Public Comments

I would like to thank the Commission for their responsiveness to the comments they received after the initial draft of preliminary congressional maps. First, the First Staff Map is an improvement in terms of keeping Latino communities whole as much as possible. Latino community members make up about 30% of CD3 in the First Staff Map, which will make it much easier for these community members to have their shared interests served. Their shared interests extend from education and employment to public health and transportation. Next, there are many reasons for northwest Colorado communities to be grouped together into CD3. There are currently two governmental councils that cover northwest Colorado: the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado (AGNC) and the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG). These two governmental councils exists for the very reason that communities in northwest Colorado share so many interests, including our industries and economies, our natural resources, our large areas of public lands, our concerns about wildfire danger, and our high prioritization of water issues. Thank you.

I share public policy concerns such as education, employment, environment, public health, water needs, and quality of life for a rural family. I share concerns of urban, rural, agricultural, industrial and trade areas.

Do NOT redistribution Lauren Boebert.

I'm a Pueblo resident. Congratulations on the Spt. 3 version of the map! BIG improvement! Southern Colorado is it's own entity. It has nearly nothing in common with the issues of the Eastern slope. I suspect the Eastern slope feels little or no connection to the problems of Southern Colorado either. I'm so glad you fixed that. Those of us on the Southern and Western slopes share many of the same problems. Water, climate change, poverty and access to services like medical care, internet and higher education. We also have strong historical ties. Thank you for recognising that and I look foreward with interest to your final proposals.

I am urging the commission to reconsider the placement of the city of Fort Collins in the Fourth, eastern plains congressional district. The city of Fort Collins shares very few interests with the communities of the Fourth District and its interests will not be served by grouping it with towns and counties whose needs and interests are completely different. Fort Collins is an urban center whose economic activities no longer center on agriculture, which is the main focus of most communities in the eastern plains. Home to a major research university, high tech, health care, pharmaceutical, commercial and recreational industries, its needs are not the same as smaller, agricultural communities. Our transportation needs alone align us much more with front-range communities to our south, as we need to develop common corridors, increase public transportation between those communities, mitigate the air pollution produced by the hundreds of thousands of vehicles that move across our city and between the cities of the front range. The citizens of Yuma, Fort Morgan, and Las Animas share none of these concerns. Citizens of Boulder and Fort Collins share educational interests because they are the homes of the state's two premiere universities; thousands of citizens in both cities are impacted by federal policies affecting the universities. People living in Wray or Julesburg can live their lives oblivious to these policies. In Fort Collins, we look to the west of us for our recreational spaces. We care about our mountain backdrop and have clear and powerful interests in fire mitigation and watershed protection. Forest fires do not burn to the doorstep of Burlington. Mudslides along burn scars on the Poudre River do not kill the coworkers of those living in Cheyenne Wells. Further, to the west of Fort Collins lies the entirety of Larimer County. Separating Fort Collins, the county seat of Larimer County, from the rest of the county, placing each in a distinct congressional district, is counter productive and damaging to the interests of the people of Larimer County. If residents of Fort Collins look to other locations for entertainment, health care, or commerce, we look to our south, to our southern front range urban corridor neighbors. I can't tell you when I last went further east than Timnath for any service or need. Although as a native Coloradan I appreciate the eastern plains, as a resident of Fort Collins I have minimal shared federal interests with its residents. Fort Collins is no longer a sleepy agricultural town. It has become an urban area, one of the fastest growing in the country. It has urban problems which are very different from the kind of problems that concern folks in Eads or Hartman. We face problems with homelessness, affordable housing, pollution, population growth and density, and racial and religious diversity that simply do not concern citizens of Haxton or Holyoke. We do, however, share these concerns with the front range urban areas to our south with whom we currently share a congressional district. The draft congressional district map shows areas east of I-25 that are included in the second congressional district, while Fort Collins is carved out to be in the fourth district. I would submit that these areas have more in common with residents of district four than do the residents of Fort Collins. Additionally, it looks like areas in the mountains and in the southwestern part of the state share commonalities with neighboring congressional districts that could allow for tweaking of this map. It is a grave injustice to the people of Fort Collins to remove them from their "like communities", isolate their interests, and deprive them of adequate representation for the next ten years. Thank you for your consideration of these ideas. Alisa West

Dear Members of the Commission, I believe that Colorado voters are best served by a congressional redistributing map that keep Front Range and Western Slope communities of interest intact. The September 3 plan is a grave mistake because it wrenches apart Front Range urban and suburban communities of interest and pits them against agricultural, extractive, resource-based rural communities in all or nothing district elections. It severs the Western Slope, which faces unique environmental and economic challenges that sometimes oppose Front Range interests. The result may be a rise in voters feeling no voice in the election process and a disorderly and dangerous rise in arguments over election validity. Though the numerical balance of the September 3 plan looks superficially appealing, it hides a divisive clash in ways of life that may leave voters as seared as the worst example of political gerrymandering. The September 3 map carve-outs along the Front Range have raised serious concerns from both rural and urban citizens, as other public comments show. Boulder and Fort Collins are a closely aligned urban and exurban corridor with interlinked economies, ecologies, and social networks. Boulder should not be lumped with rural NW Colorado, where communities already feel politically disenfranchised and bitter about the voting experience. Fort Collins has university, tech, and energy organizations working hard to clear the air and protect the environment from the fossil fuels that Eastern Colorado depends on for sustenance. It is a terrible idea to remove Fort Collins voters from immediately adjacent and interwoven communities just to pit them against rural plains voters who feel existentially threatened by the new energy economy. Highlands Ranch is a suburb of Denver sharing schools, employers, and other communities of interests with other Front Range foothill communities around Denver. Casting it into a rural Eastern Colorado district will needlessly segment the voices of Highlands Ranch voters and threaten to override rural voices by voters who have no idea what life is like in agricultural high plains communities. I am proud to live in a state that voted for an independent redistributing committee. I want all Coloradans to feel that their votes matter, their communities matter, and that a fair process exists for Coloradans to work out their differences. Please consider choosing a map such as the June 23 preliminary plan which honors the interests and voices of all Coloradans. Thank you for all of your work on behalf of our state. Respectfully yours, K Putnam

and I am registered voter in unincorporated Summit County for over 20 years, and am speaking on behalf of myself only. I was unable to stay in the Sept 9 zoom meeting until I was called upon. This comment is addressed to the staff who created the algorithms that generated the map. I am not going to say yea or nay on splitting counties, but if you do split a county, you should be careful not to split a zip code. A look at how Northern Summit County was split, it would appear that being inside the town of Silverthorne vs unincorporated. The software essentially made all districts equal population. The constitution says +/- 5% in population, and that flexibility should be written in. Others in the Sept 9 meeting also brought this up, but I will give an additional reason. If I want to write to my congressman, Joe Neguse via the web, I have to put in my zip code. If in the same zip code there are two representatives, you now have put the onus on US Govt to make their software more flexible or put a stamp on and send through USPS. BTW, in the case of Summit/Grand on CO9, one post office in Summit handles deliveries into Grand. In summary putting in a smoothing factor on the districts should be considered so that micro communities are not split up. I am attaching a blow up of the Silverthorne area so that you can see what I am talking about. In summary what I would propose for the next map is a +/- 3% population variance and a micro smoothing algorithm added to the software that is generating the map.

Dear Commission, Colorado citizens looked to the creation of your board with a level of optimism that the political gerrymandering that has so severely compromised our state's representative government over the past three decades would be addressed and in some since "right the wrongs of the politicians on both sides of the aisle" have forced on us. That hopefulness has been crushed with the development of your recent "Staff Maps". The disjointed appropriation of some sections of Colorado into districts that are in no way connected geographically, economically, or socially is an indictment of you and your process. This is an exercise in more disgusting partisan politics masquerading as an effort to address the need for additional districts because on our increased population. There is no way a Denver politician is going to be able to or desire to represent the interests of the rural population. as will be the case if this current "Staff Map" is adopted. As politically connected citizens who were selected for this committee I urge you to reflect on the role you have been given as an opportunity to strengthen our representative form of government as opposed to promoting the continual political manipulation of "WE THE PEOPLE". J. Douglas Wilson

Please don't turn us into Illinois. The voices of us who do not live in (nor think like) folks in Denver/Boulder are still important. We like our small towns, our low crime rates, our low homeless counts and speaking English. Let our votes matter for us, not your votes controlling the entire state. Colorado is majority rural.

I am writing to express support for the second version of the Congressional redistricting map (dated 9.2.2021). I appreciate the effort of the Commissioners and staff to listen to the public during this process and to draw maps that are fair and competitive. Thank you.