Public Comments

In the proposed District 2, I am noting that Western Colorado rural values are very different from those of ultra liberal urban Boulder. How is this a fair combination of Counties? In Western Colorado, there are specific issues of ranching, agricultural water use, coal mining, oil and gas, many rural issues. Boulder is an ultra liberal city with urban values, and they do not mesh with the values/politics of Western Colorado. They have no understanding of rural values and issues affecting us. The basis of Boulders economy is different from Western Colorado. Boulder would be a poor representation for Western Colorado. The democrats would assured of winning District 2 with the addition of Boulder, seemingly a power grab for the benefit of the Democratic Party. We in Western Colorado would never have a voice in Congress again. This looks like an attempt to dilute the values we hold dear in Western Colorado. Our voices will not be heard, and liberal Boulder will never listen to what our issues are on the Western Slope. Also, could this be an attempt to oust the extremely popular congresswoman Lauren Boebert? It sure looks like it.

Colorado's tourism industry and the communities that rely on it have never had a voice at the national level. Their interests have been suppressed by including the mountain ski towns in with larger ranching and farming communities that dominate the district. The needs of ranching and farming communities bear no resemblance to the needs of resort communities and are often diametrically opposed to each other. The counties that include ski areas and resort communities should be grouped together and combined with a front range county with a similar perspective. This could include Eagle, Grand, southeasernt Garfield, Gunnison, Pitkin, Routt, San Juan, eastern San Miguel and Summit counties. Thank you for your consideration.

Summit County should not be split into 2 Congressional districts. The split would have neighbors in Summit Cove, (a local's, aka voter's neighborhood) in 2 different districts depending on which side of the street they live on. This means that neighbors with similar needs and priorities would not have access to the same representation, and could end up with different results. Summit County should remain in CD2 with Boulder County as Summit is closely aligned with front range on many issues including climate legislation, public land protection, I70 corridor to Denver (where many Summit residents commute to), water issues (Denver Water board), transportation needs including dependence on RTD, housing affordability issues, non-extraction, etc. Summit County is only an hour drive from the front range and many second homeowners are from the front range, and tourism is essential to Boulder and Summit economies. However, I don't understand how Boulder and Summit have been put into the same district as Garfield and Moffat counties, which are largely ranching, agricultural, and extraction economies. Adequate and cohesive representation for such different communities seems implausible.

It seems to me that the Denver Metro area is still one district based on the map. I thought that this process was to eliminate that Denver has more people than the rural areas. Their fore, I suggest that you brake the metro Denver area into 4 different groups so that the whole is not larger than the outer areas. Possible a north south east west lines could be drawn. The way the map looks now doesn't resolve the problem.

I am in strong opposition to the proposed boundary that carves out Fort Collins from the surrounding area, and puts our community into the district that encompasses the Easter Plains. To respond to some of your criteria questions: What are your community’s public policy concerns? Fort Collins residents have a strong environmental ethic (water conservation, air quality, opposition to oil and gas development, etc.) that is VERY different from our neighbors to the East. What geographic areas or features are important to your community? Our proximity to the foothills, easy access to the mountains and their amenities, and commitment to preserving open space are all very important to Fort Collins residents. What else should the commissions know about your community? This is a progressive community. I have lived here for over 40 years and it was only after we were finally "uncoupled" from the Eastern Plains that I have ever felt I had a voice in Congress. I lived through the Marilyn Musgrave years and have NO desire to repeat that!

Dear SIr or Madam, I took a quick look at the proposed redistricting map, and have only seen brief articles relating to the proposal. The most obvious result would be forced competition of Boebert and Neguse. For obvious political reasons this seems to be favored by democratic party members. However, the movement would essentially silence the conservative voices of the western slope. These voices are mostly legacy families, ranchers and the very few actual local mountain families. Inclusion in a front range district heavily populated with Universities and high density urban development is simply unfair and unjustified. Yes, the Democratic chairwoman has a point. Affordable housing and child care are similar issues in mountain and frontage range communities. However, I would argue those are issues ubiquitous to all communties and are simply irrelevant in this respect. Frontage range Colorado communties and experiencing economic growth in the form of distribution centers, light industrial development and single family housing. The University communities are able to support high density multi-family housing. Zoning boards are experienced and deeply connected to to economic development. In contrast, mountain communities are land locked due to legacy zoning requirements, most namley the 40 AC. minimum. Growth is restricted by highway proximity, ease of travel, availability of land and most importantly gentrification. These issues are completely different and require a completely different understanding of the local laws and reasons they have come to exist. The issues facing a politician in Boulder, Colorado are not the same as one in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. These issues will run into water rights, federal forest lands, zoning requirements, transportation infra-structure needs and countless other local governmental needs. The rural, mountain communties of Colorado deserve a voice. To drown that voice in the population of the Front Range is simply unwise. I live on County Road 129, 12 miles from Steamboat Springs. I see RVs, campers, toy haulers, and endless streams of tourists going into the mountains. I also see the deer left dying on the side of the road. I see the red foxes cowering in fear behind the metal rails on the road waiting for their chance to cross without being killed. I see and smell the smoke of the fires that didn't get put out by the weekend nature loving crowd. I see the trucks come and take the cattle away. How many in the front range realize how dependent the meat department at the grocery is on rural Routt and Moffat Counties? This country is not about political parties and manipuilation for control of votes. No political party seems to have any interest in protecting anything other than its own interest. In Colorado, large population centers should be districts of themselves. The rural areas need to be large enough to have a voice. To include large rural areas in large urban centers with large Universities seems only a ploy to limit the voice of one segment of America. To limit a voice is to limit the conversation, the debate and the pool of available knowledge. Please redraw this map, and be aware of the fact your charge is about fair representation of interests, not manipulation of the existing power structure of the state. Thank you, James Easton, AIA NCARB

Members of the Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission, I am a graduate of Highlands Ranch High School and a multi-generational Coloradan whose maternal family tree stretches back into Douglas County in the 1870s. My grandmother was born on a ranch owned by my Great-Great Grandfather, George P. Stewart, who also owned the Castle Rock and gave it to the town that now bears its name. When my ancestors arrived in Douglas County nearly 150 years ago, the seeds of its agricultural industry had already been planted. In 1871, the Curtis family established the Oaklands ranch, where they raised cattle and dairy products. It is now one of 8 “centennial ranches” in the area, meaning it has been owned and operated by the same family for more than 100 years. The Greenland Breeding Farm sprouted in the 1880s on what today is the Greenland Ranch (which is reportedly the longest continuously operating cattle ranch in Colorado and also serves as an open-space buffer along the Palmer Divide). The nearby Allis Ranch dates to the early 1900s. The Elbert-Douglas County Livestock Association has been around since 1875, making it one of the oldest livestock associations in the country. This joint effort across county lines – going east to west, not north to south – works to foster common interests in agricultural business, land and resource stewardship, and education. This connection among adult ranchers mirrors the connection among teens in those counties. The Douglas County Future Farmers of America chapter is part of a district within Colorado. That FFA district includes Elbert and Lincoln Counties, among other rural communities such as those on the eastern edge of El Paso County. The American poet and author, Maya Angelou, famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” You have heard much about where you should and shouldn’t put particular district lines, including from political officials who haven’t mentioned that they might – just might – have a partisan agenda at work. With apologies to Ms. Angelou, I’d like to put a question to you: If a county shows you what is important to it under non-political circumstances, should you believe it the first time? Let me reduce this question to the situation and the challenge that you face. Should you believe the county when partisan political officials are making political statements for this decidedly political purpose of redistricting? Or should you believe what those same officials said when they were legislating and making policy for what they honestly believe to be the county’s best interests? The first is clearly motivated by political purposes; the second is entirely motivated by what they really believe when they are acting to improve the lives of their constituents. So when a county tells you that a specific industry “has historically been, and continues to be, one of the key economic drivers” in that county, you should trust the public officials making that statement that it truly is an important industry. https://douglascountyco.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?ID=6724 Similarly, if in a separate piece of legislation, that same county highlights the fact that this same industry “contributes $18.9 million to the County’s economy,” it seems you’d want to acknowledge that significant, quantifiable economic contribution in your decision making. https://douglascountyco.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?Frame=&MeetingID=2783&MediaPosition=&ID=6880&CssClass= Douglas County Commissioners made these two findings about one of its “key economic drivers” in resolutions passed in March and June of this year, copies of which are linked above. What is the industry that is so important to Douglas County, both in the past and in the present? According to the County itself, it was “agriculture” and “livestock production.” Why did the County make these findings? There have been certain policy initiatives in Colorado that threaten agriculture and livestock production, and the County wanted it on the record that this industry is critical to many of its residents and its overall economy. Of course, plenty of political motivated actors ask you to ignore the county’s own statements of its policy priorities. You can’t do that. You can’t use political posturing as a substitute for clear, specific, and unqualified statements of how the county sets its priorities. Do parts of Douglas County have an urban aspect to them? Sure. Many formally rural counties do. But if agriculture is a “key economic driver” in this part of the state, the county commissioners can’t deny – and you redistricting commissioners can’t deny – the importance of the industry to Douglas County. Or the fact that it shares federal policy concerns over agricultural product export policy, price supports for agricultural commodities, and regulation of the safe transport and sale to consumers of these products. Believe the Douglas County Commissioners when they acted authentically and without any partisan agenda. Douglas County has policy interests in common with Elbert, Morgan, Lincoln, and Otero counties. The fact that the Douglas County Commissioners say one thing when they legislate and the opposite when trying to get you to act in accordance with their political party means that their map advocacy to you is all about protecting a political party, not standing up for a community of interest. I would urge you to keep Douglas County in a rural-aligned congressional district so that the area benefits from a member of congress who understands the importance of preserving and growing the region’s remaining farming and ranching operations and continuing to respect that historic connection. Douglas County should be in a 4th Congressional District with the counties of the Eastern Plains, as it has been drawn in the first staff map released on Sept. 3. Thank you, Amy Jones, Greenwood Village

I would like to thank the commission for partaking in this non-partisan activity to re-draw the legislative disctricts based on the recent 2020 census. I applaud your efforts to draw a competitive map, while keeping communities as intact as possible. No effort to keep districts as competitive as possible can be construed to be extreme. Let the candidates run on the merits of their ideas and not the color of their party. As a life long resident of Colorado, I have seen over the years that common sense issues get clouded by concerns of party. Policies endorsed by one party are opposed by the other purely for political reasons. If one party adopts a policy that had been previously endorsed by the other, it will immediatly repudiate any members of its party that have 'stepped out of line'. I leave you with the words of our first president with respect to the 'spirit of party': "It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume." Washington's Farewell Address, 1796

Putting Fort Collins in the proposed rural eastern 4th district makes no sense at all. The issues of a growing metropolitan area has nothing in common with rural eastern Colorado’s faming communities. Metropolitan communities like Boulder, Loveland and Fort Collins should remain in the 2nd district.

The proposed redistricting map released on 9/3 appears to shift FortCollins from the 2nd District to the 4th District. I would urge the commission to keep Fort Collins, Loveland, Boulder and the northern Front Range communities together in the 2nd District. Fort Collins shares much more of the interests and politics with this area and with the west slope resort communities than it does with Weld County and northeastern Colorado. Please reconsider placing Fort Collins in the 4th district.