Public Comments

PLEASE LEAVE NEW CASTLE IN DISTRICT 57! Regarding the Colorado House Districts numbers 55 and 57. According to the Preliminary Map, you have my community, New Castle, included in District 55 separate from the rest of the valley communities. Please leave us in District 57, which is our current district. Putting us in 55 separates us from easy access to the rest of District 55.

Criteria: • Overall Range of no more than 5 percent between most and least populous districts • Contiguity • Preserve communities of interest and political subdivisions • Compactness • Maximize number of competitive districts after adhering to other criteria • Can’t draw maps to protect incumbent members, candidates, or any political party • Can’t draw maps to harm the right of any citizen to vote or ability of a racial or language minority groups’ electoral influence Communities of Interest Criteria In addition to the federal requirements of one person, one vote and the Voting Rights Act, Colorado’s state constitution requires that state legislative (Art. V, § 48.1) and congressional (Art. V, § 44.3) districts be compact, contiguous, preserve political subdivisions, preserve communities of interest (defined in detail in Art. V, § 46(3)), and be drawn to promote competitiveness. Additionally, intentionally favoring or disfavoring an incumbent, party, or candidate for office is prohibited. Colorado Revised Statutes 2020 Section 44, Paragraph (3) Definitions: (b) (I) "Community of interest" means any group in Colorado that shares one or more substantial interests that may be the subject of federal legislative action, is composed of a reasonably proximate population, and thus should be considered for inclusion within a single district for purposes of ensuring its fair and effective representation. (II) Such interests include but are not limited to matters reflecting: (A) Shared public policy concerns of urban, rural, agricultural, industrial, or trade areas; and (B) Shared public policy concerns such as education, employment, environment, public health, transportation, water needs and supplies, and issues of demonstrable regional significance. (III) Groups that may comprise a community of interest include racial, ethnic, and language minority groups, subject to compliance with subsections (1)(b) and (4)(b) of section 44.3 of this article V, which subsections protect against the denial or abridgement of the right to vote due to a person's race or language minority group. (IV) "Community of interest" does not include relationships with political parties, incumbents, or political candidates. Section 44.3. Criteria for determinations of congressional districts - definition. (3) (a) Thereafter, the commission shall, to the extent possible, maximize the number of politically competitive districts. . . . (d) For purposes of this subsection (3), "competitive" means having a reasonable potential for the party affiliation of the district's representative to change at least once between federal decennial censuses. Competitiveness may be measured by factors such as a proposed district's past election results, a proposed district's political party registration data, and evidence-based analyses of proposed districts. As a resident of Orchard Gate Subdivision in Unincorporated Arapahoe County for over 28 years, I am quite familiar with the shared public concerns of Centennial, Greenwood Village, and Parker. My oldest daughter’s family has lived in Willow Creek (Centennial) for over 20 years and my younger daughter’s family has lived in Stonegate, a subdivision in Unincorporated Arapahoe that is adjacent to Parker for around 15 years. Four of my grandchildren have attended Cherry Creek Schools. The other two grandchildren have attended Douglas County public schools including Skyview Academy. We have all shared public policy concerns regarding education, employment, the environment and general water needs for the three communities as well as the broader policy concerns of Arapahoe County and Douglas County. These communities are central to the success of the Tech Center, including the roads, bridges, parks, and public services needed to support these communities and the broader population. Arapahoe County maintains a large section of the county as a municipality because a large number of neighborhoods are unincorporated. The county shares the same public policy concerns as other municipalities in District 6 and 4. Maintaining the political integrity of Greenwood Village, Parker, Centennial and Arapahoe County supports the Community Interest concerns of these political entities. These concerns are different than Aurora, Colorado’s third most populous city (and growing), and more like those of similarly situated cities and towns like Parker, Lone Tree, and Castle Rock. These Community of Interest concerns are separate and apart from the competitive requirements of the statute. I would request the commission consider protecting the political integrity of Greenwood Village, Parker, Lone Tree, Centennial, Castle Rock and related unincorporated parts of Arapahoe County to the maximum extent possible. When this is done, I believe the commission will be able to create a competitive congressional district in the south metro area.

Thank you for your consideration of this testimony and the time involved in the creation of our new legislative and congressional maps. On the attached document, I have drawn conceptual maps of how the legislative redistricting commission can create compact, competitive, legislative seats by considering communities of interest that cross the Arapahoe and Douglas county lines. Higher education, economic development, transit, government services, and public health are all closely knit in northern Douglas County and the south-central portion of Arapahoe County. To the legislative redistricting commission: I would plead with you to consider Douglas County’s rapidly changing political, economic, and cultural growth. My community desperately needs competitive legislative seats that consider the cross-county realities of our region. I would acknowledge that creating competitive legislative seats throughout all of Douglas County would be so difficult that it would put other, particularly rural, portions of the state in a predicament. However, the northern portion of Douglas County is the perfect place to create competitive legislative seats that will ensure adequate representation in the General Assembly on a number of diverse issues like water, education, transit, public health, and more. To the congressional redistricting commission: I would ask that, because parts of Douglas County cannot realistically be given a competitive legislative district, please consider keeping Douglas County in one, whole congressional district. Although parts of Douglas County are indeed rural, we share little in common with the Eastern Plains of our state when compared to how strongly we are tied to the Denver Metro Area and Colorado Springs. For those residents of Douglas County who feel their legislative representation is not competitive, a competitive congressional seat will ensure they are heard and consequential at the ballot box; while also creating a seat for the U.S. House of Representatives that is tied to the fate of rural, suburban, and urban America.

First, I want to thank you all for your time and efforts on this redistricting Commission. My name is Shelly Manning. I live in the area of Lincoln and Chambers. Although this area is in unincorporated Douglas County, my address is in Parker. Parker is where I live, shop, and work. Parker is a great community which needs to stay as one entity with all parts of Parker remaining in Douglas County, not divided up with part in Douglas County and part in Arapahoe County. Would you please consider keeping all of Parker together in one District instead of separating Parker into several Districts? Again, thank you for your time and talents for this consideration. Best regards, Shelly Manning

Summit County Colorado should be in District # 3 with other western slope counties, with like interest and issues. Summit county should not be in District # 2 with Boulder county.

I was glad to see the preliminary map which included Park county in a district with most of the western slope. I believe the shared public policy concerns of urban, rural, agricultural, industrial, or trade areas in Park county are more closely identifiable with those in this new district rather than those of our current district which is the 2nd district. I would love to see the preliminary map upheld.

Legislative Redistricting Commission: My name is Ms. Katherine Czukas. I am representing myself. I have been a resident of El Paso County for 11 years. I made some of these comments verbally and remotely during the Frisco Public Hearing on July 31st. I appreciated the remote ways like this for me to testify, as I wanted to do so prior to mid-August when this commission and the staff started examining the additional 2020 census data. In this additional data, we see that El Paso County is the most populated county in Colorado. El Paso County grew by more than 100,000 people. By looking at American Community Survey data from 2010-2018, at least 1/3 of these people moved to El Paso County from a different state in the US. 100,000 more people in El Paso County than 10 years ago. It’s a lot of new people. But there are distinct communities of interest like the one I live in. I live in the very Northwest Corner of Colorado Springs. It is a residential neighborhood of apartments and homes originally built 20-50 years ago. It has well defined borders on its north and west, of federal lands of the US Air Force Academy and the Pike National Forest. It is a neighborhood that typifies the wildland-urban interface and its challenges with wildlife, with wildfire, with flooding due to burn scars. When it comes to K-12 education, our neighborhood has NO private or charter school, but we have many public schools. We span the two largest public school districts in Colorado Springs. We are a city neighborhood. In the preliminary state house map, my community is being divided between Districts 48 and 49. The western part is being put into District 49. The boundary separates the more uphill side from the rest of the neighborhood by secondary streets. This boundary separates families that walk to the same elementary school. This boundary splits the Mountain Shadows community where the Waldo Canyon Fire burned 340 homes to the ground. I’d encourage the commission to advise the staff to unite the area north of Garden of the Gods Road into the same house district to preserve this community of interest. For the preliminary state senate map, the District 11 and District 12 boundary lines separate a small unincorporated area we informally call Woodmen Valley from the rest of the neighborhood. This area north of West Woodmen Road and west of I-25 is not contiguous with the rest of the proposed District 11 due to the Air Force Academy fencing. There are no roads connecting that valley to any part of the proposed District 11. Everyone in that valley uses the paved roads and public schools of proposed District 12. My attached map that I created from Representable.org website shows the boundaries I’m suggesting to be a part of the same community of interest for any broader house or senate districts that the staff creates. You can also see it at this link, https://www.representable.org/submission/460ba6e6-2cf3-42f6-80af-af079dfac742 More broadly, the preliminary State Senate District 12 makes sense as it is kind of a west side urban district. It’s a community of older homes mainly built 20-125 years ago. It’s a community of people who live in an urban environment of streets, locally-owned small businesses and sidewalks. We live in a city. It is an area of the city where others travel to for tourism and recreation. If that’s how we who live here describe it, then we in Colorado Springs would probably describe Manitou Springs (current proposed to be part of District 11) as being quite similar to the rest of the northwest and west side that are in proposed District 12. The West Colorado Avenue business corridor west of 30th street serves residents of Manitou Springs as well as Colorado Springs, it seems odd to separate the two into different State Senate Districts. I hope you have the opportunity to hear more from residents of Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs about these legislative district boundaries. I appreciate all you are doing to hear from the public about our communities and a desire for similar representation. Thank you, Katherine Czukas

I want to see our 3rd Congressional Distrxit kept whole and not divided up.

As a 24 year resident of Douglas County, the stakes could not be higher for fair and balanced redistricting! With climate change that could impair our environment, upend our economy, and alter our state's landscape - we NEED representatives that work to SOLVE these issues, not use their position to remain in power and ruin our livelihood. Much of the current leadership for Douglas County focuses on religious idealism, rather than the challenges and realities of our connection with the Denver metropolitan area. Additionally, this area has seen a fair amount of school shootings and death, while current leaders could care less about enacting sensible laws that could spare further loss:( Therefore, south metro residents are BEGGING you to assign the northern Douglas County area in districts with connections to the metropolitan and professional areas where people's concerns are longevity for our state, our economy, the livelihood of our communities, and the health and safety of our families. Please choose prevention over power and politics, thank you!

To the CIRC: The proposed maps for Delta County, put the North Fork Valley in jeopardy of losing its cohesive community representation in the State Legislature. By severing our watershed and placing the North Fork with communities that do not share the same economic, environmental, geographic, water, and energy development interests, these preliminary maps effectively suppress our voice and threaten our ability to address our water and climate crisis and potentially undo the progress we have worked so hard to make building a renewable and resilient future for the North Fork Valley. We cannot let that happen! We are economically different than the central part of the state and our watershed, especially with our "exceptional" drought status only getting worse, we must not be split up and left out. We are a diverse agricultural area and need to protect our dwindling and threatened resources. Climate change/extreme weather is the existential threat of our time and watersheds need to remain intact along district lines if we are to advance resilient policies to address our changing climate. Keep the Gunnison River Basin intact along district lines. In particular, keep the North Fork Valley (Paonia, Hotchkiss, and Crawford) watersheds intact and in the same district as Gunnison County. Maintain the current Delta County division between current House District 54 and 61 for proposed House and Senate Districts, which at a minimum extends west to all of Gunnison County. We are very connected to Gunnison and Pitkin Counties, especially in recreational resources, energy/economic development, and all being part of the West Elk Wilderness, our Black Canyon Nat'l Park, and watersheds, and also have similar interests at heart. Please do not split Delta County! Your proposed map threatens our voice and resources! Sincerely, Andrea Lecos Paonia, CO 81428