Arvada Press 033023

Arvada Library reopens to public, meth contamination remediated

Remembering Moses Walker, a musician and friend beyond compare

The Clam Daddies band leader passed away in March after one last big show at the O

BY RYLEE DUNN RDUNN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Curbside lane reopened last week, library opened March 27

BY RYLEE DUNN RDUNN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Arvadans can now return to the library. e Olde Town Arvada branch of the Je erson County Public Library was closed on Jan. 28 following testing which showed methamphetamine contamination at the library,

and reopened on March 27 following remediation of the contamination.

Earlier this month, JCPL led a variance with the Colorado Department of Public Health requesting that the library be allowed to begin cleaning a ected spaces and allow sta to return in a limited capacity.   Cleaning crews began decontamination work on March 13, according to JCPL Promotions and Marketing Manager Harry Todd. As of March 22, cleaning was mostly done, Todd said, and sta was allowed in all

areas of the library.

“Once we’ve completed (cleaning) we will submit clearance samples to a contractor and industrial hygienist,” Todd said. “Once those have been cleared and decontamination is remediated, we will be able to proceed with our reopening procedures.”

By March 22, the library was mostly cleaned and samples had been sent to the Colorado Department of

Moses Walker never told anyone the key. He’d begin a song — steady — but before long, his left hand would begin racing up and down the guitar neck, nding chords in unique voicings, all while anchored by his gravelly, inviting baritone. If you were lucky enough to play with Moses, you’d best get with it — he’d punctuate a good run of a tune with a smile and a warm “Mighty ne.” If you struggled to keep up — well, he wouldn’t say much of anything. Mo, by all accounts, didn’t have a negative bone in his body.

When Mo was diagnosed with Stage 4 brain and lung cancer in November, he knew his time was up. Friends say he wasn’t sad about his condition but accepted his prognosis with grace and levity.

Before his passing on March 3, Mo played one last big show on Feb. 5; a celebration of his music and life at his favorite venue, the Oriental eater, accompanied by over two

Exterior shot of the Olde Town Arvada Library, which reopened to the public on March 27.

COURTESY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY

dozen musicians who played with him at various points in his career.

“ anks for coming to my funeral,” Walker remarked at one point during the four-hour set. e remark might have come across as morbid if uttered by anyone else, but it was folksily on brand for Walker.

Walker’s musical career is the stu of legend — spanning at least ve decades, the impressions Walkers left were many, while the speci cs of his life are harder to come by.

One old friend, John Furphy, recounts Walker living in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the 1990s and forming a local group called Moses and the Lost Sheep around that time. e band went through a few iterations, namely as Nosmo King (no smoking) and No Dogs Allowed.

Around this time, Walker got married and moved to a horse farm outside of Coopersburg. Shortly thereafter, Walker’s wife died. Around 1997, he decided to follow his harmonica player, om, out to Colorado.

Furphy recalled the rowdy nature of Walker’s early shows.

“I booked them to appear at an outdoor gathering for the community sta at WMUH-FM, from the campus of Muhlenberg College,” Furphy said. “Before his performance, he cut his left hand, badly. Still, he wrapped it up and performed a full set, as the blood trickled onto his guitar.

“I went with the band to a per-

formance at a dive bar, since torn down, next to the railroad tracks in South Bethlehem,” Furphy continued. “ ey were barely into the rst set when someone at the bar threw what was believed to be an M-80 at them. Without missing a beat Moses leaned into the microphone and said, ‘ at’s all right. People often shoot at me when I’m out.’”

In Colorado, Walker established

himself as a singular presence in the state’s music scene, rst with his seminal band e Clam Daddies, and later with a variety of collaborations including Moses Walker and Friends, Walker Whalen and Walker Shellist, among others.

Besides being a prodigally talented musician — Walker’s repertoire included hundreds of songs, ranging from standards to originals to contemporary tunes — Walker is remembered by those who knew him as a compassionate, caring friend and an exceedingly positive presence.

“Moses was the most encouraging and positive musical person I knew, always with a kind word and quick to smile,” Michael Whalen, who played with Walker often, said. “Just about every musician that played with him came away richer for the experience. He had this amazingly unique voice, we used to say he was like the long-lost brother of Leon Redbone and Tom Waits.”

“Moses was upbeat and always offered to help me out with anything I needed,” Ronnie Shellist said. “He was there for me when I was at some of the lowest points in my life. I’m not sure how I could have gotten through some of it without his friendship. Moses also had the uncanny ability to make me laugh even when I was feeling way down. Hell, he made everyone laugh.”

“I can say that he was more than generous with his time, knowledge & resources to new musicians & singers,” acclaimed soul singer Hazel Miller said. “He was always optimistic & supportive!”

Andy Bercaw, who played bass with Walker at over 150 shows between 1997 and 2004 — and scores more over the years — said that Walker strived to mentor young musicians with his genre-spanning talents, which ranged from tin pan alley staples to American Songbook standards and just about anything else under the sun.

“He really liked to play with younger musicians that weren’t jaded,” Bercaw said. “With it, were still kind of open minded about

music. And Mo’s big deal was kind of just teaching about, you know, all di erent styles of music and music that maybe younger people have never heard before introducing new genres to young players.

“He’s the most like unconventional bandleader you that you would ever meet,” Bercaw continued. “Because he didn’t have a setlist and he would never tell you what key you’re playing in, because he wanted you to gure it out. And, you know, Mo said he knew nearly 500 songs. And so, you could play with Mo three or seven gigs and not repeat the same song.”

Ryan Chrys, who fronts popular Colorado country band Ryan Chrys and the Rough Cuts, said Walker took Chrys under his wing musically, advising him on tricks for soloing and di erent ways to play. Before then, the pair bonded over Walker’s signature beard.

“I rst met him around 15 years ago,” Chrys said. “I had no beard myself then but some years later I started growing it and through the years we always laughed cause each time it was longer, and he had more approval. ‘It’s nally started to come in there, youngling,’ he’d say each time and even after it had gotten really long.

“He spoke always in truth and wonder,” Chrys continued. “He was a truly unique man with a truly unique style. I have never seen anyone with a music sense like his — the swagger in his low vocals or the swing in his guitar playing, he never ceased to amaze me, and I was enthralled every time I saw him play and sing. He taught me a lot about music and I learned to be freer in my exploration of sounds in playing and soloing. He was a great inspiration to me.”

Melanie Owen was a fan of e Clam Daddies who nervously attended one of Walker’s jams, where Walker made her immediately comfortable and forged a lasting friendship.

“When I got to sit in and fangirl at his jam at the D Note, he was really encouraging,” Owen said. “Moses had this way of talking to you that made you believe you could do it — whatever it was. He was generous with his music and his time and his encouragement and made such

The Oriental’s marquee after Walker’s passing. PHOTO BY ANDY BERCAW

Walker (right) plays with Bercaw (left) at the Oriental.

PHOTO BY MELISSA POLK

REOPEN

Public Health and Environment for reopening clearance.

As of March 23, the library’s sorter reopened for returned items, which allows librarians to restock shelves and pull books on hold for pickup. Curbside pickup and drop-off at the Arvada library are available in the back alley behind the library.

Responding to concerns of parents who have worried about meth

contamination spreading to pages of books that would be potentially handled by children, Todd said the JCPL team is working with experts at CDPHE and following their guidance.

“All of the research they’ve pointed us towards indicates that’s not a concern,” Todd said. “Of course, this is an ongoing point of interest, and we are staying in touch with CDPHE and following the experts for guidance.”

Todd said the library will reopen when its staff can ensure the safety of patrons.

“We’re eager to reopen the Ar-

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vada library and very excited for that,” Todd said. “We’re making positive progress to do so in a safe way for all our patrons.”

The Arvada Library is back to its normal hours as of March 27. In an FAQ page posted to the library’s website, details for how future meth contamination incidents might be avoided are spelled out.

“JCPL is investigating piloting environmental sensors at the Arvada Library,” the statement says. “These sensors show promise in detecting incidents of smoking and vaping in the areas where they’re installed. The company that manu-

education.

Now, The Colorado Sun co-owns this and other Colorado Community Media newspapers as a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy. The Sun is CCM’s partner for

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factures this equipment states that they are capable of detecting methamphetamine smoke. We are investigating integration of the detectors and notification protocols into our cameras and security systems.

“In addition to detection systems, JCPL is hiring a part time position to assist our Safety and Security coordinator,” the statement continues. “The intent of the hire is to share some of the workload so that we can apply more focus on identifying and addressing behaviors that impact our ability to be a safe and welcoming space for all. “

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What’s the Story With Zillow? Specifically, Why Do Most Real Estate Agents Dislike Zillow?

Zillow may be the #1 fixture on the American real estate scene, and it has certainly worked hard to earn your trust and patronage. But many people don’t know how Zillow relates to the rest of our industry and why many real estate brokers/agents don’t trust it the way most homeowners, buyers and sellers do.

When I first entered the business two decades ago, Zillow was already in the business of displaying all real estate listings nationwide, as it does now. Its business model (revenue stream) was to sell agents ZIP codes where they would be displayed next to each listing so that buyers who are interested in that listing would click on one of those “premier” agents to see and possibly buy the house.

The cost of being one of those Prem-

ier Agents varied by location, and Zillow would sell each ZIP code to multiple agents, so each agent would get a percentage of those buyer leads based on how much they paid. Keep in mind that to get those leads had little or nothing to do with how good or knowledgeable that agent was. Their qualification was simply that they paid to be there — as much as $1,000 or more per month for each ZIP code. Many agents have built their entire book of business this way, spending thousands of dollars per month to do so.

It has been a very successful business model, and it antagonized listing agents because their name was not shown next to their listings until recently, as I’ll explain below. That’s the origin of the our community’s discontent with Zillow.

Some Widely Used Electrical Panels Are Defective

A recent blog post from Alpine Building Performance LLC addressed an issue which is well known to long-time real estate brokers like those of us at Golden Real Estate, and worth sharing with owners of older (1960s to 1980s) homes. If your home has one of these breaker panels, you can expect it to be an expensive inspection issue raised by your buyer’s inspector. Here’s that blog post:

The two most notorious defective electrical panels are the Federal Pacific Electric (FPE) Stab-Loc panels manufactured from the 1950s-1980s and the Zinsco and later Sylvania Electrical panels largely used in the 1970s.

A lesser known, but equally problematic electrical panel was the Challenger brand electrical panel in the 1970s and ’80s and has similar issues with overheating and faulty circuit breaker function. All 3 of these panels were recalled and

are considered safety hazards that should be replaced.

What is the cost to replace one of those electrical panels? The blog post suggest a price range of $4,000 to $7,000, but my clients have seen much lower prices from the electricians I have recommended.

We replaced two such panels in our storefront with a single new panel for $1,500, but that was because there was very little rerunning of service lines and no finished wall to break into and rebuild. The FPE panels were on a brick wall in a backroom, so they were removed and the new panel placed on the same brick wall.

In a typical home, there is more work to do, but the replacements I have overseen for my clients were in the $2,000 to $3,000 range — again using electricians I recommended who are lone eagles, not employees of a big electrical contractor.

Price Reduced on Golden Home With Views!

Zillow, as you may know, has experimented — usually with success — in capitalizing on their impressive public presence. The “Zestimate” has been particularly effective, and Zillow’s computer is good at reminding every homeowner with an email address what the current estimate of their home’s worth is.

One of their experiments was to enter the “iBuyer” business where they would actually buy homes and flip them for a profit. Their major competitors, who are still doing that, were OpenDoor and OfferPad. Like those competitors, Zillow started losing money when the market softened, but Zillow was smart to exit that business quickly. They appear to have sold all the Denver area homes that they purchased under that program.

A big change that occurred a few years ago was that Zillow became a brokerage itself, which entitled it to receive a direct feed of listings from every MLS in the country. They don’t have a Denver office, but they do have a few agents with Colorado licenses. As you are likely aware, the member brokerages of every MLS can display on their website all the currently active, coming soon or pending listings of that MLS. That’s true of www.goldenrealestate.com, and now it is true of www.zillow.com

This represented a big change for Zillow, because it now had to abide by the same rules as other brokerages, which included displaying the listing agent’s name, phone number and email address, but when you click on “Contact Agent,” the lead goes to a “Premier Agent” who

paid Zillow to get website leads like that. The fact that listing agents are now listed with contact info next to their listings and Premier Agents are not displayed anymore has softened but not completely overcome the antipathy that Zillow created in the past.

Interesting Postscript to Last Week’s Column About Fertilizer

From reader Jim Borland:

Yes, nitrogen fertilizer can be used to make a bomb à la Oklahoma City bombing, though I doubt that the nitrogen fertilizer in Miracle Gro’s potting mix contributed much if anything to the fire that resulted from the insertion of a cigarette butt into the soil. What you missed in taking a picture of the package was the other part of the contents besides the fertilizer. All potting soils these days are made of synthetic products including those made by Miracle Gro. In the case of this particular potting mix it consists of forest products (shredded and chipped wood and bark), coir (shredded coconut husks), composts, peat, sphagnum peat moss, perlite and wetting agent. All but the perlite and wetting agent are flammable, especially when dry. In this case the soil was undoubtedly not moistened as most soils are that have live plants in them. The nitrogen part of the fertilizer is contained within prills or small plastic coated spheres, here called Osmocote, that release nitrogen with each watering. After a couple of waterings the nitrogen is gone, leaving only the plastic capsule behind. Even with no fertilizer, this and other artificial soils are flammable, and care must be taken when located in a place convenient for snuffing out cigarettes.

Price Reduced on Downtown Denver Loft!

$495,000

$1,495,000

This solar-powered home at 359 Canyon Point Circle was a model home for the Village at Mountain Ridge, the subdivision west of Highway 93 backing to the Mt. Galbraith Park. (There’s a trailhead to the park’s 5 miles of hiking trails within the subdivision.) The seller has made many improvements to the home since buying it in 2002, including a total renovation of the gourmet kitchen and master bathroom, plus adding 11 5 kW of solar panels which meet all the electrical needs of the home. The main-floor deck was also completely rebuilt with composite decking, metal railings and a breakfast bar for enjoying the sunrises over South Table Mountain

If you're looking for loft living, this unit at 2000 Arapahoe Street #204 is as good as it gets! Walk to EVERYTHING in Downtown Denver — Coors Field, Performing Arts Complex, 16th Street Mall, Lodo, Union Station, shopping, restaurants, and light rail, including the A-line to DIA. The 12-foot ceiling and four massive pillars, plus HUGE windows to nearby skyscrapers — this is the loft life you've been looking for! You could rent out two of the three included garage spaces for $150-200 each, too! This is a rare opportunity, so act fast. No open houses. Call us or your agent for a private showing!

and the City of Golden, which are visible even from the walk-out basement. A walking path near this home allows children to walk safely to Mitchell Elementary School via a pedestrian bridge that crosses the highway. To appreciate all the features of this 4,106-sq.ft. home, take a video tour at www.MountainRidgeHome.com

Reuse ideas sought for schools slated to close

BY LUKE ZARZECKI LZARZECKI@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Je erson County Public Schools and the City of Westminster are evaluating how to repurpose three schools in the city, and the public is invited to submit their recommendations.

Lisa Relou, Chief of Strategy and Communications, presented the plan to Westminster City Council at their March 20 study session meeting.

e three schools in question are Sheridan Green Elementary, Witt STEM Elementary and Doral Academy, an arts-focused charter school operating on the site of the old Zerger Elementary. ose schools will close at the end of the current school year.

Je co Public Schools voted to close 16 schools in November of 2022 due to too many seats for too few students. e decision for which schools to close was also based in part due to proximity to other schools.

Relou explained that the board will engage with the community and will hold two community meetings to gain input on what residents would like to see at those locations.

For Zerger, a community meeting will take place in March or April and another in June. e other schools don’t have scheduled meetings yet.

City Councilor Bruce Baker asked if the schools could be turned into charter schools and asked if Je co

Public Schools has done outreach to charter schools in order to do so.

“ e reason we had to close schools is because we have too many seats, we had seats for 96,000 students and we serve 68,000. Our objective is not to create more seats for students because it exacerbates our problem of small schools. Adding another school to the district is not a priority,” Relou said.

She said the district is probably not

done closing schools, either.

City Councilor Sarah Nurmela, pointing to the rising age of residents, suggested senior housing or a senior care facility could be proactive about the lack of housing for them.

For Sheridan Green, Mayor Nancy McNally had a host of suggestions from residents who live near the school. One came from a resident who would like to see one side of the tennis courts xed, and the other

turned into a pickleball court.

“We heard suggestions about that before the closings ever happened,” McNally said.

Other suggestions included a library, to use the classrooms for intergenerational activities and a preschool. One resident, McNally said, would like to see $1,000 massage chairs and a hot tub placed in the building.

When it comes down to it, Economic Development Director Lindsey Kimball said zoning is the greatest control of the property, which is currently quasi-public use.

Residents that live near Sheridan Green Elementary are calling for the tennis courts to be fixed, and for one of them to turn into a pickleball court. It’s one of the schools on Je erson County’s closing list.

PHOTOS BY LUKE ZARZECKI

Zerger Elementary, now Doral Academy, will close at the end of the school year. How it will be used in the future is still up in the air.

Polis targets local land use in bid to make housing less costly

BY JESSE PAUL AND ELLIOTT WENZLER THE COLORADO SUN

Fast-growing, housing-strapped Colorado communities would be barred from limiting construction of duplexes, triplexes and add-on housing units under a marquee measure unveiled in March by Gov. Jared Polis and Democratic state lawmakers aimed at addressing the state’s housing crisis by increasing residential density.

e land-use bill would also block limits on how many unrelated people can live in the same home and prevent Colorado’s largest cities from restricting what kind of housing can be built near transit stops. A separate measure, meanwhile, would ban municipalities from imposing new growth caps and eliminate existing ones.

e land-use proposal would apply di erently throughout the state depending on population size and housing needs, with the biggest impacts on Colorado’s most populous cities — Denver, Aurora, Boulder, Lakewood, Colorado Springs and Grand Junction — but also rules for rural communities and resort towns, which have faced their own unique housing struggles.

“ is is an a ordability crisis around housing in our state,” Gov. Jared Polis told e Colorado Sun. “Absent action, it’s only going to get worse. We absolutely want to move our state in a way where homeownership and rent are more a ordable, and this will help get that done.”

Polis said the bills — one of which is expected to be more than 100 pages

long — represent the most ambitious land-use policy changes in Colorado in about 40 years. e policy changes will take years to go into e ect, but the governor said if the state doesn’t act, Colorado could start to look like California, where homes are even less a ordable, and tra c is worse.

“We want to make sure we get ahead of the curve,” he said.

Local government leaders have been

wary of the proposals, previewed in the governor’s State of the State address in January, because of how it would restrict their power to create and enforce housing policies.

“Respectfully, get o our lawn,” Kevin Bommer, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, said at a gathering of local o cials in February when describing negotiations on the legislation with Polis’ o ce.

e organization’s board voted to oppose the land-use bill last week, Bommer said. “CML opposes this sweeping and breathtaking attempt to centralize local land use and zoning policy in the state Capitol, while doing nothing to guarantee a ordability,” Bommer said in a written statement, also calling the measure a “breathtaking power grab.”

e only Colorado mayor who spoke in support of the bill at a Capitol news conference on March 22 rolling out the legislation was Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett. “ ere’s still some work to be done and I’m sure there’ll be changes hashed out,” he said. “But there is so much at value here.”

e bills are also expected to meet erce pushback from the few Republicans in the legislature, who are in the minority in the House and Senate and have little say over which measures pass or fail.

e measures have been the talk of the Capitol since the 2023 legislative session began in January, but the details of what’s in the legislation have been under wraps until now. Democrats will have less than two months to pass the bills through the House and Senate before the lawmaking term ends in early May.

e governor’s o ce says the landuse bill was drafted after more than 120 meetings with housing and business experts and local o cials and through research on similar policies passed in other states. Oregon, for

Workers frame townhomes in Littleton.

DAVID GILBERT

SEE COSTLY, P6

instance, passed a law in 2019 requiring cities with a population greater than 1,000 to allow duplexes, while cities with more than 25,000 people must allow townhomes, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes.

Rep. Steven Woodrow, a Denver Democrat who will be one of the prime sponsors of the land-use bill, said the measure is supposed to prevent some Colorado communities erecting barriers to development while their neighbors sprawl out of control, which can cause gentri cation and water issues.

“We have to do this at the state level because local political pressures are such that it hasn’t been hasn’t been done until now,” Woodrow said.

e measure reshaping land use in Colorado would apply only to municipalities, not counties. e governor’s o ce and the bills’ sponsors believe they can impose policy restrictions on cities and towns because housing is an issue of statewide concern, a position that could be tested in court.

“Research has shown that increasing housing supply, like building units like duplexes and townhomes, can increase a ordability,” Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, a Commerce City Democrat and a lead sponsor of the bill, said at a news conference as the bill was unveiled. “Yet these types of housing are often prohibited in many of the communities that need them the most. And that doesn’t make sense.”

An unanswered question is whether

developers will take advantage of the bill, should it pass.

“I think that people are anxious to provide housing,” said J.J. Ament, president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, which supports the bill. “I don’t think it really is a capital problem in Colorado. It is regulatory and environment. I think the capital will ow because the demand is there.”

e legislation is slated to be formally introduced this week. e measures were described in detail to e Sun by their sponsors and the governor.

e requirements will vary for different parts of the state depending on which of ve categories they fall into based on their population and housing needs. Here’s how the requirements would break down:

Tier 1, with cities that include: Arvada, Aurora, Boulder, Brighton, Broom eld, Castle Pines, Castle Rock, Centennial, Cherry Hills Village, Columbine Valley, Commerce City, Denver, Edgewater, Englewood, Erie, Federal Heights, Glendale, Golden, Greenwood Village, Lafayette, Lakewood, Littleton, Lochbuie, Lone Tree, Longmont, Louisville, Northglenn, Parker, Sheridan, Superior, ornton, Westminster and Wheat Ridge.

Outside of the Denver metro area, Greeley, Fort Collins, Loveland, Windsor, Colorado Springs, Fountain, Grand Junction and Pueblo would also be considered Tier 1 cities.

Cities in this category have a population of at least 1,000 and are in a metropolitan planning organization — such as the Denver Regional Council of Governments — with a population greater than 1 million and

in a Census Urbanized Area with a population greater than 75,000. Cities with a population greater than 25,000 and in a metropolitan planning organization with a population less than 1 million would also fall into this category.

Tier 1 cities would be most a ected by the land-use bill. ey would be prohibited from restricting duplexes, triplexes and multiplexes up to six units, as well as accessory-dwelling units, sometimes referred to as ADUs or granny ats. ey would also be prohibited from requiring parking tied to those kinds of housing.

ADUs are habitable structures that are on the same property as a house but a separate building, such as an apartment over a garage. Many municipalities across the state restrict where and how they can be built.

Tier 1 cities would also have to allow the construction of multifamily housing near transit centers, which are de ned as the half-mile area around xed-rail stations.Cities wouldn’t be allowed to require new, o -street parking for multifamily homes built in transit corridors, though developers could provide any amount of parking they feel is needed.

Tier 1 cities would also be subject to development guidelines aimed at promoting housing density and walkable communities around so-called key transit corridors, which are dened as areas within a quarter mile of bus-rapid-transit and high-frequency bus routes.

Finally, Tier 1 cities will also be required to complete a housing needs plan based on a state housing needs assessment, as well as participate in long-term planning to stop sprawl and address environmental concerns, like greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and limited water.

Tier 1 cities have the option of meeting minimum land-use requirements set by the state, which the governor’s o ce refers to as the “ exible option.” If not, they would be forced to adopt a state-developed land-use code. e state code would be created by Colorado Department of Local Affairs regulators at a later date.

Tier 1 cities would have to submit codes compliant with the bill to the state by December 2024. Any Tier 1 cities that don’t meet the minimum standards under the legislation’s so-called “ exible option” would be forced to operate under the model land-use code starting in December 2025.

Tier 2 is next, which includes Dacono, Fort Lupton, Firestone, Frederick, Evans, Berthoud, Johnstown, Timnath, Eaton, Miliken, Severance and Monument.

ey are de ned as cities in a metropolitan planning organization that have a population of between 5,000 and 25,000 and in a county with a population greater than 250,000.

Tier 2 cities would be prohibited from restricting accessory-dwelling units and parking associated with ADUs, though they would be able to block duplexes, triplexes and multiplexes. ey would also be exempt from provisions around transit centers and corridors.

ey would, however, still be required to conduct housing needs assessments and create the same type of long-term housing and sprawl and environmental plans.

Tier 2 cities would have to submit codes compliant with the bill to the

state by December 2024. Any Tier 1 cities that don’t meet the minimum standards under the legislation’s so-called “ exible option” would be forced to operate under the model land-use code starting in December 2025.

Another category is dubbed, Rural Resort Job Centers. is category includes Aspen, Avon, Breckenridge, Crested Butte, Dillon, Durango, Frisco, Glenwood Springs, Mountain Village, Silverthorne, Snowmass Village, Steamboat Springs, Telluride, Vail and Winter Park.

Rural resort job centers are de ned as municipalities that have a population of at least 1,000 and at least 1,200 jobs and are outside of a metropolitan planning organization. ey also have regional transit service with at least 20 trips per day.

is category is intended to prompt local governments to work with their surrounding region to address housing shortfalls. e communities would be required to allow ADUs but then have to develop a regional housing needs plan to identify where zoning should happen for duplexes, triplexes and other multiplexes. e communities would also have to work together to boost transit corridors and housing surrounding them.

“ ere’s often a dynamic in rural areas where people may live in one community but work in another, and because of that the additional exibility is that they can reach agreements with their partner communities to have a more regional approach to some of the goals that are in the bill,” Moreno said.

Like Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, rural resort job centers would have the ability to choose between a minimum level of housing policies while maintaining some of their own design standards or be forced to adopt a model land-use code that will be created by the state. e speci cs on those two options are not laid out in the bill and would be determined later by state regulators.

“ e goals aren’t as stringent as the (ones for) urban municipalities,” said Moreno.

Rural resort job centers would have to submit land-use codes compliant with the bill to the state by December 2026. Any rural resort job centers that don’t meet the minimum standards under the bill’s exible option would have to operate under the state’s model land-us code starting in June 2027.

Yet another category is called NonUrban Municipalities. Any municipality with a population greater than 5,000 falls into this category — as long as it’s not in another category — including Alamosa, Brush, Cañon City, Carbondale, Cortez, Craig, Eagle, Fort Morgan, Gunnison, La Junta, Lamar, Montrose, Ri e, Sterling, Trinidad and Wellington. Non-urban municipalities would be prohibited from restricting accessory-dwelling units but won’t have requirements around duplexes, triplexes and other multiplexes or transit-oriented development. ey also won’t need to prepare a housing needs plan.

is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun.com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.

a positive impact on so many musicians and fan family. I am really lucky I got to be friends with Mo.”

Mo at The O

A month before he died, Walker played one last show at what was likely his favorite venue; e Oriental eater, which his old bassist Bercaw purchased about 14 years ago. Bercaw said that before he died, Walker — a mainstay at the Oriental, or the O as he called it — wanted to play nal shows at his favorite places; La Dolce Vita Co ee Shop in Arvada and e O.

Be Be, Walker’s banjoist for many years — rst with the Clam Daddies, then with Moses Walker and Friends — frequently accomanied Walker at La Dolce Vita, and will be taking over his standing slot there every fourth Sunday of the month.

“(Walker) was an awesome person, pro cient singer musician and held great a ection for the people in his life,” Be said. “He will be greatly missed.”

Be was working on recording Walker singing 20 of his favorite songs shortly before his death, and will make the recordings — which she describes as sounding as if “he’s in the room with you” — available to anyone who wants them via her email: be@bebe.bz.

On Feb. 5, Walker took the stage at the O one last time, joined by over 20 musicians from throughout his career. Despite his failing health,

Walker put on a tour de force, playing for over 4 hours and completing over 40 songs.

“He probably played for like four hours straight,” Bercaw said. “Everyone else ran out of gas and he was still going. It was it was like the most epic day for me. In the all the years I’ve owned the eater and for so many people that came it was so incredibly rad.”

Whelan helped Bercaw plan the event and called the concert “the most important show I’ve ever been a part of.”

“It was a beautiful retrospective of his life and music career,” Whelan said. “Local blues legends Hazel Miller and Erica Brown sang with Moses. Former members of the Clam Daddys reunited to play songs together one last time.

“Most people don’t get a chance to say goodbye,” Whelan continued. “We gave that to Moses and all his friends… Moses was so excited and full of energy in the days leading up to the show, where he performed for over 4 hours! I believe it might have been one of his greatest days and

shows of his life.”

Walker might not have been ready to go — he had plans to travel more, and had designs for how he’d spend his earnings from the Oriental show — but his friends were able to give him a proper send-o in traditional Moses Walker fashion. A livestream of Walker’s nal show can be found on the Colorado Music Network’s YouTube page.

“Everything was perfect,” Bercaw said. “And at the end of the night, we got him home. And you know, we went to dinner a couple days later, and I paid him, and we talked about the show and he’s super stoked… Mo said it was the best-paying gig he ever had.”

“I’m honored that I could walk him to the end and give him that last hoorah and be in a room full of love,” Whelan said.

When Walker died, Bercaw left a message for his old friend on the O’s marquee: “RIP Moses Walker.”

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Mo at the O: Hazel Miller (left) and Ronnie Shellist (back middle) join Moses Walker for a few songs at the Oriental.

Moses Walker at his final show, Mo at the O, on February 5. Thommy Knox, also of the Clam Daddies, is to the left of Walker.

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL MCGRATH

End of COVID emergency to usher in health system change

BY RACHANA PRADHAN KAISER HEALTH NEWS

e Biden administration’s decision to end the COVID-19 public health emergency in May will institute sweeping changes across the health care system that go far beyond many people having to pay more for COVID tests.

In response to the pandemic, the federal government in 2020 suspended many of its rules on how care is delivered. at transformed essentially every corner of American health care — from hospitals and nursing homes to public health and treatment for people recovering from addiction.

Now, as the government prepares to reverse some of those steps, here’s a glimpse at ways patients will be a ected:

e end of the emergency means nursing homes will have to meet higher standards for training workers.

Advocates for nursing home residents are eager to see the old, tougher training requirements reinstated, but the industry says that move could worsen sta ng short-

ages plaguing facilities nationwide.

In the early days of the pandemic, to help nursing homes function under the virus’s onslaught, the federal government relaxed training requirements. e Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

MEDICAIDCLIFF SURVIVINGTHE

instituted a national policy saying nursing homes needn’t follow regulations requiring nurse aides to undergo at least 75 hours of state-approved training. Normally, a nursing home couldn’t employ aides for more than four months unless they met those requirements.

Last year, CMS decided the relaxed training rules would no longer apply nationwide, but states and facilities could ask for permission to be held to the lower standards. As of March, 17 states had such exemptions, according to CMS — Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Washington — as did 356 individual nursing homes in Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C.

Nurse aides often provide the most direct and labor-intensive care for residents, including bathing and other hygiene-related tasks, feeding, monitoring vital signs, and keeping rooms clean. Research has shown that nursing homes with sta ng instability maintain a lower quality of care.

Advocates for nursing home residents are pleased the training exceptions will end but fear that the quality of care could nevertheless deteriorate. at’s because CMS has signaled that, after the looser standards expire, some of the hours that nurse aides logged during the pandemic could count toward their 75 hours of required training. Onthe-job experience, however, is not necessarily a sound substitute for the training workers missed, advocates argue.

Adequate training of aides is crucial so “they know what they’re

doing before they provide care, for their own good as well as for the residents,” said Toby Edelman, a senior policy attorney for the Center for Medicare Advocacy.

e American Health Care Association, the largest nursing home lobbying group, released a December survey  nding that roughly 4 in 5 facilities were dealing with moderate to high levels of sta shortages.

A looming rollback of broader access to buprenorphine, an important medication for people in recovery from opioid addiction, is alarming patients and doctors.

During the public health emergency, the Drug Enforcement Administration said providers could prescribe certain controlled substances virtually or over the phone without rst conducting an inperson medical evaluation. One of those drugs, buprenorphine, is an opioid that can prevent debilitating withdrawal symptoms for people trying to recover from addiction to other opioids. Research has shown using it more than halves the risk of overdose.

Amid a national epidemic of opioid addiction, if the expanded policy for buprenorphine ends, “thousands of people are going to die,” said Ryan Hampton, an activist who is in recovery.

e DEA in late February proposed regulations that would partly roll back the prescribing of controlled substances through telemedicine. A clinician could use telemedicine to order an initial 30day supply of medications such as buprenorphine, Ambien, Valium, and Xanax, but patients would need an in-person evaluation to get a re ll.

For another group of drugs, including Adderall, Ritalin, and oxycodone, the DEA proposal would institute tighter controls. Patients seeking those medications would need to see a doctor in person for an initial prescription.

David Herzberg, a historian of drugs at the University at Bu alo, said the DEA’s approach re ects a fundamental challenge in developing drug policy: meeting the needs of people who rely on a drug that can be abused without making that

COVID is still present as health o cials look at next steps.

SHUTTERSTOCK

White House sets May cuto

‘They know what they’re doing before they provide care, for their own good as well as for the residents.’

Toby Edelman,

senior policy attorney for the Center for Medicare Advocacy

CHANGE

drug too readily available to others.

e DEA, he added, is “clearly seriously wrestling with this problem.”

During the pandemic, CMS has tried to limit problems that could arise if there weren’t enough health care workers to treat patients — especially before there were COVID vaccines when workers were at greater risk of getting sick.

For example, CMS allowed hospitals to make broader use of nurse practitioners and physician assistants when caring for Medicare patients. And new physicians not yet credentialed to work at a particular hospital — for example, because governing bodies lacked time to conduct their reviews — could

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Other changes during the public health emergency were meant to shore up hospital capacity. Critical access hospitals, small hospitals located in rural areas, didn’t have to comply with federal rules for Medicare stating they were limited to 25 inpatient beds and patients’ stays could not exceed 96 hours, on average.

Once the emergency ends, those exceptions will disappear.

Hospitals are trying to persuade federal o cials to maintain multiple COVID-era policies beyond the emergency or work with Congress to change the law.

e way state and local public health departments monitor the spread of disease will change after the emergency ends, because the Department of Health and Human Services won’t be able to require

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labs to report COVID testing data.

Without a uniform, federal requirement, how states and counties track the spread of the coronavirus will vary. In addition, though hospitals will still provide COVID data to the federal government, they may do so less frequently.

Public health departments are still getting their arms around the scope of the changes, said Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

In some ways, the end of the emergency provides public health o cials an opportunity to rethink COVID surveillance. Compared with the pandemic’s early days, when at-home tests were unavailable and people relied heavily on labs to determine whether they were infected, testing data from labs now reveals less about how the

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virus is spreading.

Public health o cials don’t think “getting all test results from all lab tests is potentially the right strategy anymore,” Hamilton said. Flu surveillance provides a potential alternative model: For in uenza, public health departments seek test results from a sampling of labs.

“We’re still trying to work out what’s the best, consistent strategy. And I don’t think we have that yet,” Hamilton said.

Kaiser Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at Kaiser Family Foundation. KFF is an endowed nonpro t organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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West Je fifth grader hits a 1,000-mile goal through school’s running club

BY DEB HURLEY BROBST DBROBST@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

It feels good to reach a goal.

Cole Sargent, a fth grader at West Je erson Elementary School, has reached a big goal: running 1,000 miles in six years as part of the school’s 100 Mile Club. He’s the rst at the school to reach such a milestone since the club started six years ago.

Cole has been in the 100 Mile Club since kindergarten, and mom Darcie says she’s not only proud he has gone 1,000 miles but that he set a goal and reached it.

“When he was in rst grade, he decided to hit 1,000 miles by fth grade,” she said. “So he gured out how many miles he had to go each year to reach the goal. I’m proud of him for sticking with it.”

Cole ran 109 miles in kindergarten, 112 miles in rst grade, and then he needed to up his game. In second through fourth grade, he ran more than 200 miles a year so he could nish his goal as a fth grader.

Participants in West Je ’s 100 Mile Club either walk or run around the school’s track before or after school three times a week, plus they can go

on one ve-mile hike or do a 5K a month. e club has 60 members, with about 25 who are dedicated to hitting the 100mile goal each year, club coordinator Christine Olsen said.

Olsen keeps track of students’ progress by scanning bar codes on individual cards. Six laps around the school track equal a mile.

On March 17, the last day of school before spring break, Cole and two friends, Rhyder Vanni and Max Diesburg, did the nal 10 laps, so Cole could attain his goal. On the last lap, Olsen ran with them.

Cole said matter of factly that reaching 1,000 miles felt like he had run 100 miles 10 times.

Darcie and her husband Keith brought balloons and posters to celebrate Cole’s achievement.

Olsen modi ed a 100 Mile Club medallion, so it said 1,000 miles.

Darcie said Cole is not a big runner, only doing it to achieve his goal, but she guessed that Cole would run on the West Je erson Middle School cross country team next year.

Cole said he didn’t have a new goal to work on achieving yet, while Darcie added: “Goals are good in life.”

Cole Sargent, a fifth grader at West Je erson Elementary School, celebrated 1,000 miles since he started kindergarten. Sargent and his friends, along with 100 Mile Club coordinator Christine Olsen, holding the blue 0, celebrated his achievement on March 17.

PHOTOS BY DEB HURLEY BROBST

Cole Sargent, right, and his friends Rhyder Vanni and Max Diesburg have their cards scanned by 100 Mile Club coordinator Christine Olsen to track their mileage.

Cole Sargent with his parents Keith and Darcie Sargent after he finished his 1,000th mile.

Bennet raises concerns about what chatbots say to kids

Senator from Colorado points to examples

BY KAITLIN KIM COLORADO PUBLIC RADIO

Generative Arti cial Intelligence, like Chat GPT, may be able to write an episode of South Park or ace the LSAT, but Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet is concerned about what these chatbots might be saying to kids.

is comes after journalists and others, posing as kids and young teens, reported that generative AI programs helped provide information to questions that should have raised red ags.

e examples listed in Bennet’s letter include AI giving tips on how to protect access to social media apps parents wanted kids to delete, how to cover up bruises before a visit from Child Protective Services and advice on setting the mood with “candles or music” for someone who posed as a 13-year-old girl preparing to meet a 31-year-old man.

“Although generative AI has enormous potential, the race to integrate it into everyday applications cannot come at the expense of younger users’ safety and well being,” Bennet writes to the heads of Open AI, Snap, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta. “Although AI-powered chatbots come with risks for anyone – for example, by providing false information, perpetuating bias, or manipulating users – children and adolescents are especially vulnerable. Younger users are at an earlier stage of cogni-

tive, emotional, and intellectual development, making them more impressionable, impulsive, and less equipped to distinguish fact from ction.”

Bennet had several questions for the tech leaders as they move to integrate generative AI into their apps, including what existing or planned safety features they will implement for younger users, whether they have assessed or planned to assess potential harms to younger audiences, and what kind of auditing processes they have for the AI models behind chatbots that talk to the public. is push comes as more lawmakers have expressed concerns about how social media is a ecting teens’ mental health and how social media companies use the data they are collecting. Answers to Bennet’s questions could help shape any congressional response, either legislation or future hearings, to these concerns.

Bennet is one of several lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who have expressed concerns about the popular social media app TikTok, in particular. e CEO of TikTok will testify in front of the house Energy and Commerce committee later this week.

In the last Congress, Bennet also introduced a bill to set up a federal commission to provide oversight of digital platforms “to protect consumers, promote competition, and defend the public interest.”

is story is from CPR News, a nonpro t news source. Used by permission. For more, and to support Colorado Public Radio, visit cpr.org.

Sen. Michael Bennet says the interaction of chatbots with children deserves examination. U.S. GOVERNMENT PHOTO

Let’s tell the truth about those big, bad wolves

e return of wolves to the West has always been contentious, and the deaths last fall of more than 40 cattle really in western Colorado alarmed ranchers. But here’s the true story: Wolves did not kill those cattle found dead near Meeker. After months of investigation, the state agency, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, found no evidence of wolves in the area at all.

Yet when the news of the cattle deaths went public last October, the agency issued a press release stating it was “investigating a report of dead domestic cow calves on White River National Forest lands near Meeker that show damage consistent with wolf depredation.”

A month later, the agency’s Northwest regional manager testi ed before the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission that though some of the cattle had injuries that appeared to come from wolves, he added: “It’s perplexing; it’s confusing; it’s frustrating, trying to gure out exactly what occurred in this incident.” e story of wolves as the culprits, however, made national headlines.

Wolves are coming back to the state naturally and because in 2020, the public passed Prop 114, mandating restoration of wolves by the end of this year. rough a Colorado Open Records Act request, the Humane Society of the United States obtained documents and photos about the livestock deaths, and shared them with Carter Niemeyer, an expert on wolf-livestock con ict. He is also a member of the state’s Technical Working Group on wolf restoration.

In his Feb. 14 report, Niemeyer found that “the

evidence at Meeker is inconsistent with wolf attacks.” Niemeyer and veterinarians concluded that the cattle more likely died from “brisket disease,” which commonly a icts cattle living at high altitudes.

Misunderstandings like this one, which lasted weeks, aren’t helpful. Do wolves ever come into con ict with livestock? Yes, but it is relatively rare. In the Northern Rockies where wolves are established, they account for less than 1% of cattle losses. Disease, birthing problems, weather and theft take nine times as many cattle than all predators combined, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In Washington state, which is home to at least 33 wolf packs after nearly 15 years of wolf recovery, more than 80% of the packs have no con ict with

SEE WOLVES, P16

“God has cared for these trees …but he cannot save them from fools.”

— John Muir

The International Panel on Climate

PIVOTS

Change has issued its latest report, warning of a dangerous temperature threshold that we’ll breach during the next decade if we fail to dramatically reduce emissions. A Colorado legislative committee on the same day addressed water withdrawals in the Republican River Basin that must be curbed by decade’s end. In both, problems largely created in the 20th century must now be addressed quickly to avoid the scowls of future generations.

e river basin, which lies east of Denver, sandwiched by Interstates 70 and 76, di ers from nearly all others in Colorado in that it gets no annual snowmelt from the state’s mountain peaks. Even so, by tapping the Ogallala and other aquifers, farmers have made it one of the state’s most agriculturally productive areas. ey grow potatoes and watermelons but especially corn and other plants fed to cattle and hogs. is is Colorado without mountains, an ocean of big skies and rolling sandhills.

Republican River farmers face two overlapping problems. One is of declining wells. Given current pumping rates, they will go dry. e only question is when. Some already have.

More immediate is how these wells have depleted ows of the Republican River and its tributaries into Nebraska and Kansas. ose states cried foul, citing a 1943 interstate compact. Colorado in 2016 agreed to pare 25,000 of its 450,000 to 500,000 irrigated acres within the basin.

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Colorado has a December 2029 deadline. e Republican River Water Conservation District has been paying farmers to retire land from irrigation. Huge commodity prices discourage this, but district o cials said they are con dent they can achieve 10,000 acres before the end of 2024.

Last year, legislators sweetened the pot with an allocation of $30 million, and a like amount for retirement of irrigated land in the San Luis Valley, which has a similar problem. Since 2004, when it was created, the Republican River district self-encumbered $156 million in fee collections and debt for the transition.

It’s unclear that the district can achieve the 2030 goal. e bill unanimously approved by the Colorado House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee will, if it becomes law, task the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University with documenting the economic loss to the region – and to Colorado altogether – if irrigated Republican River Basin agriculture ceases altogether. e farmers may need more help as the deadline approaches. is all-or-nothing proposition is not academic. Kevin Rein, the state water engineer, testi ed that he must shut down all basin wells if compact requirements are not met. e focus is on the Republican’s South Fork, between Wray and Burlington.

Legislators were told that relying solely upon water that falls from the sky diminishes production 75 to 80 percent.

In seeking this study, the river district wants legislators to be aware of what is at stake.

Rod Lenz, who chairs the river district board, put it in human terms. His extended-family’s 5,000-acre farm amid the sandhills can support

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WRITERS ON THE RANGE

In just two years, wild re has killed an estimated 13 to 19% of all mature giant sequoia trees. ese most massive of trees grow only on certain western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the mountain range that divides California’s Central Valley farmland from the Great Basin Desert.

e loss of so many “big trees,” as conservationist John Muir called them, is unprecedented.

Many of the best-known stands of giant sequoias grow more than 6,000 feet above sea level in three national parks — Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite. A visit to these immense trees typically begins with a drive up from Fresno. From the valley oor, Highway 180 curves into foothills, then winds onto steep, tree-covered mountainsides where cooler temperatures and higher humidity take the edge o the California sun.  e road passes through Kings Canyon National Park, where visitors get their rst impression of the big trees. As Muir acknowledged, words aren’t sufcient to convey the awe of that rst encounter with giant sequoias: “No description can give anything like an adequate idea of their singular majesty, much less of their beauty.”

Joe Stone

He added, “Nothing hurts the big tree.” Except in our time: severe wild re and the chainsaw.

Muir’s words helped inspire the national parks that have protected many sequoia groves from logging, but our concern about wild res led to governmentmandated re suppression for more than 100 years. rough a federal agency’s zeal, the big trees are in trouble. In the Sierra Madre’s re regime, developed

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Climate scientists issue their latest, stern warning while farmers in Colorado’s Republican River Basin grapple with how to be sustainable

When giants fall, we need to listen

over centuries, sequoia groves burned every 6 to 35 years. Wild re thinned the smaller trees and converted ne fuels into soil nutrients.

Without re, sequoia cones don’t open and spread their seeds. e same re also creates openings in the forest canopy, giving seedlings the sunlight they need to survive.

Research shows that giant sequoia populations were “stable or increasing” from 500 B.C. through the 1800s. en came the 1900s, when “there was a massive failure of giant sequoia reproduction.” Without re, sequoia seeds stopped sprouting, while the buildup of highly combustible ne fuels on the forest oor, and the greater density of smaller trees, increased the

risk of catastrophic wild re.

As scientists began to understand the problem, the National Park Service implemented a prescribed burning program in giant sequoia groves.

Evidence from recent wild res indicates the program has been successful. Areas treated with prescribed re burned less intensely, mature sequoias did not die and sequoia seedlings have since sprouted.

Clearly, sequoias need re to survive.

e challenge is avoiding catastrophic wild re, a challenge made difcult by today’s dense groves. According to Alexis Bernal, a researcher with the University of California at Berkeley, Sierra Nevada forests typically held about 20 sequoias per acre before 1860. Since then, re suppression has allowed the growth of as many as 120 to 160 trees per acre.

Bernal advocates extensive logging before re can resume its natural

EICHIN Nadene Virginia (Vance) Eichin

March 30, 1925 - January 6, 2023

Nadene Virginia Eichin, a beloved mother of three, peacefully passed on to heaven Friday evening, January 6, 2023, in Elk Grove, California. She was 97. Nadene is survived by her daughter, Karen Zounek of Sacramento, California, and her two sons: Gary Eichin of Duncan, Oklahoma and Merv Eichin of San Angelo, Texas. Nadene is also survived by 14 grandchildren and 13 greatgrandchildren. Nadene was born Nadene Virginia Vance in Akron, Colorado, March 30, 1925, to Alvin and Golde Vance.

DICKMAN

role. Emergency logging by government agencies has already begun in forests with sequoia groves, including clearcuts along roadways in Yosemite National Park.

Not everyone agrees that logging is the answer. Forest ecologist Chad Hanson,with the John Muir Project, calls Bernal’s approach an excuse to continue commercial logging of public lands. He believes sequoia deaths have been far lowerthan o cial estimates and that new trees can sprout even after severe res.

Unfortunately, Congress has gotten involved. Kevin McCarthy, R-California, introduced the Save Our Sequoias Act in 2022 in the House.

Dianne Feinstein, D-California, later introduced the act in the Senate. e bill would expedite mechanical “fuel treatments” by bypassing environmental laws.

We’re just lucky that record snow-

OBITUARIES

She was preceded in death by her husband, Kenneth R. Eichin, and her older brother Alvin MF Vance. Ken and Nadene lived in Fort Collins, Denver, and Arvada, Colorado before retiring in Santa Maria, California. After Ken’s death, Nadene moved to Sacramento, California where she lived near her daughter and her rst grandchild. e family is planning a memorial for some time in the future. Donations are appreciated to fund research for dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Megan (Gilreath) Dickman

July 9, 1974 - February 24, 2023

Megan Gilreath Dickman was born in Santa Maria, Ca on July 9, 1974, and passed suddenly on February 24th in Arvada Co. She moved to Arvada, Co. with her young family in early 2000. Megan became a successful artist, had an online following, and loved teaching others. She lived by a “you can do it” motto.

She is survived by her mother, Glenda Gilreath, her father, Joseph Gilreath, her sisters, Sylvan, Kristen and Katherine Gilreath, and her two sons, Aaron Lee and Brenden Jan Dickman. Her spirit will soar in our hearts forever.

fall in the Sierra Madre threw a wet blanket on the initiative by reducing re risk, as the bill has yet to be reintroduced in the current legislative session.

While the unprecedented threat to these priceless trees might be a rare instance in which “mechanical treatment” is justi ed, chipping away at environmental protections has rarely, if ever, proven bene cial for the environment— especially when politicians try to call the shots.

Giant sequoias need all the help they can get, but that help needs to be informed by good science.

Joe Stone is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonpro t dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is the editor of Forest News, the publication of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.

September 2, 1944 - March 21, 2023

Janet K. Pease, age 78, of North eld, Minnesota, formerly of Arvada, passed away Tuesday evening, March 21, 2023, at Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, MN.

Janet was born September 2, 1944 in Moline, Illinois, daughter of Keith and E. Irene (DeMoney) Pease. She graduated from Moline High School in 1962; received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of lowa in 1966; and received a masters degree in American History from the University of lowa in 1968. She taught American History at Arvada West High School, a profession which she loved, in Arvada, Colorado from 1968 - 2008. Janet moved to North eld, Minnesota in 2017.

Janet is survived by her sister Susan Redalen of North eld, niece Brit Redalen of Apple Valley, nephew Kai Redalen (Gwen Goddard)

of Minneapolis, beloved great-nieces Stella and Svea of Apple Valley, cousin Vicki Lewallen Jones of Houston, TX, formerly of Moline, and cousins Norman Ludwick of Placerville, CA, and Larry (Pat) Ludwick of Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.

By request there will be no services and the family also requests that no owers be sent. Instead, memorials may be made to the Arvada West High School Foundation, PO Box 1677, Arvada, CO, 80001-1677, or the Arvada Community Table, 8555 W. 57th Avenue, Arvada, CO, 80002, or the Mike Warren Memorial Fund, c/o the Moline Foundation, 16 River Drive #210, Moline, IL 61265.

Arrangements are with the Benson & Langehough Funeral Home. www.north eldfuneral.com

Walter “Wally” Zavitz was born and raised in Kenmore, New York. He joined the Army as a young man and served in Korea prior to the outbreak of war. With the help of the G.I. Bill, he began his college studies at Ohio Wesleyan, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. Despite his heavy courseload, he found time to play football and participate in Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity. After completing his undergraduate studies, Wally went on to attend Bucknell University, where he obtained a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering. At Bucknell, he met Nancy Read, an elementary education major. ey married at the home of her parents in West eld, New Jersey, after graduation.

Wally and Nancy were married for 67 years and had three children – Patricia McNurlin (Don), William Zavitz (Paula), and Kathy Zavitz (Peter). Wally spent his career managing the manufacture of plastic materials. Much of that career was spent in Arvada, Colorado. Wally was athletic and

inquisitive, and he liked to stay busy. He enjoyed handball and skiing in his younger years, and he learned to y sh at age 72. Other interests included genealogy and gardening (he was a long-time master gardener). Wally was a decades-long member of the Presbyterian Church. He and Nancy continued that involvement at Westminster Presbyterian when they moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2014.

Wally was well known for his dry sense of humor, which sometimes left his listeners with quizzical expressions. Not everyone got his jokes – and he was just ne with that! He was a passionate, supportive husband and father, and he was kind and friendly to the end. He is survived by his wife Nancy, three children, six grandchildren, and one great granddaughter. He was preceded in death by his parents, Emily and Evan Zavitz and his sister, Arlene Venkatesh. A memorial service is planned for May 20, 2023, in Portland.

A ectionately known as “JD”, Julio Duran, age 97, died March 21, 2023, after a long and ful lling life. He is survived and beloved by his wife Connie, six of his seven children, eighteen grandchildren, and twenty-eight great grand-children and three great, great grand-children.

He was born in Wagon Mound, New Mexico to Antonio Jose Duran and Amalia Espinoza in August 1925. ey had eleven children, seven boys and four girls. Of the eleven children, he is survived by his remaining brother, Deacon Carlitos “Charlie” Duran of Wagon Mound, NM.

A World War II Veteran, he joined the US Naval reserves on April 19, 1943, at the age of seventeen and served on the USS Copahee Escort Carrier in the South Paci c eater. He was discharged honorably on April 5, 1946.

After discharge, he married Consuelo (Connie) Melendez on January 14, 1949, in Wagon Mound New Mexico. ey had seven children, Antonio “Tony” (deceased January 11, 2022), Irene, Eddie, Patricia, David, Julie, and Linda. He and Connie moved their

growing family to Denver in 1950 in a 1931 Model A.

He used his GI Bill to study automotive mechanics and owned a gas station and repair shop in Arvada. He retired as a mechanic for Associated Grocers.

JD was never one to sit still. As well as working on hundreds, if not thousands of cars over a lifetime, he and Connie loved to sh. ey bought an RV and a boat and would spend many weekends enjoying Colorado lakes and rivers. JD and Connie loved to dance and whenever they did, everyone watched, they were that good! In later years, they enjoyed going to Las Vegas to visit their son Tony’s family and up to “the hill” in Blackhawk and Central City to play the penny slots.

JD and Connie have been Arvada residents for over six decades. He will be missed by many, nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends. A favorite memory of all who knew him was his joyful “Good Morning” every single day!

Funeral services will be held over Labor Day weekend in Wagon Mound, New Mexico.

PEASE

Janet Pease

DURAN

Julio “JD” Duran August 1, 1925 - March 21, 2023

ZAVITZ

Walter Evan “Wally” Zavitz

November 2, 1928 - February 2, 2023

Area massage therapists laud the benefits of the practice on their clients’ ailments, stress

BY DEB HURLEY BROBST DBROBST@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Caring, compassionate hands — and sometimes feet — are used by massage therapists to help improve the lives of their clients. Massage is an ancient practice, and there are more than two dozen types throughout the world, therapists say.

Four massage therapists interviewed by Colorado Community Media say massage has become more accepted by the public, and more scienti c research is being done to document the health bene ts.

Massage can help with pain and injuries; decrease muscular tension; reduce blood pressure, swelling and in ammation; release endorphins; and much more, according to massage therapists.

“Even people who don’t have speci c problems can bene t from massage,” Destine Robertson with Alpine Medical Massage in Centennial and Conifer said. “Everybody has so much stress, and massage can help relieve that.”

People’s perceptions of massage have come a long way, the therapists said.

“A lot of people think of massage as pampering and relaxing,” Ti any Shocklee with Hearth re erapeutics in Golden said, “but it can help people who have many other issues, too.”

A blend of massage styles

Massage therapy is not an easy profession, requiring hours of training, a certi cation exam and licensing in Colorado.

“It’s become a more regulated eld,” said Mary Davis with Healing Traditions Bodywork in Evergreen, “which I think is best. I think it’s needed and necessary to protect people when they are potentially vulnerable going in for a personal treatment like massage.”

But education doesn’t stop at the 600 hours of initial training for most therapists. ey continue to learn di erent techniques to add to their repertoire.

“ e single most popular, most widely done type of massage in the

U.S. and maybe in the world is Swedish massage,” Davis said. “ at is part of your basic training. It is a bit lighter, more relaxing, with long strokes. en what I do and what a lot of therapists do is integrative massage. We have received additional training in areas that have spoken to us.”

Davis said most of the time she’s integrating di erent styles and techniques in one massage.

“I have a toolbox, and I pull different things out based on what I’m feeling that day in their tissues and what they need,” she explained.

Jenna Courage of Littleton erapeutic Massage Center said she has blended together many styles to create her own technique.

“I make each session specialized for each client,” Courage explained. “Some techniques I use on one client but not another. I feel like I am learning from my clients. ey come in with something new, and I gure out how to work with it, then take that knowledge and use it on someone with a similar issue.”

A satisfying career

Some massage therapists like Shocklee chose the practice as their rst career, while others nd massage therapy along their career paths. Davis and Shocklee have been massage therapists for 19 years, while Robertson has spent 22 years in the profession and Courage 31 years.

“Massage is important for me,” Shocklee said. “It’s what I’m meant to do. It helps me stay connected to myself. For me to go to work feels very focusing and a relief from other parts of my day that may be chaotic. It’s doing something that is single-minded by working with one person.”

Courage was working on a premedicine degree when she realized she had a strong interest in alternative health care. She visited a massage school and signed up the

CIRCLE PHOTO: Mary Davis with Healing Traditions Bodywork in Evergreen uses her forearm to massage areas of a client’s back.

Destine Robertson with Alpine Medical Massage in Centennial and Conifer massages a patient’s back.

Ti any Shocklee with Hearthfire Therapeutics in Golden massages a client’s shoulder. Shocklee also o ers ashiatsu massage during which she uses her feet.

TOUCH

next week.

Robertson, for example, worked in a bakery before moving to massage therapy, quipping that kneading bread dough helped pave the way to her next career. However, she said she should have known that massage therapy was her calling because as a young girl, she rubbed her grandmother’s shoulders. Her grandmother suggested massage therapy as a career.

Davis had a 20-year career in the nonpro t sector rst.

“I like doing things that help people, but I didn’t want to make the commute and sit in an o ce,” Davis said.

Helping others

e massage therapists agree that they continue to practice massage therapy for so many years because of the relationships they have with their clients and because of their ability to

help others with a multitude of issues.

“It’s a pretty amazing feeling to have somebody come in (for a massage) in pain or with an issue that is a big problem in their lives, and you’re able to gure out how to work with them to help either greatly improve or resolve that issue,” Courage said. “Just the feeling of seeing them feel better, to know that they are healthier, happier, more functional in their lives, and you helped create that.”

Shocklee added: “I feel like it’s very rewarding being able to increase people’s wellbeing. It de nitely can be therapeutic for me to help other people and make them feel better. For me personally, doing things like continuing education so I can keep learning new things and taking care of myself have helped me to be able to do it as long as I can. When I rst started, I didn’t think I’d be doing it that long.”

Davis says she usually see an immediate impact from the massages she provides.

“It really motivates me and makes me feel good,” Davis said. “It gives meaning to my work. I feel like I am having a positive impact on people’s lives.”

that are similar to yogic stretching. The therapist uses palms and fingers to apply firm pressure to the body, and you will be stretched and twisted into various positions. Myofascial release therapy: involves releasing sti ness in the fascia, the connective tissue system that contains each muscle in the body. The therapist uses massage and stretch to any areas that feel tense with light pressure.

John F. Barnes Myofascial Release: a treatment used to treat chronic pain from the following: back, neck, menstrual, jaw, headaches, and others.

Ashiatsu massage: a technique where massage therapists use their feet to apply deep pressure to your body. It’s often called barefoot massage. Methods allow the deep tissues, joints and muscles to be massaged while easing the nervous system.

Reiki: a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing. It is based on the idea that an unseen life-force energy flows through people and is what causes us to be alive. If one’s life-force energy is low, then we are more likely to get sick or feel stress, and if it is high, we are more capable of being happy and healthy.

COURTESY PHOTOS

Say goodbye to winter with a mix of indoor entertainment

Clarke Reader

Wh ile March is technically the beginning of spring, it isn’t until April that it really starts to feel like we’re transitioning from the cold weather to something more pleasant. April is the month where we move from inside activities to music under the stars, meals on patios and art shows spilling out into the street.

With that in mind, here’s a round-up of activities to say a fond (depending on your interests) farewell to winter.

When John Mayer rst appeared on the scene in the early 2000s, I think even few of even his most devoted fans (of which I am one)

could have predicted the journey he’d take in the ensuing 20 years. He mastered the pop guitarist thing and explored a range of roles: blues maestro, folky troubadour and even jam band favorite. During all this he worked hard to stay true to himself and the result is a wonderful song catalog full of radio mainstays and hidden gems.

To celebrate the rst two decades of his career, Mayer has embarked on a solo tour, which stops at Ball Arena , 1000 Chopper Circle in Denver, at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, April 3. He’ll be joined by the fantastic folk/blues singer Joy Oladokun for what I’m certain will be a truly special evening. Get tickets at www.ticketmaster.com.

Celebrate the legendary Charles Mingus at DU Charles Mingus is one of jazz’s most incomparable voices — his compositions are as nuanced and innovative as the writing of legends like Miles Davis and Louis Arm-

strong. And the Mingus Big Band has been celebrating his music since 1979. It is under the artistic direction of Sue Mingus and was built o the Mingus Dynasty septet that she formed after his death in 1979.

e 14-piece band will be performing at e Robert and Judi Newman Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Denver , 2344 E. Ili Ave., at 7:30 p.m. on ursday, April 6. Anyone who loves jazz or wants to learn more about one of the 20 th century’s most dynamic composers shouldn’t miss this performance.

According to provided information, the group “features new arrangements of Mingus compositions in a larger band format that Mingus was not always able to organize in his lifetime.” Get tickets at newmancenterpresents.com.

Visit Brazil via Diego Figueiredo’s guitar

It is di cult to imagine a better

music to get you in the mood for warmer weather than Brazilian jazz, which makes guitarist Diego Figueiredo’s performance at the Lakewood Cultural Center , 470 S. Allison Parkway, at 7:30 p.m. April 7 perfectly timed.

According to provided information, Figueiredo takes a unique approach to jazz and classical solo guitar. He’s a Grammy-nominated guitarist, who has performed in more than 60 countries and has an international reputation as one of the world’s best jazz musicians. For information and tickets, call 303-987-7845 or visit Lakewood. org/LCCPresents.

Explore the transience of photography at Walker Fine Art Walker Fine Art’s , 300 W. 11th Ave., No. A, in Denver, latest exhibition, “Transient Presence,” began in mid-March to celebrate Denver’s Month of Photography, but runs

FROM PAGE 12

13 families, he told me. Returned to grasslands, that same farm could support only two families.

An “evolution of accountability” is how Lenz describes the big picture in the Republican River Basin. “We all knew it was coming. But it was so far in the future. Well, the future is here now.”

The district has 10 committees charged with investigating ways

WOLVES

livestock in an average year.   Overall, the threat of wolves to the livestock industry is negligible. For the few livestock producers who are impacted by wolves, it is, of course, economically painful and time consuming.

But options exist for ranchers to

to sustain the basin’s economy and leave its small towns thriving. Can it attract Internet technology developers? Can the remaining water be used for higher-value purposes? Can new technology irrigate more efficiently?

“We do know we must evolve,” Lenz told me. The farmers began large-scale pumping with the arrival of center-pivot sprinklers, a technology invented in Colorado in 1940. They’re remarkably efficient at extracting underground water. Now, they must figure out sustainable agriculture. That’s a

safeguard their livestock. Old-fashioned riding the range to drive o wolf packs, cleaning up carcasses so they don’t attract wolves, penning up livestock at night, installing scare devices, and using guard dogs are all deterrents that can work.

Unfortunately, data from the United States Department of Agriculture suggest that few livestock owners use these e ective, nonlethal mitigation measures.

very difficult conversation. Aquifers created over millions of years are being depleted in a century.

The Republican River shares similarities with the better-known and much larger Colorado River Basin. The mid-20 th  century was the time of applying human ingenuity to development of water resources. Now, along with past miscalculations, the warming climate is exacting a price, aridification of the Colorado River Basin.

Globally, the latest report from climate scientists paints an even greater challenge. To avoid really

But many livestock producers across the west — in southern Alberta, the Big Wood River Drainage of Idaho, the Tom Miner Basin and Blackfoot Valley of Montana and elsewhere — do use a variety of these deterrents, which make it possible for their herds to live alongside both wolves and grizzly bears.

To its credit, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has produced a resource guide for livestock producers. To do an even better job as wolves integrate into western Colorado, the state must improve the way it investigates livestock deaths. ese investigations must be timely and transparent — as in other Western states such as Washington — and withoutscapegoating.

e Colorado legislature could do its part, too, by providing funding for a trained, rapid-response team that would immediately investigate livestock injuries and deaths.

bad stuff, they say, we must halve our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. They insist upon need for new technologies, including ways to suck carbon out of the atmosphere, that have yet to be scaled. We need that evolution of accountability described in Colorado’s Republican River Basin. We need a revolution of accountability on the global scale.

Allen Best, a long-time Colorado journalist, publishes Big Pivots. You can find more at BigPivots. com

According to Niemeyer, authorities must respond as if they were investigating a crime scene — checking out dead livestock within 24 hours to prevent losing evidence from tissue decomposition or scavengers.

Only when a cause is determined, based on evidence, should information be made public. If wolf recovery is going to be successful for both wolves and people, everyone involved — livestock producers, wolf advocates, agencies — must work together. What happened in Meeker has been a valuable lesson in what not to do.

Story Warren is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonpro t dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She is a program manager in wildlife protection for the Humane Society of the United States.

Clarke’s Concert of the Week — John Mayer Solo at Ball Arena

Thu 4/06

Bunny Trails at Belmar @ 11am / Free

Belmar, 7337 West Alaska Drive, Lake‐wood. janet@see-janet-work.com, 303-815-3504

Tripp St. @ 7pm

The Church, 1160 Lin‐coln St, Denver

Mingus Big Band @ 7:30pm Gates Concert Hall, Denver

Rainbow FULL of SOUND @ 8pm Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St, Boulder

Shift @ 8:30pm

Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom & Other Side, 2637 Welton St, Denver

Fri 4/07

Conjunto Primavera @ 4pm National Western Complex, 4655 Hum‐boldt St, Denver

Nia Archives @ 9pm Bluebird Theater, 3317 E. Colfax Ave, Denver

Sun 4/09

Colorado Rockies vs. Washington Nationals @ 1:10pm / $12-$300 Coors Field, 2001 Blake St., Denver

The Pitch Invasion @ 4pm Globe Hall, 4483 Logan St, Denver

10th - May 15th Buchanan Park Recreation Center, 32003 Ellingwood Trail, Evergreen. 720-880-1000

Blaze- Ya Dead Homie: Blaze & ABK Performing Drive By & More! @ 6pm The Roxy Theater, 2549 Welton St, Denver

Keeps @ 8pm

Lake Lounge, 3602 E Colfax Ave, Denver

Lake Lounge, 3602 E Colfax Ave, Denver

Wild Love Tigress

@ The Little Bear, Evergreen CO @ 7pm The Little Bear, 28075 CO-74, Evergreen

Backline @ 7pm

Mile High Spirits Craft Cocktails + Live Music, 2201, Lawrence Street, Denver

Pet Fox

@ 9pm Lost Lake Lounge, 3602 E Colfax Ave, Denver

Sat 4/08

Ballet Ariel presents 'The Firebird' @ 2pm / $20-$30

The Elaine Wolf Theatre, 350 South Dahlia Street, Denver. balletariel@comcast.net, 303-945-4388

Jakk Fynn @ 7pm Tracks, 3500 Walnut St, Denver

Neil Z @ 7pm

Sloan's Bar & Grill, 5850 W 25th Ave, Edgewater

Billy Gunther & The Midwest Riders Live! @ 8pm

Grizzly Rose, 5450 N Valley Hwy, Denver

Mavi @ 7pm Marquis Theater, 2009 Larimer St, Denver

The Girl Cous: THE WONDERFOOL W/ SPECIAL GUESTS COUS, LITTLE MIAMI & SUPER SPORT @ 8pm Larimer Lounge, 2721 Larimer St, Denver

Mon 4/10

Snail Mail @ 8:30pm

Source At Herman's Hideaway FREE SHOW! @ 7pm

Hideaway, 1578 S Broadway, Denver

Black Market Translation: Punketry! @ 7:30pm

Information Cafe, 2 S Broadway, Denver Dogs in a Pile @ 8pm

Lake Lounge, 3602 E Colfax Ave, Denver

powered by

Conifer robotics team comes to the aid of the Denver East team

BY DEB HURLEY BROBST DBROBST@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Conifer High School’s robotics team decided to come to the aid of the Denver East High School team on March 22 in the wake of the two administrators who were shot there and the chaos afterward.

During the school lockdown, the East High School Angelbotics team was concerned it would not be able to return to the school to pick up its robot and tools for the FIRST Robotics Competition at the University of Denver on March 23.

“So we had a team meeting,” Conifer junior Hannah Stau er said, “and we all realized that East might need a robot or possibly another team might have an emergency and need a robot.”

Conifer’s team, Team Blitz 2085, made a quick plan and got to work, spending about seven hours building an extra robot for the competition while putting the nishing touches on its own robot.

Luckily, Angelbotics was able to compete using its own robot.

Team Blitz 2085 embodies the notion of coopertition, which is cooperating despite being in a competition, a tenet of FIRST Robotics. It means helping other teams, so all can be successful.

“Our kids were in the middle of nishing their robot, and they decided to do what they could to give the East kids a chance to participate,” Conifer team mentor Mindy Hanson said.

She said FIRST Robotics charges each team a $6,000 nonrefundable registration fee, so it would have been heartbreaking if the East team couldn’t participate through no fault of its own.

Stau er said all of the teams have a family dynamic because of their shared love of robotics.

“Being able to help anyone we can puts us in a good place,” Stau er explained. “We want to help any way we can. It’s part of the whole spirit of the coopertition mentality. You help people and they help you no matter what.”

Stau er said she hopes all people will embody the spirit of helping others.

“I hope people in the world generally have a good heart,” she said, “and want to help people who have worked so hard and have something happen out of their control.”

Conifer robotics team member Maddie Potter begins working on a robot that the Denver East High School team could use at a competition on March 23, a day after a shooting at the school.

Conifer robotics team members Rhys Hanson, left, and Hannah Stau er find parts to use to create a new robot.

They build a robot the Denver East team could use if it couldn’t bring its own to a competition

Conifer student Mia Vaughn, mentor Isaac Stau er and student Johnathan Teklar worked on a practice robot earlier this year that was the basis for the extra robot that Denver East High School’s team could use.

Denver schools are bringing back police. Other places in the U.S. already have.

BY KALYN BELSHA CHALKBEAT

When a Denver teen shot and injured two school administrators on March 22, it marked the third time this year that gun violence had rocked East High, the city’s largest high school.

For the school’s superintendent, it signaled the need for a dramatic shift in district policy: the return of police at comprehensive high schools for the remainder of the school year.

“I can no longer stand on the sidelines,” Alex Marrero wrote in a letter to the school board, which voted in 2020 to remove police from schools.

e city’s mayor quickly backed the decision, and even a local group long opposed to police in schools acknowledged that acts of violence “force hard conversations.” On March 23, the school board agreed to temporarily lift its ban on school police.

e turnabout in Denver echoes recent decisions to bring back school police by a few other districts across the U.S. In some cases, as in Denver, these debates are coming to a head after a shooting or other act of violence on campus erodes support.

Many other districts have stayed the course. But with more commu-

nities nationwide facing upticks in gun violence, and in a moment with far less political attention being paid to racism and policing,it remains unclear if changes elsewhere will be walked back.

“It makes sense that communities are really struggling following incidents like this — they are traumatic and scary,” said Katherine Dunn of e Advancement Project,

a nonpro t that has advocated for the removal of police from schools. Bringing back police can be a quick, visible way for school leaders to demonstrate they are being reactive in a moment of crisis. “Every time this happens,” she said, policing is “the one thing that we know to go back to and try again.”

School leaders, families, students, and community groups have long wrestled with what role police should play in schools.

School shootings have prompted schools to add guards and police in an e ort to stop future violence, though their track record is mixed. By 2019, just over half of U.S. schools had at least one armed o cer present, according to a federal survey. But having police in school has also been shown to increase arrests and suspensions, with Black students most likely to be arrested at school and less likely to feel safer when police were around.

According to a tracker compiled by Education Week, at least 50 school districts eliminated school police or signi cantly reduced their school policing budgets from May 2020 through June 2022, following the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing racial justice protests of 2020.

Denver was one of several school districts that removed or scaled back the presence of school police during that period. e district canceled its contract with the city’s police department and o cers were removed from schools by June 2021.

Eight districts ended up bringing back school police, EdWeek found, at least three of which reversed course in response to shootings or the presence of weapons at or near schools.

ese debates are often complicated and play out di erently depending on the community.

Some in Denver were questioning whether the school district should revisit its relationship with the police even before the tragedy.

In Portland, Oregon, where the school district removed police from schools in 2020, the mayor said in December that talks were in the

works to possibly bring o cers back after students were shot outside two di erent high schools.

Montgomery County schools in Maryland brought back police following a shooting at a high school in January 2022 that injured a student.

And Alexandria City schools in Virginia temporarily reinstated police following several student ghts and an incident in which a student had a handgun outside the city’s high school. e debate continued after a student was stabbed to death outside the same school. In January, an advisory group ultimately recommended that the district keep police in schools, in part to show families the district was taking those violent incidents seriously.

In those cases, police returned with some new requirements in place. Montgomery County, for example, limited which incidents police could get involved in, while Alexandria is poised to require that school police receive de-escalation training.

Elsewhere, changes have stuck. In Los Angeles, the district cut its policing budget by more than a third and reinvested that money into an initiative to boost Black student achievement. at includes hiring hundreds of new social workers, counselors, and other sta for schools that enroll large percentages of Black students. Some students have reported feeling more relaxed seeing those mental health sta ers on campus instead of police.

“I feel like a big part of their purpose is to help you feel comfortable in your skin,” one 16-year-old student told Capital B.

Still, conversations about the future of school police are ongoing in lots of places. In Washington D.C., where the city has been shrinking its school police force, the mayor tried and failed to reverse the measure last year and is set to try again. In Chicago, decisions are being made at the school level, and 40 schools will decide whether to continue having police on campus in the next few months.

In Denver, the board suspended its policy prohibiting police in schools through the end of June. It also directed the superintendent to engage with students, families, and teachers, and to seek funding for additional mental health sta .

Dunn says while many schools have experimented with removing police, they have a longer way to go to gure out how to sta and fund alternatives to police.

“ e systems transformation that is required to actually have schools be safe places — I don’t really see that happening,” she said.

Sarah Darville contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org. is story is from Chalkbeat Colorado, a nonpro t news site covering educational change in public schools. Used by permission. For more, and to support Chalkbeat, visit co.chalkbeat. org.

School shootings have prompted schools to add guards and police in an e ort to stop future violence, though their track record is mixed.

FILE PHOTO

EASTER Worship

Church of the Beloved

Ecumenical Catholic Community

Holy Week Services and Easter Mass

We value diversity in…

Age

Ethnicity and Race

Marital Status

Sexual Orientation

Arvada United Methodist Church

8:15am | In Person

10am | In Person & Livestream

childcare available

with JeffCo Brass, AUMC Choirs & Handbells

Arvada United Methodist Church invites you to Easter Worship services at 8:15am and 10am on Sunday, April 9, 2023. We are located at 6750 Carr Street in Arvada, CO. Our 10am service will also be livestreamed online. AUMC is an open and affirming community- all are welcome in our doors and at our table.

To learn more about Holy Week and Easter at AUMC, please visit us online at arvadaumc.org/lent

Gender Expression

Religious Background …and more!

ALL Are Welcome!

In-person or on Zoom!

churchofthebeloved-ecc.org

Weekly Mass: Saturdays at 5pm

Holy Thursday: 7:30pm; Good Friday: 7pm Easter Vigil: 9pm; Easter Mass: 8:30am

10500 Grant Dr, Northglenn CO (303) 489-7046

DAs balk at raising prosecution age from 10 to 13

BY JENNIFER BROWN THE COLORADO SUN

Colorado lawmakers will consider a proposal again this year to raise the age that children can face criminal charges, from 10 to 13 years old.

Legislation introduced at the state Capitol in March is a more robust version of a bill that failed last year. The plan is to send the youngest criminal offenders directly into therapy and other community programs, instead of arresting and holding them in detention in a juvenile corrections center. The only exception included in the legislation is homicide.

Supporters point to statistics that show young children who spend time in juvenile detention are more likely to return to the corrections system as kids and adults, with studies showing that it’s difficult to get their lives on track after being branded as criminals.

“Are we making kids better or are we making them worse?” asked Kyle Piccola, vice president of advocacy for Healthier Colorado, which supports the proposal. “We came to the conclusion that the system as it is today is making kids worse.”

The major difference in this year’s legislation is that it would require every county to set up a system in which authorities would refer children who get into crimi-

nal trouble to mentoring, therapy, anger management and substance use treatment. Last year, opponents had argued that children were unlikely to get rehabilitation services if they were never charged with a crime.

But, same as last year, the pro-

posal doesn’t have broad support from the law enforcement community. District attorneys say Colorado’s juvenile justice system has evolved so much in the past several years that nearly all 10- to 12-year-olds who are accused of crimes end up not behind bars but in diversion programs intended to rehabilitate them. And, they argue, the legislation would strip the judicial system’s ability to levy consequences against kids who don’t participate in required services.

It’s extremely rare that children that young end up sentenced, or “committed,” to spend time in a juvenile detention center. In the past 10 years, only four kids 12 and under were committed in Colorado.

Many more, however, were arrested and detained in juvenile facilities while a judge decided their case.

In the six years from 2016 to 2021, 455 kids ages 10, 11 and 12 were detained for days or months in the Division of Youth Services. Of those, 49 were 10-year-olds.

The crimes range from weapons charges and auto theft to homicide and attempted homicide. In the last fiscal year, one 12-year-old was detained on a homicide charge and three 12-year-olds were held on attempted homicide charges, according to Division of Youth Services data released to The Sun.

Two children, one 12 and one 11, were held on sexual assault charges.

The state Department of Human Services, which includes the youth corrections system, is not taking a position on the legislation.

When children who are 10, 11 or 12 get in trouble with law enforcement, officers would complete a form to refer them to a so-called “collaborative management program.” The programs, created by state law in 2004, already exist in 51 of Colorado’s 64 counties and coordinate services for families

and children involved in multiple systems, such as child welfare and juvenile justice.

The programs would create a plan for each child, a mix of services that could include mentoring, anger management, family therapy and individual counseling. In cases in which the crime had a victim, the victim could contribute input about the services plan. Victims would still be eligible for victims’ services and compensation.

In cases of a felony sex offense, the county human services department would also participate in the plan and would decide whether to open a child abuse or neglect case.

The bill says children who violate a protection order intended to protect the victim in a case cannot be held in custody. Instead, a court could order the child to participate in a collaborative management program.

It also would outlaw transferring the criminal cases of 13-year-olds to adult court.

An organization called Fully Liberated Youth is among those that would provide services to kids who come into contact with law enforcement but are too young to face prosecution.

The agency already has worked with about 100 children in four judicial districts in the Denver area through pretrial diversion, a program in which a judge orders a juvenile offender to complete a rehabilitation program in order to avoid criminal charges.

Fully Liberated Youth also has programs in school districts targeting young people who often miss class, get in fights or are involved in gangs. School staff and authorities can refer students to the program.

If the legislation passes, it likely would send more funding to Fully Liberated Youth and similar programs.

SHUTTERSTOCK

RAISING AGE

“We’re asking bigger questions about why is this young person engaging in these activities in the first place, instead of trying to incarcerate our way out of the problem,” said Preston Adams, a co-founder of the program.

A child who is stealing, for example, might need help with food assistance. A child might act out because they need a special learning program in school. Other kids need a mentor on the Fully Liberated Youth team.

“It’s a comprehensive plan for the client and the family to get to the root of the problem,” Adams said.

The proposal to get kids into services instead of behind bars is also a way to address the racial bias that exists in the juvenile justice system, said the organization’s other co-founder, Natalie Baddour. Nearly all of the children who participate in the organization’s programs — 98% — are Black and brown, she said. Black youth are overrepresented in Colorado’s judicial system, according to department data.

Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, a Denver Democrat and a prime sponsor of the legislation, has worked with young people in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and ran Denver’s collaborative management program for 10 years.

“We continue to hear his concern

that the juvenile justice system was the only place that these kids could access services, which in my experience, I know is actually pretty false,” she said. “There are a number of resources and services that are already available. It was a matter of how do we make sure that they are made more easily accessible and available to these kids, if they are no longer going through that system.”

Rep. Ryan Armagost, a Berthoud Republican and the other prime sponsor of the bill, is a former sheriff’s deputy and worked in the prison system.

“That’s part of the reason that brought me to this bill,” he said.

“I’ve seen the revolving door.”

“I carried handcuffs to detain somebody. I never had to put them on a 12-year-old, they’re not even designed to fit a 12-year-old, so the fact that we are considering this as an option for kids 12 and under is frustrating to me.”

But the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council opposes the measure.

The juvenile justice system is working fine, said Tom Raynes, a former district attorney in Montrose and now executive director of the council. Criminal filings against juveniles have dropped 50% in the past 20 years because kids are sent to diversion programs instead. And in 2017, Colorado stopped allowing detention of 10to 12-year-olds except for felonies or weapons charges.

“I feel like they are attempting to unwind a system that’s working extremely well,” he said.

The state is already diverting most juvenile offenders to support services, and the success rate for those programs is high. But today, when a child violates court orders to participate in therapy or not contact a victim, a judge can send them to detention. The legislation would take away that consequence, replacing it with meetings about service plans and shifting accountability from the child to their parents, who could become the subject of a child neglect case if their child does not follow the service plan, Raynes said.

“Failure to comply has little consequence, until perhaps an ultimate decision to file a dependency and neglect action against the parents, which is this kind of exaggerated premise that all kids who get in trouble have neglectful or abusive parents,” he said.

In the decade from 2011 to 2021, there were 973 violent and serious offenses filed in Colorado against kids ages 10-12, according to the council. That included 14 murder and attempted murder charges. Yet only four kids were sentenced to serve time in a juvenile corrections facility.

“You’re seeing that the probationary and community services are working,” said Jessica Dotter, the council’s sex assault resource prosecutor.

In the past decade, children ages 10-12 were accused of 1,500 sex cases. More than half were sexual assault on a child, meaning the child was victimizing a child younger than them, she said.

“It’s a really harsh reality and one

that most people don’t want to believe occurs with this population,” Dotter said. “And it’s worrisome that the bill does not have any sort of carve-outs for violent crimes other than murder, and worrisome that the bill does not have any carve-out for sexual offenses.” Last year’s proposal was stripped down to a task force, which recently released its final report.

This story is from The Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support The Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun. com. The Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.

Why so many Colorado cars have expired license plates

Situation is widespread

BY PAOLO ZIALCITA COLORADO PUBLIC RADIO

eodore Shille was driving home from the grocery store when he noticed something. During the short trip, he passed three cars that had expired temporary license plates or no plates at all.

It wasn’t the rst time he had seen this near his Denver home; a few days before he wrote in to CPR News and asked, “what’s the deal with all the cars driving around without a license plate, or with an expired temporary plate?”

It’s a question that regularly appears on a local Reddit message board.

And it’s something this reporter has seen, as well. When I started looking into this story, I stood at a busy intersection in Westminster near the entrance to U.S. 36 on a Sunday morning to count the number of cars I saw with expired temporary license plates or no plates. Within 10 minutes, I saw 10 cars.

Why are there so many cars on Colorado roads with expired plates? At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, before vaccines were readily available, county Department of Motor Vehicle o ces were closed frequently and experienced supply chain issues for materials needed to make the plates. Could that still be a ecting permanent license plate turnaround times? Are drivers lax in getting their plates updated, or is something else happening?

According to Adam Wilms, director of vehicle services at the state DMV, that early pandemic slowdown has come and gone.

“You’ll see appointments ranging from same day to, I would say, a max of three or four days out,” he said.

But that only covers one aspect of the process to acquire permanent plates. It really begins once someone purchases a vehicle from a dealership.

After all the forms are signed, the dealer has 30 days to forward the title paperwork to your county DMV o ce for processing. Jessica Ramirez, who manages titles for

GoJo Auto in Denver, said this part usually goes smoothly for her, but there are exceptions.

“Every deal’s di erent. I have three right now that aren’t good,” Ramirez said. “Sometimes it’s a trade-in and we pay out the lien and the bank doesn’t send us the title. Or it gets lost in the mail, so I have to wait for a lien release and then get a duplicate title. ere’s lots of things that could delay it.”

e county DMV has 30 days after it receives the title to process the paperwork and send the buyer a “Title Complete Notice” via mail. Ramirez said she heard from the people she sends paperwork to that there are potential slowdowns there, as well.

Derek Kuhn, a spokesperson for the state DMV, said that all Colorado counties should be caught up on title processing by now, except for one.

“Our team con rmed that Denver County DMV is running behind on processing title paperwork, but we

believe they should be caught up in a couple of weeks,” he said.

Department spokesperson Courtney Meihls said the Denver County DMV wait time is currently 30 days: “Denver is experiencing a backlog due to sta ng issues, and because our branches operate di erently than other [motor vehicle] branches throughout the state.”

If drivers don’t receive their permanent plates within by the time the temporary plates expire, Meihls continued, the DMV branches will provide extended temporary plates.

After the local DMV mails that Title Complete Notice, the process to get permanent plates varies by county. In Denver County, for example, buyers can either register their vehicle over the phone or visit a branch o ce. Buyers may be required to bring documentation, like proof of ownership and insurance, into their local DMV o ce.

All that’s left to do is pay for registration fees, which can vary depending on the age, weight and value of the vehicle. Fees can amount in the low hundreds, while some vehicles may garner a nal fee of well over $1,000. Fees help pay for vital infrastructure across the state.

“What most people don’t realize is that a signi cant portion of [registration fees] goes to the county, so that pays a lot of your county taxes,” Wilms said. “In addition to that, it’s your road and bridge taxes and fees. A lot of the money goes to the highway user tax fund and funds the repairs and the creation of our roads and bridges throughout Colorado.”

e road to obtaining permanent plates should take 60 days, at most. But for Kyle Spence, it took six months.

“As soon as I actually purchased the car and left with it, that’s when everything started falling to pieces,”

Spence said.

When his rst set of temporary tags expired in November, he called his dealership, a national chain, in orton which told him they hadn’t submitted any documents to the state.

“ ey never really gave me a reason for it,” he said.

By January, Spence’s second set of temporary tags were due to expire, and he hadn’t received the Title Complete Notice from the DMV. So, he took matters into his own hands.

“ ere’s a way that you can look up your VIN number of your vehicle, [and] whether or not you have a title number,” he said. Spence took the title number to the tax collector’s o ce without his Title Complete Notice and eventually got his permanent plate. He acknowledged, however, that per-

Tra c on intersate 25 in Denver COURTESY OF CPR NEWS

‘Our team confirmed that Denver County DMV is running behind on processing title paperwork, but we believe they should be caught up in a couple of weeks.’

Derek Kuhn, spokesperson for the state DMV

EXPIRED

suading the o ce to go through the process without the notice was di cult.

For Kate McElhaney, the road to permanent plates has been similarly rocky. In November, she bought an electric vehicle and by February, she was still waiting to obtain permanent plates.

“I don’t know where the holdup is. Is it with the dealership? Is it with the DMV? I’m not really sure,” she said.

Neither her dealership nor the DMV have answered her questions. And with the tax deadline quickly approaching, she isn’t sure how to le to get the state’s electric vehicle tax credit.

“If I don’t get my car registered until after April 15, what does that mean?” she asked. “Do I just surrender my tax credit or can I go for it in this calendar year? I don’t know and I can’t really nd any information on that.”

But what about people driving around with long-expired temporary plates, or cars with no plates?

Until recently, Colorado only penalized people with expired vehicle registration. But earlier this month, a new law went into e ect that aims to reduce the number of cars with expired temporary license plates by introducing new nes to people late with the registration of their temporary plates, as well as permanent ones.

In response to the DMV’s renewed hard stance on all unregistered vehicles, some state law enforcement agencies said they would take more consistent action against cars with expired plates or no plates.

Colorado State Patrol, the Douglas County Sheri ’s O ce, and other police departments recently said they will begin pulling over people for unregistered vehicles.

e Denver Police Department, however, signaled that unregistered vehicles are low on their priority list.

“Consistent with our commit-

ment to Vision Zero, Denver Police O cers generally focus on safety violations when conducting tra c enforcement. When they are not responding to reports of crime, o cers are encouraged to engage in proactive e orts, to include enforcing tra c and parking violations,” DPD said in a statement.

Police departments aren’t the only entity with the authority to enforce registration laws. In Denver, a division of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure handles parking violations and citations around the city.  at division — the Right of Way Enforcement — issued about 92,000 citations in 2022 to cars breaking municipal code 54-62, which prohibits having either an expired license plate or no front license plate. at’s about 7,000 more citations than were issued in 2019.

John LeDrew has received several of those tickets.

About a year ago, he began leasing a plug-in hybrid and has been driving with expired temporary license plates since they rst expired. He wasn’t told by his dealership or the DMV that he could obtain more temporary license plates.

“I did the calculation, the fees were like $600. I went [to the DMV] to register and get those tags, but it turned out to be closer to $1,400,” LeDrew said. “I couldn’t a ord that at the time. So, I asked what my options were and he said, ‘you just drive around with expired tags.’ I said, ‘alright, cool.’ And I just left.”

LeDrew has been trying to save up to a ord his permanent plates, but owning a small business and having a commission-based salary makes his nances di cult to predict. He believes he’s close, but more tickets could set him back.

“It’s just one of the constant battles we have to manage,” he said.

is story is from CPR News, a nonpro t news source. Used by permission. For more, and to support Colorado Public Radio, visit cpr.org.

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Coloradans could get up to $2.5 billion

tax

BY JESSE PAUL THE COLORADO SUN

Coloradans will receive more than $2.5 billion in tax refunds from the state as long as there isn’t a recession, according to two quarterly economic and tax revenue forecasts presented this month to the legisla-

An economic downturn is increasingly likely, however, given international nancial instability, including stubborn in ation and the banking industry’s headline-grabbing struggles over the past month.

Nonpartisan Legislative Council Sta said the state government will collect $2.75 billion in tax revenue in excess of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights cap on government growth and spending in the current scal year, which ends June 30. e legislature is required to refund that e Governor’s O ce of State Planning and Budget expects the TABOR cap to be exceeded by $2.7 billion in the current scal year.  e cap, set by a 1992 constitutional amendment passed by Colorado voters, is calculated by multiplying the prior year’s limit by in ation and population growth e money will predominantly be refunded to taxpayers in April 2024 in the form of checks tied to people’s income — with higher refund amounts going to higher

A look up through the dome in the state Capitol.

PHOTO BY ELLIS ARNOLD

READER

through Saturday, May 13, to give fans of the medium more time to appreciate the work of six photographers.

is group exhibition features the work of Melanie Walker, Bonny Lhtoka, Joo Woo, Jane Fulton Alt, Kevin Hoth and Katie Kindle, all of

REFUNDS

earners — as long as the legislature doesn’t change the refund formula this year, as it did in 2022.

e forecasts are provided to the Colorado General Assembly to help lawmakers draft the state budget for the next scal year. e data presented in March to the legislature’s powerful Joint Budget Committee, which drafts the budget, is considered the most important each year because it’s used to set spending.

e good news for the legislature is that it will have all the money it’s entitled to. e bad news is that the in ation rate used to calculate the TABOR cap lags current economic conditions. at means that while the legislature would seem to have more money to spend next year, the amount is actually lower than this year’s when adjusted for real-time population and in ation increases.

In fact, Greg Sobetski, chief economist for Legislative Council Sta , told the JBC that even without TABOR state budget revenue isn’t expected to keep up with in ation and population increases.

“We expect those revenue increases to not make up for the budgetary

whom explore the exability and impact of photography in unique ways. As is always the case with exhibits at Walker, expect to be both challenged and delighted in equal measure.

Find more information at www. walker neart.com/transient-presence.

Dining of the delecTABLE kind at ASLD

The Art Students League of Denver is unveiling the sixth version

of its biennial, functional ceramics exhibit delecTABLE: The Fine Art of Dining at the league, 200 Grant St. in Denver, where it is on display from April 7 through May 21.

According to provided information, the show features 90 pieces by more than 70 ceramists, as well as accompanying 2D and fiber arts works by ASLD faculty.

The show was juried by Andrew Clark, a Tennessee ceramics artist and current gallery manager at

Companion Gallery in Humboldt, Tennessee. There will be an opening reception from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. on April 7 and there will also be discussions, workshops and more held during delecTABLE’s run. For all the necessary information, visit https://asld.org/delectable/.

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

in ation, while credit card balances have risen.

“Some households may still have excess savings, but most lowerincome households spent down the excess savings acquired early in the pandemic,” Louis Pino, an LCS analyst, told the JBC.

Bryce Cooke, chief economist with OSPB, said if there is an economic downturn, Colorado will be well positioned to weather it.

pressures that arise from in ation and population,” he said. Still, state tax revenue is expected to exceed the TABOR cap through the 2024-25 scal year, which begins on July 1, 2024. at’s assuming Colorado voters don’t approve more reductions in the income tax rate — as conservatives are pushing for — and the legislature doesn’t pass new bills o ering tax breaks.

ere’s also a proposal swirling at the Capitol to ask voters to forgo their TABOR refunds and send the money to K-12 schools instead.

e TABOR cap was exceeded last scal year by $3.7 billion, which prompted refund checks to be mailed to Coloradans last year. Another round will be mailed out in April, as well.

Legislative Council Sta and the

governor’s o ce shared good and bad news about the state’s economy.

Overall, the state’s economy, like the nation’s, is slowing in the wake of rising interest rates set by the Federal Reserve. Unemployment in Colorado, however, remains low — 2.8% in January, which means it has returned to pre-pandemic levels — and isn’t expected to rise too much.

Legislative Council Sta forecasts the unemployment rate to be 2.9% at the end of 2023 before increasing slightly to 3.1% in 2024. e Governor’s O ce of State Planning and Budgeting says there are two job openings in Colorado for every unemployed person.

Coloradans’ personal savings, meanwhile, have shrunk amid high

“If the gap between the workforce and job openings remained similar to where it is now, you would see that people wouldn’t be losing jobs,” he said.

Cooke said bank failures in the U.S. and internationally are a real economic risk, though it will be tempered by the federal government’s willingness to respond to the situation.

Overall, Lauren Larson, who leads OSPB, said these are “uncertain economic times.”

is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun. com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.

project.aspx?activityno=DA2022-0093

CITY OF ARVADA PLANNING COMMISSION /s/ Tim Knapp, Secretary

Legal Notice No. 416042

First Publication: March 30, 2023

Last Publication: March 30, 2023

Publisher: Jeffco Transcript PUBLIC NOTICE

A public hearing will be held before the Arvada Planning Commission scheduled for April 18, 2023 at 6:15 p.m., Arvada City Hall, 8101 Ralston Rd., Arvada, when and where you may speak on the matter to consider an Alternative Sign Program, 1.76 acre parcel of land approximately located at 8041 I-70 Frontage Rd N. Members of the public may attend. To submit written public comment to be considered by the Commission, email comments to cedboardsandcommission@ arvada.org by 5 p.m. on 4/17/2023. Additional information can be obtained from https://www.arvadapermits.org/etrakit3/search/ project.aspx?activityno=DA2023-0006.

CITY OF ARVADA PLANNING COMMISSION /s/ Tim Knapp, Secretary

Legal Notice No. 416019

First Publication: March 30, 2023

Last Publication: March 30, 2023

Publisher: Jeffco Transcript Metropolitan Districts

Public Notice

NOTICE OF CANCELLATION OF REGULAR ELECTION AND CERTIFIED STATEMENT OF RESULTS BY THE DESIGNATED ELECTION OFFICIAL SPRING MESA METROPOLITAN DISTRICT

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN by the Spring Mesa Metropolitan District of Jefferson County, Colorado, that at the close of business on the sixty-third day before the election, there were not more candidates for director than offices to be filled including candidates filing affidavits of intent to be write-in candidates; therefore, the regular election to be held on May 2, 2023, is hereby canceled pursuant to Sections 1-13.5-513(6), C.R.S. The following candidates are hereby declared elected:

Larry Seidl to a 4-year term until May, 2027 Georgia Magnera to a 4-year term until May, 2027

JoEtta Gentry to a 2-year term until May, 2025 Vacancy 4-year term (2023-2027)

Contact Person for the District: Nicole R. Peykov, Esq

District Address: 1700 Lincoln Street, Suite 2000, Denver, CO 80203

District Telephone Number: 303/839-3800

SPRING MESA METROPOLITAN DISTRICT

By: /s/Robin A. Navant, Designated Election Official

Legal Notice No. 416018

First Publication: March 30, 2023

Last Publication: March 30, 2023

Publisher: Golden Transcript Jeffco Transcript and the Arvada Press

Metro Districts Budget Hearings

Public Notice NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING ON THE AMENDED 2022 AND 2023 BUDGETS

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Board of Directors (the “Board”) of the HANCE RANCH METROPOLITAN DISTRICT (the “District”), will hold a meeting via teleconference on April 5, 2023 at 9:30 AM, for the purpose of conducting such business as may come before the Board including public hearings on the amendments to the 2022 budget and 2023 budget (the “Amended Budgets”). This meeting can be joined using the following teleconference information:

Join Zoom Meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81826113491?pwd

=WEVQbzVOKzhwa3M1a3FFOWxJK2Y5dz09

Meeting ID: 818 2611 3491 Passcode: 014666

Call-in Number: 1-720-707-2699

NOTICE IS FURTHER GIVEN that the Amended Budgets have been submitted to the District. A copy of the Amended Budgets are on file in the office of CliftonLarsonAllen, LLP, 8390 E Crescent Pkwy #300, Englewood, CO 80111, where the same are open for public inspection.

Any interested elector of the District may file any objections to the Amended Budgets at any time prior to final adoption of the Amended Budgets by the Board. This meeting is open to the public and the agenda for any meeting may be obtained by calling (303) 858-1800.

BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

HANCE RANCH METROPOLITAN DISTRICT, a quasi-municipal corporation and political subdivision of the State of Colorado

/s/ WHITE BEAR ANKELE

TANAKA & WALDRON

Attorneys at Law

Legal Notice No. 416005

First Publication: March 30, 2023

Last Publication: March 30, 2023

Publisher: Jeffco Transcript and the Arvada Press ###

‘If the gap between the workforce and job openings remained similar to where it is now, you would see that people wouldn’t be losing jobs.’

Bryce Cooke, chief economist with OSPB