Right-wing social media influencers and citizen journalists seized on video shared by Denver’s Fox31 television station showing armed men at an Aurora apartment complex, often adding their own captions and commentary, as it made the rounds on TikTok, X and Facebook.

Even former President Donald Trump weighed in during a podcast interview, repeating unverified claims that gangs were taking over big buildings with “big rifles” in the city.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman appeared on national TV and posted about the Venezuelan gang on his Facebook page, contradicting his police chief about the severity of the situation, and saying the city was preparing to go to court to get a judge’s order to clear out the apartment complexes where the Tren de Aragua gang operates. However, city staff on Tuesday said that is not the immediate plan.

Aurora and Denver police have publicly acknowledged there are Tren de Aragua gang members in their cities, but they say the gang’s numbers are not large and they operate in isolated areas. Others say the Tren de Aragua presence in Aurora, a city of nearly 400,000 people, has been overhyped.

“Those stories are really overblown. If you didn’t live here, you would swear we were being taken over by a gang and Aurora was under siege,” Aurora City Councilwoman Stephanie Hancock said Tuesday. “That’s simply not true.”

Aurora officials over the Labor Day weekend contradicted each other on the scope of the problem and the city’s responses to it.

Coffman claimed on Facebook that five apartment buildings along Dallas Street are “associated with gang activity,” and told Fox News that “several buildings” under the same ownership “have fallen to these Venezuelan gangs,” repeating claims made by property management company CBZ Management that the apartments fell into disarray because of gang activity.

Coffman did not return a request for comment Tuesday.

Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky, who has been most outspoken about the gang’s presence in the city, also did not return a call from The Denver Post seeking comment Tuesday.

The mayor’s claim of a gang takeover is disputed by other city officials, who say the longstanding disarray and poor conditions at the apartment buildings were the fault of poor oversight by CBZ Management — not because of criminal acts by Tren de Aragua members.

“There’s this hysteria that we apparently have a gang problem, but what we have is a slumlord problem in the city of Aurora,” City Councilwoman Alison Coombs said.

Aurora interim police Chief Heather Morris said in a video Friday that residents are not paying rent to gang members.

“I’m not saying there’s not gang members that live in this community,” she said in the video, taken at the Edge at Lowry apartments at Dallas Street and 12th Avenue, where officers were talking with residents.

“We’ve really made an effort these last few days to ask the specific questions and direct questions in terms of the gang activity and… making sure that people aren’t paying rent to gang leaders, gang members. That’s not happening. And we’ve discovered here today and yesterday, talking with so many residents, that that is not the case.” she said. “…We’re standing out here, and I can tell you that gang members have not taken over this apartment complex.”

“We don’t feel threatened by gangs”

Dozens of residents who gathered in the courtyard at the Edge at Lowry apartments Tuesday afternoon said they have not been threatened by — or even interacted with — gang members.

“They say there are gangs and criminals, but the only criminal here is the owner,” resident Moises Didenot told a crowd of reporters.

The residents demanded city leaders hold the “slumlord” building owners accountable for untenable living conditions, including rodents and bedbugs. Didenot held up adhesive mouse traps with three dead mice stuck to them.

Aurora officials have disputed the property manager’s claims that issues at the apartment buildings are due to gangs, instead citing poor upkeep that has resulted in repeated code violations.

Tenants on Tuesday said they were more afraid of the hatred sparked by news coverage.

“We don’t feel threatened by gangs,” said resident Gladis Tovar.

Multiple people interviewed by The Post, including the two City Council members, specifically referenced the Fox31 report about gangs at the Edge at Lowry complex — featuring the video of armed men in the building — as elevating the national attention on the story.

On Aug. 28, Fox31 reporter Vicente Arenas, who had been reporting on problems at the complex, posted to social media a video that shows six men, one of whom was holding a rifle and four of whom were carrying pistols, knock on a door and go inside an apartment.

Since the footage was first posted on the news station’s website and X accounts, Fox31 says its network partners have confirmed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that the men were affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang. Efforts to reach the Fox31 news director Sean McNamara were unsuccessful Tuesday.

On Friday, Coffman wrote in a Facebook post that the city was preparing to seek an emergency court order declaring additional buildings a criminal nuisance — a tactic the city used before evicting 85 families from a building at 1568 Nome St. earlier this year. But city officials denied that Tuesday.

Aurora representatives are planning to meet with the property managers and owners before taking any official action in court, and an emergency court order is “one of several considerations at this time,” city spokesman Michael Brannen said.

“The state law is clear when it comes to a property owner’s responsibility when it comes to addressing health hazards and code violations at the apartment buildings they own,” he said in a statement. “We will continue to aggressively pursue a resolution in order to address the poor conditions impacting residents.”

A decrease in crime in Aurora this year

Venezuelan migrants have been arriving in metro Denver as they flee political upheaval, a poor economy and a humanitarian crisis. So far, an estimated 42,700 migrants have come through Denver since January 2023, according to a tracker on the city’s website, although many have moved to other parts of the country to be closer to family and friends.

While some claim the Venezuelan gang is bringing danger to the city, crime in Aurora has declined in 2024 compared to 2023, statistics published by the city show. Overall reported crime dropped 20% in the first eight months of the year when compared to the first eight months of 2023, the statistics show. The city saw declines in homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults.

Aurora police did not answer questions Tuesday about whether they have identified any instances of Tren de Aragua members collecting rent from Aurora residents, how many people have been identified as Tren de Aragua members in the city, or how many criminal acts have been connected to the gang.

Aurora city officials have publicly tied just one crime this summer to the Tren de Aragua gang: a July 28 shooting in which two men were shot and a third broke his ankle at the apartment building at 1568 Nome St.

One of the suspects in that shooting, Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, 22, is a known Tren de Aragua member, police said in a statement Thursday. Pacheco-Chirinos, who uses the alias “Galleta,”  was charged with assault with a deadly weapon in connection to that attack.

Pacheco-Chirinos was also charged with aggravated assault after an incident at the apartment complex in November, Aurora police said.

Across the metro area, Tren de Aragua gang members have been arrested in two other incidents this summer: a jewelry store robbery in Denver and an enforcement action by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office on Aug. 21 arrested six people during a routine policing effort near South Quebec Street and High Line Smith Way — a slice of county land sandwiched between Aurora and Denver, spokesman John Bartmann said. Four of those arrestees were later found to be Tren de Aragua members, he said.

“We weren’t looking for them,” Bartmann said, adding that deputies found some drugs and recovered a stolen vehicle during the “proactive” policing effort. He was not able to identify the four arrestees or say Tuesday what charges they faced.

Denver police spokesman Doug Schepman said many people on social media were conflating Denver and Aurora in a “misleading” way. He said officers have no evidence that Tren de Aragua members are targeting Denver apartment complexes for “takeovers.”

Jon Ewing, a spokesman for Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, said the national attention was “fanning ugly rhetoric” during an election year. The mayor’s office is concerned that immigrants who moved to Colorado to start a better life will be harmed. But the city is also working to stop the spread of Tren de Aragua.

“We can walk and chew gum at the same time and be concerned about both of those things,” Ewing said.

Hancock, the Ward 4 Aurora City Council member, said the city is working to build trust among new arrivals so they will report crime to police.

“Our immigrant population is being targeted by gangsters from their own communities,” she said. “They often don’t report for fear of retaliation.”

“The hardest thing is getting people to tell us these things are happening. We need to develop trust with our agencies and we need APD to develop a relationship with people who came here to seek a better life.”

Aurora leaders also are worried about how the national reports reflect upon the city’s reputation.

“It definitely makes it seem like our city is not safe, that it’s not a good place to live, not a good place to do business,” City Council member Coombs said. “It also makes it seem like our city staff and our police department are not trying to serve the public.”

Denver Post reporter Katie Langford contributed to this report. 

This story was updated at 10 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 4 to correct the Aurora ward represented by Stephanie Hancock.

Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.

Now, this city on the western edge of the metro area is setting up a one-time $100,000 relief fund for smoke and vape shops, along with gas stations and convenience stores, to soften the financial hit they’ve taken since Golden’s prohibition went into effect on Jan. 1.

The City Council earlier this month directed staff to create a competitive grant program to which businesses can apply for funds. No single store can receive more than $10,000 and the money must be allocated before the end of the year. About 30 businesses in Golden are affected by the city’s prohibition.

“The City Council is trying to say they’ve heard the concerns of local businesses and they want to be responsive to local businesses that were impacted by an ordinance they weren’t anticipating,” said Rick Muriby, Golden’s community development director.

While several Colorado municipalities have passed similar flavored tobacco sales bans in recent years to combat youth consumption of nicotine products, including Boulder, Aspen, Glenwood Springs and Edgewater, Golden appears to be the first willing to backfill revenues lost to a law it passed.

Muriby said the $100,000 figure wasn’t based on sales data from businesses in the city, but was a figure the council and city manager “felt was a reasonable amount for the city to spend.” And while Golden wants to ensure its businesses remain healthy, he said, it has no intention of taking a second look at its flavored nicotine ban.

“They’re letting (the shops) know they are valued but that it’s more important to enact this law to protect kids,” he said of the City Council.

In fact, Golden’s elected leaders imposed guardrails on the reimbursement program. Businesses applying for funds must document only losses above and beyond those caused directly by the ban, or as Golden Mayor Laura Weinberg put it at a recent study session, “the spillover effect” of buying chips, a soda or a lottery ticket that no longer happens because people have taken their business elsewhere.

“I’m not comfortable compensating people for not selling poison to our children,” Councilman Rob Reed said at an Aug. 13 study session, emphasizing his resistance to making dollar-for-dollar reimbursements for lost tobacco sales.

Multiple attempts by The Denver Post this week to get members of the Golden City Council, including the mayor, to comment on the grant program were unsuccessful.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that “no tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, are safe, especially for children, teens and young adults” and that the addictive nicotine they contain “can harm the parts of an adolescent’s brain that control attention, learning, mood and impulse control.”

The agency says the use of flavored e-cigarettes or vapes, with alluring flavors like cotton candy and pink lemonade, is favored by youths over any other tobacco product. When Golden passed its ban in July 2023, the city’s ordinance noted that e-cigarettes and other flavored offerings are essentially “starter tobacco products for youth.”

The Post reached the owners of several businesses in Golden that once sold flavored tobacco products but they declined to be interviewed on the record. Grier Bailey, executive director of the Colorado Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association and Convenience Store Association, said bans unnecessarily harm stores that already operate on slim margins.

“It’s nice, it shows recognition that these business owners have been hurt,” Bailey said of Golden’s revenue replacement program. “But as a one-time grant, this doesn’t make up for future years of losses.”

Bans, he said, don’t work because most youth who vape or smoke get their products from friends or older siblings. Adults who enjoy a wide range of flavors on the market, Bailey said, are denied what they should be free to buy.

And so they go elsewhere, taking their appetite for flavored tobacco — as well as myriad grab-and-go snack and beverage items sold at gas stations and convenience stores — outside Golden, Bailey said. No other community touching Golden has a similar ban in place.

“For a gas station customer, there are a lot of stations around — why would you go to one that doesn’t have what you want?” he said. “When jurisdictions do this, it doesn’t do anything but shift business to other places”

That was the reason given by former Denver Mayor Michael Hancock nearly three years ago for his veto of a bill the City Council had just passed banning flavored nicotine product sales in the city.

“I believe in passing and implementing effective policies,” Hancock told The Post at the time. “I didn’t see that this bill singling Denver out would do anything to keep nicotine and vaping products from our young people.”

In 2022, the state legislature considered — but didn’t pass — a bill that would have banned flavored vape juice and other products in that category statewide. Statutory counties, like Jefferson County, don’t have the authority to specifically regulate flavored tobacco products, Alexandra Bolivar, spokeswoman for Jefferson County Public Health, wrote in an email.

A bill introduced this spring that would have granted that authority to Colorado county governments died in committee in March.

“Jefferson County could consider a similar policy to Golden’s if there are changes to state statute allowing counties to do so,” Alexandra Bolivar, spokeswoman for Jefferson County Public Health, wrote in an email.

In the meantime, Golden’s mayor said the city needs to balance the need to promote public health among local youth with the idea that businesses subject to the strong arm of the law aren’t left floundering as they try to win back customers who have gone elsewhere.

“This would be a recognition that we want those small businesses to still be in our community,” Weinberg said.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

If the council gives final approval to the plan on Aug. 26, voters will decide this November whether to switch from decades of citywide elections of council members to a ward-based approach. Westminster would have two council members per ward while the mayor would continue to be elected at-large.

Then, in the 2025 election, voters would decide whether to grow the council from seven to nine members, adding two new members to represent the entire city rather than just part of it.

The latest plan came together Monday night, scuttling a proposal the council had moved forward last week to give voters a single vote this fall to create a hybrid council with both citywide and ward-based representatives. Some council members in favor of creating wards in the city felt more local representation could give a louder voice to people living in south Westminster, an older and less affluent section of town.

Westminster, with a population of around 115,000, is one of the last large metro-area cities that still elects its entire council — minus the mayor — in an at-large fashion. Boulder also runs exclusively citywide elections for its council.

The state’s three largest cities — Denver, Colorado Springs and Aurora — use a blended approach of district and at-large representation on their city councils, as do Pueblo, Greeley and Grand Junction.

Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.

The City Council is weighing a proposed ballot measure that would split Westminster into three pieces — each to be represented by a council member with closer ties to city neighborhoods and the people who live and work there. If voters sign off, it would spell the end of decades of exclusively citywide elections in this suburb of 115,000 northwest of Denver.

“I believe wards can be more equitable and offer better representation,” Councilwoman Claire Carmelia said. “Voters can reach out to their specific representative who understands their area of the city.”

The council’s first vote on a referred measure setting the new governance model is set for a special meeting Monday, with a final vote pegged for Aug. 26.

If the measure passes, Westminster would establish a hybrid model of representation. It would add two seats to its seven-member council. Of the nine total seats, three — two council members and the mayoral post — would continue to be filled through at-large elections in which all city voters have a say.

But the majority would be elected from three newly created wards in the city, with two council members per ward. The change potentially could prompt a dramatic shift in focus among those elected to lead the city.

The state’s three largest cities — Denver, Colorado Springs and Aurora — use a blended approach of district and at-large representation on their city councils, as do Pueblo, Greeley and Grand Junction. Westminster’s move would leave Boulder as one of the only large home-rule cities in the state still electing all of its council members at large, according to a tally maintained by the Colorado Municipal League.

Many of the state’s smaller towns and cities still subscribe to the all-at-large council model, including Edgewater, Fruita and Aspen. But in the spring, fast-growing Elizabeth in Elbert County shifted to a ward-based system of government. Town staff said such a change “proposes to increase direct accountability between citizens and elected officials, while at the same time ensuring a consistent balance of power between neighborhoods and subdivisions within the town itself.”

Obi Ezeadi, a first-term Westminster councilman and only the second Black member of the body, has long advocated for the city to shift to a ward system. Having politically concentrated pockets could benefit parts of the city that have been overlooked in the past, he said, especially the older and less affluent southwest area that’s known as Historic Westminster.

At-large elections also cost a lot of money to launch and run, Ezeadi said, potentially dissuading potential candidates of lesser means from tossing their hats into the election ring.

“What an all-at-large system does is dilute representation, overlook local issues and lessen the accountability of council members,” Ezeadi said. “My hope is to bring equity to historically underrepresented areas.”

Pros and cons to both approaches

But a ward-based system isn’t without its faults.

Municipal government experts have cited a sometimes-resulting focus on hyper-local and parochial politics, where the interests of the wider city are subsumed by concerns often defined by a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) sensibility.

A 2020 paper from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research even found that switching a governing council from at-large to district representation can lead to less new housing construction, with 21% fewer home permits approved in the cities the paper looked at. That’s an issue that is particularly troubling for a growing region already dramatically short of housing.

Author Evan Mast, now an assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, wrote that the differences in constituency size mean ward-based and at-large representatives “face very different incentives.”

“Within the ward containing a proposed development, a higher percentage of people will be affected by the project’s concentrated costs than in the town as a whole,” Mast wrote. “This means that the average opinion of the project in the ward may be lower than in the town as a whole, making ward representatives less likely to support housing developments.”

But the ward system of government rose in popularity in response to an ugly chapter in American politics, according to Monmouth University political science professor Scott Hofer, who wrote a 2018 paper on the topic while a graduate student at the University of Houston.

“In the United States, at-large elections were popular for local elections; especially as a mechanism to ensure that a bloc-voting white majority could deny black citizens the opportunity to choose representatives of their choice in local governments,” he wrote.

The Voting Rights Act in 1965 broke that logjam and resulted in greater minority participation in politics, Hofer wrote, spurring more communities to turn away from exclusive at-large voting. But while ward-based systems are favorable to minority candidates, Hofer’s research found that at-large systems tend to lead to more women serving in city halls.

That’s why, he said, many communities across the country today aim for the mixed approach that Westminster is considering Monday.

“The hybrid model seems to be popular,” Hofer said in an interview. “The justification is you get the best of both worlds.”

He said ward representatives, with their smaller constituencies, are seen as being closest to the people, while at-large council members, who can take a wider view of city affairs, are seen as the “watchdogs” for the city’s fiscal health.

Carmelia, the Westminster councilwoman, likes that blend.

“If we don’t have representatives looking out for the best interests of the entire city, certain projects could get shot down,” she said.

Westminster’s council last year approved a new water treatment plant that invited no shortage of controversy. And in recent years, Colorado’s eighth-largest city has seen loud and boisterous fights over municipal water rates, recall attempts on four council members and the sudden resignation of longtime Mayor Herb Atchison in 2021.

Last month, City Manager Mark Freitag resigned after just two years in the position.

Boulder rejected change in setup

Whether a change in governance structure would make for smoother sailing at Westminster City Hall won’t be known until a change is in place. Boulder, the only other big Colorado city still exclusively electing its council at large, has no plans to change.

Voters there rejected a ballot measure that would have pivoted to a ward-based system 21 years ago.

“I do feel the system is working well enough,” Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said. “And if it ain’t broke, there’s nothing to fix.”

Brockett said most of Boulder’s racial and ethnic minorities are spread evenly throughout the city, meaning no single ward would necessarily capture Blacks or Latinos as a voting bloc. And the city’s strict campaign finance rules, which limit contributions and total spending in order to qualify for city matching funds, puts an electoral campaign “in the reach of many.”

The road to Westminster’s Monday vote has been long and twisting. In the fall of 2021, voters rejected a question asking whether they wanted the city to create a commission to explore the issue. Two years later, the voters reversed themselves, restarting the process.

A wards advisory committee brought to the City Council three options for overhauling its system of governance. Last week, the council narrowly rejected a wards-only approach, allowing the hybrid proposal with an expanded council to take center stage.

If the measure reaches voters and passes in November, the 2025 election will be the first time Westminster residents choose their leaders based on the new system.

Dino Valente, a member of the wards advisory committee and the longtime owner of Valente’s Deli, Bakery & Italian Market in south Westminster, says he doesn’t like the option the city is considering this week. With a hybrid approach, he worries that if all three at-large council members happened to come from the same part of the city, the geographic diversity promoted in a ward-based system would be scotched.

“I will not endorse something like that,” Valente said. “It’s not good governance.”

The proposal also is seen with a wary eye by Nancy McNally, who’s in her second stint as mayor of Westminster. She feels the system works well as is — no matter that just about every other sizable city in metro Denver has moved away from all-at-large voting.

“This is Westminster, Colorado,” she said. “I don’t give a rip about what others are doing. We don’t have to make a decision just because others are doing it.”

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

But across town, members of the Aurora City Council gave initial unanimous approval to a similar ordinance — exercising a provision that allows local communities to cast off the gun restriction for their own property. The elected leaders of Colorado’s third-largest city will have to take a second vote on the issue next month to make it final.

The diverging votes, both taken Monday night, come as a growing number of Colorado cities and counties are opting out of the law. Passed by the legislature as Senate Bill 131, it “prohibits a person from knowingly carrying a firearm, both openly and concealed,” in municipal or county buildings, courthouses, polling places, and public or private schools, universities and child care centers.

About a dozen counties, cities and towns across the state have opted out of the law, which took effect July 1. They include Douglas, Teller, Routt, Mesa and Morgan counties, along with Palmer Lake, Monument and Castle Rock.

Aurora Councilman Curtis Gardner , who brought that city’s measure forward, framed the issue as one of local control versus state control.

“I think we are best suited to determine the safety and security of our buildings, not the state legislature,” he said Monday night.

Those against allowing firearms in city halls, like Westminster Councilman Obi Ezeadi, fear that guns may introduce new “variables” that could turn deadly in spaces — such as council chambers — that can feature heated debates over controversial issues.

“This area is safe, this building is safe. We’ve had no incidents. Let’s keep it that way,” he said Monday.

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

Weinberg, who serves in the House, said the comment was made on the Facebook page of a Loveland politics group on Sunday afternoon.

“My initial reaction was safety for my wife and two kids,” he told The Denver Post by phone Monday.

Drew Sexton, campaign manager for Boebert, said Weinberg spoke to him Sunday night about the threat. He said the Republican congresswoman, who also has lived in Larimer County since her decision late last year to run for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, was in Washington, D.C., on Sunday night but that the campaign is reaching out to Capitol police to inquire about any additional protection that might be needed.

We Are Not Enemies! #unite pic.twitter.com/2fS06HD4hI

— Ron Weinberg (@RepWeinberg) July 21, 2024

The third person mentioned in the post is Ben Aste, a Republican running for commissioner in Larimer County, Weinberg said.

Weinberg in a statement on Sunday called the Facebook post a “disturbing and unacceptable death threat,” especially coming eight days after a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man tried to kill former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally.

“The alarming assassination attempt on former President Trump makes it clear that the rhetoric and actions surrounding our political differences have become far too contentious,” Weinberg wrote. “We are not enemies!”

The first-term representative said the man who made the Facebook post has threatened to punch him in the face before, but had never made reference to using firearms. He declined to name the person, saying that could potentially place him in danger.

“I want to protect him,” Weinberg said.

But he said police know who he is and are monitoring the situation.

The Facebook post associated the three politicians with Christian nationalism even though Weinberg is not Christian.

“I’m a Jew, for Pete’s sake,” he said.

In the post, Weinberg was referred to as “‘Mr. Militia’ Weinberg,” which the lawmaker presumed was a shot at him for helping start a Patriot-themed group in Loveland that attended school board meetings to make sure “our voices were heard.”

“When you hear patriot today, you have to carry an AR and a pistol on your hip, apparently,” he said. “It’s time to come back to the center.”

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

The decisions are motivated by the view that the people who live in those communities are best equipped to manage the safety of their public facilities.

Douglas County was the state’s first locality to push aside the law, approved by the legislature earlier this year as Senate Bill 131. County leaders passed a resolution in mid-May to allow firearms in its government buildings — two weeks before Gov. Jared Polis even signed the bill. Weld County is the most recent, exercising its withdrawal from the law last week.

“I know people who carry a firearm everywhere they go, and for us to tell them we don’t trust you to carry a firearm when you come see us (at Board of Commissioners meetings) is wrong,” said Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas. “This is about the citizens being able to protect themselves — this is their constitutional right.”

The law, which went into effect July 1, “prohibits a person from knowingly carrying a firearm, both openly and concealed” at municipal or county buildings, courthouses, polling places, and public or private schools, universities and child care centers. The prohibition also applies to adjacent parking areas. It contains exemptions for law enforcement, military and security personnel, along with some others who carry guns as part of official duties.

Notably, the law provides an escape hatch, permitting a local government to allow the carrying of a firearm in its buildings. But the new restrictions would remain for other types of buildings covered by the law.

There are now about a dozen counties, cities and towns across Colorado that have opted out of the law. They include Teller, Routt, Mesa and Morgan counties and Palmer Lake, Monument and Castle Rock.

Both Aurora and Westminster are discussing whether to do the same.

“I want people who are law abiding and went through the rigor of getting their concealed carry permit to be able to exercise their right to conceal carry,” Westminster City Councilman Dave DeMott said last week. “To me, it’s about personal safety.”

DeMott is bringing an opt-out resolution to the council’s July 22 meeting, but not all of his colleagues are on board. Councilman Obi Ezeadi said he worried the presence of guns in council chambers could intimidate residents into silence during meetings — or dissuade people from running for the council.

“In today’s politically volatile climate, the presence of firearms in City Hall poses a significant threat,” he said. “You can imagine the intimidation (of an audience member) if the person next to them has a gun.”

Ezeadi, a Democrat who last month lost a primary bid for a state Senate seat, said he looks to Westminster’s police force to protect people at public meetings. There’s no way to know what level of training an individual has received in the use of firearms, he said — raising the risk of tragic results, should tempers flare.

“Do we trust our police officers to keep us safe? If we do, this bill makes sense,” Ezeadi said of the new law.

“Not keeping our social graces”

State Sen. Chris Kolker, a Littleton Democrat and an SB-131 sponsor, said the bill was a comfort to some Colorado communities in an age when “we’re not keeping our social graces.”

He said some municipal leaders approached him and other statehouse Democrats to see what lawmakers could do on the topic, given the legal gray area they’d be stepping into if they tried to enact firearms restrictions at the local level.

The measure is one of a several gun-control bills the Democrat-dominated legislature passed this year.

“We are seeing contentious arguments. We are seeing people come into town halls and school board meetings, and the nature of the discussion has turned negative,” Kolker said. “We feel guns are disruptive — they can cause fear when people want to practice good political discourse.”

Kolker’s bill was far more expansive when it was introduced early in the 2024 legislative session. Its gun prohibition umbrella initially included churches, hospitals, bars, public parks, recreation centers — even zoos.

Lawmakers winnowed it down generally to government buildings — including the state Capitol — polling places and school property before getting the governor’s signature on May 31.

That may still be too much for Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the gun-rights advocacy group that has sued the governor and various municipalities over the years with claims of government overreach on gun restrictions. Ian Escalante, the group’s director of operations, said it was “seriously considering our options” with SB-131, including a legal challenge.

The law, he said, flies in the face of the country’s presumption of innocence doctrine.

“Deal with the bad actors — don’t treat everyone like bad actors,” Escalante said. “Just because you are in council chambers, your God-given rights to self-defense don’t end where politicians’ feelings begin. The state government is ramming Denver’s agenda down the throats of localities.”

Concealed carry permit holders have to go through a training course on how to properly handle their weapon, Escalante said — giving them an extra level of conscientiousness and awareness of gun safety and firearms laws.

Palmer Lake Mayor Glant Havenar has a concealed carry permit and so do many of her fellow residents in the rural El Paso County town of 2,600. The town board passed an opt-out resolution on June 27.

“People here carry all the time and it’s no problem. In a lot of small towns, people carry every day,” she said. “It’s such a part of their day, they don’t even think about it.”

She sees laws like SB-131 as an overreach by state lawmakers who aren’t adept at distinguishing between the challenges and needs of large Front Range cities and small rural communities in Colorado.

Yes, town trustee meetings in Palmer Lake get heated, Havenar said. But everyone respects everyone else’s right to feel differently and speak out. There is no metal detector to screen people, and two police officers attend the meetings to keep order.

A gun-free protocol would do little to stop a person from committing the unthinkable crime, the mayor said.

“If someone wanted to shoot up the council chambers, you could shoot through the windows,” she said, referring to the decidedly unfortified 110-year-old Craftsman-style town hall. The new law “doesn’t stop the bad guys — it only stops the person following the law.”

But Nick Ehrhardt, a fellow trustee in Palmer Lake and the lone vote against the opt-out last month, said certain places in society simply aren’t appropriate for guns. To him, municipal buildings are considered “sensitive” spaces for a reason.

“I’m going into this Town Hall as an elected member to engage in important dialogue,” he said. “That’s exactly where tempers are going to flare. The last thing I want is that last resort of someone grabbing a gun.”

“Every local government has unique needs”

Tempers in Aurora have flared in a big way in the last few weeks, following the May 25 police killing of 37-year-old Kilyn Lewis, an unarmed Black man who was being sought on suspicion of attempted first-degree murder. Recent City Council proceedings in Colorado’s third-largest city have been shouted down and repeatedly disrupted as protesters have demanded justice for Lewis’ death.

Councilman Curtis Gardner said that in this volatile environment, he’s not worried about “law-abiding gun owners exercising their constitutional right to conceal carry firearms in the council chambers.” Aurora didn’t ban the concealed carry of firearms in city buildings before the new law took effect.

“While I am concerned about the increase in tempers in local government spaces in the last several years, continuing to allow the concealed carry of firearms by law-abiding gun owners isn’t what most concerns me,” he said.

During a study session last week, Gardner introduced a measure that would opt Aurora out of the new state law. He wrote in an email to The Denver Post that many mass shootings — even most — have happened in places where guns aren’t permitted, showing that those laws and policies don’t deter individuals intent on carrying out harm.

“Local municipalities, not the state legislature, should be in charge of security for their buildings,” Gardner said. “Every local government has unique needs and various protocols, and our security practices shouldn’t be the purview of the state legislature.”

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

City elected officials gave initial approval Monday, by a vote of 5-2, to an ordinance designed to establish the Westminster Hills Open Space Dog Off-Leash and Natural Area, a designation that officially provides a generous slice of land upon which canines can continue to run, frolic and play — loose and fancy-free.

A second vote to finalize the new designation, which is expected to cost approximately $1.3 million to activate in 2025, is scheduled for later this month. A chunk of that money will fund full-time positions in Westminster’s open space department to manage the newly designated property, including open space stewards and a crew leader.

Specific details about trail alignments, land restoration and recreational management of the property will come later. The off-leash dog park has informally existed for more than 20 years at the site, but Monday’s vote makes it official.

“This is a good plan,” Councilman Obi Ezeadi said in support. “It’s what a lot of people wanted.”

Monday’s action may or may not quell what has been a simmering months-long dispute between thousands of dog lovers — some of whom travel from afar to use the open space property at the northwest corner of Simms Street and West 100th Avenue — and residents worried that unfettered dogs threaten the natural landscape, including native shortgrass prairie and burrowing owl habitat.

“Shortgrass prairie and off-leash dogs cannot mutually coexist,” Melissa Koss, who has lived in the nearby Countryside neighborhood for the better part of a decade, said before Monday’s meeting. “One need only look at surrounding municipalities to see what happens to land used by off-leash dogs: native plants are damaged, native animals are displaced, soil is degraded, and invasive species run rampant.”

But pooch proponents turned out in force at the meeting, talking up the park’s importance as an amenity in the city for more than two decades. Rachel Alvidrez, a nurse, said Westminster’s leaders should acknowledge the mental health benefits to people being able to see their four-legged companions run free.

“This dog park is really a cherished piece of this community,” she said.

The city put together a community advisory committee in the spring to craft options for the City Council to consider regarding the Westminster Hills Open Space property. The committee suggested four different off-leash dog park sizes — from leaving it at its current expanse to reducing it to a mere 33 acres.

Cindy Staudt, a spokeswoman for the pro-canine advocacy group Westy Dog Park Guardians, said she was happy that the largest size dog park had landed on the council’s dais Monday night as the leading option, but she worries about its lasting power.

“The proposed changes to the Westminster Municipal Code still empower the city manager to unilaterally change the use of the park,” she said. “We’re proposing that be modified to require any future use change be decided by City Council, not the city manager.”

Westminster’s city attorney, David Frankel, disagreed with that assessment, saying he read the ordinance as keeping the decision-making power over the property’s status in council’s hands.

Westminster has amassed just more than 3,800 acres of open space over the last few decades. Nearly a quarter of that is encompassed in Westminster Hills, which sits just north of Standley Lake and east of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

“At over 1,000 acres, this is one of the largest stretches of shortgrass prairie publicly protected on the Front Range,” the city wrote in a memo for Monday night’s meeting. “(Westminster Hills) was established through a series of land acquisitions with the primary goal of permanent land preservation and conservation.”

A dog park was not initially envisioned at Westminster Hills, but the property became canine-friendly in 2000 when the city launched a one-year pilot for an off-leash area on 27 acres. The city expanded the off-leash zone to the entire open space property in 2008, before dialing it back to just more than 400 acres the next year in response to numerous coyote-dog encounters.

Westminster Hills dwarfs the next two largest off-leash dog park in the metro area — Chatfield State Park, at 69 acres, and Cherry Creek State Park, at 107 acres. Both of those parks charge a $3 daily fee or $25 for an annual pass, and users are limited to three dogs per visit.

On busy weekends, parking can quickly become scarce at Westminster Hills Open Space. That has prompted the city to post signs warning visitors not to park in nearby neighborhoods.

As part of the ordinance, the city will commence a year-long area-specific management plan for the property, including an examination of whether to one day charge an entry fee or a parking fee to manage crowds. The city estimates that more than 750,000 people visit Westminster Hills annually.

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

“We set up a room in case we needed to stop the meeting to allow her to pump,” said Rachel Medina, who was appointed mayor of Cortez by her council colleagues in 2022.

The council — made up of three women and four men — had to figure out how many meetings the new mother, Mayor Pro Tem Lydia DeHaven, might miss and what steps should be taken to ensure compliance with the city charter regarding attendance.

“She’s actually building her family while on council,” Medina said of her colleague. “What are our rules around that? How do we deal with that?”

Considerations like these are becoming increasingly commonplace in Colorado, where women have swelled the ranks of local and state government in recent years. This year, the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University placed the state at the top of a national list for the highest share of women serving in municipal government — at 46.1%. It limited its analysis to municipalities with a population of 10,000 or more.

Of Denver’s 13 city council members, nine are women. And a couple of years ago, the Federal Heights City Council marked a Colorado-first distinction: the first all-woman city council.

The Rutgers report also ranked Colorado No. 2 for the proportion of women serving in the state legislature, representing 49% of all House and Senate members under the Gold Dome. The state trailed only Nevada, where the legislature is just over 60% women. At the bottom is West Virginia, with fewer than 12% of state lawmakers women.

Nationally, women in state legislatures in 2024 hit a high of 32.9% — still less than a third of all lawmakers in the country.

“Colorado is ahead of the pack — it’s pretty close to parity,” said Jean Sinzdak, associate director of the Center for American Women and Politics. “It’s a pretty good representation.”

Certainly better than 44 years ago, when Wilma Webb was first elected to represent a state House district in the heart of Denver. Webb, who is married to former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, was one of 19 women in the Colorado House in her first term.

There were 36 women in the House in the 2024 legislative session, constituting the majority of the 65-member body.

“We’ve come a long way from where we began,” said Webb, 81, who was just the second African-American woman elected to the Colorado General Assembly. “I know people respect women more now than they once did.”

“Dipping their toes”

Women are “very engaged in the governance of the community,” said Colorado Municipal League Executive Director Kevin Bommer. They often start at the ultra-local level, serving on boards and commissions, “then they’re hooked,” he said.

That’s what happened to state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, who sat on the board of the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada’s citizens capital improvement committee and the city’s transportation committee.

“Women start by dipping their toes into public service and testing out the waters and seeing if it’s something they are qualified to do,” she said. “Women are less presumptuous when taking these big leaps.”

Zenzinger, a Democrat, helped local candidates in runs for fire district board, school board and mayor. And then she realized: “If I could get these people elected, why couldn’t I get myself elected.”

She did, winning a seat on Arvada City Council in 2009 and again four years later. But less than a year into her second term, she was appointed to replace state Sen. Evie Hudak, who resigned in the face of a potential recall by gun rights activists.

Her initial tenure in the Senate was short-lived, ousted by Republican Laura Woods in 2014. But Zenzinger, 49, didn’t let that end her political life.

“I filed to run two weeks after I lost,” she said.

Her determination paid off, with a victory over Woods just two years later. After two Senate terms representing Arvada and Westminster at the state Capitol, Zenzinger is now running for Jefferson County commissioner, a post she sees as the “perfect blend” of state and local government.

She credits the now-defunct White House Project, a nonprofit formed in the late 1990s to help boost women representation in government and business, with providing critical guidance on how to run a campaign.

“It was really good to get validation from this group,” Zenzinger said. “There is value in creating that network of support.”

State Sen. Lisa Cutter went through an intensive candidate training course seven summers ago with Emerge Colorado, another candidate training program for women whose leaders were removed by the national group last year amid dueling accusations of mismanagement and power grabs.

Cutter, who heads the Democratic Women’s Caucus at the legislature, said her experience training with Emerge Colorado was vital.

“Patriarchy and sex dynamics are still alive and well,” she said. “The system and structure don’t always help women. It’s really important for women to support each other.”

Just six years ago, the state Capitol was rocked by a sexual harassment scandal, culminating in the expulsion of state Rep. Steve Lebsock — the first vote of its kind in more than a century. Five women filed complaints of harassment against the Thornton Democrat, most notably state Sen. Faith Winter of Westminster.

Cutter, 60, said women are attracted to public service by several issues, like equal pay, the cost of child care and abortion rights.

“Women are being elected in large numbers largely because of the conversation that is playing out with abortion,” she said. “We’re seeing abortion play out in all areas.”

Democratic women dominant

Sinzdak, of the Center for American Women and Politics, said one notable trend in the explosion of women in politics is the disproportionate number of Democrats in the mix. According to the center’s latest tally, 65.5% of all female state legislators nationwide in 2024 are Democrats (1,592) compared to 33.4% (812) for Republicans.

In the Colorado House, just five of the 36 women are Republican. The Senate features just two Republican women.

“That’s a huge disparity in the affiliation of women,” Sinzdak said.

One of those two women GOP senators is Janice Rich, whose district covers Mesa County and part of neighboring Delta County. At 72, Rich rose to her position by starting small.

Her first public stint was two terms as Mesa County clerk and recorder, starting in 2003. Then she served eight years as county treasurer. Tapping the encouragement she received years earlier from James Robb, a state representative for whom she had worked in the 1980s, Rich decided to make a run for the statehouse.

“I stepped out of my comfort zone and ran,” she said.

Rich was elected to the House in 2018 and reelected two years later. In 2022, she ran for Senate District 7 and won. She said she works well with Barbara Kirkmeyer, the only other woman Republican senator in the chamber. But issues of gender, she said, take a back seat to her responsibilities on the Senate floor.

“I’m there to do my job and not to try and figure out if I belong there or figure out the dynamics of men and women,” Rich said. “I’m just there to represent my district.”

State Rep. Rose Pugliese, 46, feels similar to Rich.

“I’m less gender-focused and more experience-focused,” the freshman Republican lawmaker representing Colorado Springs said.

Nonetheless, Pugliese said she felt a kinship with the all-woman House leadership in the last session. She assumed the minority leader position in late January after state Rep. Mike Lynch stepped down from the post following revelations of a 2022 drunken driving arrest.

“Our dynamic is a little different,” Pugliese said of her work with Democratic House Speaker Julie McCluskie and House Majority Leader Monica Duran, also a Democrat. “The expectation on the floor is that the majority leader and I manage expectations on bills. We were able to very effectively communicate.”

Women, she said, start with issues they care about and then move up from there. For Pugliese, that rise started in Mesa County with an intense interest in education and an unsuccessful attempt to capture a school board seat in 2009.

Three years later, she ran for Mesa County commissioner and won. She was reelected in 2016. She moved to Colorado Springs in 2020 and was elected to the state House two years later.

“Most women started with grassroots activism — an issue they care about. And they rose through the ranks,” she said.

“More collaborative”

On the municipal front, where Colorado stands atop the list of states for women in government, the Federal Heights City Council all-woman council is led by Mayor Linda Montoya, a 25-year resident of the city.

Montoya, who was elected in 2019 (she defeated three men) and was reelected last year, said she feels the current council is more prepared for meetings and more efficient. No offense to her husband, Kenneth Murphy, who served on the city council for two terms, she said.

“It seemed like their meetings took longer,” Montoya said of previous councils. “We just go in there and get the job done.”

She also said her leadership style is “less combative” than previous mayors. Perhaps no more so than the last council in Federal Heights, where discord on the body resulted in then-Mayor Daniel Dick sitting alone at the dais as the rest of the council refused to show up for a meeting in the waning weeks of 2019.

Across the state in Cortez, Medina said she has sometimes heard people express wariness about her more cooperative approach to running meetings as mayor.

“A lot of people think you should command the room,” she said. “I have more of a collaborative and listening approach.”

Medina, who grew up in Longmont, thinks it’s only a matter of time before Colorado achieves parity in the gender breakdown of municipal leaders.

“I think women will continue to step up to take ownership, for the future of their communities and families,” she said.

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.

But last week, a judge ruled she would grant “immediate possession of the Subject Property” — an easement across the 95-year-old Palizzi Farm — to Parkland Metropolitan District No. 1, the entity behind the development of a nearby neighborhood called Bromley Farms.

Adams County District Judge Sarah Stout ruled that eminent domain, a practice allowing governments can condemn property for the public good, is warranted because “the taking at issue is for public benefit” — namely a stormwater outflow to prevent flooding in the city.

And the fact that the condemnation is being done by a metro district — a quasi-governmental entity under Colorado law — and not a full-fledged governmental agency or subdivision is not enough to halt it, Stout ruled.

“Public purpose has been liberally construed in Colorado courts,” the judge wrote in her June 26 opinion. “The fact that private interests may benefit from the condemnation does not defeat a public purpose.”

Parkland’s eminent domain claim against Palizzi Farm earlier this year prompted the farm’s owner, Deb Palizzi, to warn that if the easement were granted to the metro district she would have to shut down the farm. The dispute brought dozens of people to the farm on East Bromley Lane and to Brighton City Hall to show support for the farm.

Palizzi could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

But on the farm’s Facebook page, Palizzi Farm wrote that people should “let your city councilors know it’s in their hands for them to make sure Palizzi Farm can actually farm over their pipes, as Parkland testified to, AND they make sure the drainage outfall as proposed will actually work.”

At the heart of a May court hearing on the issue was whether Parkland would bury its stormwater pipe deep enough across Palizzi Farm so as not to interfere with the farm’s ability to plant and harvest its vegetables. Brighton City Council granted Parkland eminent domain powers as part of a metro district service plan it approved for Bromley Farms last September.

Attorneys for Parkland Metro District No. 1 didn’t immediately respond to a request from The Denver Post for comment Wednesday.

Stout said in her opinion that the public benefit of Parkland’s proposed stormwater project is indisputable, and that it is a project that Brighton has been unable to fund for four decades.

“…It is clear to this Court that the taking meets the great needs of the City and residents of Brighton, that for the reasons stated above a benefit is bestowed upon the City who cannot otherwise finance this type of improvement, and that the Project is necessary for the long-term safety of the Brighton community as development continues,” she wrote.

She noted that Parkland had made two good-faith offers to Palizzi Farm to compensate for the easement it is requesting, “one with a purchase price of double the market value and one with a purchase price of five times the market value of the Subject Property.”

“Both of these offers were rejected by Respondent Landowners,” the judge wrote.

She ordered the parties in the case to set a date for a trial to determine fair compensation for the easement. In the meantime, Stout ordered Parkland to make a deposit of $57,000 ahead of a compensation hearing to gain access to the land for its project “without interference from the Respondent Landowners.”