The Home Front: Letter said Colorado woman ‘could be held liable for drilling accidents if she didn’t sign,’ but…

Under the headline “Facts vs. Fear,” The Greeley Tribune’s Tyler Silvy reports about a Weld County woman named Linda Warner who won’t lease her land to oil-and-gas companies, and the letters she gets from those companies. “Warner, a former environmental studies teacher at University Schools, is against fracking, but she did more research when the letters first started arriving in her mailbox,” the Tribune reports. “She met with companies, then returned to the same conclusion: She wouldn’t sell or lease, no matter what. ‘It’s an ethics issue for me,’ Warner said. ‘I just don’t want to do it.’ Then, in April, came a unique letter from Aztec Exploration, one offering her a ‘last chance’ to sell those rights — one that said she could be held liable for drilling accidents if she didn’t sign. The letter was technically true. ‘To me, it just seems crazy,’ Warner said. ‘You’re being held liable for something you’re personally opposed to.'”

“After a sizeable spike in 2016 that nearly doubled the previous year’s total, the number of concealed handgun permits issued by the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office appears to be leveling off,” reports The Pueblo Chieftain. “From Jan. 1 through July 17 of this year, the sheriff’s office issued 1,034 permits. By comparison, 1,933 permits were issued last year, a notable increase over both 2015 (1,052) and 2014 (1,166). Although 2017’s numbers are trending up from 2014 and 2015, Undersheriff JR Hall said the sheriff’s office does not anticipate the 2016 mark to be surpassed. “I think we will probably hit close to in the middle of those figures by the end of the year,” Hall said in a telephone interview. “The numbers are kind of waning off toward the middle of the year. So I’m not sure we’re going to hit the 1,900 we hit in 2016.” And while 2016 was an election year, Hall does not see any correlation between that fact and the significant jump in permits from 2015.”

“Boulder City Council members made clear at a meeting in June, then again on Tuesday night, that they believe other towns and cities in the county aren’t doing enough to create affordable housing options for homeless and low-to-middle-income people,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “But the council members agreed that it’s best to keep any resentful feelings to themselves, or, at least, to phrase things more delicately from here on out. “If we berate people, we are going to get the opposite of what we want,” Mayor Suzanne Jones said Tuesday, after suggesting last month that county officials might consider taking punitive measures to “compel participation” from other communities that aren’t, in the Boulder City Council’s view, contributing enough land or money to the cause.”

“Calling it a shot in the arm toward making the city a pearl in the recreation industry nationwide, the Grand Junction City Council approved an incentive package for Bonsai Design Wednesday night to locate in a soon-to-be-built business park at Las Colonias Park,” reports The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “After the idea stalled three previous times before the council, it voted 6-1 to offer the company not only $1 million to help build a new facility at the park located on Riverside Parkway, but also waive about $79,000 in construction fees and offer a 10-year rebate on real property taxes.”

“Summer is the busiest time of year for Longmont’s one and only graffiti removal specialist,” reports The Longmont Times-Call. “The spray-painted act of vandalism becomes more prevalent when it’s warmer and more people are outside, according to police and code enforcement officials. Yet this year, police said they are seeing graffiti dispersed throughout the city as opposed to the concentrations in certain neighborhoods — in parks on the east side, and between Ninth and 17th avenues — that they’ve seen in prior years.”

The Coloradoan in Fort Collins reports on the local district attorney’s office clearing officers in a shooting.

“Teenagers Whitmire Hewett, William DeMartino and Joshua Sandvick have added researching patents, ways to crystallize fertilizer and market specifics to their slates of summer fun,” reports The Loveland Reporter-Herald. “The trio have created a fertilizer system that ties into the typical home sprinkler system for their entrepreneurship class at Thompson Valley High School last year and, after winning $750 through the district program, are continuing to work toward turning Colorado Fertilizer Systems into a real business.”

“A proposed development that would bring affordable housing to the heart of Cañon City is up in the air,” reports The Cañon City Daily Record. “The Cañon City Planning Commission on Tuesday denied a request by a 3-2 vote to rezone the former St. Scholastica property at 615 Pike Ave. from R-2, Medium Residential Density in the Transitional Mixed-Use Overlay, to R-3, High Residential Density in the TMU.”

The Denver Post looks back at the Aurora theater shooting, which happened five years ago this week.