LOCAL

BY SCOTT TAYLOR STAYLOR@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Brighton leaders are fi ne expanding their current Victim Services program — which provides counseling and other services for crime victims — to include Fort Lupton and Lochbuie.

“Well, that’s a great idea,” Brighton Councilor Mary Ellen Pollack said during the City Council’s Oct. 11 study session meeting. “They are our neighbors and I think that the way times are now — we all know that it’s not pretty out there — and we can help them and they can help us. You never do know when we are going to have a real big emergency and it will take more than one department to deal with it.”

Colorado municipalities are required to provide some level of victim rights services. Brighton and Commerce City have combined their efforts since 2014 and Fort Lupton, Lochbuie and other communities relied upon the Weld County Sheriff’s Department to provide those services. Weld County announced earlier this year that it would stop providing those services after Dec. 31 of this year.

“Brighton and Commerce City Victim Services have established a reputation that far exceeds the normal services that victims receive,” Kim Messina, Brighton victim services manager, said. “We have been recognized locally, nationally and across the state. I don’t tell you that so you’ll say what a great job we do. We have built a program that is successful and based upon best practices that truly work.”

Lochbuie and the Fort Lupton police contacted Brighton to see if the program could be expanded. Messina said it could.

“One thing we thought about, though, is we will have to increase staff, but we can talk about that later in the budget,” Messina said.

Each department would provide space for the victim services staff to work and to meet confi dentially with crime victims. Victim advocates themselves would work in all the cities and train with all departments and Messina would work directly with each department’s chief of police.

She said it would call for hiring at least one full-time victim advocate for the program.

Increasing paid staff would allow for better coverage across the four municipalities.

She said that they will have to adapt what they do to work with each new police department.

“Currently Lochbuie and Fort Lupton have not had a robust victims services program,” she said. “We have about 75% call-out rate and we meet victims on the scene. That’s not something they have had or have been doing, so that could be a challenge for them and for our staff.”

It will also take those departments some work to get used to having victims services staff regularly involved on a regular basis, she said.

According to Messina, the expanded program will cost about $655,000 to operate annually and that would be shared by each community based on population, the number of victim rights calls for service in 2021 and the number of unattended deaths in each city. Under that formula, Commerce City would pay about $353,000, Brighton would pay about $213,000, Fort Lupton $52,000 and Lochbuie $36,000.

Councilor Clint Blackhurst wondered if Brighton volunteers would be asked to respond to the new communities. Messina said they would.

“Currently the way we have it, our volunteers come from both Brighton and Commerce City and they respond to whichever city calls,” she said.

He said he did see a concern with matching work cultures across the four departments.

“You have spent a good portion of your lifetime with the city training our offi cers on victim services and why it’s important and when they should be called,” Blackhurst said. “I venture to say those two agencies will not have the same culture going in, which could create confl icts.”

Deputy Brighton Police Chief Matt Domenico said that’s a valid concern.

“They are certainly getting a different level of service than what we provide in our community,” he said. “That being said, Kim and her staff have experience managing culture changes among organizations. There was a signifi cant culture change in Commerce City and the victim advocate program was viewed very differently.”

That’s changed, he said, and now victim services is an accepted part of the Commerce City Police Department’s culture.

“I feel very good that we will be able to recognize some signifi cant benefi ts while helping out our neighboring communities as well,” he said.

Advancing Adams plan advances

Adams County ratifi es plans for future vision

STAFF REPORT

A suite of master plans covering Transportation, and Parks, Open Space and Trails and comprehensive planning for Adams County passed County Commission muster Oct. 3.

Commissioners ratifi ed Advancing Adams, the newest suite of master plans that will guide growth and development in the county for the next 20 years. Advancing Adams also seeks to advance the health, safety and welfare of the residents and property owners of Adams County.

“It is not just growth itself that needs to be healthy, but it’s also the health of the people in this county that must be a priority,” said Commission Chair Lynn Baca.

Adams County is set to become the third most populous county in the state by 2040 - and because the economy has signifi cantly shifted since 2012, housing affordability has moved to the forefront of this plan. Advancing Adams updates the county’s current land use plan and development policies while incorporating other planning efforts such as open space, greenways, affordable housing, and transit/transportation.

“With this ratifi cation by the Board, we can better integrate our future planning efforts and use infrastructure investments to connect and re-connect diverse communities across the county in historic ways,” said Jenni Hall, Community and Economic Development director. “There is also an overarching theme of partnership with other organizations and local jurisdictions to leverage these investments wisely.”

The Advancing Adams plans identify areas for infi ll opportunities, including the development of parks, open space properties and trails, in areas that will transition between industrial and residential land uses in the future and in areas where higher density residential uses will be supported.

“Adams County is turning underutilized lands into public assets. It’s also one of our responsibilities to protect the environment and to strengthen it for the future,” Baca said.

Clustering services

The plans seek to cluster services and residential and employment opportunities within a 20-minute walk, bike or drive. It calls for adding 288 miles of bicycle lanes in Adams County and 6,500 acres of collective publicly accessible open spaces, parks, and greenways.

Adams County has the second highest growth rate in the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) region, making community amenities a primary focus of Advancing Adams. As of 2021, Adams County now owns and manages 2,166 acres of parks and open space, a 39% increase since 1998, and 40.75 miles of trails, a 60% increase since 1998.

Community participation

Advancing Adams included an unprecedented level of

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The historic depot has been through several transitions since then. Soon after it was moved, it opened as a rail-themed restaurant and its owners added a train car on the right of the depot. They also added a model train with tracks that runs along the top of the ceiling into the bathroom.

“I have people come in all the time and tell me, ‘When I was a little kid, we would come on my birthday,’ and the prime rib was supposed to be the best item on the menu,” said Natalie Cummings, president, and CEO.

The lower part of the depot also held a popular bar and Cummings said she knows plenty of people that enjoyed having drinks there. It was also a place where the district attorneys would come over and wait while their cases were being decided in District Court.

“There are lots of stories that went on at the depot and stories people won’t talk about because names could be mentioned. It’s pretty funny,” Cummings said.

Cummings said she believes the restaurant was sold, and a second restaurant tried to make it happen, but it wasn’t successful.

“Somewhere in 2000, it became a bicycle shop called Treads. They did an excellent job restoring the building and got the model train running again. They did a lot of work, and then it was closed down. There are lots of gaps in the story,” Cumming said.

The Chamber tried to work with the city to get into the building for years.

“Then last fall, we started talking to the city again and we were able to make the deal and moved in this March and we are very excited,” Cumming said.

Cummings said they have plans to use the space on the back patio between the Chamber, the library, and the Armory for functions.

“Today its grandeur, we can add outdoor lighting, get permanent furniture back in the patio,” Cummings said. “So we’re working with the Brighton Urban Renewal Authority to work on some ideas where we can partner and get those things done.”

They would like to use the backspace of the Chamber for a coffee shop and restaurant.

“The opportunities that exist are so fantastic, the partnerships we have here in this community between economic development for the city, city council, the Chamber,” Cummings said. “And of course, with everything that’s happening with the library, I think that we’re going to fi nd a solution that blesses the city but is also generates business. I’m looking forward to that.”

Cumming said the tourism center is slowly developing to create something usable.

“It will help generate more visitors. It’s our goal.”

VOTE

Georgia has been in the news in the last few years because of Trump supporters and allies claiming fraud in the 2020 Election. What are your thoughts about these claims, which have been found baseless?

In Georgia, all kinds of claims were made, and there has just been no evidence at all.

Outside of a handful of cases, there’s no evidence at all that there was voter fraud anywhere at the level that would fl ip an election. We had an initial presidential count, we had a machine recount and we had a full hand recount of the presidential election — all showing the same thing.

The only difference was that, administratively, we found out there were a couple of precincts and a couple of counties where their (results data) were not uploaded properly. So that was an administrative issue. It wasn’t fraud or anything like that. And they got corrected through the recount process. But even that didn’t come anywhere near to changing the outcome.

In Colorado, we have more than 3.7 million active registered voters. The conservativeleaning Heritage Foundation has documented 16 cases of voter fraud in the entire state since 2005. So what’s the takeaway from those numbers?

In general, cases of proven, verifi ed voter fraud are rare.

State (governments) are sort of the arbiters of elections, and even within that it’s really devolved down to the county level, or in some states, even to the township level. That’s where elections are being carried out at a very low level in the U.S. To perpetrate some kind of massive fraud, that makes it even more diffi cult given how devolved elections are in the U.S. It’s not like we have one central counting place in Washington, D.C.

You’d really need more than just voters. You need the cooperation of election offi cials, which is not going to happen, obviously. You should feel confi dent when you cast a ballot that it’s going to get counted and counted correctly.

What is a primary safeguard to ensure the integrity of the vote in U.S. states like Georgia, for example?

In Georgia, there are a lot of safeguards in place if you vote in person. You have to have a government-issued ID. So if you vote early, or on Election Day, it would be fairly diffi cult to try to impersonate someone. Even if you’re successful, that’s just one vote. I’m not saying that it’s not important to even stop fraud in terms of one vote, but it’s diffi cult to produce fraud on a massive scale.

We do have absentee-by-mail ballots. We used to use signature verifi cation. So the election offi ce would compare the signature on the ballot envelope to the signature that’s in the registration system or the DMV system to see if they match. We moved from that safeguard to having to now put your driver’s license or state ID card number on not only your ballot envelope, but even on your application to get a ballot. There are exceptions — say you have a passport, for instance, you can photocopy that and attach it. But for most people, it’s putting their driver’s license or state ID number on their application to get a ballot or on their ballot envelope when they return it.

Every state has some kind of verifi cation process that they use, whether it’s signature verifi cation for absentee ballots, or a couple of states like Georgia using state ID numbers. In North Carolina witnesses sign your ballot affi davit or your ballot envelope as an affi davit that you are who you are. [Editor’s note: Voter ID laws vary by state. In Colorado, an ID is requested for in-person voting and a photocopy of an ID may be needed when voting by mail for the fi rst time.]

What if someone just uses a fake ID to vote?

You would have to be in the Department of Motor Vehicles system. So you’d have to create a fraudulent identifi cation, essentially, for that to work, which is probably not going to happen.

What mistakes can happen with absentee ballots?

A lot of things that may look like fraud are a husband accidentally sends in his wife’s absentee ballot and vice versa. So not fraud — just a mistake that needs to be rectifi ed.

Or someone who is dead votes. Well, what happened? They mailed their absentee ballot before they passed away. So not fraud. Now, it depends on the state as to whether that would count or not since the individual is deceased. Technically, in Georgia, it shouldn’t count. But it’s not fraud by any means.

For voters who have concerns that our systems are secure, what can they do?

I would just encourage people to the extent to which they are concerned, to look into things — see what safeguards are there and how they’re being employed, as opposed to just thinking something is going on without investigating. A lot of the election process in a lot of the places in the U.S. is a very open system. Obviously, the ballot is secret, but the administrative part of it is very open. Most counties have a board of elections or a board of registrars — or both sometimes — and there are open meetings. There’s no shortage of information nowadays.

There is a lot of thought that has gone into this in any state. There are a lot of security and safeguards that are placed in the state’s election code to specifi cally prevent fraud. I would welcome anyone who’s brave enough to look at their state’s election code. It’s not the most interesting thing, but you can get an idea of just how many safeguards are in place.

People can also certainly sign up to work the polls or in other capacities.

Are there other voting issues Americans should be focusing on?

What we should be doing is trying to increase voter confi dence in the system for all partisans, whatever stripe. Now, this seems to be easier said than done, unfortunately.

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