Sara Jo Light

For Centennial Water & Sanitation District Board

PASSION – RESULTS - LEADERSHIP

“Protect CO’s Great Outdoors – Save Our Water”

Our rivers are drying up, our forests are burning, & our wildlife is disappearing. Action on our water crisis is needed now. I want to be part of the solution for Highlands Ranch!

Passion:

• Protecting CO’s great outdoors has been my passion for many decades

• Colorado’s water crisis is only getting worse & our great outdoors are suffering

• I feel strongly that our children & grandchildren deserve access to clean water & the great outdoors as our legacy

Results - I get things done throughout Colorado:

• Reduced Highlands Ranch Wind Crest Community water usage (saved 15 million gallons & $57,000 in water fees annually); this is the annual water usage of 150 Highlands Ranch homes

• Championed the passage of numerous bills in the CO legislature to protect our water & preserve our state parks

Leadership:

• 30 years as a senior business executive in four industries, world-wide

• Elected as Board Chair of two large nonprofit organizations

• Created & led a 300 member legislative team to protect our great outdoors

Vote for Sara Jo Light for the Centennial Water & Sanitation Board

SaraJo4Water.com

To vote in this special nonpartisan election, apply now for a mail-In ballot at Bit.ly/GetBallot4Water

Paid for by SaraJo4Water ere’s historical value in neatly summarizing how the districts changed and then came together, Dell’Orfano said. For curious members of the public, the updated document also can provide other information clearly.

Protection District. e old agency served about 2,000 residents over 105 square miles in portions of Arapahoe and Douglas counties.

Now, South Metro Fire Rescue covers 560,000 people over 285 square miles, stretching over much of the south metro area after many re protection agencies combined over the years to form today’s agency.

It now covers many cities and towns, including Bow Mar, Castle Pines, Centennial, Cherry Hills Village, Columbine Valley, Foxeld, Greenwood Village, Littleton, Lone Tree and Parker, along with nearby unincorporated portions of Arapahoe, Je erson, and Douglas counties. (“Unincorporated” means an area doesn’t sit within a city or town.)

“A service plan is required for all special (government) districts, and you would hope that the document is pretty transparent when it comes to the services provided, how it’s being nanced, how it’s being governed and what’s the impact to people,” Dell’Orfano said.

He added that the updated plan “is more comprehensive and understandable than the previous one, which was just several county and court documents that we pieced together.” e amendment is “just recognizing that we might be o ering the same services, but over the past 55 years, the volume, the expertise, the types of incidents have all evolved,” Dell’Orfano, who serves as the agency’s chief government a airs o cer, has said. e amendment won’t change the way the agency spends money, and it won’t change South Metro Fire’s hiring ability or the pay that employees receive, Dell’Orfano said.

When a person has to “do a research project” to gure out what the plan is, that’s not helpful, he added.

Amid recent public scrutiny of “special districts, mainly metro districts, I feel like this helps us keep up with current expectations,” Dell’Orfano said.

(Metro districts are a type of government entity that carries out some government functions, such as the Highlands Ranch Metro District that oversees some services in that community.)

It also aims to take a new “snapshot” at the features of the re district, such as the hazards, the number of cities and the population, he said.

Since the agency’s start decades ago, its original service plan was amended a couple times to account for the ability to take on debt and to make sure all its services were re ected, Dell’Orfano said. ose amendments occurred in 1983 and 1996.

“As of right now, we don’t have debt, and we haven’t used debt to fund major capital projects for several years,” Dell’Orfano said in February. “Capital” costs include paying for re trucks, re stations and ambulances, for example.

South Metro Fire’s property tax rate — the mill levy that property owners in the re agency’s service area pay — would not increase as a result of the amended plan.

Leaders in Douglas, Arapahoe and Je erson counties held public meetings on the proposed change in late February. e three boards of county commissioners all approved the plan unanimously, Dell’Orfano said.