Public Comments

The Grand Valley begins at Palisade and ends at Mack and is joined by water, agriculture and tourist interests. Too break this are up into two different State Senatorial Districts does not make sense. Please reconsider this proposal. One the state House of Representatives side, the current map lumps the worker bees that live along the I-70 corridor in Garfield County in with the elites that rule Aspen and Vail and disenfranchises the citizens of Garfield County. Please revise this proposal.

Hello, I would highly encourage the commission to rethink the most recently proposed congressional and legislative maps. It's clear the most recent proposal is a political move and does not have the interest of anyone outside of Denver/Boulder's best interest. The most extreme example is grouping Boulder/Fort Collins in with representation from Routt/Jackson/Grand counties. This is unbelivably ridiculous and completely illogical. I could go into much more detail, but reading the public comments from others, I'm hoping you all see the point. Jason

Do not split Broomfield! This small, young county/city did not exist and was 4 counties just 20 years ago and deserves to have some character as a whole county. It has spent years formulating a new city center and is just beginning construction of that center. It is not to be a bedroom community, growing rapidly as a whole. Highway 7 on the north end is getting overwhelmed and needs central governing agreements, not peacemeal. When I walk my dog I only have a short walk to Boulder county to the west(proposed CD2), a short walk to Boulder county to the north(proposed CD2) and a short walk to CD8(proposed map) within Broomfield to the east. Most of my travel by car out of Broomfield is to Boulder county for shopping, doctor appointments, restaurants and I feel comfortable in both. I am very happy having Joe Neguse(who formerly lived in Broomfield) as my representative and would love to live in CD2. In the latest map, Broomfield west is just a bump, a sliver, an oddity in the shape. It deserves to be a whole county and the preference is CD2.

I am writing to object to the splitting of the City and County of Broomfield into two congressional districts. Here are some reasons why: After population equality and adherence to the Voting Rights Act the Colorado Constitution in Article 5, Section 44.3 directs the Commissions as follows, "As much as is reasonably possible, the commission's plan must preserve whole communities of interest and whole political subdivisions, such as counties, cities, and towns." Section 44 (3)(B) defines communities of interest as reflecting "Shared public policy concerns such as education, employment, environment, public health, transportation, water needs and supplies, and issues of demonstrable regional significance." Broomfield, the smallest county in the state, absolutely shares all of the public policy concerns identified in the Constitution as a "community of interest." That is precisely the reason we voted to become a single City and County 20 years ago, instead of being broken up into four counties -- Boulder, Adams, Jefferson and Weld. Our interests align more closely with Boulder County than any others. All of Broomfield is a north metro suburban community of interest. We have many interests in common with southeast Boulder County: transportation (Hwy 7, US 36, Light Rail or other train service), employment, air quality, housing and economic issues. It makes sense for Broomfield to be part of the congressional district that includes eastern Boulder County with a larger suburban population and a smaller rural component. We are not a rural community. Please include the Broomfield County areas east of Lowell Boulevard back into the Boulder County district.

Please keep Delta County entirely intact and aligned with Mesa County. It shares the same watershed and most of the Grand Mesa. They are much more unified communities of interest. Place Montrose County with Gunnison County, they have more shared interests then Mesa and Montrose Counties. Splitting Delta County reduces its voice and places undue hardship on the citizens, businesses and governing officials of our county.

Please keep Delta County entirely intact and aligned with Mesa County. It shares the same watershed and most of the Grand Mesa. They are much more unified communities of interest. Place Montrose County with Gunnison County, they have more shared interests then Mesa and Montrose Counties. Splitting Delta County reduces its voice and places undue hardship on the citizens, businesses and governing officials of our county.

Keep WELD county in WELD county. I live in Erie in Vista Ridge. I bought my home in WELD county as I did not want to be in Boulder county. I have lived here for 14 years. Please keep Weld county in Weld county. Why do you want to put Erie in District 2? It does not keep in the tradition of Erie to be lumped into Boulder. I want the representative to reflect the area and we would never have a shot of being heard with Boulder, Lafayette and Louisville in the mix. Please keep Weld county residents in Weld County. Here in Erie in a little corner of Weld, County we keep getting lumped into the Metro area. While being close we do not want to be a part of the Metro area.

The Commission is on its way to adopting a map that violates three of the statutory and constitutional requirements and will also dilute (“gerrymander”) the community of interest in the southern part of the state. The Commission has failed to develop any definitions or guidelines for the following requirements: definitions criteria for what is a community of interest; definitions for compactness and competitive districts. The staff has repeatedly told the Commission that they are flying blind in these areas because the Commission has failed to give them instructions. It is my opinion, after watching many of these proceedings, you are failing to meet your constitutional obligations because the chair (“Hare”) has no idea how to run a meeting or how to guide the discussion and set up votes so that the Commission and staff (if they are required to draw the map) develops analytical and fact driven definitions. Instead, Hare, who appears to be on the verge of a nervous break- down, talks about “process points” and getting through the “stack.” The ranked voting straw poll a week ago was outrageous. Hare was willing to allow Schell to tabulate the votes. Hare then allowed late votes to come in which completely changed the results of the straw poll, while there was discussion and a vote proceeding on moving the then top three vote getting maps—Coleman 1 and 2 and Tafoya—forward and dropping the other maps from consideration. Anyone who understands ranked voting knows that you can game the system if you send votes in later after you have seen the results of the ranking. Either Hare does not understand this, or she was willing to manipulate the process to rank lower the southern map put forward by Tafoya. The second problem for the Commission is that it has at least two partisan bullies on the commission who continue to ignore the issues of compactness, competitiveness, and communities of interest to get what they want. Coleman’s primary goal appears to be to keep the city of Fort Collins and the rest of Larimer County together. Schell’s primary goal is to keep the western slope together to protect the rural community of interest, but with no definition or description of what makes that a community of interest. Schell’s statements on Saturday that she did not understand what Tafoya was concerned about because the southern district was in Staff Plan 2 with the 3rd at almost 50,000 square miles was hypocritical. Staff Plan 2 gerrymanders out and dilutes the defined community of interest and those criteria for the southern district which are the only definitions that the Commission has adopted. However, Schell continues to accuse others, with no explanation, of “gerrymandering.” Chair Hare allows this and enables it. What should the Commission do to make its decisions constitutionally compliant and rational and have a chance of being approved by the Supreme Court? Develop definitions of compactness, competitiveness, and communities of interest and then apply them as opposed to working backwards to getting the results that some of the partisans want. For compactness, simple math would work. Colorado is composed of 104,185 sq miles. Divide by 8 and you get 13,023 square miles. No district should have more than 2.5 times 13,023 which means 32,557 square miles. A definition of compactness will then require compromises as to the composition of the districts. The current staff plan two ranges from 155.73 sq miles (Denver) to 49,754 (3rd). The next two largest districts are 4th at 31,716: 2nd at 11,552. If the Commission had adopted a metric or goal of no more than 2.5 times the average, the Commission could meet the constitutional requirement of compactness and make rational decisions as to the composition of the districts as opposed to giving into a couple of bullies. I have heard commissioners state that you can fly around these days and so geographical size is not relevant. There are very few commercial airports within the proposed 3rd and 4th. By my calculations of flying and driving, it will take at least 8 to 12 hours to get to the edges of the proposed 3rd and that is assuming there are flights available. The Commission has developed different metrics to analyze competitiveness, but as staff keeps saying, the Commission has failed to adopt any of those as the criteria that staff must use. Pick one or pick two so that staff can do its job. The only Community of interest for which the Commission has adopted (with 7 votes because Bill Leone changed his position and would not vote for the criteria. Bill, whom I know, is very smart, but usually a reliable Republican vote.) What are the rural interests that Club 20, Action 22, and some of the witnesses mention? The Chair has failed to ask those questions of witnesses and has failed to guide the Commission to define the term. Commission Kelly (who would appear to be implicated in the election complaint because the allegation is that he met with paid lobbyists representing a group that appears to be tied to the Republic party) has adopted the Republican talking points and asserts that the rural communities are under an “existential threat.” What does that mean? The rural areas, and the whole state, are threatened by climate change, more frequent and more severe droughts. Agriculture needs a strong voice to get funding, perhaps at CSU to develop drought resistant crops, develop different ways to manage irrigation, fertilization, and emissions. We must reduce methane and nitrogen emissions from agriculture. You need to look no further than Sunday’s Denver Post https://www.denverpost.com/2021/09/19/colorado-agriculture-grapples-with-climate-change/ Climate change is causing the drought and putting pressure on water and the Colorado River compact will be renegotiated by 2026. Even the tarantulas are dying off which presents huge problems for the eco system. https://www.denverpost.com/2021/09/20/colorado-tarantulas-climate-change-extinct/ How has the current composition of the 3rd and 4th produced congress people who are working on solutions for these problems of the rural communities. It has not and Staff Map 2, which is essential Coleman Map 2, keeps the status quo in place as opposed to meeting the promise of the constitutional amendment that taking the politicians out of redistricting would produce better results. These are the types of things that the Commission should be considering in developing criteria for community of interests as opposed to adopting the Republic talking points that our rural way of life is under existential attack. There are numerous dedicated and hard-working citizens on this Commission, and I appreciate the hard work that you have done. But it is my opinion that you are failing to meet your constitutional mandate, but merely adopting the status quo, to the detriment of the citizens of Colorado who need congressional districts that will require competitive discussion of these matters as opposed to safe districts that will produce social warriors who either do not understand the threats or do not care about the threats we are facing as a state and as a county.

We are small town Colorado, we do NOT belong lumped in with Big City counties, so that you can stack voting to the liberal side.

I have not really been following the legislative redistricting because all my energy has been on congressional. However, I just noticed an oddity with my own district on House Staff Plan. The districts label HD6 and HD9 are flipped from historical names. I would recommend keeping the central Denver district as HD6 and the SE Denver District as HD9. It will be less jarring for the residents of those respective areas if their house number doesn't change needlessly. Thanks, Daniel Willis (l'm in the current HD9)