The Home Front: Erie’s leaders want to know why so many ‘high profile town staff’ have quit recently

Your morning roundup of stories from the front pages of newspapers across Colorado

“At least two Erie trustees are calling for an investigation into the reasons behind a spate of high profile town staff resignations in recent months — spotlighting the question of whether the exits may be due, in part, to a thread of systemic issues playing out in town hall,” reports The Longmont Times-Call. “One of our most exemplary Town staff members abruptly resigned yesterday,” Trustee Dan Woog wrote in a recent Nextdoor post titled “What’s Happening in Erie?” “This department director was one of our best Commercial Economic minds with a promising future in Erie,” he continued. ‘Erie has lost 4 top staff members since April. This makes us wonder, who’s next to leave?? And WHY?!?'”

“At some point Saturday night, the crowd in the Union Colony Civic Center’s Monfort Concert Hall will erupt in recognition of the first notes and where they will lead,” reports The Greeley Tribune.

“Gunnison Energy is proposing doing a three-dimensional seismic survey on some 28,000 acres of federal land to evaluate oil and gas leases it owns north of Paonia,” reports The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “The work involves sending vibrations underground using vibrator-equipped vehicles or explosives placed in shallow drill holes, and using receiver equipment to captures echoes from underlying geological formations.”

“The Fort Collins-Loveland Water District is saving $60,000 in utility bills each year through a hydro turbine installed at its water treatment plant that turns some of the pressure associated with water delivery into electricity,” reports The Loveland Reporter-Herald. “The small turbine went online in June at the Soldier Canyon Water Treatment Plant in north Fort Collins and can handle 10 million gallons of water per day and create up to 207 kilowatts per hour of electricity, according to information from Chris Harris, who is the plant manager.”

“Constitutional amendments leave a deep imprint on state law, and Amendment 74 on the Nov. 6 ballot is drawing heavy fire from state and local governments, environmental groups and even conservative voices,” reports The Pueblo Chieftain. “On its face, the language is simple and hard to dispute — it says property owners are entitled to “just compensation” when a government decision reduces the fair market value of their property.”

“The Glenwood Springs Gun Club has dropped its National Rifle Association (NRA) requirement of its members,” reports The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent. “The nonprofit organization, which has had leased rights from the city since 1984 in South Canyon, will begin taking member applications again in January 2019. The window for membership this year ended on Sept. 1. Glenwood Springs Gun Club President Ralph Delaney told the Post Independent that, although rates for 2019 applications have not been set yet, those interested may pick up applications, come the new year, at Big John’s Ace Hardware, Factory Outdoors, Bighorn Toyota, Phil Long Honda of Glenwood Springs or Saturday mornings at the South Canyon Sporting Clay Range.”

“Stitching spirals of ultra-soft cotton and bamboo yarn, the Friday afternoon knitters at Sew Steamboat put their time and skills toward a number of charity projects,” reports The Steamboat Pilot. “They knit hand bags that hang over walkers for elderly people, and they knit hats, scarves and mittens for those in need. For the past several years, they’ve also been knitting “knockers” — handmade breast prostheses for cancer survivors.”

“Republican Treasurer Walker Stapleton and Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Polis clashed again Saturday over health care, guns and Colorado’s energy future in the fifth one-on-one debate of their gubernatorial race,” reports The Associated Press on the front page of The Cañon City Daily Record. “Stapleton again criticized Polis’ plans for a universal health care system, saying it will drastically boost taxes. ‘You won’t be able to afford to live in Colorado anymore,’ he said. Polis insisted Coloradans already pay too much for medical care and prescription drugs, especially compared with other industrialized countries with universal systems. ‘Coloradans are tired of being ripped off,’ he said.”

“Research and innovation will be front and center in the coming week at the University of Colorado,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “In what is intended as the first of an annual Research & Innovation Week, impact through research, scholarship and creative work will be highlighted through wide range of activities running Monday through Friday.”

“An October snowstorm delivered the first real winter blast to the Rocky Mountains and surrounding areas Saturday into Sunday morning,” reports Summit Daily. “As a result, the National Weather Service spent much of the day Sunday warning northeast and north-central Colorado — including Summit County — of hazardous weather conditions, as the overnight storm continued dumping on the region well into the day.”

“Colorado’s means of getting around are in great need of attention, partisans on every side agree,” reports The Gazette in Colorado Springs. “But the various solutions and competing ways of paying for transportation improvements offered by candidates and ballot measures are a different political matter entirely. The interstates across Colorado have gotten by on a federal gas tax that hasn’t been raised since 1991. And the Legislature annually looks the other way on funding the repairs and expansion brought on by population and economic growth, despite the financial windfall of the state’s turbocharged economy.”

“For Eagle County Clerk & Recorder Regina O’Brien and her staff, the term Election Day really doesn’t apply any longer,” reports Vail Daily. “Tuesday, Nov. 6, may be the last day to vote, but casting ballots is no longer a single-day exercise. Instead, Colorado voters are presented with a roughly three-week span to turn in their ballots, and that period begins Monday, Oct. 15, when the mail-in ballots are sent to registered voters.”

“Critics charge Colorado’s Amendment 73, the ballot initiative that promises to be a $1.6 billion lifeline for the state’s underfunded schools, is really just a camouflaged pipeline set up to feed an already bloated and top-heavy public education system,” reports The Denver Post. “They argue Colorado has a track record of funneling education funding to central offices and school-level administrators rather than into classrooms. But supporters of Amendment 73, which appears on the November ballot, counter that those detractors are using math tricks to skew the on-the-ground needs of cash-strapped schools in Colorado, and ignoring the complex jobs of today’s school administrators.”

The Coloradoan in Fort Collins reports where candidates are on the issues.

“The three candidates running for La Plata County Sheriff have different ideas about how the department has functioned in the past four years and what should be done to make the region safer for its residents,” reports The Durango Herald. “Dean Mize, Charles Hamby and incumbent Sean Smith are all campaigning for sheriff this fall. Smith, a Democrat, said the Sheriff’s Office has become more attuned to the people it serves since he took office nearly four years ago, taking about 10,000 more calls for service than the office averaged before he took over from then-sheriff Duke Schirard. That increase demonstrates a reconciliation with the community, he said.”

“U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner has introduced legislation that would allow employers to make up to $10,000 a year in tax-free contributions to their workers’ student debt payments, an effort the Colorado Republican says he hopes will spur more job growth and retirement savings,” reports The Colorado Sun.

“When Rhonda Kelly joined the Aurora fire department in 2000, she recalled that old timers would talk about ‘that call,’ the one big emergency that still left a mark on their memories,” reports Denverite. “But in her 17 years working as a firefighter and paramedic, those calls turned out to be more frequent than once-in-a-lifetime events.”

“Add another name to the list of people who want to be Denver’s next mayor,” reports ColoradoPolitics. “Lisa Calderón says she plans to launch a campaign for mayor in the May 2019 election. Calderón, 50, is a criminal justice professor at Denver’s Regis University and co-chair of the Colorado Latino Forum.”

The Colorado Independent is a statewide online news source operating in a time when spin is plentiful, but factual, fair and unflinching news in the public interest is all too rare. Our award-winning team of veteran investigative and explanatory reporters and news columnists aims to amplify the voices of Coloradans whose stories are unheard, shine light on the relationships between people, power and policy, and hold public officials to account. We strive to report the news with context, social conscience, and soul, and to give Coloradans the insight they need to promote conversation, understanding and progress in this square, swing state we call home.

1 COMMENT

  1. Whatever happened with the passage of Amendment 64, which legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado, paorviding a 28 percent sales tax on retail marijuana products, which includes a 15 percent excise tax to benefit K-12 education in Colorado?

    Oh yeah, it’s called Best Capital Construction.

    All that marijuana money is really funding Contractors, IT firms, telecom’s, and other industries owned & operated by, or funneling proceeds to the .001 percent.

    Like everything else, they get theirs first, via healthy profit.

    It seems more & more the U.S. is just a highly-volatile ponzi scheme.

    Everything is suffering, except the pockets of the ultra-wealthy.
    Teachers can’t afford to live in the communities they teach in.
    Buildings are crumbling.
    Kids are being trained as mere drones for the corporations owned by these .001 percent.

    Meanwhile, more taxes for the rest of us…………

    What’s It Like To Be Rich? Ask The People Who Manage Billionaires’ Money

    BROOKE HARRINGTON: The lives of the richest people in the world are so different
    from those of the rest of us, it’s almost literally unimaginable. National borders are
    nothing to them. They might as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They
    might as well not exist.
    ….the fact that they are so rich gives them these very important things in common, which is to say, for them, national boundaries and laws are all optional. Taxes are optional. All forms of law are essentially optional at that level of wealth.

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