditional 3,500-square-foot home, lessening impacts on views. He also said it’s expected that the majority would not have a child living in them, lessening the impact on local schools.

Elick said NexMetro communities are completely privately funded without the use of metro districts and “with no impact on the taxpayer.”

But members of No Rezone North

Virtual Jeffco Gives Week raises $8,800 for Jeffco food banks Event switched to raising money because of the pandemic

BY PAUL ALBANI-BURGIO PALBANIBURGIO@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Although COVID-19 has canceled plenty of events, not even a pandemic could put a stop to Jefferson County’s 26-year food drive tradition.

Instead, county staffers decided to modify the drive so that it could take place entirely online with money donations replacing the traditional non-perishable foods.

The drive, which was held in May, was open only to Jefferson County staff for the first two weeks before it was opened up to the entire community, with the goal of having community donations match those of Jeffco staff.

A total of $8,800 was raised during the four-week event. That money, which the county said will provide $26,445 meals, is being distributed to five providers of food resources in Jeffco: Community Table - Arvada Community Food Bank, Evergreen Christian Outreach (EChO), Jeffco Eats, Light of the World Roman Catholic Church, and The Action Center.

Each foundation is receiving a check for $1,760.

Table Mountain say such a development is not a fit for the site given its proximity to North Table Mountain.

“While there’s a need for high density housing throughout the Front Range, our two-lane streets and intersections were not designed for this level of increased traffic,” said Shane Marberry, who is identified as a concerned statement in a statement released by the group ahead of the meeting. “Nor do the flanks of North Table Mountain need to be subject to a building boom. This location is not zoned for large-scale luxury rentals regardless of out-of-state developers ask-

ing nicely for a rezoning so they can extract their returns at the expense of the environment and Colorado’s treasured landscapes.”

During the comment portion of the meeting, one resident asked Elick why surrounding residents should support the development given its impact on their views and possible property values that could be reduced due to the loss of a more rural character.

Elick again pointed to the Front Range’s housing affordability issues, which he said will only continue to be exacerbated if more housing is not built. He also argued that other surrounding sites have also been developed.

The community meeting was the first step in the rezoning process, which would ultimately require approval by the county commissioners and county planning commission.

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July 2, 2020J

LOCAL

VOICES

Legislature supporting small business ALCHEMY

State Representative Tracy Kraft-Tharp

2

020 has been an historic and unprecedented year. After months of pandemic news, lock downs and social distancing, this month the Colorado General Assembly and small businesses across the state turned their attentions to economic recovery.

Working closely with Simplify Colorado Sales Tax, a coalition of businesses, trade organizations and taxpayers, I’m pleased to report the passage of HB 20-1022 and a major step toward supporting Colorado small business. The bill is now on the way to Governor Polis’ desk for signature.

The mission of the Simplify Colorado Sales Tax is one that I share: to reform Colorado’s excessively complex sales and use tax system

with fairness, simplicity, and predictability for business and a competitive economic environment in Colorado that will attract employers.

HB 20-1022 allows the Legislative Sales & Use Tax Simplification Task Force originally established in 2017 to continue its work to advance legislation in order to simplify Colorado ‘s sales and use tax system. Why is extending this task force so critical? In 2013, the Council on State Taxation rated Colorado as the fourth worst state in the country with a grade of “D” due to our complicated patchwork of more than local sales tax jurisdictions.

Over the last three years, the task force has made significant progress in a mission to

make doing business in Colorado easier. One of the best examples of task force progress is the development of a streamlined data base that will provide administrative simplification. Along with several small businesses, I recently had the opportunity to observe the system and am pleased to report that we are well on our way to launching this critical resource.

Prior to the creation data base, business owners were faced with deciphering more than 700 different sales tax jurisdictions, piles of paperwork and multiple tax filings. Without this new system, Colorado’s small businesses would face one more cripSEE KRAFT-THARP, P9

‘In order to find wisdom, we have to be honest with ourselves’

I

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Prioritize kids As an educator, and as a parent, I have witnessed the incredible and far-reaching impact early childhood education has had on my daughter, and on kids in my classroom.

Most of a child’s brain is developed by the age of five. In fact, children develop approximately 700 neural connections per second in their early years. This brain development is critical for success throughout life — it helps them academically, socially and emotionally.

For this reason – and many others – it’s vitally important that all kids have access to quality and affordable early learning opportunities.

That’s why I’m so pleased that House Bill 1427 passed, bringing forth a ballot measure in November, allowing Coloradans to vote for a Cigarette, Tobacco and Nicotine Products Tax. If approved by voters, Colorado

A publication of

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can use this tax revenue to provide voluntary and free access to at least 10 hours per week of preschool to all kids in the year before they go to kindergarten. I applaud my state senator, Rachel Zenzinger, for supporting House Bill 1427, giving voters a chance to prioritize kids.

While the passage of this bill is a great first step in the right direction, we’ve still got more work to do! Join me and Save the Children Action Network (SCAN) in educating Colorado voters on the importance of early childhood education and encouraging them to vote in November.

Our kids deserve the best – they are, after all, our future. We must prioritize them and ensure they have every opportunity to succeed.

Mary Catherine Schell, Arvada SEE LETTERS, P9

n the 1960s, it was the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the Vietnam War. HITTING In the 1980s, there was the Iran HosHOME tage Crisis and imminent death with a reckless president staring down the Soviet Union.

In the 2000s, there was the Florida recount, the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina.

Michael Alcorn And, of course, 2020 has brought with it a series of catastrophes and horrible missteps that sound like one of those stories written by a team of people sitting around a table, where each person gets five minutes, then has to pass the story to the next one. And the people at this table are Stephen King, Quintin Tarantino, Wes Craven and Jamie Lee Curtis.

In some ways, it’s comforting to know that we’ve survived horrible seasons like this, as a country, before.

In fact, every 20 years it seems like we go through something like this. I could track it back, but I think most of you can do it on your own. Well, most of you who graduated high school when they still taught American history, at any rate.

On the other hand, this doesn’t feel like quite the same sort of thing.

I think MLK really was working to form a “more perfect union,” a country made better by drawing on the talents, skills and perspectives

of every American. Quite pointedly, many of the loudest voices these days are trying to silence the talents, skills and perspectives of other Americans.

And, to accomplish that, in many ways, some of those voices have to work to actively obscure or eliminate parts of our history.

The pandemic has presented us with a challenge unlike anything we have seen — navigating our way through this requires the wisdom of Solomon.

But, instead of wisdom, we’re approaching it with the petulance of Bart Simpson, the anger of Mike Tyson, and the power-lust of Cercei Lannister. Nothing even remotely resembling Solomon.

Of course, Solomon ended up with 700 wives, so, ya know, his wisdom failed him, too.

But in order to find wisdom, we have to be honest with ourselves. You cannot attain enlightenment without self-knowledge. So let’s start with this: this is who we are. This is who we have been. This is what we have accomplished, and here is where we have failed.

It does us no good to gloss over our warts; likewise, to act as if we’ve never done anything that wasn’t evil would rob us of any confidence that we can move forward into a better day. So let’s look at all of it, fairly and honestly.

Now… let’s move forward together.

Otherwise, I fear this Independence Day is going to have to be marked less

by John Hancocks and fireworks than by the opening stanza of the Declaration: “When in the course of human

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SEE ALCORN, P9 Arvada press A legal newspaper of general circulation in Jefferson County, Colorado, the Arvada Press is published weekly on Thursday by Colorado Community Media, 14143 Denver West Pkwy., Suite 100, Golden 80401.

POSTMASTER: Send address change to: Arvada Press, 750 W. Hampden Ave., Suite 225, Englewood, CO 80110

Arvada Press 9

0July 2, 2020

I

Places are opening up, but it’s far from normal

t’s been a really strange weekend for me. As everyone knows, things have started to open up around town and people are finally getting out of the house and happy to have a few AVENUE things returning FLASHES back to normal. I say back to normal but that’s not exactly what’s really going on. Things may be back, but let me tell you, they are far from normal. It’s like a weird twilight zone with a mixture of people trying to John Akal do some things in a most unnatural way.

Here’s what I’m talking about. This past weekend was the first time in three months that one of the bands I play with was able to get back to performing again. We play a lot of places that are basically considered a bar and grill that serve food, so they have been trying to get things rolling for a few weeks. Now they have brought back their live music. So, we were at these places both working and observing what all was going on and let me tell you, people just don’t really know what they are supposed

KRAFT-THARP FROM PAGE 8

pling barrier to success. At a time when Coloradans are struggling and we’re all focusing on economic recovery, it is even more important to do everything we can to foster our small businesses. This system will streamline tax collections and allow Colorado businesses to do what they do best – create jobs and drive our economy.

ALCORN FROM PAGE 8

events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”

In closing, I offer my most abject apologies to my readers in Golden.

Both of you.

Of course, the Battle of Gettysburg happened 21 months before Lee’s

LETTERS FROM PAGE 8

Rush to judgment?

How many people know that the Hennepin County (MN) Coroner’s Office June 1 report, which has been in the public domain for almost three weeks, shows that George Floyd died of cardio-pulmonary arrest, not necessarily due to police actions?

Floyd’s blood test showed that he had a cocktail of street drugs in his system, which in conjunction with the fentanyl, provided several times the dosage needed to quickly do anyone in.

How many know that his thrash-

to be doing.

See, it’s not as simple as opening up a place with fewer tables spaced farther apart and expecting people to just sit glued to their seats wearing masks. That just isn’t going to happen. I know these restrictions are well intentioned, but they are totally unrealistic and fail to take so many circumstances into consideration, that they are doomed from the start.

First off, we now have loads of people who are getting out of the house for the first time in months, going to a place with a few friends or family members for dinner and some entertainment. There’s your group. But they are going to places where they are likely to run into a whole bunch of other people in their little groups that are friends of theirs that they haven’t seen in months. Of course they are going to approach each other and start a conversation, which then leads to introductions of other people in the groups and now it’s a chain reaction of throwing social distancing right out the window.

Then add to the mix the fact that the staff at these places is running a bit short handed right now and have their hands full trying to get the orders out and dealing with just doing their regular jobs. There is no way

they can police the entire establishment and scold people for not following the rules. They also have no way of knowing who belongs with whom nor do they have an inclination to make the entire customer base furious.

Next throw in the fact that wearing masks, especially in the heat, is really uncomfortable. After a while people get tired of trying to talk and breathe through them, let alone put them up and down for every bite of food or to sip a drink and there’s a limit to how often you are willing to clear the fog off your glasses. After about a half an hour of trying that, the masks are gone. It’s really strange watching people try their best to figure out what to do and finally just giving up and going back to acting normal again.

After eight hours of watching people and seeing what happens, it became abundantly clear that whoever came up with these restrictions never tried to implement them before they were put in place. They just aren’t practical in real world applications. So, that’s my word of warning.

If you go out, don’t expect everyone to be vigilant about social distancing protocol. It’s very hard to sustain that in a social setting for several hours.

Especially when someone comes up

in your lead singer’s face and yells “Freebird!”

Now, on to what I would usually be writing about for the 4th of July.

Events that are happening. Well, all the usual big ones, including fireworks, have been canceled. But, our own Golden VFW Post 4171 has come to the rescue with one special event that’s still running which the whole family can enjoy on the 4th of July.

It’s their Annual Very Fine Wheels Car Show that will be happening rain or shine from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. It will feature classic and custom cars on display as well as drawings for various prizes. They will also have food and refreshments for sale, so plan on having lunch there. Proceeds will go to support the Post’s Relief Fund for veterans and their families. They are located at 15625 10th Ave. in Golden.

For more information, you can go to www.vfwpost4171.com. So go check that out and have a safe and happy 4th of July.

John Akal is a well-known jazz artist/ drummer and leader of the 20-piece Ultraphonic Jazz Orchestra. He also is president of John Akal Imaging, professional commercial photography and multi-media production. He can be reached at jaimaging@aol.com

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses employ more than 1 million employees and 99% of all businesses. Simplifying the sales tax process to protect small businesses and our economy is not only a common-sense solution, but fiscally responsible and an absolute necessity.

State Representative Tracy KraftTharp has been a small business owner and represents House District 29 in Jefferson County. She is a candidate for District 1 Jeffco Commissioner.

surrender at Appomattox, not the nine I wrote in last week’s column. No excuses — that’s what happens when an amateur tries to do things from memory. My bad.

Michael Alcorn is a teacher and writer who lives in Arvada with his wife and three children. His new novel, “Charon’s Blade,” is available at Amazon. com, on Kindle, or through MichaelJAlcorn.com.” His opinions are not necessarily those of Colorado Community Media.

ing death throes, pictured by several cameras, mimic exactly those of Excited Delirium Syndrome exhibited by other dying fentanyl-overdose victims?

So, isn’t long past the time for public officials, reporters, clerics, and local real estate agents to immediately cease calling this case a murder?

Shouldn’t they publicly repent re the massive damage to our nation and its communities which their ill chosen words have wrought?

What can you do now to save the lives and reputations of the four unjustly accused police officers involved?

Russell W Haas, Golden

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10 Arvada Press

July 2, 2020J

Colorado officials warn COVID-19 could surge again Governor cautions against large crowds on Fourth of July

WHAT’S STILL CLOSED IN COLORADO?

BY ELLIS ARNOLD EARNOLD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Pointing to worrying COVID-19 trends in neighboring states and an outbreak of cases following Boulder collegearea parties, Gov. Jared Polis has implored Coloradans to take caution with a baseball metaphor.

“Our ability to open schools, our ability to keep our economy going, really relies on people making the right choices. So far you have! So far you have,” Polis said at a June 18 news conference. “As I said, we’re one run up, you know? We’re still in the fifth or sixth inning here — we’re one run up. But yes, the bases are loaded.”

In the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, Colorado has “runners on base in Utah and Arizona,” where the virus’ spread has turned more dire, Polis said.

“It really depends on our behavior here in the next few weeks and months,” the governor added.

Polis’ uncharacteristically worried tone found more support in data later at a June 24 news conference, when he highlighted outbreaks around the state.

In roughly one week in June alone, Boulder County saw more than 100 new cases, largely linked to graduating college seniors — and Polis warned the situation could balloon if Coloradans don’t wear masks and take caution in public.

“We are starting to see new outbreaks in different parts of the state: San Luis Valley, El Paso County, Boulder County, San Miguel County. We’re also watching Eagle County very closely,” Polis said, adding that “all of our gains could be reversed very quickly if we’re not careful.”

A screen shot of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis at a June 24 news conference on COVID-19. An interpreter for the hearing impaired appears at upper right.

COURTESY OF GOVERNOR’S OFFICE

The same day as Polis’ news conference, state officials said that 324 additional people had tested positive for coronavirus in Colorado, the biggest oneday total since May. A key test for the state will be how Coloradans handle the Fourth of July, and Polis emphasized the importance of treating it differently than many Americans approached Memorial Day weekend.

“We don’t want our Fourth of July holiday in Colorado to be what Memorial Day weekend was in Arizona and Florida and lead to a renewed round of 20 times the level of virus, where you get to the point where it could be overwhelming our health care facilities,” Polis said June 24.

More young people infected The governor brought in Rachel Herlihy, state epidemiologist, to explain the changing trends in the virus’ spread.

Since Colorado’s COVID-19 peak in mid-to-late April, officials have seen a steady decline in hospitalizations, deaths and cases, Herlihy said.

But after the week of June 7 — which saw the lowest number of cases in months — the week of June 14 showed an uptick, Herlihy said.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released guidance June 24 to allow outdoor visitation at senior homes and other care facilities.

“Isolation of individuals in nursing homes, group homes, assisted living communities and other congregate settings impose substantial physical and mental health consequences for these residents,” the state’s COVID-19 website said.

“Social distancing and use of electronic means of communication remain strongly recommended,” but the state decided to implement this guidance now because Colorado’s disease rates are low, the website and a news release said.

The guidance says: • The facility cannot have outdoor visitation if it had any recent positive COVID-19 cases or outbreaks and has

As of the state’s June 18 update to the safer-at-home order, only a handful of spaces are still required to be closed statewide.

They include establishments primarily based on smoking, such as cigar and hookah bars and cannabis social-use businesses; amusement parks and arcades; and bounce houses and ball pits in any public or commercial venue.

Sporting events, except for recreational sports leagues, also are not authorized.

However, counties may apply to open those any of those establishments with a “variance,” or waiver, from the safer-at-home order.

Casinos recently were able to open after the state approved variances for Teller and Gilpin counties.

Horse races are treated as outdoor events and now can have participants and spectators based on outdoor event crowd limits.

Off-track betting can operate under the recent indoor event guidance.

Under the safer-at-home order, gatherings of more than 10 people in public and private spaces in general are still prohibited, except for in certain settings such as day camps and recreational sports leagues. Many types of events can include much larger crowds.

Houses of worship also may hold larger numbers of people with at least 6 feet between individuals or parties. A “party” includes members of a household who live together, the state’s guidance says.

And the disease’s reproductive number — sometimes written “R0” and pronounced “R naught” — has risen dangerously close to where Colorado’s progress would reverse. The number represents the average infections generated by each COVID-19 case, meaning if the number sits below one, the number of new cases per day is declining.

The reproductive number had fallen from about four in March to below one, but now, it sits at about 0.96, Herlihy said on June 24. That means the virus’ spread could soon ramp up again.

The lion’s share of COVID-19 deaths has occurred among older Coloradans, but since the peak, the average age of Colorado’s cases has declined — which means the disease is spreading in younger populations, Herlihy said.

“For people that are in their 70s, almost half will need to be hospitalized who contract this virus,” Polis said. “For people in their 20s, it’s still about 1 in 15 to 1 in 20 that need to be hospitalized.”

Moreover, Polis asked 20-somethings living with parents in their 60s: “Are you also willing to have that 1-in-3

chance that your parents will be hospitalized?”

not completed the 14-day isolation period.

• Facilities with active cases cannot offer visits.

• Visits must be scheduled.

• The visitor must be greeted outside by staff, who will check the visitor’s temperature and screen for symptoms.

Visitors with symptoms in the previous 14 days should not be allowed.

Residents in isolation or quarantine related to COVID-19 or who have symptoms may not participate.

• All visitors must wear a face covering. All staff and the resident must wear a surgical or cloth mask unless doing so would inhibit the resident’s health.

• Facilities must designate a meeting area outdoors for visits. The facility should ensure that residents not participating in visits continue to have access to outdoor space. The area must be monitoredSEEtoWARN, ensure P11 it remains

Protests’ impact Polis supported the motivation behind recent Denver-area protests — a reaction to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, which sparked nationwide unrest — but he worried about their effect on the virus’ spread. Demonstrations continued throughout the Denver metro area for weeks, bringing thousands in close contact.

“Health experts tell me (the protests) could result in hundreds of new cases,” Polis said in a June 2 news conference.

Polis didn’t characterize the protests as playing a large role in Colorado’s June outbreaks, saying “there’s some evidence that” some of the people involved in the Boulder outbreak attended marches.

“We don’t necessarily have that same information from Denver,” Polis said June 24.

“We believe it was associated with large get-togethers and parties.”

For some areas, a turning point The outbreaks come at a critical juncture for the state as it nears its third phase of

separated from the facility population and staff.

• No more than eight people (including resident, staff and visitors) in the gathering, or the number determined by using the state’s social distancing space calculator at tinyurl.com/ColoradoSpaceCalculator — whichever is smaller.

• Furniture used should be cleaned and disinfected between visits.

The guidance applies to long-term care, skilled nursing, nursing, assisted living, intermediate care and independent living facilities, along with group homes.

The state may amend the guidance if Colorado sees cases increase and data suggest that visitation is no longer safe, the release said. Outdoor visitation will not be allowed if the facility has an outbreak or if the community is under a stay-at-home order.

The guidance does not address

social distancing policy, which officials dubbed “protect our neighbors.” The first two phases were the stay-at-home and current safer-at-home orders.

Under the “protect our neighbors” phase, some parts of the state could allow “all activities to occur” at 50% capacity, with up to 500 people in one setting and at least 6 feet between nonhousehold members, according to information the state has released about how the rules could shape up. The phase could be implemented in some counties by around early July, Polis has said.

Over time, that 50% threshold could even be increased if COVID-19’s spread doesn’t worsen in a region, Polis has said.

To enter the phase, according to a draft framework, communities must meet scientifically established thresholds of: • Low disease-transmission levels.

• Local public health agency capacity for testing, contact tracing and outbreak response.

• Hospital ability to meet needs of all patients and handle the surge in demand for intensive hospital care.

When questioned about whether the state should continue to relax its restrictions, Polis has emphasized that not all parts of Colorado will move to the new phase at once.

“If Boulder were to fail to contain the virus at the student level” and it spread, “that community would likely need to take additional steps before it expanded to additional communities,” Polis said June 18.

The “protect our neighbors” phase puts a large focus on local public health agencies’ preparedness to handle outbreaks.

“We are in regular contact with every county health department,” Polis said.

Earlier in June, Polis pointed to a likely “second wave” of the virus’ spread in the fall, according to the state’s modeling.

The flu season’s overlap with the pandemic is expected to impact hospital bed capacity, the governor has said.

“compassionate care visits,” such as in end-of-life situations. Under federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, those visits have been allowed on a case-by-case basis and should include symptom screening to prevent spread of COVID-19.

Public health orders establish requirements that Coloradans must follow, while guidance documents provide instructions for how businesses and individuals can comply with the orders, according to the release.

Gov. Jared Polis announced on June 4 that the state is working on a program called Lifeline Pass to allow visits at nursing homes and senior care facilities from those who test negative for COVID-19 and have no known exposure or symptoms.

At a news conference June 18, Polis said the state was still working on the Lifeline Pass program.

Arvada Press 11

0July 2, 2020

Sikh Coalition calls for hate crime charges in Lakewood attack Store owner Lakhwant Singh was struck by a vehicle in April

BY JOSEPH RIOS JRIOS@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

The Sikh Coalition, which works to protect the constitutional right to practice faith, is calling on the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office to press hate crime charges after Lakhwant Singh, a Lakewood liquor store owner, was attacked by a man charged with striking him with his car.

An affidavit from the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office alleges that Eric Breemen, a 36-year-old Denver resident, struck Singh, who owns Two Angels Liquors, with a black sedan on April 29.

Breeman was charged with six felonies, including attempted murder, first-degree assault for extreme indifference, first-degree assault for causing serious bodily injury, leaving a scene involving serious bodily injury, vehicular assault and violating bail bond conditions.

When asked if the DA’s Office is considering hate crime charges for Breemen, Pam Russell, a spokesperson for the office, said the investigation in the case is ongoing.

Amrith Kaur, Sikh Coalition

Lakhwant Singh is pictured at a mask, sanitizer and meal giveaway for health-care workers and first responders earlier this year at Two Angels Liquors, which Singh owns.

COURTESY OF ONKAR LAKHWANT legal director, said Breemen told Singh to go back to his country before the incident occurred and accused him of being from the Middle East.

When discussing the alleged incident, Singh’s son, Onkar Singh, told Colorado Community Media that a man walked inside Two Angels Liquors, cursed loudly, and then went to the counter of the liquor store and started breaking everything he saw.

Singh’s wife spoke to Singh in Punjabi, his native language, when the man was at the store’s counter, Kaur said.

The man then started screaming at the couple, telling them they don’t belong in the country, according to Kaur.

After leaving the store’s counter, the man went to his vehicle, and Singh went to take a photo of the man’s license plate to report him to the police, Onkar said, who watched a video of the incident.

The man then drove his vehicle into Singh and ran him over, according to Onkar.

Breemen told police he was followed by the Two Angels Liquors owner who “looked like an older Arab,” according

to the arrest affidavit.

“There is a pattern in the way (the assailant) treated (Singh) and his wife and the way (the man) decided it’s up to him to decide whether (Singh) belongs in this country and the way (the man) attacked him so brutally. I think all of us as a society need to stop, pause and reflect — it’s 2020 and this action is happening,” Kaur said.

“And in addition to that, we’re talking about an individual who thinks it’s OK to ram his vehicle into someone.

We think it’s important to recognize vehicle ramming isn’t an isolated thing when we’re talking about individuals in general who want to hurt people who have been othered,” Kaur added.

Singh suffered from a broken left arm, broken ribs, internal bleeding, a possible clavicle fracture and a spinal fracture, Onkar said. He is hopeful to return home from a rehabilitation facility in early July.

Kaur said Singh participated in a videocall with an assistant First Judicial District attorney and a Jefferson County investigator to discuss his side of the incident.

“No one deserves to be targeted because of who they are, and I hope that sharing my story sheds further light on the hatred and bigotry faced

by Sikhs and others across the

country. Colorado is my home, and I urge the authorities in charge of my attacker’s case to demonstrate, through action, that crimes rooted in hate will not be tolerated,” Singh said in a statement.

According to the Sikh Coalition, there are more than 25 million Sikhs worldwide — most of whom live in Punjab, India. CNN described Sikhism as a monotheistic faith that believes in equality and service to others.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a traditional offense such as murder, arson or vandalism with an added element of bias.

Alexis King, a Democratic candidate for First Judicial District attorney, released a statement supporting the idea of filing hate crime charges against Breemen.

Breemen is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on July 24.

“A hate crime doesn’t just impact an individual — it impacts the entire community.

It has been nearly two months for this case, and (the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office) has yet to guarantee hate crime charges are forthcoming,” said Nikki Singh, policy and advocacy manager for the Sikh Coalition. “It’s not something that just the Sikh community in Colorado is monitoring. The Sikh community at large is.”

Lakewood recognizes sustainability efforts

BY JOSEPH RIOS JRIOS@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Austin Adamson is a Phoenix native and says he understands the importance of conserving water.

When he opened up Ballmer Peak Distillery in Lakewood with Eric Strom last November, he had a goal of being sustainable. Ballmer Peak Distillery has a 320-gallon reservoir it uses in the fermentation process that is recirculated — an action that conserves more than 400,000 gallons of water.

The distillery also managed to keep 24,000 pounds of liquid waste from going to the landfill by partnering with Originateve, which provides holistic education opportunities to children.

Originateve uses Ballmer Peak Distillery’s waste as compost, feed and fertilizer.

Ballmer Peak Distillery’s work to be sustainable isn’t going unnoticed and is why it is one of eight of this year’s recipients of Lakewood’s Sustainability Awards.

The awards were established in 2008 and recognize leadership in community sustainability. The city announced the sustainability award winners on June 22.

“It’s really exciting to be recognized within the community. We did (sustainable efforts) out of it being the right thing to do,” said Adamson. “I’m proud to be recognized and to feel like we are making a difference in our community.”

Among the city’s sustainability award winners include a group of former fifth graders from South Lakewood Elementary School known as the

“Styrofoam Stoppers.”

In 2019, the class learned about the negative impacts Styrofoam can have on human health and the environment and created projects like computer and board games, presentations, plays, posters and more about the issue.

In April of 2019, the Styrofoam Stoppers presented research about Styrofoam to officials like Lakewood Sustainability Manager Jonathan Wachtel and Lakewood Mayor Adam Paul.

The class launched an online petition calling for Styrofoam lunch trays to be removed from South Lakewood Elementary. Their efforts were a success, and Styrofoam trays are no longer used at the school.

Jonathan Durso, a member of the Styrofoam Stoppers, worked to help his classmates with their projects.

When the fifth-grade class found out about the school ending its use of Styrofoam trays, the classroom erupted in cheers, Durso said.

“We realized that Styrofoam has a bunch of toxins in it, and they were getting in our food. We worked really hard on our projects,” said Durso, who is preparing to start seventh grade at Creighton Middle School in Lakewood.

The class was led by Christopher Sorency, a fifth-grade teacher at South Lakewood Elementary. Sorency said the Styrofoam Stoppers were genuinely interested in ending Styrofoam tray use at the school and that his job was to get his students excited about having a voice in the community.

“It’s pretty amazing to have some fifth graders recognized by their

community for their hard work. The community is proud of them, and I am proud of them,” said Sorency. “Letting the kids have a voice in their community was powerful.”

Other sustainability award winners include the Devinny Elementary Environmental Club in Lakewood, a group of around 50 students who are in grades first through fifth.

The club collected over 150 pounds of items that are hard to recycle like lined food wrappers and used makeup containers. It also collected over 3,000 pounds each of paper and paint products to recycle through an Eco Fair it hosted.

The club sent in squeezable food

ST. JOAN OF ARC C AT H O L I C C H U R C H

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pouches and foil lined energy bar wrappers to TerraCycle — a recycling company headquartered in Trenton, New Jersey. TerraCycle sent the club $140 for their food pouches and wrappers that was then donated to worldwide environmental causes.

Lindsey Rankin, who heads up the club, said she didn’t have to push the club members because they were determined to make a positive impact on the environment.

“I am so excited that so many of the kids seem to be passionate about (sustainability). (The sustainability award) helps encourage them to take it further and carry it forward as they move on in their lives,” said Rankin.

To advertise your place of worship in this section, call Erin at 303-566-4074 or email eaddenbrooke@ ColoradoCommunityMedia.com

12 Arvada Press

LOCAL

LIFE

July 2, 2020J

What Denver-area archivists are doing to protect the memory of this time

BY PAUL ALBANI-BURGIO PALBANIBURGIO@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

W

hen six-year-old Noah Alpert decided to express his feelings about his life during the COVID-19 pandemic in a song, he never could have imagined that song would someday end up in the collection of a major historical museum.

Yet that’s just where it is now, thanks to a new effort underway at History Colorado to document the pandemic’s impact on Colorado that is finding material worth saving in the most unexpected places.

The Denver historical society, which operates the History Colorado Center downtown, launched its COVID-19 collecting project in late March, when it posted a message on its website asking Colorado residents to share stories about the experiences with COVID-19 with it. The post explained that the museum was giving residents a variety of means to do so ranging from answering a series of survey questions online to creating a journal and then submitting it to the museum.

Although the collection process (like the crisis itself) is still ongoing, senior curator Alisa DiGiacomo said several themes and commonalities have already begun to emerge from the impressive amount of material that has already been collected.

“It’s clear the commonalities as far as the people that have responded,” she said. “That feeling of isolation, which for the people who haven’t necessarily been directly affected is also mixed with gratitude as far as tragedy, but still who are in isolation and getting used to the new normal. We’ve also had interesting submissions from children, which it’s fascinating to see that perspective and to, for example, know that students miss school and that they now have a different perspective of missing what they took for granted and being in the classroom.”

That said, there are still some perspectives that DiGiacomo feels still need to be brought into the growing collection.

“Part of what we know is missing is what I would call the more tragic stories whether it’s somebody that’s been directly affected by COVID or lost a family member or had financial hardship,” said DiGiacomo. “Those are some of the stories that we know will be coming but we know that it takes a little time.”

Closed signs collected History Colorado, however, will be just one of several institutions where future generations will be able to find documents and other artifacts from this current crisis.

At the Jefferson County Archives, archivist Ronda Frasier said her efforts have focused on county government communications related to the crisis.

“I have just been basically gathering and saving all of the communications that have been put out by the county

This image of graffiti-style lettering and cartoon figures that have been painted on the windows of the Irish Rover bar on South Broadway has been added to the library’s collection of images documenting COVID-19’s impact on the Denver area, which can be viewed online.

COURTESY OF KELI SCHMID VIA DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY to document the historic Black Lives Matter protests that recently took place around the Colorado State Capitol just blocks away from the museum.

This image of empty grocery stores shelves in Arvada is part of History Colorado’s online database of COVID-19-related photographs.

COURTESY OF HISTORY COLORADO

DENVER AREA COVID-19 DOCUMENTATION EFFORTS History Colorado History Colorado is collecting journals, voicemails and other artifacts, with a focus on first-person narratives. Visit www. historycolorado.org/covid-19 for more information. Some documents have already been added to History Colorado’s online collection. They can be viewed at: 5008.sydcommissioners and Jeffco Public Health,” said Frasier. “That includes both everything that has gone to the public as well as everything that has gone to employees.”

Just across the street from the History Colorado Center on North Broadway, the Denver Public Library has also been working to document the local impact of COVID-19, albeit by taking a slightly different approach.

After learning that History Colorado planned to focus on collecting journals and other oral histories, the library’s Western Histories and Genealogy Department decided it would work to document the impact on businesses by having staff go out in their own neighborhoods to take pictures of closed signs at local businesses from throughout the city. They also collected several take-out menus from restaurants that provide a different look at the impact on the restaurant industry.

“It was pretty ephemeral because most of those signs are now gone and those businesses are now open,” said Jamie Seemiller, the department’s Acquisitions Archivist. “So, it was just trying to document how that short time period affected neighborhoods and businesses in those neighborhoods.”

neyplus.com/HistoryColorado_ArgusNet_Final/Portal.aspx?lang=en-US. Denver Public Library The Denver Public Library has collected photos, menus and other materials. Many of those materials have been published to its Digital Collections site at https://digital. denverlibrary.org/digital/.

At the Golden History Museum and Park in Golden, curator Mark Dodge put out a call to the Golden community asking them to consider and submit suggestions for how that museum should document the pandemic. Some of the suggestions have included N-95 masks, a copy of Jefferson County’s Public Health Orders and even hand sanitizer and toilet paper.

Dodge said in a post on the museum’s website that it has already added a homemade face mask, along with dozens of photos of downtown Golden taken on March 18, to its collection.

Colorado State University’s libraries, meanwhile, are focusing their collection efforts on documenting the impact of the pandemic on the school’s Fort Collins campus.

“We are interested in your stories about the shift to remote instruction and learning, studying and working from home, working at off-campus jobs, the impact of closing residence halls and other campus services, and the ways you and your friends and family are staying in touch during the pandemic,” reads a post on the library’s website.

In addition to collecting photos and signs to document COVID-19, Seemiller said the library has also aimed

Protests also being documented One morning, a photographer visited the area around the Capitol before protesting had resumed to document the pro-Black-Lives-Matter graffiti that now covered the capitol and several surrounding buildings. Another staff member, who lives in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, later collected around 30 protest signs that will be digitized and made available online.

The library also has some videos of the protesting, although Seemiller said staff will blur out the faces of those captured on the video to protect their privacy.

Documenting the protests has presented particular challenges, Seemiller said.

“When we documented the Women’s Marches over the last few years, we had a table set up down there and we would tell people to donate their stuff and have them fill out our forms,” said Seemiller. “But this one moved so quickly that he kind of just found abandoned signs so we don’t always know the complete story behind each sign like we did with the Women’s March.”

The library’s archiving activities have also been further complicated by COVID-19 itself, which has kept staff away from their office’s since March.

Someday, researchers might examine the various COVID-19 collections being amassed across the state alongside institutions collections of material from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which tend to be more limited.

Seemiller said the library’s collection includes records of who died as well as obituaries.

History Colorado’s material, mostly consists of newspapers from the pandemic that are contained in its extensive newspaper archive. However, the museum also recently had the opportunity to acquire the trunk of a woman who died in that pandemic.

DiGiacomo, however, expects the museum’s COVID-19 collection to be much richer than its Spanish Flu collection for one key reason.

“The biggest difference is that we do not have material as rich as far as the first-hand experience as we have the opportunity to collect right now,” she said.

Arvada Press 13

0July 2, 2020

Breweries collaborate on new Golden-themed beer for charity Cans of Golden Strong Ale are being sold in 7 Golden taprooms

BY PAUL ALBANI-BURGIO PALBANIBURGIO@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

COVID-19 put a stop (for the time being anyway) to Collaboration Fest, the Denver area’s annual event that brings brewers from around the state together to create new beers. But it couldn’t squelch the spirit of collaboration that is at the heart of that event.

Instead, with the event put on indefinite hold, several Golden breweries decided to work together to create a new beer that would pay tribute to the city they call home while helping organizations that serve it.

The result is the Golden Strong Ale, a new Belgian Ale that is now for sale in specialty 16 oz. cans in several Golden brewery taprooms.

70% of the proceeds from the sale of the beer will go toward the Colorado Brewer’s Guild, the state’s nonprofit brewery trade association which says its mission is “to promote, protect, and propel independent craft breweries in [Colorado] through advocacy, community, education, and public awareness.”

Collaboration Fest is held each year as a fundraiser for Colorado Brewer’s Guild, meaning the organization has missed out on those funds

File photo. so far this year.

“The Brewers Guild does so much to support Colorado breweries,” said Over Yonder Co-founder Ashleigh Bilodeaux. “They lost out on two major fundraising events due to COVID-19,

JESSICA GIBBS

and it was an obvious choice to give back to them with this collaboration.”

20% of the proceeds will go toward charities chosen by the breweries, including the Golden Backpack Program and the Marsha P. Johnson Institute,

which is dedicated to protecting the rights of Black Transgender people.

The remaining 10% are going back to the breweries.

SEE BEER, P14

The Art of the Brick welcomes guests back to DMNS

A

space with about 10 million Lego bricks in it probably sounds like a dream come true for many children (and quite a few adults as well), COMING but for artist Nathan ATTRACTIONS Sawaya, that’s just his workspace.

“They’re all sorted by shape and color, so when you walk in you see these rows of colors. I usually have two or three projects going at a time,” Sawaya said during a sneak peek of The Clarke Reader Art of the Brick on June 23. “I get inspiration from so many things, especially since I get to travel so much, and I use what I see as a resource.”

The opening of Sawaya’s The Art of the Brick exhibition at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, 2001 Colorado Blvd., coincides with the reopening of the museum itself, which was shut down for a historic 100 days in responsive to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The exhibit is free with the purchase of a general admission ticket through Sept.

7 (Labor Day).

“We’re always looking for experiences that allow our guests to be curious, creative and playful,” said Keelin MacCarthy, one of the museum’s educators.

“And for those who may wonder why we’re showing an art exhibit at a science museum, we know from STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art and Math) programs that art and science are not all that different.”

The Art of the Brick features about 100 works, including original creations as well as Lego versions of famous

masterpieces (like Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and the “Venus de Milo”).

Another feature is a partnership with award-winning photographer Dean West, called “In Pieces.” All of this is set-up in a large exhibit space, which allows visitors to view it from far away and then close up, where the detail of how the pieces work together can be appreciated. Some works have upwards of 120,000 pieces.

“The exhibit is laid out in a way I’ve not seen before because of the needed social distancing, but I love it,” Sawaya said. “The pieces have room to breathe.

When you look closely you see all the right angles, but when you look from far away, you see it bend to curves.”

The Denver stop for the well-traveled exhibition - it has been to 100 cities, 20 countries and six continents - is particularly poignant for Sawaya, who said that the Denver Museum of Nature & Science was the first museum he ever visited. He went with his grandparents, who also gave him his first Lego set when he was about 5 years old - and he still is inspired by them decades later.

That all-ages appeal is what makes The Art of the Brick a perfect summer exhibit.

“Lego makes art so accessible,” he said. “The whole idea is to inspire more art and creativity.”

For more information and to make a reservation (as well as the social distancing rules for guests), visit dmns. org/brick.

Clarke’s Concert of the Week - A Capitol Fourth In the mood for something traditional this Independence Day? Hard to be more so than PBS’ annual A Capi-

tol Fourth live event, which will be livestreaming this year beginning at 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 4.

This year’s concert is hosted by John Stamos and Vanessa Williams and will feature performances by a slew of legends like The Temptations, John Fogerty, Patti LaBelle and Renée Fleming, among many others. The event will also feature the National Symphony Orchestra and live fireworks from Washington D.C. Visit www.pbs.org/a-capitol-fourth/ home/ to stream the show.

Streaming style - ‘Hamilton’ Even people who barely pay attention to the theater world are familiar with “Hamilton.” It was supposed to

make its second appearance in Denver this autumn before COVID-19 slammed the breaks on everything. But for once, the shutdown might be a good thing because a film version of the original Broadway cast was supposed to hit movie theaters more than a year from now. Instead, home audiences can watch it on Disney Plus beginning Friday, July 3.

The movie version was filmed over three days in 2016 at New York’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, so get your opera gloves and glasses and I’ll see you at the show.

Clarke Reader’s column on culture appears on a weekly basis. He can be reached at Clarke.Reader@hotmail.com.

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14 Arvada Press

July 2, 2020J

C R O S SWO R D P U Z Z L E

A 16-oz. can of Golden Strong Ale. The cans, which depict South Table Mountain, are being sold at seven Golden breweries.

COURTESY PHOTO

BEER FROM PAGE 13

Prior to the stay-at-home order taking effect in March, several brewers from the participating breweries collaborated on recipe development and then met for a brew day at Over Yonder Brewing Company.

Before the stay-at-home order took effect, breweries collaborated on recipe development and convened for a brew day at Over Yonder Brewing Company. Several of the participating breweries also donated materials to the project.

For example, New Terrain Brewing Company contributed canning materials while AC Golden Brewing Company donated grain from Root Shoot Malting and locally-grown hops.

Several other Golden businesses also contributed to the brewing effort. Those included Propagate Lab,

which supplied the yeast, and CODI manufacturing, which donated mobile-canning equipment that was used to fill cans with the beer.

The Golden Strong Ale, which has an ABV of 9.7%, is described its brewers as having a bold flavor with peppery notes of spices, pear, and banana. The liberal use of hops gives the beer a fruity champagnelike flavor balanced by a malty backbone and a dry finish.

“Golden has a surprisingly large and active brewery community,” said Alan Windhausen, the head brewer for Holidaily Brewing.

“We’ve come together for pints and collaborations in the past, but this has been especially wonderful to see this Collaboration Fest brew turn into a city-wide project to support our beer family.”

Cans of Golden Strong Ale are being sold in all of the participating breweries’ taprooms, except Holidaily Brewing Company AC Golden Brewing Company.

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Arvada Press 19

LOCAL

SPORTS ‘We will take what we can get’

Retired Denver Broncos spokesman talks significance of sports in city

BY JIM BENTON JBENTON@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Denver is the smallest of the 13 U.S. cities with four professional sports teams in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League and National Basketball Association.

But is Denver really a sports city?

Let’s ask somebody who should know.

Jim Saccomano was born and raised in Denver. He went to Mount Carmel High School, has two degrees from Metropolitan State University of Denver and earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Colorado.

Saccomano worked as the public relations chief for the Denver Bears and was the highly respected Denver Broncos vice president of public relations for 36 years before retiring in 2013.

“It’s a knee-jerk answer, but sports are very important in Denver,” Saccomano said.

“Sometimes we just get used to things and take them for granted. Like on those cool summer nights, I step outside on my deck and I say, ‘Oh, what a beautiful night this would be at Coors Field.’”

He added that people work hard, and that’s one reason sports talk shows are so big.

“People are driving home from work and they listen to those shows,” Saccomano said. “Then you come home, have dinner and sports are all on TV. It’s a diversion. Everybody works hard enough

he would be traded, but they were thinking Raiders and Al Davis, or the Chargers. That statue at the airport of Wally Schirra, no offense what so ever, but that could easily be John Elway. If you say Denver internationally, they say, ‘Oh Elway, Broncos.’”

Elway, as Broncos president of football operations, signed Manning as a free agent.

“I remember sitting in the press conference room,” Saccomano said, “waiting for the Manning press conference and Les Shapiro said to me, ‘You know, I’ve sat in this room for so many press conferences and I just can’t believe in a few minutes, Peyton Manning will walk in these doors.’”

and it’s a wonderful thing for them to say, ‘Now, I’m watching my team.’ Sports are very important and I’ll be glad to have it back.”

Saccomano believes sports — on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic — will be back in the near future.

“I just hope we play this fall and have fans when we can,” said Saccomano. “Right now, we will take what we can get.

Everybody is going to have to adjust — the fans, the press, the teams, the players — and then we’ll see. It’s an adjustment for all of us and just shows us that nothing ever stays the same.”

Reminiscing on Denver’s sports history Saccomano — with a little encouragement — remembered way too much of Denver’s sports history to reminiscence in this column.

But here are a few of his thoughts about baseball, onetime Broncos owner Gerald Phipps, erstwhile Broncos owner Edgar Kaiser and Broncos quarterbacks John Elway and Peyton Manning.

“Denver was always a baseball town,” Saccomano pointed out. “Denver had a professional team in 1895.

You think about it, and how the heck are you going someplace in 1895? By wagon? Five guys in a wagon? Three miles seems like a pretty good trek on a wagon.”

Saccomano remembered being shown the newspaper when Denver became a Triple A franchise from the Western League.

“The headline type was so big, almost as big as ‘War in Europe Over,’” Saccomano said. He added that “baseball was big, and the dog races. Sounds crazy now, but in the ‘50s, that was a really big thing. There wasn’t that much in Denver — the National Western Stock Show

Jim Saccomano served as the vice president of public relations for the Denver Broncos for 36 years before retiring in 2013.

PHOTO BY ERIC LARS BAKKE

and Rodeo, and the Denver Bears, which were an affiliate of the Yankees and Tigers, and had great success.”

And what about the Broncos? Saccomano was once quoted as saying, “the Broncos are the state religion in Colorado and are the soul of the city.”

“When the Broncos came, I always felt historically that they were terrible,” admitted Saccomano. “Then in about 1964, they almost moved to Atlanta. The ownership group was going to sell to Atlanta, and then Gerry Phipps excuses himself from a meeting, goes across the street to a bank, borrows a million dollars and comes back and buys out his partners. Then Phipps owned the Broncos.”

Saccomano added that sea-

son tickets sales were in the 5,000-to-7,000 range.

“And then after a terrible year, when they didn’t move and were saved, there were 22,000 season tickets in (the) 35,000-seat Bears Stadium,” Saccomano said. “The Broncos just became enormous and set the stage for the Nuggets — which were originally the Rockets — and the other sports.”

Two other significant moves include owner Edgar Kaiser arranging the trade to get quarterback John Elway to Denver in 1983, and Elway enticing quarterback Peyton Manning to play for the Broncos before the 2012 season.

“Kaiser deserves a lot of credit for what he did to get Elway,” said Saccomano.

“Everybody was thinking

Looking at sports down the road Saccomano says it will take some time for the Broncos, Nuggets, Avalanche and other sports to rebound from the problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It will be a big change, even more so because we will get used to watching games on TV,” said Saccomano.

“It just makes it harder for everybody to get all those people back. It will take them a while to rebound.

The Broncos are more like, to me, a big-time college program in terms of how the fans are to them. The Steelers and Packers are like us.

They transcend everything and so do the Broncos. Good or bad.”

Saccomano added that discussions on tickets prices are “kind of like a two-edged sword.”

“Teams would like to raise them but it’s a terrible time to do that,” Saccomano said.

“You probably have to say, ‘Welcome to 2021 and the ticket office is open.’ And for every ticket you sell, you say, ‘Thank you sir, thank you ma’am.’”

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PUBLIC NOTICES

Public Notices call Sheree 303.566.4088 Legals City and County PUBLIC NOTICE A public hearing will be held virtually before the Arvada Planning Commission on July 21, 2020,

at 6:15 p.m., when and where you may speak on the matter to consider a Preliminary Development Plan for Arvada TOD South, generally located at 5565 Wadsworth Bypass. Members of the public may join virtually via phone by emailing jsuk@arvada.org for the phone number, the email must mention this meeting date. To submit a request for public comment, you must go to arvada.org/PlnCommission and complete the public comment form by 5 p.m. on 7/21/2020. Additional information can be obtained from https:// www.arvadapermits.org/etrakit3/search/project. aspx?activityno=DA2020-0022.

legals@coloradocommunitymedia.com

CITY OF ARVADA PLANNING COMMISSION /s/ Patricia Connell, Secretary Legal Notice No. 407765 First Publication: July 2, 2020 Last Publication: July 2, 2020 Publisher: Wheat Ridge Transcript PUBLIC NOTICE A public hearing will be held virtually before the Arvada Planning Commission on July 21, 2020,

at 6:15 p.m., when and where you may speak on the matter to consider a Major Modification for the Arvada Fire Station #3 Rebuild, generally located at 7300 Kipling St. Members of the public may join virtually via phone by emailing jsuk@ arvada.org for the phone number, the email must mention this meeting date. To submit a request for public comment, you must go to arvada.org/ PlnCommission and complete the public comment form by 5 p.m. on 7/21/2020. Additional information can be obtained from https://www.arvadapermits.org/etrakit3/search/ project.aspx?activityno=DA2020-0051.

CITY OF ARVADA PLANNING COMMISSION /s/ Patricia Connell, Secretary Legal Notice No. 407766 First Publication: July 2, 2020 Last Publication: July 2, 2020 Publisher: Wheat Ridge Transcript

###

Arvada Legals 7.2.20 * 1

20 Arvada Press

July 2, 2020

The age of the Ash Borers Arvada infestation proves that emerald pests are here to stay

BY SCOTT TAYLOR STAYLOR@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

After years of municipal efforts to fence in the Ash tree killing Emerald Ash Borers and keep them from expanding out of Boulder County, the inevitable has arrived.

They’re here.

“I guess the message I’d like to tell people is that if they’ve been holding back and waiting to do the treatment on their ash trees because it’s not quite here yet, well, we do believe that it’s here now,” said Westminster City Forester John Kasza.

Westminster crews first found the emerald pests infesting the trees in the parking lot outside the Willow Run Shopping Center at the end of August 2019.

Now they’ve been found just to the south, in neighbor Arvada. Craig Hillegass, Arvada’s city forester, said the bugs were discovered on Ash trees on private property on the Southeastern portion of the city, in the neighborhood surrounding Homestead Park.

Ben Irwin, Arvada’s public information officer, said they’ve been getting ready for this moment.

“We finished up a management plan for this earlier this year, even before they discovered the outbreak,” Irwin said. “We are doing an inventory of all of our trees, looking at their condition. Some will be treated, based on their location and their value to the

community. Others may be replaced slowly, over time.”

Westminster’s Kasza said he’s not sure that the bugs have spread elsewhere in between, but he’s pretty confident they have.

“We have not had any confirmed cases besides the one up north,” he said. “But it’s hard to detect emerald Ash Borers at the early stages of the infestation. It’s usually been in the tree for a year or two before we find it.”

So far, the cities of Northglenn and Thornton have not reported infestations of the green bugs.

U.S. pest since 2002 Emerald Ash Borers are a non-native wood-boring beetle responsible for the death and decline of tens of millions of ash trees in the United States and Canada. As a non-native insect, it lacks predators to keep it in check.

Colorado’s municipal forestry departments have been preparing for the bugs for years. The pest was first discovered in the U.S. in Michigan in 2002 and has been detected in Boulder, Gunbarrel, Longmont and Lafayette since 2013. The state forest service began a quarantine around Boulder County in 2013 to help prevent humanassisted spread of the pest.

But the borers broke quarantine two summers ago when pests were found near 136th Avenue and Main Street in Broomfield on August 2018. State state agriculture officials said they didn’t know if it spread there naturally — the insect can spread a half-mile each year on their own — or if it was brought in by people accidentally, on firewood or infected ash bark used to decorate yards and gardens.

And the bugs could find plenty of places to spread. Westminster has about 69,000 ash trees in the city limits — about 15 percent of the city’s total tree population. About 1,700 of those trees are under the city’s control, the rest on private land.

“We’re doing what we can about our trees,” Westminster’s Kasza said.

“We’re trying to spread the word to everyone else.”

Arvada claims about 97,000 Ash trees within the city limits, and about 1,500 on public property.

Hillegass, Arvada’s city forester, said the his crews efforts now are on saving high value trees. Those include special trees planted as memorials and some in certain areas.

“We’re going to treat about 50% of the trees,” he said. “If you look at them now, most of our Ash trees are in pretty rough shape anyway. They had a tough winter and late freezes, so it’s not cost effective for us to treat the ones in really bad shape or the ones smaller than ten inches around.”

Holes in the bark Property owners with ash trees should be on the lookout for thinning of leaves in the upper tree canopy, 1/8-inch D-shaped holes on the bark and vertical bark splitting with winding S-shaped tunnels underneath. People that find suspicious trees should report them by calling the Colorado Department of Agriculture at 1-888-248-5535 or filling out the EAB Report Form at https:// www.colorado.gov/pacific/agplants/ eab-identification-and-reporting.

Kasza said the green colored pests are not the only problems Front Range ash trees have right now. A native Ash

borer, the lilac variety, does kill some tree limbs but does not ultimately kill the tree.

“Late frosts hurt those trees as well,” Kasza said. “It’s been a difficult year for all of our trees.”

The best treatment is emamectin benzoate, an insecticide that was invented in 2001. For a simple treatment, tree owners can put the poison on the ground around the trees, where it will get absorbed into the trees trunk or they can drill into the trunk itself or inject the pesticide.

Kasza said injection tends to be more expensive and requires a professional to do it right, but it’s safer for the environment.

“If it’s in the soil, it can be absorbed into other plants, and then it kills beneficial insects like bees,” Kasza said. “We’d rather have people inject it right into the trunk, if they can.”

Both Kasza and Hillegass said that’s what their crews are doing.

“And then, we figure each treatment should last us about two years,” Hillegass said.

Green sashes Kasza said the city is trying to get the word out about the bugs and the effect they can have on the urban forest.

They’ve started wrapping select Ash trees in Westminster’s Forest with green plastic sashes to show how big a threat an infestation could be.

“We just chose to put them out, or help make the public aware of what’s going on, that the emerald Ash borers have been found in Westminster and Arvada,” Kasza said. “If they have nice Ash trees that they’re proud of, now is the time to act.”

C Mo #1 olora rtg Rev do ag ers ’s eB e rok er

Reverse Mortgage: The Lifesaving Help You’ve Been Looking For

by Matt Witt

I

s your mortgage payment “strangling” you? Are you worried about which bills to pay on your fixed income?

Is there no joy in the Golden years because your budget is so tight? A reverse mortgage may be the lifesaving help you have been seeking.

With a government-insured reverse mortgage, you can pay off your current mortgage, eliminate your monthly mortgage payment* and get the budget breathing-room you need. Like so many seniors right here in Colorado have discovered, not only can they eliminate their mortgage payment, they can also get tax-free cash to use for any purpose.

Even if you don’t have a mortgage, you may be “house rich and cash poor.” You have paid into your home for many years and have accumulated housing wealth that would normally only be accessible if you sell. However, with a reverse mortgage, you can access the equity in your home while you continue to own the home so you can get cash and make life a little easier.

To qualify for a reverse mortgage at least one borrower must be 62 or older, the home must be your primary residence, and you should have 30–60% equity. Just to clarify, with a reverse mortgage, you are the only one who owns your home and its equity. The bank does not.

We all want to live a long, healthy, independent life. With a reverse mortgage, aging-in-place is possible!

Call me today at 720-458-4034 to see if a reverse mortgage is right for you.

Silver Leaf Mortgage, Colorado’s #1 Reverse Mortgage Broker.

Matt Witt, NMLS #1638881, President at Silver Leaf Mortgage in Centennial.

Contact me at: 720-458-4034, or you can email me at: MattW@SilverLeafMortgage.com

* The homeowner is still responsible for applicable property taxes and homeowner’s insurance, as well as maintaining the property.

720-458-4034

Located in The Streets at SouthGlenn 6972 South Vine Street | Suite 366 | Centennial, CO 80122

No Upfront Appraisal Fee. Offer Code 0703CCM

Matt Witt

NMLS #1638881 Reverse Mortgage Specialist

720-458-4034

Matt Witt: Reve Mortgage Experse rt!

MattW@SilverLeafMortgage.com Listen to: The Reverse Mortgage Show Hosted by Matt Witt Legends 810 and 94.3FM, 670 KLTT, 100.7FM KLZ and 560 KLZ or see us live on Colorado’s Best KWGN CW2 & Fox-31, or Colorado & Company KUSA 9News SLM NMLS #1394377 is an Equal Housing Lender. Credit and collateral are subject to approval. Terms and conditions apply. This is not a commitment to lend. Programs, rates, terms and conditions are subject to change without notice. Regulated by the Department of Real Estate.