Public Comments

Hello Commissioners, Thank you so much for your efforts. I know it’s a tiring challenge. I am a resident of Pueblo and a Colorado native. My mother was born in Pueblo during the 1921 flood, the youngest of four kids born to parents who settled in Colorado from Oklahoma. My Dad was the son of Polish immigrants. My parents bought a small new house on the south side of town near what was previously the location of the Pueblo Airport. That was in 1954. I arrived the next year. The family loved trekking the southwest part of the state for summer vacations, and I learned to fish, much on the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River near my dad’s favorite “secret” hideaway, Lake City. (Where Alferd Packer had his own approach to personal politics – but that cannibalism was before our statehood). As a kid, I still remember when my grandpa took me to Pueblo Public Schools Stadium on August 17, 1962, to see President John F Kennedy. It was a time when politics were less tribal, schools and businesses closed and more than 100,000 people lined the streets just to get a glimpse of the President. It was hot and sitting on the folding chairs on the field of the stadium was an exciting “eternity.” My grandma made snacks to take and a gave us a couple of those handheld paper folding fans. My grandpa had a straw hat. It was hot. Hot. It wasn’t until years later that I understood the purpose of the trip: Celebration of the Frying Pan Arkansas Reclamation Project, the huge and controversial water diversion project that brought water from the Western Slope to Colorado Springs and Pueblo. *** I support the Tafoya Plan, and any plan tied to a southern district and water history. It really makes sense! *** At his visit, Kennedy said, “I don’t think there is any more valuable lesson for a president or member of the House and Senate than to fly as we have flown today over some of the bleakest land in the United States and then to come to a river and see what grows next to it, and come to this city and come to this town and come to this platform and know how vitally important water is.” Addressing the sense that the project was being done to the detriment of the Western Slope and downstream water users such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles, Kennedy said: “What I preach is the interdependence of the United States,” he said. “We are not 50 countries. We are one country of 50 states and one people, and I believe that those programs which make life better for some of our people will make life better for all of our people.” In 1973 I left for college in Boulder, obtaining a journalism degree in 1977. Between 1977 and 2018, I lived in Las Animas, Holly, Brighton, Thornton, Denver and Bailey, before returning to the home I grew up in two years ago. In 1987, I earned an MBA in Transportation Management from the University of Colorado at Denver. It’s clear, too, that Colorado needs a better focus for east-west transportation in the southern part of the state. Growth doesn’t happen without access to transportation, and I fear we continue to marginalize rural interests down here. Better E-W transportation routes also help provide better reason for broadband development along right-of-ways. A focus on better internet access will help bolster re-development in less populated areas. I’ve traveled throughout the state, and it’s clear that residents in southern Colorado share little similarities and interests with those in the northwest corner. If I drew the map, I’d even grab some more of southern El Paso County, which is more like Pueblo, and drop out areas like Eagle County. After college graduation, I worked for a time in Holly, and loved the irrigated scenery and the smells on the drive along Highway 50 to Pueblo in the summer, stopping at a dairy to get fresh milk, picking up fresh corn, cantaloupes in Rocky Ford…all on the way home to see my parents. Heading west over the years, the family would vacation in the southern mountains, where much of the economy is based on water, snow, hunting, fishing – tourism. It’s been sad to see, over time, dilapidated buildings along the roadways where the owners had clearly sold off its water rights, usually to the benefit of more northern metro areas. Water out here is not unlimited. And water IS a community of interest. Just last October, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, Senator Michael Bennet and Senator Cory Gardner were among dignitaries who gathered at Pueblo Dam for the groundbreaking of the Arkansas Valley Conduit. Several state lawmakers, Department of Natural Resources Director Dan Gibbs and Colorado Water Conservation Board Executive Director Becky Mitchell attended. Southeastern Board members and AVC participants came as well. Secretary of Interior David Bernhardt told those gathered “for nearly 60 years, Colorado’s leaders of both political parties have been working to move the Arkansas Valley Conduit forward. This project will provide reliable clean water for 50,000 people living in 40 rural communities across southern Colorado.” A Denver Post article earlier this summer helps bring home the importance of water in the Arkansas River Valley: Unclear waters: How pollution, diversions and drought are squeezing the life out of the lower Arkansas River Valley (The Arkansas Valley Conduit promises to bring clean drinking water to more residents of southeast Colorado). https://www.denverpost.com/2021/06/27/arkansas-river-valley-water-conduit-pipeline/ If you haven’t watched this 15-minute decade-old video created by the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project 50th Anniversary Committee in 2012, I do think it’s worth your time. https://youtu.be/TIAhNSLl_sg It’s called: RECLAMATION: Managing Water in the West. It’s “timely” in that it was made a decade ago and not tied to any particular issue related to redistricting. Please consider weighing water heavily and appreciate how southern Colorado could benefit tremendously with a Congressional Representative focused on the water and transportation needs unique to Southern Colorado. One final thought. PUEBLO IS NOT RURAL. It’s not a small town but a growing city deserving of having a major impact on who represents us. My home here is 100 minutes to southeast Denver along a major interstate highway, 45 minutes to Colorado Springs. People here regularly attend events in both of those cities. People at some of the hearings I’ve listened in on want to categorize Pueblo as something it’s not. A competitive district holds the key not only to Pueblo, but to southern Colorado.

Good evening. I write to encourage the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commissions to consider two factors of high importance when deciding on new boundaries for Congressional and state legislative districts. I believe it is essential that the watersheds of the state's rivers should be a very significant consideration in district boundaries and that the commissions should take care not to dilute the voting strength of the state's Hispanic communities by grouping those in rural Colorado into a district dominated by less diverse, more Republican-dominated areas. The commissions have a mandate to draw boundaries that make districts competitive to the maximum extent possible. However, this does not mean that the goal should be a state Congressional delegation equally divided between the two major parties or a General Assembly with the state house of representatives and state senate more closely split between them. The goal of competitiveness is achieved by drawing lines that do not permit politicians to neglect the ideas and views of voters that are not in their party. That means the commissions should focus on geographical and population demographics factors that will make it much harder for politicians to do that. For the Front Range, this means that the growing corridor in the north metro Denver area should be kept within districts that do not wrap in much of rural Colorado. It would be better for one member of Congress and fewer members of the General Assembly to represent rural areas of the state than it would be to split off parts of the state's urban core from Fort Collins to Pueblo into districts that risk too much rural influence. To accomplish this goal, I suggest drawing seven Congressional districts that encompass the state's urban core from Larimer County to Pueblo County and one that would cover the vast bulk of rural Colorado, both west of the Rockies and on the Eastern Plains. The state's rural population is about 715,000 people as of July 1, 2019, so that suggestion seems feasible to me given that eight districts must be split among a total population of about 5,758,736 people (2019 estimate). In other words, each of the eight Congressional districts should include about 719, 842 people, which makes the suggestion of one Congressional district to cover all of rural Colorado east and west of the Front Range practical. The boundaries of state legislative districts should follow a similar approach, although it is obvious that those districts - being much smaller in terms of population - would divide up rural Colorado to a somewhat greater extent. The task before you is not to equalize or even to attempt to equalize the political strength of parties. It is to draw boundaries that reflect, most of all, communities of interest. That must be your priority for all Congressional and state legislative districts. Thank you for considering these comments.

The Western Slope’s vital relationship with water alone is enough to designate it as a community of interest bound by the shared responsibility of stewardship. However, the Western Slope also has commonalities regarding how the region uses water. The Western Slope’s agricultural, industrial, and recreation economies rely on well-informed local representatives to protect the community’s water at the state and federal levels. To split the Western Slope in any way would compromise the unity required to properly represent water interests in the region. There is also a clear divide between the Western Slope and front range communities, clearly designating western Colorado as a community with unique federal interests. Though many of our communities do not have the tax base of their front range counterparts, they still must provide the essential services of government: safe roads and bridges, law enforcement, public schools, and critical infrastructure with minimal resources. These challenges are not experienced by front range communities where virtually no federally owned lands exist. While federal lands are preserved for the benefit of all Americans, the day-to-day responsibilities of preservation fall upon those who live closest to those lands. These lands are managed for multiple uses – from livestock grazing to energy extraction to outdoor recreation. Over generations, communities on the Western Slope have worked with federal agencies to develop and demonstrate best practices for multi-use lands for the country and these uses are limited to county border. The Western Slope must be maintained as a result. Colorado has more than 24.4 million acres of forestland and many of these forests include the headwaters of rivers that provide reliable, affordable water supplies which are foundational to the environment, economy, and quality of life in rural Colorado. In fact, rangeland and forest are the predominant land uses in the Colorado Basin (85%), with forested land present throughout many parts of the basin. A substantial portion of the basin is comprised of federally owned land, with livestock, grazing, recreation, and timber harvesting as the predominant uses on those lands. A Colorado Statewide Forest Resource Assessment identified 642 watersheds susceptible to damaging wildfire, and 371 forested watersheds with high to very high risk from post-fire erosion, many of these watersheds, encompassing about 9.4 million acres of spruce-fir, aspen and pine forests that contain critical infrastructure for municipal drinking water supplies., ALL of these forests reside west of the continental divide. The San Luis Valley has unique agriculture interests and should not be divided. This region should be kept whole and united with other communities of interest. All of these above needs are best accomplished through the map released with the preliminary plan in June. I ask the Commission to adopt a map that closely resembles that initial plan. Residents of rural Colorado have unique interests and need representation in Congress whose constituency does not have divided priorities. Our voices deserve to be heard, undiluted by inclusion in a district with suburban and urban residents. Whether agriculture or energy production, public lands, water, natural resources, or cooperative businesses, most of our issues and needs in Congress differ from those of our Front Range urban and suburban friends and fellow Coloradans. We all care about education and transportation, but no rural county has (or will have) light rail, and no urban county will understand the needs of a small ranch operation. We deserve representation in Congress that isn’t forced to choose between our needs and the issues that matter to suburbia. The June preliminarily plan contains the best map for rural America and will ensure that our voice is heard through two distinct rural districts. Furthermore, if Teller, Park, Chaffee and Fremont counties are no longer going to be in the Fifth Congressional District, then then should be in the Third Congressional District with other communities of interest not lumped in with Jefferson County and other suburban counties with which they have nothing in common. Unfortunately, the first Staff Plan map released on September 3rd ignores the needs of rural America by removing rural counties in the current Third Congressional District that include Moffat, Rio Blanco, Routt, Garfield, Jackson and Grand counties and lumping them in with Boulder and Larimer, two counties with which they have little to nothing in common. This drastic departure from the current Congressional Districts is a disservice to both the residents of the Second and Third Congressional Districts. CD3, as drawn in the preliminarily plan released in June, made great improvements that unified communities of interest and shared public policy concerns. Tourism, education, public health, education, transportation, water and other mutual issues of concern for our residents were well represented on that map. I was excited about the possibility of a district that ensured the people of the Third District were well represented and connected. Unfortunately, the first staff plan released September 3rd decimates the rural voice in northwest Colorado and disregards the critical communities of interest that make up the fabric of western Colorado. These recent changes to the map ensure that residents on the other side of the mountains and in Denver who share little in common with us are responsible for making decisions on behalf of rural Coloradans. Whether you are living in Craig, Durango, or Yuma - these changes to the map do not allow our voice to be heard or our interests to be fairly represented. The Rocky Mountains create a natural boundary between the eastern and western parts of the state. The Western Slope has unique infrastructure, outdoor recreation and tourism challenges that unify our counties and communities of interest. Our infrastructure is not mainly centered around growing populations as it is in the front range, but around the mountain passes, rivers, and lands that make up the Western Slope. The heavy snow and other similar weather patterns in the west also connect the similar kinds of needs for roads, which vary from the eastern and front range part of the state. The economy, with regard to tourism and outdoor recreation, of the western slope contains almost all of the ski areas and encompasses what people think of when they think of Colorado: hiking, mountain biking, hunting, camping, fishing, skiing and snowmobiling. It is because of these reasons that I support the preliminary plan for CD-03 released in June. Whether we are speaking regarding shared interests such as our energy grid on the Western Slope, or our values at home, rural Coloradans on the Western Slope cannot be fairly represented without the region being kept intact. Keep the West Slope whole. The preliminarily plan released on June 23rd is the fairest map that is consistent with the Congressional Constitutional language approved by voters. The Rocky Mountains provide the obvious divider between the western slope and front range communities. However, once Colorado’s water basins and federal lands are taken into consideration, the east-west configuration seems to be the only way to accurately represent Colorado’s population across the state. The Western Slope is responsible for the roughly 80% of water that leaves Colorado; this means that those of us who live in the Western Slope are responsible for maintaining the water basins. Water is often a major issue and it is important that we have one Congressman who is able to represent ALL of the water on the Western Slope. Additionally, federal lands comprise more than 55% of the land in western Colorado, which is in stark contrast to the front range. This necessitates the need for a single Congressman , and points to the reality that the daily responsibilities of upkeep for ourfederal lands are taken on by locals all across the Western Slope; we must be united to tackle these tasks. Please keep the Western Slope intact. As a long-term resident of western Colorado, I always wonder how redistricting will affect our part of the state. The map released with the June 23 preliminarily plan respected our way of life and the geographical areas connected to that. The Western Slope is united in many ways, the large amount of federal lands and tourism being some of the top ways. The front range communities steward different types of lands and engage in different kinds of economic activities than we do on the West Slope, both of which need accurate representation. The preliminary plan serves the West Slope best. I urge the Commission to adopt a map that mirrors than plan. The Western Slope is home to a majority of the state's forests and with the multitude of forest fires in the west slope over the last three decades, it is of utmost importance to keep the western portion of the state together so our representative can most effectively address this issue. Just over 55% of the western land in Colorado is federally-owned, so in order to get the management solutions we need for our forests on a federal level, we must keep the West Slope together. Two rural districts currently make up a large portion of the state, representing various issues, industries and communities that require specific representation. The eastern plains and San Luis Valley are the home to many people that work in agriculture. We need to make sure the agriculture industry maintains a strong voice for these communities of interest at the federal level. Meanwhile, the Western slope is home to significant energy, tourism and public land communities. Ensuring two rural districts that include all communities of interest, as drawn in the map for the June preliminarily plan, will ensure Colorado’s urban and rural communities are best served by all of our Representatives. The ski industry is one of the driving forces for tourism in Colorado and unites the western part of our state, as almost all ski resorts are west of the Continental Divide. It makes the most sense to keep all ski areas together in one district. Additionally, the mountainous area in the West that allows for such great skiing also creates unique challenges for infrastructure. While the front range can align infrastructure changes with growing populations, we in the West have to consider geography and weather in addition to population density. Keeping the Western Slope whole will put a Congressman in the best position to improve our infrastructure and best serve our ski communities. Colorado generates over 95-million-acre feet of water annually, and about 10-million-acre feet leave the state through its borders. Of the 10-million-acre feet that leave Colorado, 81%, or 8.1-million-acre feet, exit through the Western Slope. This means that the Western Slope is responsible for stewarding a large portion of Colorado’s water, which will be made far more difficult if the Western Slope is split up. Communities like Moffat, Rio Blanco and Garfield will be ignored by their Representative and not receive the attention they deserve, particularly when it comes to water, if they are lumped into the Second Congressional District and removed from the Third. Please keep the Western Slope whole so our water-related issues can best be addressed in Congress.

The questions above are great thought-provoking questions. And the answers highlight some of the potential flaws in this congressional redistricting plan. I can't imagine that there would be too many positive answers to these questions that would unify several of the districts that this plan proposes: > 2nd District: There are likely ZERO common interests between those who live in the northwest part of the state, who are rural and rugged outdoorsy and strongly conservative, and the northern Front Range, who are city slickers and somewhat outdoorsy and more politically centrist > 3rd District: Similar to the notes about the 2nd District, there are likely very few unifying goals between those who live in southwest Colorado and those who live in Pueblo > 8th District: Identical to the notes about the 2nd District, there are likely ZERO common interests between those who live in oil & gas, Weld County country and those living in north suburban Denver First and foremost, this plan seems like an effort to swallow up many conservative voters into strongholds of progressives, thus rendering the conservative, and rural, voices unheard. This plan also seems as if it would difficult for representatives to reflect the interests of their constituents since they would be so varied and in opposition to each other. When in opposition, rural often loses out. The attached plan better represents the unifying interests of our state's citizens. You could combine Districts 8 and 9 if we need to stay at 8 districts.

Please do not divide Broomfield. It has been hard enough to try and keep a sense of community with all the political divide. We also have 2 school districts which is another difficulty. Do not make it harder by causing further division. We need to remain a city and county, and remain intact as one. Thank you.

Thank you to this Commission and staff for their dedication to ensuring the best redistricting outcome for our state. I am writing to express my support for the Second Staff Map released today, September 15th. Many Colorado residents have given public comment communicating their desire to see Fort Collins remain in the same Congressional District as Boulder. Both are home to the major research universities in our state. In addition, they share similar cultures and economic sectors including tech, tourism and healthcare and as such they have many areas of overlapping federal policy objectives. By definition,Fort Collins and Boulder form a community of interest. It is my sincere hope that the commission finds their work complete and adopts the second staff map as the final map. Thank you for hearing our voices and for keeping both cities in the same Congressional District.

I support the proposed Tafoya 5 redistricting map It makes more sense than the current one from last election Thank you for all your hard work at doing this huge task

Please go back to the drawing board on this. The western slope's representation is be greatly reduced under your proposed format. Thank youm

Please keep Garfield County in district 3. Our county commissioners agree also this is best.

keep us in CD3