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August 5, 2021
ARAPAHOE COUNTY, COLORADO
A publication of
EnglewoodHerald.net
VOLUME 101 | ISSUE 25
SOUNDS LIKE SUMMER
Tri-County Health urges masks in schools, indoor settings Health agency’s announcement follows new CDC guidance BY ELLIS ARNOLD EARNOLD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Gary Sloan plays upright bass as David Lawrence and the Spoonful entertain a crowd on July 28 on the Littleton Museum lawn, PHOTO BY SCOTT GILBERT part of the Summer Concert Series provided by Friends of the Library and Museum. More photos, Page 2.
Ex-councilman’s raccoon encounter causes stir Yates kills animal; says it attacked his dog BY ELLIS ARNOLD EARNOLD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
A former Englewood city councilmember injured and killed a raccoon after the animal attacked his dog, according to his account of the incident that left one nearby resident concerned enough to call police.
Steve Yates, who has lived in Englewood for decades, is a former at-large city councilmember who was elected in 2013 and ran unsuccessfully for reelection in 2017. Yates chased the raccoon into a Yates neighbor’s yard and “pinned the animal down” with a long object while it let out cries for 10 to 20 minutes, according to an area resident’s
INSIDE: VOICES: PAGE 12 | LIFE: PAGE 14 | CALENDAR: PAGE 17 | SPORTS: PAGE 24
account in an Englewood police report. The resident yelled to ask Yates what he was doing, and he replied that the raccoon had attacked his dog, the report says. The animal’s cries began around 10 p.m. July 27, and the resident called out to Yates around that time, according to the report. The cries eventually ended, but around 10:30 p.m., the resident heard the raccoon cry SEE RACCOON, P13
Stopping short of requiring masks in schools and other indoor places, the local public health agency for Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties released a recommendation for wearing masks in those settings as the Delta variant continues “surging across the metro Denver area,” the agency said in a news release. The Tri-County Health Department now recommends that “all persons wear masks in school settings regardless of vaccination status and, as long as we have rising rates of community transmission, that everyone including fully vaccinated persons wear a mask in public indoor settings,” the agency said in the July 30 release. The decision to recommend — but not require — masks in schools leaves the question of whether to require masks up to individual school districts in Tri-County’s area. The Delta coronavirus variant spreads about twice as easily from one person to another as previous strains of the virus, according to Tri-County. The recommendation from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for universal mask-wearing in school settings “is consistent SEE MASKS, P18
NEW PLACES TO PLAY New breed of entertainment centers offer food, brews, fun P14