“Call it CSI for canines. Call it a new low in personal responsibility. However you look at it, DNA tests aren’t just for cracking high-profile crimes anymore,” reports Summit Daily. “Facing a longstanding problem of pet owners either failing or refusing to clean up after their companions, Breckenridge town staff are seriously considering DNA testing more than 50 dogs living in town-owned apartments. ‘We have and continue to explore the DNA-identification option,’ said Laurie Best, a senior planner with the town who informed council last week that forensic testing for dogs and their feces isn’t a far-fetched idea. ‘In other communities where this service is available, we believe it is shown to be a very effective deterrent,’ she explained in a follow-up email, referencing places like Aspen and Denver, where implementation of such programs has been credited with cutting into the poop problem.”
“Grand Junction City Council meetings will continue to start with an invocation from a member of the public after the majority of council members expressed a desire to keep the status quo,” reports The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “At a workshop meeting Monday, all but one councilor said they wanted to keep the current invocation, which is led by a member of the public prior to each council meeting. Only Councilor Chris Kennedy said he wanted to remove the tradition.”
“In the decade Emilie Upczak spent in Trinidad and Tobago as a filmmaker, she liked to go to dinner with her husband in a restaurant that offered food downstairs and sex upstairs,” reports The Greeley Tribune. “She wondered about the women who worked as waitresses and those who worked as ladies of the evening. Why were they downstairs, or why were they upstairs? They made her think of her own situation in the 1990s, when she was 19 and living in Japan and working as a hostess. She earned good money to sit with powerful Japanese businessmen, pour their drinks and light their cigarettes. She never had sex with them, but she knew other hostesses who did. Those experiences led her to work five years on a film that tells a story of human smuggling and sex trafficking from a female perspective. Upczak, who is in her first semester as an adjunct instructor of Film Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, will screen that film, “Moving Parts,” Wednesday evening on the UNC campus.”
“The same way they cleaned up a town full of debris — with determination and hard work — residents of Glen Haven are raising money for a new town hall with construction underway and expected to be complete by summer,” reports The Loveland Reporter-Herald. “We’re finally making the kind of progress that people pay attention to,” resident Becky Childs, who with her husband, Steve, runs the General Store, said in an email. ‘Framing on the new Town Hall began last week, and the walls and roof went up quickly.'”
“For the second time in less than a year, a Steamboat Springs marijuana store has been targeted by burglars,” reports The Steamboat Pilot. “The burglary at Billo was reported to police at about 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning. On Monday, a window on the back of the building facing a parking lot in the Curve Plaza commercial center was covered with a piece of plywood. There is also a door at the back of the building with a security camera overhead. Police were not releasing any information about the burglary.”
“Two small drinking water systems were the only Larimer County entities to report lead contamination above regulatory levels during the most recent sampling period, state officials told the Coloradoan,” the paper reports. “The drinking water systems are Fox Acres Community Services Corporation, which serves a small area in Red Feather Lakes, and Spring Canyon Water and Sanitation District, which serves people in homes surrounding Horsetooth Reservoir. Managers of both water systems told the Coloradoan the lead did not come from their water sources.”
“Longmont City Council members on Monday night discussed what they’d like the city staff to include in any ordinance or ordinances that would impose affordable-housing mandates on portions of new housing developments,” reports The Longmont Times-Call. “Late in their meeting, however, council members had not reached consensus on many specific details, such as exactly what percentage of a housing project’s units should be required to be affordable, what range of household income would be eligible to buy or rent those homes, and how or whether developers would have other alternatives to building those units. Six of the seven council members did say they support some combination of mandates and incentives to increase the city’s stock of housing affordable to low-income residents, as well as workforce housing for families with higher household incomes but who have difficulty buying or renting homes in Longmont — the city where their jobs are.”
“March and April are Colorado’s snowiest months. But a persistent dry spell doesn’t show any immediate signs of breaking,” reports Vail Daily. “The latest readings from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s snow measurement sites at Vail Mountain, Copper Mountain and Fremont Pass show a mixed bag of “snow water equivalent.” While Vail Mountain continues to have adequate snow for skiing and snowboarding, the measurement site continues to give below-average readings.”
“Colorado’s political precinct caucuses, which will be held at 7 p.m. today … are the first formal opportunity for voters to weigh in on the candidates and issues in the 2018 election,” reports The Cortez Journal. “Precinct caucuses are meetings of registered electors within a defined geographic area who are members of a major political party, in Colorado, the Republican and Democratic parties. The purpose of the caucuses is to elect precinct committee members and delegates to party county assemblies. The caucuses are also the place where new ideas bubble up and begin to be discussed, debated and refined by committed individuals who have the power to shape the future of their party.”
“A proposed deer harvest within city limits to control deer herd populations will not move forward,” reports The Cañon City Daily Record. “The proposal was discussed by the General Government committee in February, but no action was taken by the city council during Monday’s meeting.”
“Boulder has reached an agreement with members of the local indigenous community to allow for ceremonial fires to be lit and exempted from the kind of city enforcement those fires have sometimes attracted,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “Earlier this year, the Genízaro Apache Tribe of Colorado complained after a Jan. 14 sweat lodge ceremony on University Hill prompted a 911 call from a neighbor who observed the fire that is part of such ceremonies. Because the fire technically constitutes an open burn, according to Boulder’s laws, code enforcement officers called homeowner David Atekpatzin Young, though the city did not end up issuing a citation.”
“Home price gains in metro Denver are rising at a double-digit pace this year after taking a breather in 2017, pushing the average price of a single-family home sold in February above $500,000 for the first time, according to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors,” reports The Denver Post. “We have never been above $500,000,” said Steve Danyliw, chairman of the DMAR market trends committee and a Denver Realtor. “It is a psychological barrier, especially for some of our younger buyers.” The average price of a single-family home sold in metro Denver reached $502,986 in February, up 2.5 percent from January and 11.8 percent from February 2017.”
“When former state Rep. Steve Lebsock of Thornton changed his party affiliation Friday, the switch from Democrat to Republican also appears to have disqualified his candidacy for the state treasurer’s race, several officials say,” reports The Gazette in Colorado springs. “Lebsock changed parties less than an hour before the House voted to expel him for multiple sexual harassment accusations that were found credible. He reportedly did so to enable Adams County Republicans – instead of fellow Democrats, who sought his ouster – to nominate his replacement in the House. But Lebsock can’t run for treasurer as a Republican, said former state Sen. Mike Feeley, a Democrat, attorney and election law expert. A state law requires a candidate be registered as a member of the party in which he is running no later than the first business day in January, Feeley told Colorado Politics.”
“As demand for housing rises, people are trying out new ways to live together — and they’re not always obeying the law when they do it in Denver,” reports Denverite. “City rules set strict limits on how people use their homes. For example, no more than four unrelated adults can live together in a single apartment. The limit’s even lower — two unrelated adults, plus their relatives — for single-family homes. So, it’s probably not surprising that the city was unprepared for the idea of the Beloved Community Village — a collection of tiny homes that now sits on a lot at 38th and Walnut, housing nearly 20 people who have experienced homelessness. Building it required months of negotiations and nitty-gritty legal work. Meanwhile, the city also has wrestled with other questions of group living. What rules should apply to artists who live together in studios? What about for nonprofits that want to build new homeless shelters — a difficult task under the current rules?”
