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FROM PAGE 18 pipes,” she said. “Each time you create those joints and individual pipes and stretch them farther out into undeveloped parts of the county, you’re losing water.” at’s where more e cient technology plays a role. In Westminster, water consumption declined in the past two decades despite an increase in population and commercial use. In fact, Westminster added 15,000 residents to the community and 150 new commercial business accounts.

She also thinks of lawns. Lower density areas usually require more square feet of lawns. With more units, less water is going towards Kentucky bluegrass.

Less density doesn’t always mean less water usage, either. She said it really comes down to per-person usage and how many water-based appliances are in the home.

Senior Water Resources Analyst a ordable housing projects,” she said. “However, we recognized that we needed to make some adjustments to our original approach — both based on the initial data from the program, as well as through comments from developers, other stakeholders, and the community — that create better and more balanced opportunities for developers to provide on-site units while still providing the option to pay the cashin-lieu fee.” e original ordinance required for-sale single-family home developments with more than 25 units to restrict one-tenth of the units to 80% of area median income or pay a feein-lieu. e new ordinance, updated late last year, requires for-sale single family home developments with more than 25 units to restrict 12% of the homes to 100% area median income. It also increases the fee-inlieu based on market rate adjustments.

Tessier said the reason the inclusionary housing ordinance was implemented in 2020 was to provide the chance for more people to live where they work.

“ e idea was to expand housing a ordability and to target those households that typically fall in the middle of the housing needs spectrum, meaning it would bene t those who are low middle to middle income earners,” she said. “In other words, it assists essential workers like the people who teach our children, who ght res and keep our city safe.” e question of how much technology can continue to improve remains, though Sarah Borgers, interim department director of Westminster’s public works and utilities department, thinks there’s much more room to grow. “Industry-wide, I think the sense is we are not close to there yet. ere’s still a long way to go before we hit that plateau,” she said. “We don’t know what the bottom is, but we aren’t there yet.”

Drew Beckwith said technology a ects a large portion of that decline, like newer high-e ciency toilets that use less water than older ones.

Pro-density ratings are low e majority of Americans are increasingly opposed to the idea of living in dense areas. In fact, about 60% want “houses farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away.” e number of Americans wanting homes “smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores and

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Several education association leadership members said LGBTQ+ teachers being mistreated is an issue both for the teacher and for LGBTQ+ students, as students gain a perception of the “real world,” at school.

“It’s important to understand that these statistics of how welcome or unwelcome our LGBTQ educators feel at their schools provide a mirror of how our LGBTQ students feel at their