“Teachers and other employees in a second El Paso County public school district will be allowed to carry concealed handguns on campus,” reports The Gazette in Colorado Springs. “The five-member Peyton 23-JT Board of Education voted unanimously last week to designate teachers and other volunteer staff as security guards, after being trained to respond in an emergency. ‘Having armed staff is not the front-line defense; it’s more if we don’t have any other options, we have the potential to stop any threat,’ said 23-JT Superintendent Tim Kistler. ‘The hope and prayer is that we never had to pull an arm.'”
“A recent vote by the membership of the Delta-Montrose Electric Association could move the organization one step closer to parting ways with its wholesale power provider,” reports The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “The cooperative’s members voted 2,677 to 1,248 in favor of changes to its articles of incorporation that include a provision letting it issue stock as a means of raising capital.”
“Two more law enforcement officers have been added since January to the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office list of officers who were found to have violated codes of conduct or been untruthful,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera.
“Members of the Summit County community woke up shocked Sunday to find an already-contentious sheriff race had reached a low point overnight with an act of vandalism,” reports Summit Daily. “Summit County Sheriff Jaime FitzSimons, a Democrat, is seeking re-election this November against Republican Derek Woodman. The race has been fierce and marred by rumors and misinformation flying in every direction about both candidates. On Sunday morning, FitzSimons knew of at least five campaign yard signs and one large banner vandalized sometime overnight, spray painted with swastikas and SS bolts, two unmistakable symbols of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and white supremacist groups.”
“The Loveland City Council will have another opportunity to make lasting impact on the city’s venture into a municipal broadband network at its study session Tuesday,” reports The Loveland Reporter-Herald. “Council will vote on the business plan for the new utility and to issue bonds to secure funds to construct the anticipated $93 million network. The council will first direct city staff informally during a study session and then vote on a one-time resolution in special session.”
“In a continuing effort to find more money for street repairs, City Councilman Mark Aliff has presented to his fellow council members a series of cuts to 2019’s proposed city budget that would get the city close to the money they need to repair a list of prioritized roads,” reports The Pueblo Chieftain. “Aliff’s proposed cuts comes from outside agency budget requests and would save the city about $661,000 that could go toward fixing streets.”
“A new group has coalesced around protecting wildlife by slowing down trail development in some areas of Routt National Forest,” reports The Steamboat Pilot. “Keep Routt Wild, a group of community members concerned by trails’ impacts to wildlife, held a meeting in the Routt County Courthouse. More than 60 people attended, including a number of hunters, hikers and mountain bikers both in favor of and opposed to trail development such as the Mad Rabbit Trails Project.”
“Yidi Xaio has one question for the political candidate at her door: ‘Are you a Democrat or a Republican?’ The candidate is Eric Rutherford,” reports The Denver Post. “He’s a brawny guy with exactly the kind of haircut you’d expect on a 55-year-old commercial real estate broker. He is also, he admits, a Republican. ‘I have to be honest,’ replies Xaio, 46. ‘I hate Donald Trump.” But Rutherford has another card to play before he trudges back into the mid-October snow. It’s about fracking.”
“Martin Parsons, Boulder’s cowboy poet and early park ranger, bought three horses by the time he was 14,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “He earned the money exercising horses for busy rich people and collecting cattle on horseback for ranchers, describing getting paid to ride horses as a dream job. He later traveled to Nevada, driving a stagecoach filled with gold from a mine, and to Mexico, breaking wild horses. Returning to Boulder, he drove a stagecoach to Eldora, taking tourists who wanted to visit the town’s seven saloons and five brothels. He also wrote odes to his horse and, as a ranger, most hated trails being opened to cars.”
“100 years ago from the pages of the Greeley Tribune-Republican newspaper for the fourth week of October 1918,” reports The Greeley Tribune. “With the election drawing near, both the Democratic and Republican parties are registering as many voters as they can. Downtown is busy this week with registrations, and both parties are sending autos out in the country to bring voters into town.”
“Despite what their cranky neighbors may say, kids today don’t really have it easy. Forces that their grandparents, and even their parents, never had to fathom complicate the lives of today’s youth,” reports Vail Daily. “Those pressures result in a raft of mental health challenges that require skill and understanding — but kids may not know what they need, and parents may not grasp the depth of their children’s challenges.”
“In the same year U.S. Rep. Jared Polis is spending a conspicuous amount of his own money in the race for the governor’s mansion, a measure to address that kind of funding is on the very same ballot,” reports The Coloradoan in Fort Collins. “Currently, candidates can spend as much of their own money as they like on their campaign. And their campaigns can accept $1,150 from other individuals if they’re running for statewide office, or $400 for lower-ballot races.”
“New efforts to improve mental health care for children and teenagers across Colorado will be rolled out over the next two to three years,” reports The Durango Herald. “The Colorado Attorney General’s Office is providing $2.8 million in grant funding to improve pediatric mental health care and support school-based mental health programming. Suicide is the leading cause of death for those 10 to 24 in Colorado, and addressing the lack of mental health services in the state is “a matter of life or death,” said Andrew Romanoff, Mental Health Colorado president and CEO.”
