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FROM PAGE 8 make a change, said state Sen. Chris Hansen, a Denver Democrat. posal for their renovation project in 2017 and submitted it to the state legislature at the start of 2018, Fujii said.

“Seniors on xed income, they’re going to be able to use that exemption for the rest of their lives, even if they change their home situation,” Hansen said.

If voters give it the green light, the Democrats’ proposed measure would last a decade, under a 10-year “sunset” timeframe, the fact sheet says.

With an almost $8.4 million investment from the state and $3.5 million of ARPA funding from Arapahoe County, ACC is ready to set o on the rst phase of its renovation project. e institution also received $1.1 million in in Higher Education Emergency Relief funds from the U.S. Department of Education for the project.

After the initial renovations, ACC hopes to continue enhancing the healthcare annex through future phases, Provost and Vice President Cheryl Calhoun said. e overall project is expected to cost about $26 million, she said, which ACC plans to fund through fundraising, future grants, individual contributions and partnerships.

Renovation details e infrastructure renovations will include Americans with Disabilities Act improvements throughout the annex, including a new elevator and upgrading four entrances, two ramps and two stairways. ere will also be several new ADA and unisex restrooms.

Healthcare students at ACC can study emergency medical services, nursing, health information technology, medical laboratory technology, mortuary science and more.

In the rst phase of the annex renovation project, ACC is working with Anderson Mason Dale Architects and Haselden Construction to improve infrastructure and enhance spaces for innovative approaches to healthcare education.

TABOR ‘backfill’ e governor’s o ce fact sheet says the proposal protects funding for school districts, re districts, counties and other local services by dedicating a portion of the state TABOR surplus. at would allow the state to retain roughly $167 million in 2024, reducing the state TABOR surplus from an estimated $2 billion to an estimated $1.8 billion and reducing taxpayer refunds by $46 in 2024, the sheet says.

“Taxpayers can still expect to receive a surplus refund of $700 this year and over $400 next year,” the sheet says.

In addition, workers will update the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system as well as re systems throughout the building.

To enhance educational experiences for ACC students, the college is adding simulation components that will give students the chance to practice the skills they are learning in real life-like scenarios.

One technology will be high delity mannequins, which are human-like robots that can speak, make facial expressions and even bleed. is technology gives students the chance to practice the skills they are learning before they do it on live patients. e nursing program and EMS academy will both be gaining more high delity mannequins that represent patients at various stages of life. One is a mother-baby unit, which works with virtual reality to show the process of a pregnancy and a live birth to nursing students.

“Students will be able to put on VR headsets and they’ll be able to see the baby in womb, watch the descent,” interim director of nursing

Ins and outs of property taxes

It’s the job of county assessors’ o ces to establish accurate values of homes and other properties to determine how much property owners will owe government entities in taxes — a process meant to ensure that the amount of taxes people pay is fair and equitable.

( e assessor doesn’t set the tax rate but determines the value of the property that the tax rate then gets applied to.)

e property valuation homeowners were receiving around early May is based on data as of June 2022, near the

Kari Hyland said. “All of the uids and things that come are very natural and real, so they experience that whole thing … ese new simulators give birth to our high delity newborns, so they’ll come out crying.” ere will also be a new immersive simulation classroom in the EMS academy that uses four screen walls to put students in the middle of a realistic emergency situation. e simulation room will have the ability to create wind to simulate tra c going by, environmental sounds, smells and even smoke to create a realistic scenario for students to practice. e renovation project also includes expanding the capacity of instructional classrooms and adding more beds to nursing classrooms.

“It comes with a 360 camera, so we have the ability to take that camera and set it anywhere we want in the world, lm it, bring it back here, plug it in and put that environment in the room,” said Dennis Edgerly, director of the EMS academy.

Interdisciplinary collaboration rough these improvements, ACC leadership hopes to create more opportunities for interdisciplinary learning, to better train healthcare students to work with others in the eld.

“How do we help our stu- recent peak in the real-estate market.

So even though home prices have declined since then, property values re ect last year’s exceptional highs. e expected 33% assessed value increase statewide is an average that applies across all residential properties, including single-family homes, condos and townhomes, duplexes, triplexes and multifamily, according to the governor’s o ce.

‘Among lowest in nation’ e governor’s o ce said the proposal, along with previous legislation, will ensure dents not only learn how to do the job they’re doing, but how do they interact with the other professionals around them?” said Calhoun. “How do they develop communication skills, how do they develop the soft skills and empathy skills that they need to be able to work actually in the careers that they’re choosing?”

In future stages of the Health Innovation Center project, Calhoun said ACC hopes to build a streetscape with a hospital, a two-story townhouse and an ambulance bay for students to do interdisciplinary simulations in a variety of environments, with EMT students, nursing students and even criminal justice students working on the same situation together.

Looking forward to the future of healthcare in Colorado, Chancellor of the Colorado Community College System Joe Garcia said programs like the Health Innovation Center at ACC are just what the state needs.

“It’s great not just for the students, but it is great for Colorado because we know we have a shortage,” he said. “Some of us baby boomers are not going to be in the workforce but we’re going to need good health care providers, trained healthcare providers, diverse health care providers — that’s what we can do better than anybody else.”

Colorado’s property taxes “remain among the lowest in the nation.”

Nationally, Colorado has relatively low residential property taxes, according to an analysis by the conservative Tax Foundation. Colorado ranked 47th in property taxes paid as a percentage of owner-occupied housing value in 2020, according to the foundation.

Note: e state legislature’s regular session was set to end in early May, and the Democrats’ proposal could be amended after this story was nalized.