“A Longmont woman said she had her house ransacked by people who mistakenly thought it was the site of an estate sale that was actually happening a few houses away,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “Mary Andrews said she left her home at 14 Texas Lane unlocked and came back on Friday morning to find people taking items from her house. “There were cars everywhere, and there were people coming out of my house with armloads of stuff,” Andrews said. “I thought, ‘What is going on?'” As it turns out, police told Andrews that it was a “very, very bad misunderstanding.” She said a house just a few doors down was having an estate sale, and somehow someone got into her house and began spreading the rumor that an estate sale was going on there and that everything was free. Adding to the confusion, Andrews said she had recently had a yard sale, so she had some items strewn about on the law. ‘They really did think this was the estate sale,’ she said. ‘They all argued with me, and very few people would just put anything back.'”
“The sputters, stalls and outright stops of cell phone data service in Old Town Fort Collins aren’t a figment of your imagination,” reports The Fort Collins Coloradoan. “But it’s something that the city and wireless carriers are trying to address. The exact congestion spots through the city aren’t publicly known, since it would reveal proprietary information, but it’s acknowledged by officials. Verizon Wireless spokesperson Meagan Dorsch likens the trouble areas to traffic jams. It’s not that a road doesn’t exist — or cellular service, in this instance — but more that so many folks are trying to access it that a normally zippy path is slower than Interstate 25 at rush hour.”
“Sen. Ray Scott is not making many friends in the beer and retail store industries, some of whose representatives say his bill to limit sales of full-strength beer not only is anti-business, but anti-Republican,” reports The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “His measure, SB198, calls for putting restrictions on grocery and convenience stores that will be allowed to obtain expanded licenses to sell full-strength beer under a new law going into effect on Jan. 1.”
“An Erie municipal election slated to overhaul the town’s leadership has given way in recent weeks to a deluge of misinformation and political mudslinging,” reports The Longmont Times-Call. “Coupled with accusations of collusion that have followed an investigation into the former town clerk’s handling of the ballot process, both voters and candidates say this latest run is likely the nastiest of campaign cycles in recent memory. It even prompted the town’s current mayor, Tina Harris, to call for an entente on the infighting in the waning days of her tenure before she hands the reins of the town over to a new board. “Enough outside interference,” she wrote in a Facebook post. ‘Enough of the nastiness. Enough making Erie look asinine. Let the two (Mayoral) candidates run clean merit based campaigns.'”
“Students, parents and teachers at Greeley’s three largest high schools are grieving after three students died by suicide in separate incidents last week. School officials notified parents Sunday night in an email,” reports The Greeley Tribune. “‘Three of our high school students took their own lives in separate incidents,” Greeley-Evans School District 6 Superintendent Deirdre Pilch said in the email to parents. ‘This has directly impacted the communities at Greeley West, Greeley Central and Northridge high schools. There are no words to express the sadness and grief of this significant loss.'”
“A stalled effort to bring more out-of-state sales tax dollars and tourism to Northern Colorado with about $330 million worth of projects will appear before the Loveland City Council again this week for a discussion about ways to move forward,” reports The Loveland Reporter-Herald. “The ‘Colorado-inspired adventures’ under consideration include a horror film center in Estes Park, a resort and conference center in Windsor and an indoor water park resort and a whitewater kayaking adventure park in Loveland.”
“Seeking a land-use change west of Silt, Microgrid Energy, a Denver-based company with commercial and industrial solar energy projects throughout the United States, presented the Peregrine Solar Energy System to the county commissioners on Monday,” reports The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent. “The zoning change was approved unanimously 3-0. Microgrid plans to turn approximately 6 acres on an overall tract of nearly 42 acres into a one-megawatt solar facility serving Xcel Energy customers in the county. “Looks like you’ve done your homework, and it looks like a clean operation to me,” Garfield County Commissioner Mike Samson said.”
“Routt County Republicans signaled this weekend they’re ready to embrace new leadership at the Routt County Treasurer’s Office when they overwhelmingly voted for an outsider candidate over the county’s current chief deputy treasurer,” reports The Steamboat Pilot. “Candidate Lane Iacovetto, who has campaigned on making changes at the Treasurer’s Office, qualified for the ballot when she received 88 percent of the votes from delegates at the Republican county assembly.”
“Wrapped in a blanket and wiping tears from her eyes, Brynn Stroope stared at the charred remains of the southeast Colorado Springs townhome she bought in June,” reports The Gazette in Colorado Springs. “Hers was one of more than 20 units destroyed or damaged in the three-alarm fire that tore through Sunstone Townhomes on Monday afternoon, caused by careless smoking, which prompted the failure of a natural gas line at the meter, fueling the fire, as did the winds of 12 to 20 mph and gusts up to 33 mph. She had been at a park with her three children – ages 1, 3 and 7 – when she heard about the fire. Stroope, 24, pointed out her townhome: ‘The very end one, the one that burnt the worst.'”
“Colorado’s burgeoning hemp industry got a jolt Monday when Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Majority Leader, gave his full-throated support of shoring up federal laws around hemp,” reports The Denver Post. “McConnell announced plans to introduce The Hemp Farming Act of 2018, which would remove hemp from regulation as a controlled substance and treat it as an agricultural commodity. Right now, no state grows more hemp than Colorado, and federal legalization could prove bountiful for growers and those who can farm out their expertise elsewhere. Currently, hemp businesses across the U.S. operate under a smattering of federal protections — via the Agricultural Act of 2014, better known as the Farm Bill, which expires this year, and via appropriations riders. Those protections are even stronger in Colorado, which established an industrial hemp program in 2013 as a result of voters legalizing adult-use cannabis.”
“Cortez City Manager Shane Hale announced Friday he plans to resign from his position this spring,” reports The Cortez Journal. “Hale said he has accepted a position as town manager in Windsor, a town near Greeley, after the offer was finalized Friday morning. He will begin his new job in June, and plans to spend the intervening months helping the city find a new manager. The Cortez City Council plans to discuss its next steps during a workshop before the meeting on Tuesday. “It’s not easy to leave this place,” Hale said. “I really love Cortez. I’ve worked with a great council and a great staff.” Hale started his job as city manager in Cortez in late 2011, after more than seven years in Grand Lake, a Colorado mountain town with a permanent population of fewer than 500.”
