Public Comments

Thanks for your work and for listening to our plea for southern Colorado. The latest map finally gives Pueblo and a god portion of the water basins a chance to have representation in Congress! For us this map honors many communities of interest : water, culture, economic need; and it provides a real chance to have a voice in DC, which we’ve been without for decades. Please accept this comment as support for the currently drawn CD3. Even if other Congresssional districts are tweaked, please maintain a coherent southern district.

As a resident of Routt County I share little with the people of Boulder County. I'm a coal miner that has a 50 acre ranch that has been in the family over 50 years. The values and interests I have as a rural Coloradan would be overshadowed and effectively silenced by including Larimer and Boulder Counties in our district. I grew up in Loveland and have seen how that entire I25 corridor has changed and not for the better. Long gone are the sprawling wheat fields of my youth and the old families who homesteaded them originally replaced by new neighborhoods of shoddily constructed houses. A different area with different needs than the rural western slope. Please do not include these counties in the new redistricting areas. Thank you, Bruce Brown

Commissioners: Thanks for publishing the first map. It helps to make this discussion over CD boundaries more concrete. I live in Steamboat Springs and so am particularly interested in what happens in the new CD 2. The proposed CD 2 map includes 1) Boulder and Routt Counties on one hand, and 2) Moffat, Rio Blanco and Garfield Counties on the other hand. Putting these highly disparate counties into a single CD seems to dramatically violate the state's "communities of interest" standard and would leave lots of voters - conservative voters in this case - in this CD feeling highly disenfranchised. In fact, Routt County has recently left the Associated Governments of NW Colorado because its interests are so different from those three counties to the west of us. There seems to be a better option, which is to keep Garfield, Rio Blanco and Moffat in CD 3, and put Eagle and Pitkin Counties into CD 2. This at least would create a CD 2 that would be far more representative of a single community of interest. Thanks for considering this comments. Cheers, Eric

I like and support the new CD3 map as issued on September 4th. It captures most of the Southern Colorado Rivers Community of Interest and even adds in part of the Colorado River Basin as well. As stated before, most of the Southern Colorado was settled early by land grant families and in addition to the rivers, there is a cultural shared interest across most of this proposed district as well. Finally, it should be noted that this district slightly favors Republican voters - but only narrowly so that any congressional race here can be contested which will serve the best interest of the district and all its residents. Regardless of what may happen to the rest of this proposal, I urge the Commission to keep CD 3 as it is currently proposed! Thank you for your efforts on behalf of us all. Gary Thomas - Pueblo Colorado

I do not agree with this planned change. Please leave the map as it was. Western Colorado doesn’t need to be divided.

The latest proposed redistricting map puts Grand County and other western counties with Boulder and other democratic strongholds on the front range. The majority Grand County population is politically conservative and vote Republican. There is no "community of interest" with Boulder and the east slope liberals. The politicians from Boulder and the front range have not represented our interests and we should not have to have to remain unrepresented in our County, While some from eastern Grand may like this, the majority want representatives from the west slope. If necessary, split Grand give Fraser/Winter Park to Boulder.

I have looked at your congressional maps and I vehemently disagree with where you have put Fort Collins. As a commission focusing on communities of interest it makes no sense to put my town ( a blue college town) in with red rural areas. We have nothing in common with these areas. I’ve lived in Fort Collins my whole life and have had to have out of touch congressional representation for years because the people representing me only cared for the rural areas of the district. The way you have drawn the district makes it likely that the representative could get away with doing that again. Fort Collins concerns would fall on deaf ears. I speak from experience because the district you are considering is very similar to the district we had from 2000-2010. I personally am more of a fan of a district that would include Fort Collins, Boulder, Loveland and the surrounding areas potentially going into Weld County a bit. It would make far more sense to give northern Colorado it’s own district which I consider to be my community then to put us in with rural areas we have nothing in common with. Fort Collins is a mixture of blue and red but ultimately is a place where I feel like is pretty progressive and would be completely out of place in the district you are considering. Fort Collins needs to be in a district with someone who cares about urban struggles not someone whose main interests lies in conspiracy theories. We have made a lot of progress as a community and I believe its wrong to put Fort Collins in a place where we will receive representation that is far removed from who we are as a city.

I would like to record my strong opposition to the current Congressional redistricting plan that places Fort Collins in CD-4 with eastern Colorado. Fort Collins is deeply embedded in Front Range issues and is much more concerned with mountain access, nearby open spaces, and other environmental/safety features that differ greatly from the eastern plains. Especially after such a difficult fire season in 2020, Fort Collins residents are extremely invested in and needs Congressional representatives who are interested in advocating for resources, management, and support of Roosevelt National Forest and Rocky Mountain National Park. Likewise, Fort Collins manages territory all the way up to the Wyoming border; splitting Fort Collins across multiple Congressional districts will reduce the effectiveness of city officials at advocating for their needs. Fort Collins is the fourth-largest city in Colorado: don't hobble the city's influence by splitting it up across representatives. (I see the first staff plan memo says "all of the city of Fort Collins" has been included in CD-4, but this is demonstratively incorrect. The city controls open spaces along the Wyoming border. Likewise, Poudre School District extends far into the proposed second district, which effectively ties mountain and Fort Collins populations in interests.) Likewise, Fort Collins shares little in common with the eastern plains of Colorado--a marriage would diminish eastern plains citizens' voice and advocacy as well. Fort Collins has previously expressed a strong anti-fracking sentiment, while eastern plains residents gain significant revenue from the activity. Eastern plains citizens need strong congressional support for agricultural concerns, issues that Fort Collins citizens are largely ambivalent about. Resentment over the urban/rural divide in northern Colorado runs so deep that Weld County has long discussed secession. Merging the two regions will likely only result in citizens of both Fort Collins and the eastern plains feeling that their political voice has been diluted past any point of effectiveness. Currently, the secession movement is small; please don't give cause to fuel the negative emotion. Furthermore, intra-district tensions will only grow with the incredibly large distance the proposed district covers. With a drive time of 4-5 hours from one side of the district to the other, there is very little chance members of this proposed Congressional district will interact with or hear one another's concerns. (More than 6 hours if one wishes to avoid toll roads.) Citizens will not drive multiple hours to attend town halls outside of their region, which means the Congressional representative will have a nigh-impossible task of representing vastly different populations who have very few common interests and even less of a geographical incentive to unify. Far from creating a balanced, politically competitive district, the proposed map will only exacerbate existing tensions between regions within the proposed CD-4. The outcome will result in a district so divided it cannot possibly protect the interests of its citizens or of Colorado as a whole. Meanwhile, the only likely outcome will be to further the deep preexisting tensions that exist between Colorado populations. Please don't give fuel to this resentment by putting them into the same district and effectively canceling out their voices/interests. Colorado has been lucky enough to earn an additional Congressional representative, but the deep divisions in this district will effectively negate that additional voice.

Dear Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission, I am writing to you today to express my disappointment with the, “First Staff Plan,” (released on Sept. 03, 2021) map for the 2022 redistricted Colorado Congressional Districts. While I viewed the former, “Preliminary Plan,” (released on June 23, 2021) as fair, appropriate, and competitive, I cannot say the same for the First Staff Plan released just a few days ago. This First Staff Plan, in my view, fails to group communities of common interest together to represent our state in the next congress. For example, the (current) 3rd congressional district, which currently includes Pueblo County (my home) as it did in the preliminary plan, now spans from the Utah-Colorado line almost all the way to the Kansas-Colorado line under the First Staff Plan. I feel this is incredibly unfair to group this broad swath of area together as there is too much variation in communities of interest due to the varying geographical area, major differences among economic drivers, and the fact that it would be difficult to capture or represent these different communities through the election of a single representative to congress. The preliminary plan did a much better job of banding communities of interest together in this case. For the preliminary plan specifically, the San Luis Valley, Pueblo County, and the Eastern plains would have been banded together as they are all agriculture and blue-collar communities (which would’ve been entirely appropriate) as the Colorado 4th congressional district. Equally appropriate, under the preliminary plan, would’ve been the new 3rd congressional district which would have been the majority of the Western Slope and many other mountain communities that share common interests i.e. tourism based economy, natural resource producing, etc. banded together. I want to emphasize that the preliminary plan was far superior to the first staff plan in effectively and appropriately keeping those communities of interest together. In summary, I hope that the Independent Redistricting Commission will hear my concerns as well as others regarding the upsetting First Staff Plan released just last week. Additionally, I also urge the commission to hopefully consider adopting something that is similar to the preliminary plan (released on June 23, 2021) as it did a much better job at grouping communities of interest together and giving all Coloradans a meaningful voice in the next congress. I appreciate you taking the time to read this message and for working on this very important issue. Sincerely, Ryan Strain

As a member of the Pueblo County Planning Commission, I was very interested in the public comments at the Pueblo meeting. water, cultural and community interests were well stated by the many persons that testified. Thank you for taking into consideration our concerns about our representation in Southern Colorado. The First Staff Plan, covers a lot of the issues that were brought up in that meeting and gives the citizens of Southern Colorado a chance to get someone who would be interested in Southern Colorado problems. The first Staff plan is a good plan for our area keeps our area together.