The Home Front: Old folks asked to flash ID on Colorado busses to ride for free

Show us your papers, granny.

“The Roaring Fork Transportation Authority is cracking down on requiring seniors 65 and older to prove their age with photo IDs to get a free ride,” reports The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent. “People older than 65 have long been able to ride buses for free on RFTA’s regional routes, said Kent Blackmer, RFTA’s co-director of operations. He believes that policy started with RFTA’s inception in 1983.” Blackmer also told the paper, “Over the past couple of years, we have noticed that some riders have been boarding our fare buses without saying a word to the driver … When questioned, some of these riders became irritated and annoyed about being asked if they might be a senior. … We also had riders that were claiming to be seniors but when asked to provide proof of their age were unwilling to produce an ID … or riders that were upset about being asked to show ID.”

Today’s edition of  The Durango Herald localizes the harrowing story of a professional slackliner— he graduated from Durango High— shimmying across a chairlift wire to cut loose a man who was hanging off the lift by his neck, tangled in backpack straps. “Today, I saved someone’s life. I think some strange forces were at work,” Mickey Wilson, who graduated DHS in 2007, wrote on his Facebook page after the incident, his hometown paper reports.

The Denver Post has more on that story.

Police in Greeley put the kibosh on a massive chop shop disguised as a legit business, The Greeley Tribune reports today.  “The commercial warehouse at 903 26th Ave. had all the trappings of a water truck company serving Weld County’s booming oil and gas industry — grease on the floor, tools in the cabinets and a company nameplate on the front door,” according to the paper. “Yet at some point, Greeley police aren’t exactly sure when, Jose Alvarado, the company’s owner, used the façade of a family business to begin operating a massive chop shop. On Thursday a Weld District Judge sentenced him to eight years in prison for his illegal business — the maximum under Alvarado’s plea agreement. By then, five other people had been charged in connection with the case, including his wife and son.”

Meanwhile, in Adams County, a man is set to go to on trial later this month “for allegedly victimizing dozens of people in a kitchen-remodeling scam faces new charges based on accusations that he wrote some $10 million in bad checks in Rifle,” The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports.

The Longmont Times-Call is reporting that an 83-year-old man eventually ended up removing an anti-Muslim sign in his yard. His lawyer said an article published on the front page of the local newspaper yesterday was “sensationalized” and jeopardized her client’s safety, the paper reports. “People are threatening to protest and destroy his property,” she said.

“Caught in the crosshairs of a pending Front Range court battle, Pueblo County is taking the lead in crafting compromise legislation at the state level to preserve its authority to impose a special 3.5 percent marijuana tax in the county,” The Pueblo Chieftain reports. “This is one of our top priority pieces of legislation. We literally have millions of dollars at stake,” Commissioner Sal Pace said Thursday.

The Loveland Reporter-Herald reports the Colorado Supreme Court on Wednesday “rejected an appeal from Loveland resident Larry Sarner, who had sued the city of Loveland over two downtown-related ballot questions in last November’s election. Arguing that the tax increase and debt questions were misleading and violations of the state constitution’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, Sarner sued the city in August 2016.”

“Poudre School District and community activist Eric Sutherland will go head to head in court Tuesday over the validity of PSD’s $375 million bond election,” reports The Fort Collins Coloradoan. “Tuesday’s trial with Eighth District Court Judge Thomas French at the Larimer County Justice Center will address Sutherland’s contest of the district’s bond election — one of three actions filed in district court related to the bonds.”

“A second finding of land erosion at the defunct uranium mill west of Cañon City has the Lincoln Park Superfund site community advisory group wondering if state and federal officials are being tough enough on Cotter Corp., the company that is responsible for remediating the land and groundwater it contaminated while in operation,” reports The Cañon City Daily Record. “In a December comment letter to the EPA and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the CAG pointed out two nearly identical comments of concern over erosion in the same area during two inspections, which were done two years apart.”

Want to know why Denver apartment buildings don’t recycle? Denverite has that story today.