The Home Front: A prison museum’s ‘cannibal buffet,’ feds search a town office, and more

A prison museum in Cañon City will host its first “cannibal buffet” as part of a fundraiser, featuring food “that looks like tongues and eyes, and an impersonator of infamous Colorado cannibal Alferd Packer, whose name is sometimes spelled as Alfred,” The Daily Record reports. The cannibal buffet will be kid friendly a museum’s director said.

The Longmont Times-Call is reporting federal agents searched the offices of Lyon town officials as they probe how money was spent on flood recovery efforts. In the meantime, “The Lyons town administrator and clerk were placed on temporary, paid administrative leave Tuesday as a precaution in light of a federal investigation into the procurement process for flood-recovery work performed on behalf of the town, the mayor said Tuesday night.”

A tobacco giant is air dropping $10 million into Colorado in hopes to defeat a ballot measure to raise the cigarette tax, The Denver Post reports. “Combined with $1.7 million collected by proponents of the tobacco tax, which would fund various health-related initiatives, that makes Amendment 72 the most costly race so far at $11.7 million. The medical aid-in-dying measure, Proposition 106, has been a distant second at $6.6 million with proponents raising $4.8 million and opponents gathering $1.8 million.”

“There were seven rapes reported on the University of Northern Colorado campus in 2015, a slight uptick from the past two years, according to the university’s recently released Security and Fire Safety report,” reports The Greeley Tribune.  “The report, mandated by federal law since 1990, is used by UNC to identify areas of concern and develop plans to address those concerns.”

Out in the gas patch, “A major steelmaker and the oil and gas producer Encana have ended deals compelling them to jointly develop thousands of natural gas wells in western Colorado’s Piceance Basin when gas prices are high enough< according to today’s Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “In their place, Nucor has bought a 49 percent oil and gas lease interest from Encana on about 54,000 acres in the Piceance, with Encana retaining a 51 percent controlling interest in that acreage.”

Steamboat Today reports city officials “took out the pruning shears Oct. 4 and cut about $1.88 million in capital projects from its projected 2017 budget during an all-day budget retreat. However, one project that made the cut is a plan to add seat belts to a pair of over-the-road Steamboat Springs Transit buses that ferry commuters to and from Craig and Hayden. ‘I don’t want to spend the money,’ Councilman Jason Lacy said, ‘but (seat belts) are going to be required on new buses within in a month,’ anyway.”

The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent profiles the campaign of John Acha, “who’s running as a Democrat for Garfield County commissioner against the 20-year incumbent Commissioner John Martin, says a commissioner’s primary role is to look forward decades into the future, which he says the current Board of County Commissioners has not done in many years.”

The Beula Hill fire, which expanded past 5,000 acres, is the news on the front page of The Pueblo Chieftain today.

The Loveland Reporter-Herald reports on the Loveland City Council’s endorsement for a behavioral health ballot tax measure. “Several supporters of the tax measure urged council members during public comment to support the issue, which many of them see as not only the compassionate thing to do but the fiscally smart thing to do. They cited the city’s homeless population, the lack of a detox facility closer than Greeley, the mental and behavioral health issues that residents, including veterans, need to treat.”

A “free speech pen” at a Donald Trump rally in northern Colorado frustrated protestors of Donald Trump during a recent campaign stop, The Fort Collins Coloradon reports. “Some protesters called the white-fenced protest pen 100 feet away from a wrought-iron gate where rally-goers entered a violation of the First Amendment, which ensures the right for people to assemble and speak on public property.”

Feedback to Boulder city government over a housing co-op issue is getting pretty intense, according to The Daily Camera. “More than 100 people signed up Tuesday to offer wide-ranging and impassioned feedback to a Boulder City Council currently considering a new ordinance that would enable the creation of more co-operative housing in the city.”

Deverite reports today that Five Colorado billionaires landed on Forbes’ latest list of the richest people in the nation. They are Charles Ergen, Phil Anschutz, John Malone, James Leprino, and Pat Stryker.