Public Comments

As your purpose states, you are looking for "community of interest". I can think of no better "community" than Delta County. The county as a whole which includes the towns of Delta, Cedaredge, Eckert/Orchard City, Hotchkiss, Paonia and Crawford have always shared like interests and commitments to agriculture and ranching tying the population together for decades. Actually since the 1800's. If you must group the county with another, it should be Mesa County. There is more connection with Mesa County than with Montrose County. Montrose County has more of a connection with Quray, San Miguel and San Jaun Counties. Their common interest being tourism. I believe these are factors that should be taken into account in your redistricting plans. Thank you for your service.

Routt County is currently grouped with Moffat, Garfield, and Rio Blanco Counties in the preliminary district mapping. I have lived in both Routt County and Rio Blanco County. The concerns and issues important to residents really couldn't be any different. Routt County is a resort county with a ranching / agricultural basis. Its biggest issues relate to housing for local employees, careful growth, and environmental preservation. Rio Blanco (and Moffat and Garfield) are energy producing / ranching / agricultural counties with no resort component. These counties have long term residents. Energy development is of high interest to these residents. High quality health care, although important to everyone, is especially an issue for some of the rural communities. Agriculture and ranching, although present in Routt County, is much more dominant in the other three counties. I encourage the commission to move Routt County into a district with a more resort focus, such as the one that includes Eagle County.

I don't agree with the proposed move of Clear Creek County to the 3rd Congressional District. Clear Creek's interests are more in line with Gilpin County and Boulder County, as well as those of Eagle and Summit Counties. One of the main issues we have to deal with is the impact of large amounts of ski and tourist traffic in these areas, especially in the I-70 corridor, and I don't see how this can be adequately addressed by someone more familiar with issues on the western slope. Seems like the 3rd is already large enough anyway, and I don't understand the reasoning behind making it larger. Thanks.

The eastern boundary of District 3 should continue to follow the Continental Divide, as it does all the way from Wyoming, until intersecting with Gilpin county, as shown in red on the attached map. The attempt to include the western portion of Boulder county is illogical, and a mistake, and contrasts greatly with the rest of the boundary, which is exclusively "Western Slope". The concerns and considerations of these proposed communities are very different than those of District 3 in terms of education, employment, environment, public health, transportation, and water needs. The communities in this area have views that align closely with those found in the rest of Boulder county. These communities will not be well-served by this proposed change.

We need to stop marginalizing people of color. The boundaries given for redistricting are doing just that. People of color are leaving the Denver-Metro area, due to rent/mortgage prices. Now they are trying to alter the representation we are given.

In viewing senate district maps for change, it would behoove the commision to understand that current district lines which encompasses 35, which includes 16 counties in southcentral and southeastern Colorado, are very similar in water issues, poverty level, education and job opportunities as well as social and political balance. The idea of breaking this district up and placing somewhat non agriculture base such as Freemont and Teller simply do not fit the demographics of the region. would ask that the existing district be placed back as it was and if additional population is required to proceed north with additional counties such as Cheyenne, Lincoln or Kit Carson adding to existing 35, as these counties share the same demographics as south eastern and southcentral Colorado. After representing this district for the past eight years and being a fifth generation southern colorado, in my opinion, it would be a mistake to break up a socially consistent district,such as 35,with inclusion of semi-metro areas , such as Fremont and Teller, with a stable agriculture base.

Please do not separate Arvada from the 7th Congressional district. The redistricting commission is meant to "Preserve whole communities of interest and whole political subdivisions, such as counties, cities, and towns," and Arvada deserves to remain included with the rest of suburban Jefferson county. The current representative for the 7th district is also a resident of Arvada and our community should remain in the 7th. The redistricting commission is further intended to "Maximize the number of politically competitive districts." News reports indicate that the 7th District as proposed will lean Republican, and the new 8th congressional district will lean Democratic. Population per district could be kept even by moving an equal portion of Douglas County from the 7th to the 4th district, and an equal portion of Adams and Weld Counties from the 4th to the 8th district. Adjusting these boundaries of the 4th, 7th, and 8th congressional districts as described would further help the 7th and 8th districts be more politically competitive.

Please RECONSIDER dividing Delta County. The County has been split these past 10 years and it has not been fair representation for us, not to mention confusing! We operate as one entity and to split our representation has silenced our voices. We should be included with Mesa County as we share the economic drivers of agriculture and the energy industry. Thank you for your consideration. ~ Tonya Huspen

These are an expansion of my comments at the Denver public hearing on Jul 14th and the refer to my submitted map labeled "Willis DC 12Jul" First, I want to be open about what my political intentions are. During my life, I have been a Republican, a Democrat, and now I am an Unaffiliated voter. I have not changed my political views much in all that time, but the nature of the parties has changed to where I felt left out by them. I consider myself a centrist. Therefore, when I look at redistricting, I do so through less partisan lens than most. Tackling the current drawing of a congressional district map with a new CD8 offers an opportunity to rethink the standards that have been used in the past, and that is what I have done. My goals are the same as those now spelled out in the State Constitution in the same provisions which created this Commission. With those goals in mind I set out to draw a map with the following criteria: as few counties divided as possible, Douglas County all in one district, Jefferson County all in one district, the City of Aurora all in one district, make CD3 less sprawling than in prior years, and finally, to make as many competitive districts as possible. I’ll address the last point first. Of the eight districts, three are going to be non-competitive no matter what we do unless we make some very ugly county splits that I would consider unacceptable. CD1 in Denver, it is going to be heavily Democratic. CD4 is traditionally the Eastern Plains and leans decidedly Republican. CD5 is Colorado Springs, probably the largest concentration of Republican voters in the entire state. However, the map I have drawn does make the five remaining districts competitive with slight leanings fairly evenly divided between the two major parties. I’ll begin with Denver and work my way outward. For the first time, the City and County is now larger than one congressional district. This means that a small piece of Denver will have to be removed and placed with another district, with the vast majority being in CD1. To my mind, the best way to accomplish this is to cut a small portion out of eastern Denver that also includes all of the small Islands of Arapahoe County that exist inside Denver’s borders. This single “county cut” accomplishes two things simultaneously. It removes enough population to make CD1 entirely inside Denver County, and places those islands of Arapahoe with a district that is much more predominantly Arapahoe County. Next is the immediate ring of suburbs around Denver. CD6 is the most natural recipient of those areas we cut out of Denver County, so I’ll continue with it. First, we include all of Aurora. This will create a small county cut in Douglas County because a small piece of the City of Aurora now goes into Douglas. In all honesty, the population numbers in that small portion of Douglas are insignificant enough that it could be included in CD6 with Aurora or CD4 with Douglas and still be within the acceptable range of population deviation. So the Commission just needs to decide do they want to honor the city boundary over the county line or not. Of course, a sizable piece of the City of Aurora is also in Adams County. Since, the city is quite a bit less than one congressional district, a chose to place the rest of CD6 in the Adams County suburbs east of approximately I-25. The rest of western Adams County is then coupled with Jefferson County to form CD7. As much as I wanted Jefferson to be all in one district, that soon became obviously impossible because the it turns out Broomfield County is not contiguous along its border with Jefferson, nor with Adams. So a small piece of both those counties had to be cut away from CD7 to keep our districts contiguous which is required by the constitution even though county boundaries do not have the same requirement. Furthermore, Broomfield County is too populous to include with Jefferson, so the remaining alternative was to remove those small portions of Jeffco/Adams and to add to Broomfield in what will be District 2. CD2 has traditionally been based in Boulder and I retained that aspect. In its current reiteration, it was coupled with Larimer County under the notion of combining the two major college towns of Boulder and Fort Collins. Because my plan needs Larimer County elsewhere to equalize population, I opted to couple Boulder with Greeley, instead. By going into Weld County, rather than stretching westward, we also start to balance the political voting power of the district. For numerical equality I also added Morgan County and ended up with a competitive district. The division of Weld County is solely to equalize the numbers between District 2 and 8. This brings me to Colorado’s newest District 8. My thinking in putting it in the NW corner of the state was to use CD8 to reduce the large sprawling nature of what is current CD3. I have long held, through the past two rounds of redistricting in fact, that there is no discernible common interest between the residents of Moffatt County and those of Las Animas or Pueblo Counties. Yet, they keep ending up in a district together. With the addition of an 8th district, we can finally correct this. Under this map, I have created a CD8 which is essentially the northwestern portion of the state and a CD3 which is the southern and southwestern portions. The real beauty of this solution that I would like to point out is that between the two districts, even with the large number of counties covered by them, there is only one county cut, the one in Weld County. This leaves CDs 4 and 5. CD5 is traditionally Colorado Springs. For the first time, like Denver, El Paso County is now larger than a congressional district. So the logical answer is to include the municipalities in El Paso County in one district and remove a small portion of the rural area and add it to a neighboring district. As CD3 to the west and south does not need an additional population in it, the remaining choice is to add a piece of El Paso to CD4. CD4 again makes up the majority of the eastern plains. The big difference here is the population base moves from Weld County to Douglas and southern Denver suburbs in Arapahoe. This accomplished two parts of my goals: It keeps all of Douglas whole, minus those small pieces of Aurora, in one district, and it sets the heavily partisan CD 4 on a path where it could become competitive. I said at the beginning that CD4 was solidly Republican. Even under this map that remains the case. However, recent years have seen moderation of the political affiliations in the regions immediately to the south of Denver. Over time, CD4, as drawn here could become a more competitive district. Will it? I don’t know. But the potential is there. In summation this map, meets the population requirements, it reduces the number of divided counties down to about as small as you will likely get, it preserves city boundaries, and creates evenly divided competitive districts where possible. To that last point, CD1 remains strongly Democratic, 4 and 5 strongly Republican, with 4 having potential to become competitive, districts 6 and 2 with a small Democratic advantage, districts 3 and 8 with a small Republican advantage, and a District 7 that is almost perfectly 50-50.

My name is Kirk Louis Columcille Hamm. I am a professor of Law and Business at Arapahoe Community College, as well as a practicing corporate attorney. In this case, though, I represent only myself. First, I would like to thank your staff for the marvelous work already done in laying out the districts. I think you have largely succeeded in keeping communities of interest together, as the law instructs, especially with the congressional districts. Your work on these matters intersects quite a bit with my own academic work. As social science research continues to show clearly, the biggest differences in our society do not come from the partisan divide, but rather arise between the urban centers and the suburban and rural communities which surround them. These communities differ in governmental institutions, housing, transportation, recreational and economic behavior, crime, and even demographics. This space is inadequate to explain all these differences, but the members certainly have my contact information if they would like to discuss these in more depth. My point is that urban communities have interests radically different from their surrounding areas. We do a disservice to both by trying to combine their interests; both deserve their own distinct representation. My primary concern is that, in the senate districts in the southern portion of Denver, these interests are being combined somewhat. Thus, I would encourage the members to consider amending these areas to maintain Denver as a separate community of interest. Thank you.