Public Comments

James town Colorado is on the east side of the continental divide. It should not be redistricting it Allender placed with the west slope. We don’t want that representation it does not represent us and I oppose the change. Our community will do what is needed or ask for to change whatever has caused this. Again I oppose the Regis Richard (submitted by email 7/14/21)

Greetings to the re-districting commission! First off, thanks for undertaking the task that you are in charge of. Related to that, I urge you all to take the greatest consideration to the issue of inclusivity. Please re-draw the boundaries of our representative districts such that ALL people have a say in them. Conservatives as well as Progressives. Please don’t leave ANYONE out of the political process. Because we are all partners in democracy, we must truly embrace and include one another in our democracy. In light of these considerations, I humbly ask the commission to make our districts competitive again! Thanks Luiz R.S. Neves Fort Collins, CO (submitted by email 7/17/21)

Hello, Due to having to put my little ones to bed, I was unable to stay on the meeting any longer to speak to the commissioners on July 21, 2021, even though I had signed up to remotely testify. I am attaching my testimony in support of ending prison gerrymandering to this email as a PDF and pasting my testimony below my signature. It was written to be delivered verbally so please excuse the more informal spelling and prose. Thank you for your time and service. Cheers, Patrick Potyondy Denver, CO 80207 Pasted testimony below: July 21, 2021 To the Colorado Redistricting Commissions: Thank you for allowing me to comment. My name is Patrick Potyondy and not representing any org. I hold a PhD in American history and hold experience in civil rights, elections, the census, and redistricting. I worked on the law that reformed how we allocate incarcerated individuals and looks like I’ll be building on some of the previous comments made although not as effectively. Ending prison gerrymandering builds upon the fair maps ideal. That is why a diverse coalition of groups supported ending the practice. Ending this type of gerrymandering helps ensure a fairer, more accurate system of political representation. The average prison sentence is about 3 years, while redistricting lasts for 10. Ending the practice stops an unfair, unintended consequence of our prison system, one that damages black and brown communities the most. It’s that simple. Now, some details: Could this be fixed at the federal level? It should, but right now redistricting is constitutionally allocated to the states to accomplish. The fix is ours to make. Like all policies, this creates some work. That’s OK. The census bureau is ready to assist as are other organizations. What if there’s no address for an incarcerated individual? If there is no known last residence, then incarcerated individuals are simply redistricted at the prison facility. Next, as I’ve heard argued, comparing prisoners to college students doesn’t follow at all. Students choose where to lay their heads at night. Prisoners are arbitrarily and unequally plucked from their home communities and transported willy-nilly across the state, often more than once and at a moment’s notice. Moreover, to highlight that a bunch of other states do not reallocate prisoners this way is to simply point out that a bunch of other states continue to deny predominately communities of color their fair political representation. We don’t want to be in that company. In terms of how federal or state funding is allocated, this law does NOT affect that. This policy has been tested. Maryland and New York both implemented similar policies. Courts upheld the practice: New York’s by its state court and Maryland’s by the U.S. Supreme Court. More substantively, our state’s law removed the likelihood of corrupting the lawmaking process. It stops one bad incentive for a legislator or congressmember to vote to lock more people up. Next, I will simply point out that reallocating incarcerated individuals to their real community is exactly how the census counts military members who are deployed away from home. No criminal law contains an intended provision that takes away a community’s political representation as part of the punishment. This is about legitimate political representation. Prison gerrymandering is at the expense of every other district that doesn’t host a prison. I’ll finish with this: when other countries use state power to arrest and imprison individuals that predominately hail from one or a few communities of interest to reduce those communities’ political power, we call that authoritarian and undemocratic. We call those folks political prisoners. We know this is a problem here, but it’s one we fixed back in the 2020 legislative session. You’re all in a unique position to decide which side you want to fall on. Please vote to allocate incarcerated individuals to their true home community. Please vote for fair maps. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Patrick Potyondy (submitted by email 7/21/21)

Dear Commissioners, Thank you so much for listening to the testimonies at the Malley Center in Englewood this evening. I had a deep sense of your non-partisan nature, and that resonates well for those of us in city elected leadership, because like you, we operate as non-partisan servants in our cities. I was very heartened by the deep conversations around giving voice to the incarcerated and I do hope you will have a separate hearing around that as I would like to attend to speak up for counting people where they call home. I had so much more to say tonight and am thankful that you invite written testimony. To expand and add to what I said: I am Mayor of Englewood but not representing council in any unified way. I have lived in Englewood since 1983 and served on council for almost 12 years now. This is the context from which I offer my testimony in written form. I care deeply for the metro area as a Minnesota transplant in 1983 when my husband and I moved out for job transitions and settled on Englewood as home. Englewood and Congressional District Mapping Englewood as you know is a landlocked, 1st tier city of Denver with a 6.6 square mile footprint with about 35,000 residents. It is compact. It is lower to middle income. We have 2 regionally and internationally recognized hospitals: Swedish and Craig. As a 1st tier city, we have both the great benefits as an adjacent neighbor to economically vibrant Denver, and the unfortunate shared challenges of homelessness, unaffordable housing, and urban transportation challenges. We are landlocked with very little in-fill. Our population is much lower in the socio-economic metrics compared to Denver, so our tax base is thinner. In this shadow of Denver, we often get overlooked in the state and national realm and are told about opportunities after the fact. I strongly applaud you for not splitting Englewood for the Congressional Districts. While either #1 or #6 would probably be fine, shifting us to CD #6 puts us in a more politically competitive district where I believe our citizens would be better served. Candidates will need to listen to our residents of Englewood if we are vital to their success in candidacy. The important thing here is: do not split Englewood as we are too small to have 2 different congressional representatives. Our interests will be lost as the little sister. I would daresay that already happens in the currently configured politically uncompetitive CD 1. Englewood and State House and Senate Mapping Historically we have had a long-standing relationship regarding shared interests with Sheridan and Littleton. The 3 city councils meet 3x/year to discuss shared interests, opportunities, and challenges. Issues that have kept us actively working together and advocating to state and national elected officials together are: 1) transportation - the Englewood TOD was the first in the state which opened all kinds of possibilities for Sheridan and then Littleton to gain rail access as well. 2) Santa Fe Corridor – We have had to unite to get CDOTs and state attention and assistance for maintenance, safety, environmental studies, and better coordinated use of resources. 3) Homelessness – three years ago the 3 mayors of the cities met and launched a separate Tri-Cities Homelessness Policy Group to commission 2 separate studies on families and adults experiencing chronic homelessness. It has resulted in a very robust Action Plan that is now before the 3 separate councils and will result in IGA’s to move us forward in September. This group has finally garnered the attention of Arapahoe County, DRCOG and MDHI (Metro Denver Homelessness Initiative, the HUD non-profit conduit for funding. These have provided much needed technical assistance from DOLA and regional HUD representation. Secretary of HUD Marcia Fudge visited our Innovative Housing Concepts (Englewood/Sheridan Housing Authority) this last week because she heard about innovative programs we had launched, and that would not have happened without strong regional coordination with Englewood and Sheridan. As separate cities we would never have the resources to approach these challenges in the same magnitude. Englewood has four school districts serving our community. They are on the edges: Cherry Creek in the NE corner, Littleton to the south and Sheridan on the western edge. Then of course the majority is served by Englewood Public Schools which I always say provides the glue of the community with families, even though my family is in the Cherry Creek system. Splitting that striving-for-better district with state seats would be so detrimental in representing educational needs, affordable housing for stabilizing families feeding the district, and human services from DOLA and HUD. Englewood and Sheridan will benefit the most from being kept together in this issue area. Additionally Englewood and Littleton have deep waste water and bio-gas capture project commitments with each other. Our South Platte Water Renew plant is the 3rd largest water renewal facility in Colorado and cleans nearly 20 million gallons of wastewater a day from 300,000 residents in Englewood, Littleton, and 19 other communities. When the EPA hands down metrics and requirements we must work together and garner the support of our joint representatives in the state and federal government to approach the challenges of unfunded but environmentally needed laws. Splitting us with representation would be detrimental to water management. Equally, the So. Platte River is of interest to Englewood, Sheridan, and Littleton. We work actively together in the South Platte Water Working Group to preserve and renew access and amenities to the river. While our group is diverse we do not have the same constraints as cities around the political divide. It is one of the assets of small cities….we don’t run on parties. We run on serving as apolitical agents of change. The same is true for the 3 cities working together for DRCOG. While Cherry Hills has also been a partner on several projects, we have worked tirelessly in the Arapahoe Transportation Sub-Region Committee supported by DRCOG. Given all that has been established to nurture and grow regional approaches between the southern metro cities, Englewood, Sheridan and Littleton are serious partners. Splitting us up in various ways would weaken our ability to find voice in the midst of other major players such as Centennial, Aurora and Denver. We need each other and our representatives benefit from our regional willingness and eagerness to work together. Please consider these important ties. At the very least, do not split Englewood into 2 for any of the maps that are being drawn. Thank you again for your service and I look forward to further input as needed. Sincerely, Linda Olson Englewood citizen and mayor Lolson@englewoodco.gov Cell: 303-503-4020

As a Grand County resident for 20 years, my interests and viewpoints were not heard or represented by Congressional representatives from Boulder Grand County should be part of a rural, western CO congressional district We have different interests from urban, front range constituencies

Dear Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission, The Commission is proposing that HD25 become HD24 with portions of the current HD33 and HD12 merged into HD25 to make HD24. The more I study this proposal the more convinced I am that this is a terrible proposal for all parties in the proposed new house district. Comparing current House Districts 25, 33, and 12 we see that the populations and households are similar, even the median house prices and the education levels of the populace are similar. The differences start showing up with the populace of HD25, being older, more married, and having notably larger per capita and household incomes and a lower poverty rate, which is probably a result of the older population. The mobility rate in HD25 is also notably lower and would probably be much lower if you subtract out all the people who moved from the suburbs to the mountains only to discover that that living in the mountains doesn’t mean the “same” but with more trees! However, the GLARING DIFFERENCE is in the population density. HD25 has 136 people per square mile while HD33 has 1,766 and HD12 has 1,213 people per square mile. The population density in HD25 is only 7.7% of that of HD33! With the exception of the current HD39, which also encompasses a lot of low-density rural areas, no other House District directly to the east of HD25 has population density less than HD33’s 1,766 people per square mile with some HDs being twice that. In the winter, HD25 gets 2-5 times as much snow as Superior and Louisville get. Sometimes many of the UNPAVED streets aren’t plowed for days and loss of electricity for hours and even for days is not uncommon. In the summer, we get FOREST FIRES and flash flooding. Did I mention that there are practically no street lights in HD23? No bus service either. The significant interests of traffic, transportation, public health, government services, recreational facilities, policing, fire departments, fire mitigation, forest fires, ingress/egress, water, zoning, land use, flooding, and conservation for the citizens living in the low population density foothills/mountains around Evergreen and Conifer in he current HD25 are TOTALLY DIFFERENT than those of the citizens living in the high population density urban suburbs of Superior and Louisville. This joining of grossly divergent communities in a legislative district is in violation of the spirit if not the intent of the Colorado Constitution, Section 44 (3)(b), Article V and Section 46 (3)(b). The two distinct areas would both have better, fairer, and more effective representation if the eastern edge of House District 24 was Hwy C470, W. 6th Ave/64th St, CO Hwy 93, bounded by CO Hwy 72 on the north and Deer Creek Canyon and Pleasant Park Roads on the south, with the proposed HD24 areas of Superior and Louisville being absorbed by surrounding House Districts that have like communities of interest. Rebalancing would be fairly easy by taking the proposed HD24 citizens in the Superior and Louisville areas and putting them in proposed HD 25, 36, and 37 and then taking the equivalent number of people living in the far west foothill sides of proposed HD 13, 12, 10, and 23 and adding them to the new HD 24 to create a HOUSE DISTRICT REPRESENTING MOUNTAIN COMMUNITIES WITH COMMON INTERESTS. This does not involve that many people as there are not that many people living in the lower foothills, with the possible exception of the lower elevation portions of Golden proper which could be carved out and left in HD12, which would actually make some sense as that is where their community of interests are. I have enclosed a map that illustrates all of this. Best regards, Peter Wagner Current HD25 resident

Dear Co Ind. Redistricting Commission, I am against the proposed HD24 boundaries. This proposal inadequately addresses the diverse communities represented in HD24. There is the urban area suburb and the rural foothills/mountain area which are very different in populations, needs, goals and priorities. Thank you.

Attached commentary is part 2 of my response to last night's Lakewood hearing.

Redistricting at this time is not necessary, unless one party wants more power and control of districts. Delta county is strong in agriculture and should be represented as so and not split up. Please evaluate what the residents of Delta county represent and keep our district intact as currently outlined.

I believe possibly the most essential Colorado Communities of Interest are school districts. We citizens of Littleton are very proud of our schools and will be lobbying heavily to have all Littleton Public Schools stay in one Colorado House District (presently HD38). I thank the commission for their time and consideration.