Public Comments

I have seen an "alternative" map submitted for CD3 that includes many ski and resort areas. I strongly oppose this map for the following reasons. The original map proposed by commission staff reflects strong community of interest elements. Western Colorado is mostly a rural area, relying on agriculture, camping, tourism and natural resource development including oil and gas. The population is engaged in these industries and activities. The population is stable, consisting mostly of permanent residents who understand the area and its long term needs. The profile of ski resorts is quite different. The ski industry employs large numbers of transient and temporary workers. Although transient and temporary, they can qualify to vote in Colorado. If they are added to voting population in CD3 they can skew the outcomes for an area that is not their permanent home. The "ski areas addition" to CD3 is promoted as improving competitiveness. But that is elusive at best. A very large percentage of registered voters are not affiliated with a political party. This makes it merely speculative to try to evaluate political competitiveness. No one knows how the unaffiliateds will vote in any election. Indeed, no one can predict that those registered with a party will vote with their party or not. I oppose including ski areas in CD3.

I have seen an "alternative" map submitted ifor CD3 that includes many ski and resort areas. I strongly oppose this map for the following reasons. The original map proposed by commission staff reflects strong community of interest elements. Western Colorado is mostly a rural area, relying on agriculture, camping, tourism and natural resource development including oil and gas. The population is engaged in these industries and activities. The population is stable, consisting mostly of permanent residents who understand the area and its long term needs. The profile of ski resorts is quite different. The ski industry large numbers of transient and temporary workers. Although transient and temporary, they can qualify to vote in Colorado. If they are added to voting population in CD3 they can skew the outcomes for an area that is not their permanent home. The "ski areas addition" to CD3 is promoted as improving competitiveness. But that is elusive at best. A very large percentage of registered voters are not affiliated with a political party. This makes it merely speculative to try to evaluate political competitiveness. No one knows how the unaffiliateds will vote in any election. Indeed, no one can predict that those registered with a party will vote with their party or not. I oppose including ski areas in CD3.

I support the currently drawn House map and agree with splitting Montezuma County. However, I believe it is in the best interest of the HD58 if we keep the Dolores watershed within the district boundaries. Our community is heavily dependent on access to irrigation water from the Dolores watershed and would hate to see that access unnecessarily impacted by placing it another district. Southwest CO presents challenges because of high mountain passes and its terrain. Moving Hinsdale County to HD53 makes sense. Finally, we want districts that allow for the market place of ideas to function. This new plan creates competitive districts which allow for the competition of ideas, which in this present climate, I believe we desperately need. That ends my comments. Thank You. William Nelligan Dolores, Colorado

In a balanced representative government, all would be well-represented. Those with conservative and right-leaning views would be represented by conservative people, and those with liberal and left-leaning views would be represented by liberal people. However, due to the way districts are laid out, I am currently represented in Colorado and in the US Congress by liberals who say they listen, but when votes are cast my views are almost never represented. And my letters and emails are generally answered with newsletters, not thought-out responses. Colorado Districts should be laid out in such a way that conservative voters are represented by a proportionate number of conservative candidates, and so on. For example, if there is a relatively equal number of Democrat/Liberal-voting people and Republican/Conservative-voting people, then Colorado should always have one Republican/Conservative Senator and one Democrat/Progressive Senator. Thanks and LISTEN-UP. Mark Graham in Arvada

Gilpin County is a small rural mountainous county located east of the Continental Divide between Boulder and Clear Creek Counties. Our population is around 6000 and we have mostly unincorporated residential areas and over 52 percent public lands. Our request is to be situated in districts as a whole county to retain unity in our county government and services. Our like communities are most aligned with the peak to peak mountain area including Clear Creek County, Boulder and Jefferson Counties. One element which binds us is the Arapahoe Roosevelt National Forest which straddles our adjoining counties. Because Gilpin is a small county with less infrastructure and smaller government resources, we partner with Clear Creek and Jefferson Counties for shared social services and team up to collaborate on programs. Our District Attorney district includes our counties. Some of the public policy concerns lead to the shared collaborative endeavors. These include Jefferson County for our Public Health services which have been crucial during the Covid pandemic, Jefferson Center for Mental Health for behavioral health services for our residents, jail population and law enforcement trauma supports. We share an animal rescue and adoption center with Clear Creek County. Currently our four counties are members of NoCoPlaces2050 which was formed to address sport shooting in public lands and has expanded to work on addressing outdoor recreational overuse management as a regional effort. Gilpin and Clear Creek are currently partnering to obtain a sport shooting range to serve our counties which will lead to shooting restrictions on public lands to increase public safety and we are exploring co-responders shared with Jefferson County to support those with mental illness and our law enforcement officers. Gilpin and Boulder County's mountain areas are working together to bring a health clinic to our rural corridor and looking at shared public transportation and human service nonprofits. We received a REDI grant under a regional resiliency collaboration with Boulder County mountain towns. Our watershed protection areas are joining efforts for a coordinated regional approach between Clear Creek and Boulder Watershed. Our fire protection District, Ambulance Authority and Office of Emergency Management have mutual aid agreement for both human safety and animal evacuation at Gilpin county fairground. Because of this history of working together with similar yet compromising mindsets and pooled resources to protect and preserve rural mountain life, services for people, public safety, health, habitat, ARNF public lands, and cultural resources having shared representation at the state and federal levels between our counties insures progress on programs, funding, innovation, and implementing legislation. Please keep Gilpin County as one unit and retain unity between Clear Creek, Jefferson and Boulder Counties for sound future policies.

I want to express my opinion that I feel it is imperative that you 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. This would be in our community's best interest and I implore you to examine this further. Thank you very much.

My name is Carol Cure, I’m a retired lawyer and a 15-year resident of Durango, CO in La Plata County. I’m here to provide comments about HD59 Legislative Redistricting. I do not believe the preliminary house plan produced by staff complies with the constitutional mandates set forth in Article V of the Colorado Constitution, specifically Section 48. There are two main problems with the preliminary house plan. First, it completely ignores the requirement that a district “preserve whole political subdivisions“ such as counties to facilitate the efficient and effective provision of government services. Instead, it splits Montezuma in half, separating out the western part of the County, and lumping the northeastern part of Montezuma County which includes the county seat of Cortez in with La Plata. This makes absolutely no sense in terms of the provision of county services and would potentially pit the representative and constituents of half the county against the representative and constituents of the other half. It’s my understanding that Montezuma residents as well as its government officials are opposed to that plan and have strongly voiced their desire to be kept whole and combined, instead, with a district including Montrose, San Miguel, Delores and Ouray, other counties with significant rural agricultural concerns. Second, the preliminary house plan totally ignores the constitutional requirement that the plan “preserve whole communities of interest.” Montezuma County shares almost no legitimate community interests with La Plata County. We have little in common with Montezuma’s rural agricultural economy. Instead, we have much more in common with Gunnison County, which like La Plata is home to a major four-year college and to a well-known ski resort. Fort Lewis College in Durango is very similar to Western Colorado University in Gunnison. Both are situated in mountain resort areas and emphasize their outdoor recreation, mountain sports and wilderness pursuits, with world-class skiing in their backyards at Crested Butte and Purgatory Ski Resorts. Both counties, as well as the contiguous counties of Hinsdale, San Juan and Archuleta share many common policy concerns. These communities are tourist and outdoor recreation destinations with San Juan County’s county seat of Silverton as the destination for the Durango to Silverton narrow gauge railway and the Silverton Mountain Ski Resort. The train supports much of the tourism economy in both towns. Hinsdale County is covered by mountains, including multiple “fourteeners,” the 14,000-foot mountains that people from all over come to Colorado to climb. Archuleta County is home to Pagosa Springs, where you can find the world’s deepest geothermal hot springs and well as many other tourist attractions. The ski resort of Wolf Creek in Archuleta County has some of the best snow depths in the area. Small businesses, tourism, public lands, and outdoor recreation are the lifeblood of these mountain resort communities and the importance of legislation protecting these common interests and unique policy concerns cannot be underestimated. The climate crisis has led to drought, a reduction in snow and rainfall, and an increase in in wildfires and their severity, which negatively affects both winter and summer outdoor recreation tourism...the biggest industry in our communities. I am asking the Commission to combine La Plata County with Gunnison, Hinsdale, San Juan and Archuleta Counties. This configuration would best recognize and protect our local mountain resort counties as a community of interest as mandated by the Colorado Constitution. Carol Cure 747 Oak Drive Durango, CO 81301 carolcure@gmail.com Cell: 602-402-2424 Home: 970-382-8286

Thank you all for the time and effort you have dedicated to this process! House District 24 I would like to make comments about House District 24, and how it would join very different communities into this one district. Included in HD 24 are Conifer, Evergreen, West Golden, Morrison, Aspen Park, Genesee, Kittridge, Indian Hills, and other mountain / foothills communities that share many of the same interests in the areas of traffic, transportation, fire mitigation, fire departments, water availability, police, land use, and parks. But the more urban areas of Superior / Louisville, which are also included in HD 24, it seems to me, would have very different interests and priorities. Representation regarding these divergent communities could be very lopsided to either the more urban area of the north part of HD 24, in the Superior/Louisville area or to the foothills/mountain areas. It might be very difficult to be fair to these divergent interests. I am proposing that this District be re-worked, since there are mountain / foothill communities joined together with more urban communities that seem to me would not share common interests. Senate District As to the Senate Districts, the city of Golden, is split. I was wondering if this may just be a mapping error, but in case it is not I would like to propose that the City of Golden not be divided. It seems that this split would make people in the same city be at odds against each other, when they are naturally unified by the city they live in. This seems to not to be in the spirit of maintaining communities of interest. It would also take away the citizens’ voice as a united “Golden”. Please don’t split the city of Golden. If you would like a suggestion on how this might be fixed I suggest that the entire of city of Golden go to SD 35. Thank you!

I do not believe the proposed preliminary redistricting map adequately meets the requirement that districts be as competitive as possible. I am specifically concerned about CD3, the district in which I reside. The proposal for CD3 would change the current CD3 from a lean Republican (+6 point advantage) to a strong Republican (+11 point advantage), disregarding the requirement that districts be as competitive as possible. Since I typically vote Democratic or Independent, this would make it very likely that my vote and the vote of many who share my political preferences would NEVER make a difference. Essentially, our votes would not count at all in the long run as the district would always be carried by Republicans. I respectfully ask that the commission adhere to the requirement for competitiveness. This is supposed to be a non-partisan endeavor. Show it is one by fixing this problem and making it possible for my vote to count.

Do NOT REDISTRICT CO.! I’m not going through all my thoughts in this,but redistributing is a plan to break up county’s for voting purposes for Democrats only. We are sick and tired of are representators not listening and only doing what’s best for them. You pack the Public meeting with Dems. I’m letting you know we see what you’re doing and I’m sick of your purposes for redistributing!!!