Denver District Judge Martin Egelhoff on Tuesday dismissed three of Douglas County’s four claims, saying he lacked “subject matter jurisdiction” on the first two, and that the county came up short on its third claim, in which it alleged the state board had violated Colorado’s open meetings law.

But a fourth claim remains alive. That claim seeks judicial review, or an appeal, of the state board’s December decision overturning Douglas County’s approval of a valuation decrease for property owners.

“The court dismissed three of the county’s four claims,” county attorney Jeff Garcia said in a statement Friday. “The county is evaluating possible grounds for appeal on the three dismissed claims. However, regardless of any appeal, the county is proceeding to litigate its remaining claim.”

The affluent suburban county filed its lawsuit against the State Board of Equalization in January, characterizing its unanimous decision to deny Douglas County’s proposed $4 billion reduction in residential home values as “arbitrary and capricious.” With reduced valuations, homeowners would have seen lower tax bills as various taxing entities’ mill levies, or tax rates, were applied.

The suit alleged that the state board singled out Douglas County for denial even as it approved other counties’ requests for even larger valuation reductions. The county also noted that its assessment adjustment had already received the blessing of state tax officials and a third-party auditor, only to be shot down by the equalization board.

Egelhoff’s ruling comes the same week the Colorado legislature held a special session to address ballooning property tax bills in the state. On Thursday, the legislature passed a property tax deal aimed at stopping a pair of initiatives on November’s ballot.

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For 25 years, 10 city and county governments near the former nuclear weapons manufacturing site northwest of Denver have monitored for contaminants and other hazards through their participation in the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council. But now the council, which has met regularly to discuss conditions on the troubled property-turned-wildlife refuge is disbanding.

Broomfield pulled out earlier this week, joining Golden, Superior, Thornton, Northglenn and Boulder County in abandoning the council — a sufficient number of member defections to trigger the organization’s demise. The body will hold a final meeting this fall, clear the books and dissolve by early next year.

Deven Shaff, a Broomfield city councilman who has sat on the stewardship council for the past five years and serves as its vice chair, said its death doesn’t mean concerns about Rocky Flats will go away.

“You have an end to the stewardship council, but there is a story ahead for Rocky Flats,” Shaff said. “There’s a sense that there’s a new chapter for Rocky Flats.”

That new chapter could begin as soon as next week, when construction is set to start on two regional trail access points at the edge of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Looming over the project is a potential ruling from a federal judge that could halt plans to build the planned underpass and bridge, which will bring the Rocky Mountain Greenway trail onto the refuge.

The stewardship council’s demise and the continuing controversy are the latest developments in the long and tortured history of Rocky Flats.

The weapons manufacturing facility opened in 1952 and made plutonium triggers — or fission cores — for the nation’s nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War. On a windswept piece of Jefferson County prairie between Arvada and Superior, the ugly result of all that industrial activity was the creation of tons of hazardous chemicals and barrels of noxious waste, some of which leaked or burned over the years.

Rocky Flats, which employed about 40,000 workers over its nearly 40-year active phase, was closed down after the FBI raided the plant in 1989. It sent 70 armed agents in a convoy of vehicles to the U.S. Department of Energy property to ferret out suspected environmental crimes.

“No way” everything was cleaned

Despite a 10-year, $7 billion cleanup that ended in 2005, many remain leery of what Jon Lipsky, one of the lead FBI agents during that raid — and an outspoken critic of Rocky Flats for years — calls an “unlicensed nuclear dump.”

“There’s all sorts of infrastructure that exists underground, and nobody knows what’s there,” Lipsky told The Denver Post. “There’s no way the Department of Energy cleaned everything.”

The Rocky Flats Stewardship Council is compromised because the Department of Energy funds it and “runs interference” for it, Lipsky said. That’s a sentiment shared by the Boulder-based Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. Chris Allred, who works on nuclear issues for the center, said there needs to be an organization that can look out for public health “without being subject to regulatory capture by the DOE.”

The peace and justice center is not convinced that the 6,500-acre site, which opened as a national wildlife refuge six years ago, is safe for human recreation. It’s one of several environmental groups that sued the federal government in January in an effort to stop the trail connections from being built on Colorado 128 and Indiana Street.

About 1,300 acres in the middle of the refuge remains a Superfund site, off-limits to the public, where the plutonium triggers were manufactured inside what amounted to a small standalone city.

“Rocky Flats is not stable in the environment,” Allred said. “This will only be made worse if construction projects are allowed to continue spreading contaminated dust.”

Dave Abelson, the longtime executive director of the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council, flatly rejects the claim that he is bought and sold by federal interests, saying his accusers “have not shown a single example of where the funding source affected the actions or comments of the board or of the contract staff.”

“Not a single instance,” he said.

Abelson agrees that it’s time for the organization to sunset — not because it’s untrustworthy, he says, but because the science says so.

Water samples from the site have been relatively stable and within a safe range for years, while hundreds of soil samples — with the exception of one that generated headlines five years ago for its elevated plutonium reading — have also been deemed safe.

“Do you need the same type of intense focus that the governments have put on this?” Abelson said. “The answer appears to be no. You don’t need the same level of focus because it’s a stable site and has been for many years.”

Concern about lack of collaboration

The stewardship council grew out of the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, which was launched in 1999. The council, created in 2006, was a more formal version of its predecessor and was created under a mandate in federal law to provide local communities a voice in the management and monitoring of contaminated sites nationwide.

The council has proven vital in looking for and identifying post-cleanup problems at Rocky Flats, Abelson said.

One year, city and county officials on the council challenged a plan by DOE officials to breach ponds on the site. They also expressed concern with the condition of Rocky Flats’ notorious landfills.

“The governments were alarmed when it became clear that portions of the original landfill that lie above Woman Creek were not stable,” Abelson said. “DOE eventually remedied the problem.”

In more recent years, things have been quieter, said Thornton Mayor Jan Kulmann, who chairs the stewardship council. She’s served on the body for a decade.

Thornton’s main concern is water quality, she said, with Standley Lake — just east of Rocky Flats — serving as a major source of drinking water for the city of 145,000.

“The data that we’ve been receiving from DOE … have not changed in 10 years,” Kulmann said. “We’re cautiously optimistic that it has reached a more stable condition.”

Broomfield’s concerns are different than Thornton’s, given its closer proximity to the refuge.

The city and county has been aggressive in separating itself from all things Rocky Flats in recent years. It started in February 2020, when the city’s elected leaders unanimously voted to pull out of the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority following the discovery in 2019 of an elevated reading of plutonium along Indiana Street and in the path of the proposed highway.

Not long after that decision, Broomfield withdrew from the Rocky Mountain Greenway project, resulting in the trail being rerouted through Westminster. But Broomfield Councilwoman Heidi Henkel isn’t so sure the city should have withdrawn from the stewardship council without having an “exit plan.”

“The only way to make government accountable is (that) you make everything public,” said Henkel, who served on the stewardship council for two years. “It’s disappointing to me that with a Superfund site there, we’ve decided to stop this group without any commitment to further the public discussion.”

While the Department of Energy will send quarterly water quality reports to the cities and counties that made up the stewardship council’s membership, Henkel worries about the lack of collaboration and shared knowledge that comes from everyone sitting down at a table together.

50,000 visitors to Rocky Flats

Seth Kirshenberg, executive director of Energy Communities Alliance, said the cities and counties around Rocky Flats are in a unique position because their advocacy organization — the stewardship council — is one of the first in the country to disband.

His Washington, D.C.-based group works with communities that are located near former nuclear weapons plants and nuclear energy facilities.

“Remedies fail and you have to keep on top of these issues,” Kirshenberg said. “The remedies need to be protective of human health and the environment. Hopefully, all we see is the use of the site — but if something happens in the future, they may have to put it back together.”

A Department of Energy spokesman told The Post that the agency would continue doing what it has been doing while the stewardship council has been active.

“The cleanup of the Rocky Flats site has proven to be protective of human health and the environment for nearly 20 years,” spokesman Jeremy Paul Ortiz wrote in a statement. “As we move into the third decade since cleanup, DOE will continue reporting on-site monitoring and maintenance activities and post this material on our public website.”

The Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge saw 50,000 visitors in the most recent fiscal year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

One of those visitors is Jeanette Hillery, a member of the League of Women Voters of Boulder County. She’s also been a member of the stewardship council since its inception 18 years ago.

She said she’s struck by how the contamination horror stories of decades ago still seem to guide people’s thinking about Rocky Flats today. The site isn’t pristine, she said, but the testing and data she has seen over the last two decades indicate the risk posed by Rocky Flats’ legacy is more than manageable.

“There are a lot of people who want to go back to the 1970s and 1980s — and think that what was going on then is still going on today,” Hillery said. “The testing indicates it’s safe.”

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His Aspen appearance is the latest Colorado event to raise money for the newly minted Democratic presidential candidate.  No time or specific location have been released by the campaign yet. The stop will follow a fundraising visit by Emhoff to San Francisco earlier in the day, and one to Ketchum, Idaho, on Thursday.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made his own fundraising trek to Aspen earlier this month.

Emhoff visited Denver in March, when he joined Tom Perez, senior adviser to President Joe Biden and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and spoke about infrastructure. Friday will mark the second gentleman’s first official visit to Colorado since Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential hopeful in July.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, stopped in Denver for a fundraiser earlier this month.

Tickets to Emhoff’s Aspen event go as high as $25,000. There are also tickets available at the $500 level. The event is hosted by Alexa Wesner, a former tech executive and former U.S. ambassador to Austria who lives in Aspen.

The Harris-Walz campaign reported this week having raised $540 million in its battle for the White House, according to the Associated Press, while Trump’s campaign reported having $327 million in cash on hand at the start of August.

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Time to find a new job. Time to find a new school for her children. Time to find a place to live she can call her own.

She’s been living at a Motel 6 in Greenwood Village for a month — her husband and son in one room, she and her three daughters in another — after being evicted from an apartment in Aurora less than a year ago.

That puts Webster up against a city-imposed 29-day maximum for anyone visiting a non-extended-stay hotel in the affluent south suburban city of 15,000. If she is made to leave, the 29-year-old mother of four who grew up in Centennial said she’ll be back out on the streets.

What’s worse, the Greenwood Village City Council this month did away with a longtime exception to its hotel stay limit for “families in crisis” who are receiving housing assistance from a governmental or charitable entity. Webster was referred to the Motel 6 in July by the Community Economic Defense Project, a nonprofit born out of the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project that fights for renters facing removal from their homes.

Her son suffers from anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and ADHD, making the instability of being homeless even more challenging.

“Think about kids with disabilities, think about single mothers struggling to make ends meet,” said Webster, sitting at a table beside the motel’s outdoor pool on a recent afternoon. “Have an understanding that we don’t have it all. It takes time, it takes patience.”

Neza Bharucha, whose husband owns the Motel 6 at 9201 E. Arapahoe Road, said Greenwood Village has shown little patience toward the hundreds of families — many with disabilities — that she has provided temporary refuge to over the last few years. The city, she said, has targeted the motel with extra police patrols while allowing guests at other Greenwood Village hotels to stay more than 29 days at a time regularly.

It has led Bharucha, who along with her hotel duties is a licensed psychiatrist, to a singular conclusion.

“They do not want this group of people in Greenwood Village — people who are unhoused with mental health troubles and those who are in recovery,” she said.

Earlier this month, Bharucha and the Community Economic Defense Project sued the city in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, alleging Greenwood Village is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. They are asking for economic damages and for a judge to strike down the 29-day limit or grant exceptions to people with disabilities.

“Differential treatment by a governmental entity and its agents on the basis of disability cannot be justified by an arbitrary and irrational reason,” reads the lawsuit, filed by well-known civil rights attorney David Lane. “Defendants have arbitrarily and irrationally applied and enforced the 29-day ordinance on the basis of discrimination against people with ‘mental illness and/or addiction issues,’ which are disabilities as defined by the ADA.”

Greenwood Village spokeswoman Megan Copenhaver said the city won’t comment on the situation because of the active litigation. The Denver Post reached out to Mayor George Lantz and the two councilwomen — Libby Hilton Barnacle and Donna Johnston — who represent the district where the Motel 6 is located.

They either didn’t respond or said they were unable to comment.

“They were not going to stop”

Greenwood Village’s involvement with the 129-room Motel 6 at the busy East Arapahoe Road interchange with Interstate 25 goes back at least a decade. In 2014, city leaders passed their controversial 29-day hotel stay limit.

Amie Mayhew, president and CEO of the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association, said the only other city in the state she is aware of with a stay-limit in place is Wheat Ridge, which passed a 30-day maximum in 2021.

The rationale at the time of the measure’s passage in Greenwood Village was that conventional hotels and motels are not equipped to operate as long-term living facilities. Potentially dangerous use of hot plates and cooking implements in rooms not wired or designed to handle such items posed a fire hazard.

According to the new lawsuit, the city also said there were more calls for service by police to the Motel 6 and to a couple of other hotels where homeless people would typically stay.

Bharucha, who with her husband has helped run the motel her father bought in 2008 for the last several years (her husband took possession of it in 2021), said she doesn’t allow hot plates or other kitchen appliances in rooms. But she does have sympathy for those who find themselves in a tough spot and she wanted to use a portion of the property to help them.

“I work with this population,” she said of her job treating those with mental health challenges. “I see the problems when they don’t have housing.”

Bharucha, 34, has teamed up with several homeless advocacy groups over the last five years, including the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and SAFER, to provide rooms in her motel for those without a home. Her father lived in “charity housing” in India when he fell on hard times and she’s thankful someone was there for him.

“Someone gave him a hand up when he needed it and I want to do that,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here if someone hadn’t done that for him.”

The penalty for a hotel owner caught violating the ordinance is a $499 fine, though Bharucha said the city has neither booted anyone from her motel nor tagged her with a fine. But Greenwood Village has long attempted to impede her efforts to reach out to the homeless and disabled community in other ways, including asking to check the hotel’s guest lists for anyone with active warrants, the federal lawsuit states.

In 2022, a Greenwood Village municipal judge ordered the motel and the nonprofit organizations it worked with to provide documents about the rooms they were renting to clients with disabilities, the lawsuit said. And last year, Greenwood Village served Bharucha with a criminal summons for violating the 29-day limit, according to the suit.

The charge was later dropped.

“I realized they were not going to stop,” Bharucha told The Post in an interview.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Greenwood Village has enforced the ordinance against any other hotels; when asked, the city told The Post to file a public records request for the information.

At the heart of the case is what the city itself has allegedly said about its ordinance. Bharucha’s lawsuit states that city attorney Tonya Haas Davidson wrote in a 2021 letter to the motel that the city’s families-in-crisis exception wasn’t meant for those “suffering from mental health and/or addiction issues,” but more typically was meant to address victims of natural disaster.

That interpretation of the exception, the lawsuit alleges, forced motel management to “choose between discriminating against its guests with disabilities or seemingly violating the ordinance.”

Maddie Lips, an attorney who worked alongside Lane on the case, said because of the statement from Greenwood Village’s attorney in her letter to the motel, the city “has made this a novel case by being so blatantly open about the discriminatory intent of the 29-day ordinance.”

Making matters worse, according to the lawsuit, business travelers often stay at the city’s other hotels for longer than permitted by city regulation “and have not been subject to enforcement actions by the city.”

“There is no non-discriminatory distinction between a person staying in a hotel for an extended period of time because of business reasons as compared to a person staying for an extended period of time who has disabilities,” the lawsuit reads.

Cesar Jimenez, head of supportive housing for the Community Economic Defense Project, said the organization uses up to 10 rooms at the Greenwood Village Motel 6 to house clients temporarily. They’ve had a contract with Bharucha since February at a cost of $70 a night per room.

“Our main objective is to keep them safe while we find a home and services for them,” Jimenez said. “What Neza has created is a refuge for our clients.”

Homeless numbers up in 2024

Arapahoe County’s homeless population leaped dramatically from 2023 to 2024, according to recently released data from the Metro Denver Homelessness Initiative’s point-in-time survey taken on a single night in January.

The data shows the number of unhoused people in the county up from 442 in 2023 to 650 this year — a faster pace than the 10% growth the metro area as a whole saw in that same period. Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed said alcohol or substance abuse played a key role in their situation, the top contributor to homelessness in Arapahoe County.

Another 23% of respondents pointed to mental health issues or “disabling conditions” as chief reasons for their homelessness.

“We house some of the most vulnerable community members,” the defense project’s Jimenez said. “Our primary objective is to just provide them with temporary safe housing as opposed to them being in shelters or literally homeless.”

To Greenwood Village’s elected leaders, Jimenez said he would just say one thing.

“I would invite them to see the families,” he said. “You yourselves have families — would you want to be in this situation?”

Webster, the displaced mother of four currently living on the third floor of the Motel 6, said she doesn’t know how much longer it will be before she obtains a more permanent housing situation. But that day can’t come soon enough.

“Our kids are stuck in a room pretty much 24/7,” she said. “Nobody wants to be stuck in a hotel with kids.”

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So says Eli Bremer, whom the party’s central committee selected to replace Williams as party chair in a vote on Saturday.

“My job is to get this thing back on track as fast as possible and make sure it’s rebuilt correctly to support Republican candidates,” said Bremer, a former chair of the El Paso County Republican Party and a 2022 candidate for U.S. Senate, on Monday.

But Williams, in a text message to The Denver Post, called the contention that he was no longer the head of the GOP in Colorado “beyond absurd.” He said a “fringe party faction” that met in Brighton over the weekend does not “get to decide for 400 plus members (of the central committee) at a fake meeting.”

In an email sent after Saturday’s vote, the party claimed that Republican National Committee parliamentarian Al Gage had already determined in an opinion that the meeting in Brighton was “illegitimate” and any action taken “was or will be null and void.”

More than 180 committee members attended or participated by proxy. All but a handful took part in the vote, with more than 90% of votes cast in support of Williams’ removal, according to former Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams — no relation — who served as parliamentarian for the meeting.

As with the two popes who ruled the Roman Catholic Church in the late 14th and early 15th centuries after the institution underwent a major schism, the state Republican Party is without a definitive leader. Ultimately, it may be up to a judge or the RNC to determine who is the legitimate head of the Colorado GOP.

“Since this has already gone to a court three times, it’s going to go to a court a fourth time,” said Todd Watkins, the vice chair of the El Paso County Republicans who spearheaded Saturday’s meeting at a Brighton church. “It’s obviously going to be a legal battle — we always knew that.”

Still, Saturday’s decision quickly gained some influential recognition. The National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports GOP congressional candidates, announced it would support the result, and luminaries including former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner congratulated Bremer.

The latest twists and turns in the long-running skirmish between mainstream critics and Dave Williams, a far-right former state lawmaker who ascended to the top of the party last year, has revealed a Colorado Republican Party riven by dissent and bitter division just 10 weeks before the Nov. 5 election.

Cries for Williams’ ouster from within his own party have grown louder over the last few months. They’re centered on his unorthodox and controversial decision to pick and choose certain GOP candidates as favorites during the primary election season — including himself in his unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination in Colorado’s 5th Congressional District.

In April, Williams was criticized for tossing a political reporter from the party assembly in Pueblo due to his belief that the reporter’s coverage of Republicans had been “very unfair.” Around the same time, a Republican strategist filed an ethics complaint against Williams, alleging he improperly used state party monies to help his congressional effort.

In June, Williams was lambasted by politicians on both sides of the aisle after he sent out an email under the party banner titled “God hates pride,” repeating anti-LGBTQ+ smears and calling for the burning of Pride flags.

Late last month, the planned attempt to oust Williams was put on hold by a district court judge before regaining momentum in early August when the judge decided his court lacked jurisdiction to block it.

That resulted in Saturday’s gathering of the party’s central committee in Brighton for a special meeting.

The party’s bylaws, which set the threshold to remove the chair at 60% of the committee, leave some room for interpretation. But the Brighton attendees voted to interpret the threshold as the proportion of those in attendance at the meeting.

Watkins said the true desires of the party were already borne out during the June primary, when nearly every one of Williams’ endorsed congressional candidates lost their race.

“That’s the party we’re supposed to be representing,” Watkins said of the winners.

Most of the Republican nominees in the state’s eight congressional races signed a letter Saturday recognizing Bremer as chair of the state party, along with former Routt County Treasurer Brita Horn as vice chair and former Mesa County GOP Chair Kevin McCarney as secretary. Colorado Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen also signed the letter.

Wayne Williams said the party will move forward under its new leadership, even as the “legal wrangling” over the central committee vote continues.

“We need to get away from the damaging sideshow that has been hurting our party’s effectiveness, which has essentially been absent without leave in this fall’s campaign,” he said.

Bremer, a 14-year Air Force veteran and a pentathlete in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, opened an office in Colorado Springs on Monday to run the party out of until he can gain access to the party’s headquarters in Greenwood Village.

“My job description is to stop the damage to the party,” said the 46-year-old Colorado Springs businessman. “We’re going to take every legal step to protect the assets of the party as quickly as possible. I am here to fix the problem we have right now.”

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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The flood watch zone in the metro extends from Brighton in the north to Larkspur in the south, and includes Aurora, Denver, Highlands Ranch, Littleton and Denver International Airport. The National Weather Service projects that flooding could occur starting at 2 p.m. and continue until 9 p.m. Monday.

Thunderstorms will again move from the mountains to the plains this afternoon and evening. There's a greater threat of heavy rainfall and flash flooding today, especially over the recent burn areas, the Denver area, Palmer Divide, and parts of the eastern plains. #cowx pic.twitter.com/a8MJYPArq1

— NWS Boulder (@NWSBoulder) August 12, 2024

Flooding of underpasses, streams and low-lying urban areas is possible.

Heavy rain could impact areas beyond the metro Monday afternoon, and the weather service said the worst of it — with a potential of more than 3 to 4 inches of rain — is expected to hit Lincoln and Elbert counties, among other areas on the Eastern Plains. The Palmer Divide, north of Colorado Springs, is also in the path of storms.

Rockslides, with debris in flow, could occur in recent wildfire burn scars, including those created by the recent Alexander Mountain and Quarry fires.

“You should monitor later forecasts and be prepared to take action (e.g. move to higher ground and avoid low-lying areas) should Flash Flood Warnings be issued,” weather service meteorologists warned Monday.

Police said the man was taken to the hospital with “serious injuries.” There was no further information as to his condition Monday morning.

Thornton police posted a news release on X saying officers were dispatched to a parking lot in the 9700 block of Washington Street shortly before 8 p.m. Sunday to reports of a man firing a gun into the air. When officers arrived, the man pointed his gun at them and retreated into his car, the release said.

As police tried to negotiate with the man as he sat inside his car pointing his gun at himself and at police, he shot and killed his dog, authorities said. Police negotiated with the man for 30 minutes in an attempt to get him to surrender, at which point he exited his vehicle and fired at officers.

Police returned fire, striking the man, according to the release. The investigation into the shooting will be turned over to the 17th Judicial District Critical Response Team and the officers who fired their guns have been placed on administrative leave.