Public Comments

Lakewood does NOT belong in the same district as Douglas County! We are a diverse community who deserves to have our minority voices heard. Putting a demographic like Lakewood with such a homogeneous community at DougCo would silence minority voices. NO to lumping Lakewood in with DougCo!

Do not put Lakewood in a district with Douglas County. Lakewood has nothing in common with Douglas County. Keep Lakewood in a district with Arvada and Wheat Ridge. Douglas County is far south from Lakewood, far right-wing from Lakewood, and even has a different climate - it always snows way more there than it does in Lakewood. We do not belong with Douglas County. I vote in every election.

Chaffee County has >80% public lands, low population density, and significant considerations for the increasing development and environmental pressures we're facing. Right now, we are grouped in CD5 with El Paso County, a densely urban community and county >33x our size. We have much more in common with proximate mountain counties including Lake, Pitkin, Eagle, and Gunnison that share our core economic drivers like tourism, outdoor recreation, and production ag and also share our priority needs like affordable housing, greater healthcare and childcare options and equity of access, land conservation and stewardship-driven policy addressing forest and watershed issues, and infrastructure improvements like broadband and roads. CD3 & HD61 seem better aligned for us with communities of shared interests - the redistricting commission needs to know this!

Lakewood should not be be joined with Douglas County for purposes of Congressional seating. Lakewood is an older, inner ring suburb. It is more like Wheat Ridge and Arvada than the more recent, exurb population of DougCo.

TO: Colorado Legislative and Congressional Redistricting Committees From: Gena L. Ozols Re: Denver Communities of Interest Thank you for your service to our state and for reading the perspectives of Coloradans on the needs for their neighborhoods and communities. My name is Gena Ozols and I am a thirty-two-year resident who moved to Colorado at three weeks old, and has lived and worked in community organizing and local legislative offices since 2007. Ranches now have apartment buildings sitting on their corner, and farms down the street from my old house have had to recently negotiate deals with major shopping centers being built next to their grazing pastures. The population growth across the city has been prodigious and positive for many and like you I am looking forward to full census results in August to better inform this work. But this increase in people to the metro area has also caused rapid gentrification and decimated many communities of color who had been living close to downtown Denver for decades. Gentrification, employment, transportation, and healthcare access are issues across the state, but particularly in the regions of the Denver Metro area where rising home costs have shifted the demographics within the city and forced many communities of color out. This has caused issues with representation and I believe should be a primary consideration when creating new district lines. REGARDING NORTH DENVER: (Specifically the areas to the east and west of I25 aka Federal Heights, Commerce City and Montbello) While many Black and Latino families have lived in some of these regions for many years, there has been a huge increase in families moving here for affordable housing. These neighborhoods show more difficulty in receiving service calls to their homes, worse rates of environmental pollution, less access to the public transportation many relied on to get to work, and public education in dire need of funding. To carve up this area into separate districts would be detrimental to ensuring a voice from that community who could prioritize these needs. In particular, the Montbello neighborhood has even more needs regarding transportation than most of the city of Denver itself, and has more in line with Adams county and north Aurora neighborhoods. RE DENVER/AURORA AS THEIR OWN CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS: Denver’s district should no longer be shaped this way and it would be an error to create Aurora as its own district as well. The southern areas of Aurora closer to Centennial where I grew up when it was still unincorporated Arapahoe county, are full of large homes and majority white communities served by the Cherry Creek School District. These neighborhoods have very little in common with the communities north of Mississippi Avenue and the needs are different. Similar can be said in Denver, where the voting communities of homeowners south of Evans compared to the wealthy/renting downtown areas have entirely different economic realities and are more similar to the neighborhoods south to Lone Tree. Aurora neighborhoods along Havana are incredibly diverse and fully of African, Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants in the Aurora and Cherry Creek Public School Districts who align more with the concerns of many Denverite’s than with people just up Parker Road. The metro area should no longer have Denver as its own district and we need to look into carving up cities to properly build lines of neighborhoods with aligned values. SPECIFICALLY RE NORTH AURORA: The region I'm most concerned with is an approximately 2.5 miles long region from Colfax to I70, and from 225 to the Denver line. This area is in Aurora, but instead of being in Arapahoe county like the vast majority of Aurora, this is in Adams county and is separated from the rest of it by I-70. Causing gaps in representation and services which have created a particular need for work on homelessness, gang activity and human trafficking that do not align with the growing prosperous neighborhoods in the southern part of the city. They should not be mapped together. RE HB20-1010: POC communities should be defined as communities of interest for their shared racial experiences and cultural values first and foremost, but they also sadly have in common being overly policed and ultimately incarcerated at higher rates than white communities. These prisoners are then counted where they can’t actually vote and where they do not choose to be, ultimately cutting into the numbers of people eligible to be represented in a particular neighborhood at the time of the census count or voter registration. Unless prisoners are given the same opportunities as any other citizen to reregister or have their ballots forwarded to them where they are currently located, they should be counted where they are registered, voting and therefore able to be represented. Thank you so much for your time in reading this and for your service to Colorado on this Commission. Gena L. Ozols Englewood, CO

Lakewood is far too diverse a community to join Douglas County. I am a proud resident of Lakewood and Jeffco and do not share the same ideals as those represented in Douglas County.

Lakewood shares little in common with Douglas County, and should stay in a district with Arvada+Wheat Ridge.

Lakewood does NOT belong in the same district as Douglas County! We are a diverse community who deserves to have our minority voices heard. No to rezoning!

I am commenting on congressional redistricting of considering putting Lakewood in with Douglas County. As a Lakewood resident, I am opposed to this as Lakewood does not share commonalities with Douglas County. It would serve to silence minority voices and the diversity of Lakewood.

I understand it is being proposed to combine Lakewood with Douglas county in the same district. We live in Lakewood. This proposal makes no sense! Lakewood shares nothing in common with Douglas County. Lakewood is in the middle of Jefferson County. It should be in a district with adjacent cities in Jefferson County- like Arvada Wheat Ridge as we lots in common - our county, our courts, our school system, continuity. Please do not adopt this ill-thought-out districting proposal. It feels like extreme Gerrymandering to me.