The Home Front: Colorado Springs city leaders want $2,500 in fines or 189 days in jail for people camping near creeks

“In a move affecting countless homeless campers across Colorado Springs, city leaders want to more aggressively ticket people living alongside creeks and waterways, even when no alternative shelter exists,” reports The Gazette in Colorado Springs. “Calling it a public health imperative to battle E. coli, trash and debris, Colorado Springs leaders on Monday plan to pitch City Council a ban on camping within 100 feet of the city’s waterways. That includes streams, such as Fountain and Monument creeks, as well as concrete drainage ditches crisscrossing the city. The move comes as Colorado Springs faces increasing pressure by state public health regulators to improve the quality of its waterways and to cut down on longstanding and unusually high levels of the bacteria, which are found in fecal matter.”

“The barbecue restaurant’s catering truck was parked outside the Milliken Town Hall on Friday night, and workers scurried, bringing in and setting up the buffet line in the meeting room,” reports The Greeley Tribune. “In the hallway, the youth being saluted lined up next to their artwork and posed for an official group picture as friends and family also snapped away with cellphones. The occasion was the celebration of “Hear Us: The Voices Amongst Us,” a project of the Milliken Young Community Leaders group, with the Milliken Police Department and the Weld County Health Department’s Community That Cares Program sponsoring the Friday night gathering. It is a fine line, difficult to draw amid what Milliken police chief Benito Garcia labeled a troubling “spike” in teen suicides in Weld County. Encouraging young people, in this instance from Milliken and Johnstown and the area, to openly acknowledge and express their thoughts about mental health doesn’t produce all sunshine — whether in the words or pictures — and optimism. But it was out there.”

“Longmont officials say the installation of wiring that puts properties onto the city’s award-winning NextLight fiber optic internet service remains rejected by only five multi-family apartment complexes,” reports The Longmont Times-Call. “On the other hand, 224 multi-family developments — defined as having four or more separate units — in the city have elected to allow the gig-speed network into their buildings, according to Scott Rochat, spokesman for Longmont Power and Communications, which oversees NextLight. The nonprofit municipal broadband utility offers new subscribers who have not previously lived in an area where the service is offered a charter rate of $49.95 per month for upload and download speeds of a gigabyte per second. That undercuts most rates of plans for similar speeds offered by private sector providers.”

“The family of fallen soldier Gabriel Conde is overwhelmed with the outpouring of support they have received as they plan a memorial service for the 22-year-old killed in Afghanistan,” reports The Loveland Reporter-Herald. “The family of Gabriel Conde has been overwhelmed by the multitude of heart-felt words and sentiments expressed by the people who know Gabe and the many who have never met him, yet feel connected to him,” the family said in a written statement released Sunday. “They wish to express their thanks and gratitude to everyone.” Gabriel was killed in action April 30 by small arms fire in the Tagab District while serving as a security enabler assigned to a special unit conducting operations with Afghan security forces against a Taliban facilitation, according to information from the Department of Defense.”

“It’s after 2 p.m. and things are quiet at Powder Day Donuts, as Sue and Jeff Fegelein, new owners of the downtown Steamboat Springs business, sit in the restaurant’s dining room surrounded by the enticing smell of freshly made donuts,” reports The Steamboat Pilot. “Jeff has been at work since 3 a.m. “I had been telling Sue for the year and a half when I was working here that I knew how to run this place,” Jeff said. “Then the time came, and she told me to ‘put up, or shut up.’” Jeff worked at the former Milk Run Donuts from 2015 to 2016 before leaving. And when the couple discovered the business was for sale, they jumped at the opportunity to make it their own.”

“As some Glenwood Springs residents mobilize in opposition to a major limestone quarry expansion north of town, concerns are not limited to the environmental impacts that could result from the operation should it be approved,” reports The Glenwood Springs Post-Independent. “There are looming concerns about potential political influence from the very top of the U.S. Department of the Interior when and if a formal application comes before the local Bureau of Land Management field office for review. The current Deputy Secretary of the Interior, Rifle native David Bernhardt, once worked for and was a shareholder in the law firm now representing the mining company.”

“Crews recently mobilized at the site of Eagle County’s latest multifamily complex — 6 West in Edwards. According to developer Steve Spessard, of Gore Creek Partners, the 120-unit project located on a 5.7-acre tract, is eying a late December, early January opening,” reports Vail Daily. “By local standards, that is a very ambitious schedule. But for Spessard, it’s the culmination of years of effort. “Since I moved here nine years ago, I have been trying to find a project I could move on close to home,” Spessard said.”

“Paul Petersen and Samantha Kitchen live 1,900 miles apart, but they ended up at the same place Sunday, winning their respective divisions of the 17th running of the Colorado Marathon,” reports The Coloradoan in Fort Collins. “Petersen, 38, of Fort Collins won the overall title, running the 26.2-mile race down the Poudre Canyon in 2 hours, 33 minutes, 24 seconds. Kitchen, who hails from Westwood, Massachusetts, was the top female finisher in a time of 2:55.40. Petersen, a two-time winner of the Horsetooth Half Marathon and an Olympic Marathon Trials participant, ran by himself in second place most of the race before gaining the lead with 5K left to beat Gunnison’s Bashash Walio by a little more than a minute.”

“Pueblo native Don Johnson was 14 when he marched in Cañon City’s first Music & Blossom Festival Parade, and he took part in the festival’s 80th parade Saturday,” reports The Cañon City Daily Record. “Johnson, 94, played the drums for Pueblo Centennial High School, who won the band competition that first year.”

“Two very prominent stretches of Boulder roadway are primed for very expensive realignment projects that are projected to take a very long time to complete,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “Over the next 20 to 30 years, city transportation staff says, Boulder is prepared to spend between $50 and $100 million remaking key stretches: 30th Street from Baseline Road to Pearl Street, and Colorado Avenue from Foothills Parkway to, then through, the University of Colorado’s main campus.”

“It was sometimes tough to find a place at the dining room table from Thanksgiving to March in the Jordan house near Ignacio,” reports The Durango Herald. “Isaac Jordan, 17, often had it staked out working on his science fair project. The inconvenience paid off beyond the most ambitious of family dreams: Jordan took home the Best of Show award in the 2018 Colorado Science and Engineering Fair. Next week, the family is off to Pittsburgh where Isaac will compete with 1,800 students from more than 75 countries from May 13 to 18 in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. In addition, his sister, Marissa, 14, has earned observer status at the fair with her own project.”

“Earlier this year, in a speech to leading members of Colorado’s medical community, Dr. Donald Stader confronted a blunt truth about the nation’s opioid crisis,” reports The Denver Post. “The majority of the blame, he said, “rightfully rests with people like me – physicians.” “We as doctors really drove this epidemic; it’s plain and simple,” said Stader, an emergency room physician and the associate medical director at Swedish Medical Center in Englewood. “And if we are going to get out of it, we as physicians and we as a medical system need to come to grips with the harms that we’ve caused.” But behind the scenes, in conversations with state legislators, Stader and the Colorado Medical Society lobbied against stricter regulations on a doctor’s ability to prescribe opioids – making the case that medical professionals can police themselves.”

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