Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announces the city’s priorities for 2024, during a press conference Monday, Feb. 26, 2024 at the City and County Building.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
Ten months into his first term, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has nominated someone to fill his final open appointment.
If approved by City Council, Karin McGowan will take over as head of the Department of Public Health and Environment, the agency that handles everything from air quality and noise pollution to overdose prevention, immunization and the animal shelter.
“Throughout her career, Karin has stewarded equitable public health and environmental outcomes across Colorado and knows how to deliver strong and healthy communities,” Johnston said in a statement Thursday.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has nominated Karin McGowan to lead the city’s Department of Public Health and Environment.Courtesy of the mayor’s office
Johnston’s nominee has longstanding ties to state politics.
McGowan worked for a decade at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, including a stint as deputy director. At CDPHE, she led communications, legislative affairs, the Office of Health Equity, the Office of Emergency Planning and Response, and the Office of Planning and Partnership.
CDPHE navigated cannabis legalization, the 2015 Gold King Mine Spill and the COVID-19 pandemic under her leadership.
McGowan also served as assistant director for external affairs for Great Outdoors Colorado and worked in Governor Roy Romer’s administration.
Gov. Jared Polis later appointed McGowan to the Energy and Carbon Management Conservation Commission. She has also worked at the Denver Regional Council of Governments, heading up both policy development and communication efforts.
Unlike many of Johnston’s political appointments, McGowan is not a holdover from the Hancock years.
If confirmed, McGowan will follow Interim Director Alice Nightengale, who has served in the role since March, when Hancock appointee Bob McDonald retired.
“We conducted a thorough and meticulous search for this position because we knew we wanted a candidate with world-class talent, and we found exactly what we were looking for with Karin,” Johnston explained.
Correction: This story originally stated Bob McDonald was the current head of DDPHE. It has been updated to note that he retired in March and had been replaced, in the interim, by Alice Nightengale.
Sports for all ages at University Hills’ Observatory Park. April 12, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Denver has the best parks system of any large Colorado city, according to a new national ranking of the country’s 100 biggest cities by the Trust for Public Land, a parks advocacy group.
Nationwide, the city was rated as having the thirteenth-best system.
“The City of Denver is making a significant investment in the quality of life of its residents, parks and open space,” explained Jim Petterson, the Mountain West Region Vice President of the Trust for Public Land.
So what does the rating measure, anyhow?
The rating measures how close residents are to a park, how much cities spend on their park systems per resident, park acreage, and equitable access between various communities in the city.
In Denver, a whopping 93 percent of the public lives within a 10-minute walk to a park.
Denver spends $197 per resident each year on parks, far higher than the national average of $124.
Access between racial groups is fairly equitable, according to Petterson, though not everything is rosy in Denver.
Denver ranks fairly low in terms of the percentage of the city comprised of parks.
“That’s a tough thing to solve for, because Denver doesn’t have many large parcels of land left,” Petterson said. “But there are still opportunities to create new parks where they’re needed most.”
How are other cities doing?
Aurora fell six places in the national rankings to 46th best, and Colorado Springs dropped four places to 55th best.
In Aurora, 90 percent of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park, and the city spends $142 per resident annually on parks.
As for Colorado Springs, 77 percent of residents have a park within a 10-minute walk, and the city spends $116 per resident each year on parks.
Boise, ID has the best dog parks; Saint Paul, MN has the best basketball courts; and Las Vegas has the best playgrounds.
Nationwide, Washington D.C., where 24 percent of the land is reserved for parks, continues to enjoy the best parks system in the country, followed by Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Irvine.
Why do parks matter?
“Connections to nature are incredibly good for one’s health and mental health,” Petterson said. “In fact, if parks were a pill, everybody would have a prescription and be taking it every day.”
Parks also give people a space to come together. People who live near parks are more likely to approve of their local government, parks departments and police.
“In a city like Denver, in the top quarter of ParkScore rankings, residents are about 60 percent more likely to volunteer than in lower ranking cities and 26 percent more likely to form friendships with people from different social economic groups,” Petterson said.
“So what this really is telling us,” he added, “is that in this era, where there’s such an epidemic of loneliness and isolation, parks are a useful tool to get people outdoors, connecting with their neighbors, their communities, and making relationships across the socio-economic spectrum.”
Denver International Airport is gearing up for a record number of Memorial Day weekend passengers, meaning travelers can expect a busy trip and long waits, airport officials said Tuesday.
Between Thursday and Tuesday, airport officials expect nearly 450,000 passengers to pass through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, according to a news release from DIA. This is a 9% increase from the same holiday travel period last year.
Thursday and Friday alone will each see more than 80,000 travelers moving through TSA screening areas, with additional foot traffic coming in from flight connections inside the airport, DIA officials said.
Airport officials said holiday travelers should arrive inside the airport at least two hours before their scheduled boarding time and should have plans for parking and making it through security checkpoints.
Those committed to parking on-site should avoid the Pike Peaks lot due to construction and park at the Landslide parking lot — 6975 Valley Head Street.
The Pikes Peak and Longs Peak shuttle parking lots will close on Friday at 3 a.m. and re-open by 5 p.m., according to Tuesday’s release. The Landslide lot will be open for overflow parking at 3 a.m. Friday and will remain open until full.
Regular shuttle service will be available from all parking lots to and from the airport terminal.
TSA Security Checkpoints
DIA’s South Security Checkpoint — located on level five at the south end of the terminal — is open from 3 a.m. to 1 a.m. the next morning and is the primary checkpoint for travelers who need standard screening.
South Security has four TSA PreCheck lanes open from 4 a.m. to 7:45 p.m., but PreCheck passengers traveling after 8 p.m. may use South Security and receive a form of expedited screening, officials said Tuesday.
One CLEAR lane is available for standard screening at the South Security Checkpoint, but passengers with both PreCheck and CLEAR must use the dual-service lane at West Security.
The West Security Checkpoint — located on level six at the northwest corner of the terminal — is open from 4 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. and is the primary checkpoint for TSA PreCheck travelers.
Passengers with standard screening at this checkpoint should enter through West Security 1, and passengers with reservations for DEN RESERVE should enter at West Security 2.
Finally, A-Bridge Security is open for standard screening between 4:30 a.m. and 5:45 p.m., officials said Tuesday.
The bridge has a limited number of lanes dedicated for travelers requiring standard screening and is not available for TSA PreCheck.
Real-time security wait times and parking availability can be found online at FlyDenver.com.
Sally Johnston, mother of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and co-owner of the Christiania Lodge at Vail, passed away May 17, with the mayor joining her for a final goodbye.
The city leader announced his mom’s passing in a LinkedIn post on Saturday.
“Yesterday we said the final good bye to my mom,” Johnston wrote. He depicted her as selfless, joyful and “a tireless force for goodness.”
Sally Johnston grew up in Port Leyden, N.Y., alongside three sisters. Her father worked as a school principal, while her mother was an arts and music teacher, according to a 2010 article in the Vail Daily.
She followed in their footsteps — teaching music in Boston in the 1960s, her son Mike recalled in his social media post. There, she spearheaded a Head Start program, the Vail Daily reports.
She married her husband, Paul Ross Johnston, in 1970 — the former mayor of Vail, who passed away in 2015. The pair bought a boutique hotel in Vail in 1976.
With her experience in education and psychology, Sally Johnston served as a board member at Third Way Center, a nonprofit that helps youths resolve trauma. She also had a spot on the Vail Mountain School Board and was involved with the Vail Religious Foundation.
“She loved people for their beauty and their brokenness alike, which always had the power to make each of us feel unafraid, unashamed, perfect again — the way we were once before the world taught us to doubt,” Johnston wrote. “She changed my world, and she convinced me with a ferocity I will never surrender that we can all change the world, because I watched her do it every day.”
Tivoli Quad at Auraria campus, after students and administration removed a protest encampment that lasted three weeks.
Auraria Higher Education Center
After more than three weeks, organizers at Auraria Campus protesting the war in Gaza officially announced they were ending their protest encampment Saturday.
The three weeks their tents were up made the encampment one of the longest running of the student-led antiwar protests that took off nationwide after police arrested students at Columbia University in April. The protests oppose the war in Gaza, which began in October when Hamas killed more than 1,000 Israelis and took another 200 hostage. Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israel’s counterattack.
On Friday, protesters scattered across the Auraria campus, moving the dozens of tents and public art pieces that had been set up on Tivoli Quad to new locations. On Saturday, Auraria Higher Education Center spokesperson Devra Ashby called the encampment “abandoned” and said staff have begun cleaning up the quad.
80 people have been arrested over the course of the Auraria protests, including 16 active students and three staff and faculty members
Protesters at the Auraria antiwar camp are moving their tents campus-wide. Friday, May 17, 2024.Rebecca Tauber/Denverite
In a statement Saturday, organizers with Students for a Democratic Society touted the encampment for raising awareness about the war.
“Since April 25, 2024, the Auraria Encampment for Palestine, organized by the Denver Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), has achieved significant milestones that have made clear the power of student organizing; have shown the strength of community solidarity, and have strengthened our movements for liberation,” SDS organizers wrote in a statement posted to their Instagram Saturday.
The statement pointed to Metropolitan State University’s agreement to provide information related to its investments as a concrete win from the protest, though MSU has not yet released that information. Organizers did not get any other clear concessions from MSU or the University of Colorado around investments, nor did the schools meet their other demands, which included issuing statements in opposition to the war and severing ties with companies that hold contracts with Israel and the U.S. military.
“No regent is offering any policy changes in response to the demands,” wrote the University of Colorado Board of Regents last week in response to the encampment.
The end of the encampment comes as some students across the country have begun to strike deals with colleges in exchange for ending the protests.
Last week, Harvard University agreed to discuss concerns around its endowment and reinstate students suspended during the protests. Other schools, like Brown University, have agreed to formally vote on divestment.
The pro-Palestine protest camp at Denver’s Auraria Campus. May 14, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
As the camp winds down, Auraria leadership said that Tivoli Quad and all other green spaces on campus will be closed until further notice as staff clean up the area and complete property repairs.
At the end of last week, all three schools at Auraria switched to remote learning because of the encampment. Ashby said the campus will remain restricted to “critical personnel and operations” for now, without a clear timeline for if or when that might change.
“Leaders have worked diligently towards finding a peaceful resolution,” Ashby wrote Saturday. “We hope this will end more than three weeks of unauthorized occupation that has increasingly escalated into dangerous activities, taken significant time, resources, and dialogue with student protesters to resolve, and has pulled us away from our academic mission and goals.”
It’ll be an NBA Game 7 doubleheader to finish the weekend.
The Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves will meet for their winner-take-all series finale Sunday at 6 p.m. MT, the league announced Friday night. The game at Ball Arena in downtown Denver will be broadcast on TNT and available for streaming on Max.
The start time was dependent on the result of Game 6 between the Knicks and Pacers. If the Knicks had finished off the Eastern Conference semifinal series Friday with a 3-2 lead, Denver and Minnesota would have been in the afternoon TV slot Sunday. Instead, Knicks vs. Pacers at Madison Square Garden takes that space, pushing the Western Conference clash to the evening.
This will be the Nuggets’ first elimination game in more than two calendar years and their first Game 7 since the bubble in 2020. Denver took a one-game lead over Minnesota for second place in the West on the last day of the regular season to earn home-court advantage for this series, including its grand conclusion. The winner will advance to the Western Conference Finals to face either Dallas or Oklahoma City.
The visiting team won the first four games of the series, with Denver erasing a 2-0 deficit. Since then, the Nuggets and Timberwolves have traded home wins. Minnesota staved off elimination Thursday at Target Center with a 115-70 blowout that holds the distinction of being the Nuggets’ worst playoff loss in franchise history by point margin.
Summer-like temperatures will be joined by sunny, mostly clear skies and a light afternoon breeze, according to NWS forecasters.
Temperatures in Denver will peak around 87 degrees Friday afternoon before dipping back down to 53 degrees overnight, forecasters said.
In northern Colorado, warm, dry and windy weather conditions will lead to increased fire danger, especially in Weld and Larimer counties, according to a NWS hazardous weather outlook.
Periods of critical fire weather conditions are possible, but will largely be dependent on fuel conditions, the outlook stated.
Fuel conditions refers to when excess plant material — including grasses, shrubs, trees, dead leaves and pine needles — significantly threaten the ignition or spread of wildfires, according to NWS.
Rain is set to return to the metro area Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning and early next week, forecasters said Friday.
Showers and thunderstorms could hit Denver between noon and midnight Saturday, and a cooler, unsettled weather pattern is expected to bring higher chances for rain Monday and Tuesday as a storm system tracks across the state, the hazardous weather outlook stated.
Warm weather will continue throughout the week — regardless of wet conditions — as temperature highs hover in the upper 70s and lower 80s across the metro area, forecasters said.
Saturday night rain showers and severe Sunday/Monday thunderstorms are forecasted for eastern Colorado, according to NWS meteorologists.
Four students from Monarch Montessori visited Denver City Council on Monday prepared with pitches. The 4th and 5th graders were set to speak during the general public comment session, equipped with bullet points detailing how their expanding Montbello school needs more classroom space and better pedestrian safety in the area.
But as two of the students, who are Black, began speaking to councilmembers, a person attending the meeting over Zoom began spewing racist language and insults.
“I was caught off guard,” said Councilwoman Shontel Lewis. “I’m hearing this happen and I’m seeing this young girl try to give her her public testimony and my instinct as a mom [goes to] how do we protect these babies? Turn that off, fix it. I’m looking over at our production staff and it’s not happening fast enough … I just, instinctually, just went to go hold the babies because it was traumatic.”
After about 30 uninterrupted seconds, the unidentified person was ejected from the video call.
One of the young students couldn’t continue and was escorted out of the chambers by Lewis. Councilmembers later gave the remaining students time to finish the presentation.
So, what were the students pitching? Well, they want a yurt and crosswalk safety.
Monarch is the only bilingual school in Montbello and the only Montessori school in the neighborhood.
Peoria Street near Monarch Montessori. May 16, 2024. Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Because of its Spanish-English curriculum and focus on supporting the students’ voices and independence, Laura Pretty, the executive director of the elementary school, said enrollment requests are high. Pretty said the school has seen an increase in applications, in part because of its high test scores and bilingual program. Applicants have included new immigrants because the program can help students integrate into the school system more easily.
But the school can’t accommodate all of the students.
“The school is growing but we’re running out of space,” Pretty said. “Next year we actually are running into a problem where we can’t accept all the kindergarteners that are applying because we just don’t have the space … We’re not accepting 4th and 5th graders because of space challenges.”
Pretty said the school needs one to two extra classrooms to accommodate new students. But while most schools turn to portable classrooms, such as trailers or modular buildings, to solve space issues, the Monarch students have advocated for a different approach.
In their prepared pitches to city council, the students said trailers are ugly and can be crowded. Trailers are also expensive and can destroy the concrete they’re placed upon.
Instead, the students want a yurt, a portable tent with a rounded ceiling. Yurts can be insulated and are environmentally friendly, according to the students.
This is a yurt! Specifically, a circHouse was deployed at Sustainability Park in Denver, where it stood for three years ending in 2015. (Courtesy Edward Ryan)
“Imagine going to a classroom like that!” the students wrote in their pitches.
The yurt would be used for their music class, freeing up classroom space.
“It would be cool because if you’re in the yurt, you can hear the birds outside. You can hear outside sounds and the music teacher does not see that as a problem,” Pretty said.
While students and faculty are on board with the unconventional classroom, getting permits for the structure has proved challenging. Not because the structure is unsafe but because no other school has ever asked for a yurt before. It’ll be a learning process for the school and Community Planning and Development.
So, the four students attended the city council meeting Monday to ask members how their school can acquire a permit for the yurt.
The students’ second request, which wasn’t heard at all during the meeting, was the need for more pedestrian safety.
At the end of the school day, the students must wait in the car pickup line. But, Pretty said, the students are tired of it. They want to play in the playground while waiting for their parents.
Pretty said the only way that can happen is if the school gets rid of the pickup line. To accomplish that, more parents need to walk or bike to pick up their kids. For parents who need to drive, they would need to park on the street and walk up to the school.
The problem with those options is safety.
“Peoria is a tough street,” Pretty said. “The problem is just crossing the street. We don’t have great markings for crossing, [we don’t have] great lighting. The signs that say we’re a school are not visible so people are speeding by. It just doesn’t feel very safe and so they were advocating for finding ways to make it safer.”
Peoria Street near Monarch Montessori. May 16, 2024. Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Pretty said students also prepared a pitch for city council to look into ways to make the area safer through clearer crosswalks, maybe a crossing guard, or anything that would encourage parents and guardians to get out of their cars.
After the incident at the meeting on Monday, Pretty said the school community, councilmembers and the mayor reached out to the students.
“I think they’re experiencing just a big embrace from the community, which I hope is making this more about them and less about the hate that they heard on Monday,” Pretty said.
City Council is also working to make sure this type of interruption or any interruption, doesn’t happen again
Robert Austin, the council’s spokesperson, said the Technology Services team is investigating how the person who leveled the racist slurs was able to speak during the meeting.
The goal is to have this not happen again.
After the comment session on Monday, Council President Jamie Torres apologized to the students, denouncing the unknown person’s actions.
Lewis also condemned the person’s actions, noting that the incident was a microcosm of what goes online. She has experienced macro- and micro-aggressions on social media, leveled at her as a Black woman.
While they can’t erase what happened on Monday, Lewis said the city council does have the ability to shed light on that type of racist speech and to make sure the people who come to speak in the chambers are not subjected to slurs.
“We certainly have a responsibility because we can’t just sweep this under the rug and pretend that it’s business as usual,” Lewis said. “We have a responsibility to lead … to say our chambers are not only the people’s chambers, but they are open to our youngest, the leaders so they can engage in democracy.”
As for whether the students will get their yurt and better pedestrian safety around their school, that’s yet to be seen. But Lewis said she’ll be looking into her rolodex to see how she can help her constituents. In the meantime, she’ll be advocating for safer spaces during public sessions.
“Don’t mess with our babies and certainly not in our chambers,” Lewis said.
Warm, sunny weather will shine over Denver Thursday as the last of Wednesday’s storm rolls out, according to the National Weather Service.
Denver residents should enjoy time outdoors with plenty of sunshine and light wind Thursday and Friday before a new set of thunderstorms hits the city this weekend, NWS forecasters said.
Temperatures in the metro area will reach the upper-70s Thursday before dipping down to 50 degrees overnight, forecasters said. Friday could bring highs around 85 degrees.
Calm winds between 5 mph and 8 mph will drift through the metro area in the afternoon, according to NWS forecasters.
Starting Saturday afternoon, a new wave of rain showers and thunderstorms could pour over Denver, with the largest chance of weekend rain falling between noon and midnight Saturday, forecasters said.
Thunderstorms and rain showers could roll through the metro area through early next week. The NWS forecasters project chances of afternoon and evening storms Monday through Wednesday.
Starting Friday, elevated fire weather conditions could spark red flag warnings for the eastern plains due to warm temperatures, low relative humidity and increased winds in the area, according to a NWS hazardous weather outlook.
While dropping kids off at school, parents across Denver often enter an over-caffeinated, lawless hellscape.
“When I’m in the vicinity of those schools at pick up and drop off time, it really feels like the Wild West,” said Melissa Colonno, who has three kids, one in elementary school, another in middle school and a third in high school. “Parents or whoever’s driving — they do what they need to do to get their kids to and from school. But lots of those things are not legal.”
Parents speed, drive recklessly and park in no-parking zones so their children beat the bell — even if it means endangering other students also trying to beat the bell. There are few safeguards.
“I think people’s behavior changes when they know someone with authority is watching them,” Colonno said.
But should those authority figures be armed officers? Many pedestrian advocates and the Denver Police Department agree: probably not.
Police are issuing fewer tickets during traffic stops in school safety zones than they were before the pandemic shutdowns.
That’s according to records from 2019 through 2023 that Denverite requested from Denver County Court.
The most tickets on record in the past five years were issued before COVID-19 hit the city, in September 2019, when DPD issued around 800 tickets in safety zones. In the first half of the 2019-2020 school year, there were an average of 510 tickets issued per month.
Ticketing hit an all-time low during the pandemic shutdowns, with DPD issuing fewer than two tickets some months. Schools were largely closed during quarantine, and there weren’t any students around to keep safe.
While ticketing rose from zero as schools reopened, it has never hit pre-pandemic highs.
The highest number of tickets issued during stops since the pandemic was 373 in May of 2023, with an average of 181 tickets being issued by police in active school months between 2021 and 2023.
Data Source: Denver County Court
That’s a 64 percent decrease in the average number of monthly tickets officers issued during stops.
Fatalities from car crashes have risen citywide in the same time frame police enforcement has slowed down in school zones and beyond.
They hit an eight-year high of 71 in 2019, dropped the first year of the pandemic, and then rose in 2021 and 2022 to an all-time high of 84. In 2023, they dropped again to 83.
Why did the Denver Police Department stop pulling so many people over in school zones?
During the summer of 2020, there was a national reckoning with police violence after the murder of George Floyd, Elijah McClain and multiple unarmed Black people.
Since then, police-executed traffic stops have come under scrutiny.
Denver Police Department itself intentionally pulled back from pulling people over for low-level traffic stops citywide, including in school zones, explained Division Chief Rick Kyle, who oversees traffic enforcement.
A passenger pick-up area outside of Morey Middle School in Capitol Hill. May 15, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
“We continue to do enforcement,” Kyle explained. “Lower-level stops, we are kind of being more judicious about when we make those,” largely to avoid escalation and needless violent encounters.
“In the area of safety violations, speeding, running stop signs, running red lights, we continue to do enforcement in those areas,” he said.
Instead of so many traffic stops, the department is working on what Kyle calls a ‘multipronged approach’ to traffic safety in school zones.
At the beginning of each school year, DPD identifies the schools with the highest potential for traffic safety issues. The department works with the school on traffic education for students, families and teachers.
“We’ve actually seen more people either driving their children to school or kids walking to school, versus using the bus that they used before the pandemic,” Kyle said. “So we’ve actually used our officers quite a bit for traffic control because congestion has become a big issue, which leads to the inability for people to speed because there’s so much traffic congestion.”
The city also uses photo and radar enforcement. Kyle explained that the number of citations through those technologies has been fairly steady and far higher than tickets issued by armed officers.
According to Denver Police Department data, 41,382 tickets were issued from photo enforcement in 2022 and 34,384 in 2023. The drop in 2023 occurred when the Department changed contractors.
A passenger pick-up area outside of Morey Middle School in Capitol Hill. May 15, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
The city also uses speed trailers and signs that visually signal when people are speeding and help them self-regulate. Some of those devices also track patterns of speeding by time of day, helping the department plan enforcement efforts.
“The other thing that we do is we work on the environment, the streets, the traffic environment, the traffic engineering,” Kyle said, noting that the police often work with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure on recommending infrastructure changes.
Some advocates are enthusiastic about the drop in police ticketing, even as they acknowledge traffic safety issues abound.
“We are not anti-enforcing speeding,” he explained. “We just do not believe that armed law enforcement needs to do it.”
His group has partnered with the Denver Streets Partnership to advocate for traffic safety policies that remove police departments’ role in enforcement.
“Speeding is definitely a problem citywide, not just in school safety zones,” explained Jill Locantore, head of the Denver Streets Partnership. “And we know speeding is one of the biggest contributors to whether a crash happens and whether the crash results in a serious injury and a fatality.”
She wants to see speed mitigation at the heart of Vision Zero, the city’s plan to eliminate all traffic deaths.
“We’ve designed the street to make it as enticing as possible to speed but then we’re going to pull you over and slap you with a ticket,” Locantore said, describing it as a form of “entrapment.” “You know, it’s just not an awesome way to approach safety issues. Though our preference has always been to focus on street design changes that just really reinforce safe speeds.”
A passenger pick-up area outside of Morey Middle School in Capitol Hill. May 15, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Instead of enforcement, armed or otherwise, Locantore would like to see traffic-calming infrastructure: speed bumps, diverters, and traffic circles designed to slow people down.
Meanwhile, since infrastructure changes take time to build, she acknowledges some enforcement is necessary. Her preference would be automated radar and photo enforcement available 24/7, 365 days a year.
“Something we’ve been calling for is for automated enforcement to be shifted from the purview of the police department over to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure because it should be part of the design and operation of the transportation system,” Locantore said. “This is much more about preventing traffic crashes in the first place, preventing unsafe behavior in the first place, and less about traditional policing activities.”
Colonno, the parent who wants some sort of authority present in school safety zones, doesn’t think that necessarily needs to be police.
Colonno often bikes her kids to school. Her kid’s elementary school has staff serve as crossing guards, and when they’re present, she feels safer.
“They’re wonderful,” she said. “But sometimes they come out late. Sometimes they miss a shift.”
She’d like to see safer street infrastructure across town and hopes Denver Public Schools could hire crossing guards citywide.
“You really notice the difference in the car drivers’ behavior when the crossing guards are present,” she said. “And when they’re not present, the cars roll through the stop sign and try to hurry on their way without yielding to a pedestrian or bicyclist.”
This year, the city has already recorded 19 traffic deaths. By 2030, Denver is aiming to have zero.
The two girls attended the council meeting with two fellow students and a group of educators. The goal was to discuss the school’s plans for bringing a yurt to the campus, which would be used for music classes. The other two students intended to speak with councilmembers about making two crosswalks near the school more accessible.
“Last night, we went in with a lot of optimism,” said Mairi McCormick, director of elementary at Monarch Montessori. “What we really wanted was for our students to be able to demonstrate in a public space.”
However, the students’ prepared speeches were stopped abruptly by a racist rant that was broadcast over the council speakers through the meeting’s Zoom call.
Local News
Children targeted by racist rant during Denver City Council meeting
6:47 PM, May 14, 2024
The students’ teacher, Giovanni Breaux, was standing at the podium alongside the girls.
“Obviously, as a Black woman, bringing these young Black students to city council and to have them be so excited, this was something that they were doing for the very first time. To have them be so excited and then to be met with that was atrocious,” Breaux said. “Everyone’s response was their jaw hitting the floor.”
Laura Pretty, executive director of Monarch Montessori, was also at the meeting.
“My understanding is that after that, [city council] stopped the meeting. And then a number of city councilmembers came out with us and we went into a little room. They just showered the girls with love and gave them an opportunity to give their speech in a safer space,” Pretty said. “All of that hate, I actually think, whoever the person who was doing that, if anything, they have further empowered us and our kids.”
The educators who spoke with Denver7 on Tuesday said the students were shaken, but by the time they left the Denver City and County Building, they were inspired to be a force of powerful change in their community.
“I don’t know how else to say it — they were pumped. They were like, “We’re going to go back. I’m going to grow up, I’m going to be a judge. I want to work in government,”” Breaux said, smiling. “All of us had the same reaction when the girls were like that, just showing that feeling of being empowered. We were all like, “Yeah, that’s what Monarch is about.””
FULL INTERVIEW: Students feel inspired despite racist rant at Denver City Council meeting, educators say
Pretty said one of her biggest concerns was that the racist outburst would discourage students from participating in democracy. She wants to ensure all students still advocate for the issues they are passionate about and feel empowered to use their voices.
“The idea that for kids, democracy could be scary, is really upsetting to me,” said Pretty. “I want to make sure that our kids are not afraid to speak. That’s the number one lesson we’re going to take from this. And I think if anything, you know, we’ll certainly be looking at how can we work with city council if we bring kids again to make sure it’s a little safer.”
Breaux said the girls are still wearing the trauma of the racist rant from Monday, but one student said she wants to run for city council one day. Everyone left the meeting determined to secure the yurt for their school and work on improving the accessibility of two crosswalks around it.
“Those girls are feeling now like they can do anything,” Breaux said. “That nothing is going to stop them.”
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Two Black elementary school students were subjected to hateful and racist rhetoric during City Council’s general public comment session on Monday by an unknown Zoom attendee.
The two young girls from Monarch Montessori in Montbello were asking City Council members for help in procuring a yurt for their school when an unknown person on Zoom interrupted the meeting and told the girls to “go back to Africa.” The person continued spewing more insults and racist slurs for about 30 seconds while City Council members could be heard asking moderators to step in and mute the person.
The person was eventually ejected from the video call.
Several councilmembers went down to the podium to stand behind the students and console them.
The older student was visibly upset and unable to continue giving her speech. She was led from the room by Councilmember Shontel Lewis.
The younger student continued their plea for the yurt that would create more space for students. The student said the school has experienced an influx of students and in order to accommodate everyone, the yurt would be transformed into a music room. The current music class will then be converted into a regular classroom.
After the student finished, Council President Jamie Torres condemned the unknown person’s actions.
“I want to extend an apology,” Torres said. “I want to thank you for being here first and foremost and for sharing your commentary. I want to apologize for what we heard and I want you know…that everyone in this room is a support system and we would never acknowledge or authorize that kind of language in this chamber.”
In a statement, Torres added the “words were vile, as was the character of a person who would actively seek to say these words to two beautiful and courageous young girls.”
“Speaking at the Denver City Council brings nervousness to adults every week, and these youth gathered the bravery to bring their voices to their City Council representatives to improve their school and community. We honor and praise these two young voices and condemn anyone who would attack them and any other member of our community,” Torres wrote.
Robert Austin, the council’s spokesperson, said the Technology Services team is currently investigating how the person was able to speak during the meeting. Typically, an event producer runs the meeting and unmutes people when it is their turn to speak. Austin said the producer tried several times to mute the person before ejecting them from the meeting.
Austin said the team has also not been able to identify the speaker. Their IP address shows as being from the Netherlands, which Austin said the team suspects isn’t accurate.
Austin said the primary concern is to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
After the meeting, Austin said several councilmembers and Council’s Executive Director Bonita Roznos spoke with the girls about the incident.
Austin said he’s not sure what council will do regarding the students’ request “but efficiency and decreasing wait times in the permitting process has been something the council has asked of the administration in a variety of forums.”
The mountains will see light showers this morning, with scattered showers and storms spreading to the urban corridor, plains and valleys this afternoon.
Today will be partly sunny and breezy in the Denver metro area with a high of 77 degrees and a 40% chance of precipitation, mainly after 2 p.m. Tonight will hit a low of 47 degrees.
Rain returns Wednesday with temperatures dropping to a high of 65 degrees. Storms may continue Wednesday night with a 50% chance of showers and thunderstorms before midnight and a low of 45 degrees.
Thursday’s forecast calls for a high of 71 degrees with a 20% chance of showers and thunderstorms after noon.
Skies should clear Friday, with a sunny day around 80 degrees, and just a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms through the weekend, according to NWS forecasters.
Alex Milyard (left) checks on recently poured concrete on the top of an I-70 tunnel in Elyria Swansea that will soon become a park. July 8, 2022.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
The economic think tank Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity made a claim that may surprise people struggling to afford life in Denver: “The Denver region was ranked as the national leader for living wage jobs.”
That 4% unemployment rate makes it look like the Denver economy is rosy. In reality, evictions are up, and affordability is one of the dominant issues on the minds of the locals Denverite speaks with each month.
Ludwig’s number attempts to better represent working people’s struggles. The institute argues that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data overstates how well certain regions are doing based on the number of people who have jobs — even if those jobs are part-time and woefully inadequate for funding a comfortable life.
So which metric should we trust to assess the city’s current economic situation? Well, neither. At least in totality.
So what does the Ludwig Institute’s True Unemployment Rate really count?
The institute calls its “functional unemployment” figure number the “True Rate of Unemployment,” or TRU — and it’s always higher than the federal unemployment rate released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“The TRU Out of the Population measures the percentage of people in the whole U.S. population that is functionally unemployed,” according to the study. “Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment Out of the Population tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.”
The institute developed the True Rate of Unemployment scale to create a more accurate picture of how many people are actually making a living at their jobs. That’s in contrast to the standard unemployment rate from the federal government.
“Generally speaking, the unemployment rate is calculated by simply dividing the number of unemployed persons — as defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — by the number of persons in the labor force (employed or unemployed who are actively seeking employment) and multiplying by 100,” the study explains. “While [the BLS measure] may be elegant in its simplicity, it presents a very incomplete and, in many ways, misleading picture.”
But here’s the thing
The Ludwig Institute’s numbers also present a simplistic, incomplete and somewhat misleading picture — even if the think tank does a better job of portraying the struggles of workers in the region than the federal statistics.
For anybody looking at Denver as a model: The $25,000 the institute counts as a living wage would be a stretch to live on.
A full-time worker making minimum wage ($18.29 per hour) would earn roughly $38,043 annually — well over the $25,000 cited in the study.
In Denver, an annual income under $25,000 is less than 30% of the $91,280 area median income for an individual. A household in that situation would qualify for nearly all government-subsidized housing.
In fact, housing is so expensive here that Denver offers some forms of government-subsidized housing for people making up to 80% of the area median income, which is $71,900 for a single person and $92,400 for a household of three.
Here’s what some private sector companies say people need to earn to live comfortably in the metro.
“Denver residents need an annual income of $167,562 to afford the median home,” according to a spokesperson for Clever Real Estate, a real estate data company.
That’s $76,282 more than the area median income for an individual.
According to a study by GoBankingRates, a personal finance website, renters in Denver need to earn $101,726 yearly to live without stress over bills, while homeowners need $144,616.
In a 2022 study, the Ludwig Institute, looking at more localized data, stated that a household of four needed just over $101,000 to live comfortably in Denver — a jump of more than 60% since 2005.
These studies offer some variation in their analysis of what it takes to live in the Denver area. Most people live here on less.
Even so, by all counts, the Ludwig Institute’s $25,000 a year “livable” income — a national standard — would be a pittance of what a person needs in the Denver metro.
Still, the Ludwig Institute says their measure has value
The government’s liberal count of who is actually employed has given economists a false sense of what constitutes a functioning economy, the Ludwig Institute argues.
High employment rates, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are generally considered a sign of good economic health.
Those numbers, according to the institute, give policymakers bad information about how everyday people are actually doing.
“This continued dependence on aggregate U.S. economic data constructed for a bygone era has been clouding the basic understanding of what’s happening on the ground,” the study states. ”New measures are needed if we are to understand what’s really going on.”
Rapper Afroman has performed many shows in Colorado and each time he visits, the people here always seem to make him uncomfortable with how nice they are.
“One time I was looking for an address and three strangers came from out of nowhere trying to help me find it. I didn’t know if someone was trying to steal my wallet,” he said with a laugh. “I never been uncomfortable with people being nice ’til I got to Colorado. It was giving me the goosebumps.”
Still, Afroman keeps coming back because of the vibe – “I call it California in the deep freezer,” he said, in large part because of the abundance of weed here.
Sleepless in Seattle, Doomed in Denver. Two straight postseasons. Two straight playoff exits for Valeri Nichushkin.
It’s been real, Val. Lord, it’s been glorious. But this is your stop.
The Avalanche title train needs engines it can rely on.
You weep for the man. You rage at the loss. You wonder about the Avs front office, which circled the wagons, protected and enabled their troubled winger. Only to be burned again.
It’s over. It’s time.
The championship window won’t wait.
Nathan MacKinnon turns 29 in September. Mikko Rantanen’s 28th birthday falls a month later. Gabe Landeskog will be 32 a month after that.
The Avs are on the clock.
And the timing couldn’t be worse.
Roughly an hour before Colorado dropped the puck on a pivotal Game 4 at home in their second-round Stanley Cup Playoffs series Monday night with the Dallas Stars, the NHL and NHLPA jointly dropped the bomb on the player nicknamed Nuke.
Nichushkin, the announcement read, had been placed in Stage 3 of the NHL Player Assistance Program but did not disclose why. Which means he’s suspended without pay for six months, and eligible to apply for reinstatement after that.
In other words, not just whatever’s left of this year’s postseason run — but at least a month into the regular season of 2024-25 as well.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The clock doesn’t just apply to the window, either.
Nichushkin has a whopping six seasons left on an eight-year, $49-million deal inked after he lifted Lord Stanley high. It’s turned into Kris Bryant minus the laugh track, bad money wasted by a good organization.
If he can’t help you reel in another Cup, it’s time to cut bait.
Let someone else take this challenge on.
Nichushkin’s got too much talent to give up, you say. Absolutely true. He’s also too unreliable to lean on anymore as a piece of this championship puzzle, too much of a risk to be a pillar for the core.
After the mysterious departure in Seattle, his absence for treatment this past winter and Monday’s suspension, can the Avs, his brothers, trust him? Can MacKinnon, who tolerates fools about as much as he tolerates defenders? Can Colorado fans?
Because it’s the brilliance that breaks your heart. The Choo Choo Train, who spent much of the winter in the NHL’s Player Assistance Program, was exemplary this postseason. His nine playoffs goals as of Monday afternoon were tied for the most in the league. His six-game streak of lamp-lighting to open a Cup run is an Avalanche record and fell one shy of the league mark.
When Nichushkin is on his game, he’s a force of nature. A 6-foot-4 speedster, a masterful screener, a power play cheat code, a colossus with soft, careful watchmaker’s hands.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Two straight postseasons. Two straight playoff vanishing acts.
Mayor Mike Johnston and Ben Sanders, the head of the Office of Social Equity and Innovation, announce the city’s new Office of Neighborhood Safety.
Kyle Harris / Denverite
During the George Floyd protests of 2020, activists demanding police reform called for local governments to shift money from armed law enforcement to community-led violence prevention.
On Monday morning, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced that the city is doing just that.
Johnston made the announcement in the Holly, a former shopping center in Northeast Park Hill that burned down in 2008 during a gang-related dispute.
The new office will broaden the city’s community relationships on public safety issues. It will also learn what neighbors say they need to decrease crime and increase a sense of safety beyond armed police.
“A lot of it is about getting the right resources in the right places,” said Ben Sanders, executive director of the Office of Social Equity and Innovation, who will be overseeing the work.
The new office would work with other citywide safety agencies to bring resources like added street lights or youth programming to communities that request them. Beyond that, the specifics are somewhat fuzzy and will be more clearly defined over the next few months.
What is clear is that racial equity is front and center in the conversation.
“You cannot create a safer city without clear commitments to racial, social, equity, and justice,” said Sanders.
As he sees it, this is proof that Johnston is leading with those values in mind, even as some institutions and cities pull away from equity-centered work in response to community calls for more police.
Sanders described the new program as a “courageous” partnership between his office and the Department of Public Safety.
Johnston said during the Monday morning announcement of the program that Armando Saldate, the executive director of the Department of Public Safety, supported the shift in resources. Saldate, who fell ill over the weekend, was not at the press conference.
Here’s what we know about how the Office of Neighborhood Safety will work.
All of the youth programs that currently run through the Department of Public Safety will be moved to the new office. So will the Assessment, Intake, and Diversion (AID) Center, an alternative-response facility that takes a public health approach to public safety issues, along with the Office of Community Violence Solutions and the Department of Public Safety’s various Youth Violence Prevention programs.
Part of the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program that sends mental health professionals to 911, currently under the Department of Public Health, will be moved into the Office of Neighborhood Safety.
It’s unclear what metrics the city will use to measure success, though some of the data collected under the current programs will continue to be evaluated as the new office measures what is — and isn’t — working about its approach. Whatever metrics the city lands on will be shared with the public.
Sanders says the new office will likely be rebranded in the near future.
Not all members of the community were enthusiastic about Johnston’s announcement.
“The Mayor rejected the recommendations from the Taskforce, his own ONS transition committee, and City Council members to create an office to support alternatives to policing,” Taskforce head Robert Davis wrote in the statement. “However, after the Taskforce announced plans in February to create a community-led initiative, the Mayor is now launching his own competing initiative.
“It’s like a child who abandons a toy until others show interest in it, and then he wants it back,” Davis added. “But it’s too late because this initiative belongs to the community, and we will see it through to fruition.”
The announcement came on the same day the Denver Taskforce to Reimagine Community Policing held a meeting with community policing experts to create an action plan for their own community-led Office of Neighborhood Safety and Violence Prevention.
Former mayoral candidate and criminal justice advocate Lisa Calderón, who works with the Taskforce, also chaired the mayor’s Community Wellbeing and Neighborhood Safety committee, though she was disheartened by his initial efforts.
“The Mayor was initially going to bury the initiative within the department of safety where good ideas go to die and bad ideas get funded,” explained Calderón in a statement. “I strongly objected to his plan because it was contrary to community input. Now he’s giving the concept to his equity office director who has failed to collaborate with key stakeholders and will be competing against us for limited funding. We will not be co-opted like the STAR program that was started by community organizers sidelined by City officials who grew their agency budgets.”
The mayor insists his office is ready to collaborate with the Denver Taskforce to Reimagine Community Policing and says that more organizations working on the issue are better than fewer.
Diverting $11 million and 65 full-time employees from the Department of Public Safety is a major effort, Johnston said, and requires central communication within the city. Now that the work is done, he’s ready to resume conversations with the Taskforce.
“We’re willing to work with anyone, including that outstanding Taskforce, in the work that they’re trying to advance,” said Sanders. “We want to move forward the work of neighborhood safety, right? To me, the prerequisites are easy. You care about the people being most negatively impacted. You’re more invested in advancing the work than you are in advancing yourself. And you want to come to a table of folks who feel the same way.”
Monday will be mostly sunny across northeast and north central Colorado with isolated and scattered showers and thunderstorms in the foothills and mountains later in the day.
Yesterday’s rain may continue in the Denver metro area this afternoon with a 20% chance of showers and thunderstorms after 3 p.m. and a high of 72 degrees. Tonight will be mostly cloudy with a low of 49 degrees.
Showers and thunderstorms are expected to return after noon on Tuesday with a 40% chance of precipitation and a high of 77 degrees. Rain may continue Tuesday night, mainly before midnight.
Chance of precipitation on Wednesday rises to 70% with showers and thunderstorms possible in the morning and afternoon and a 40% chance of precipitation before midnight Wednesday night.
Rain and thunderstorms may continue in the Denver metro area throughout the week and into the weekend, according to the NWS.
Colorado Avalanche right wing Valeri Nichushkin (13), Nathan MacKinnon (29) and Colorado Avalanche right wing Mikko Rantanen (96) celebrate Rantanens goal against the Dallas Stars in the second period of Game 3 of the second round of the 2024 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs in Denver on Saturday, May 11, 2024. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
Coloradans looking to buy homes or simply hold onto their property face a barrage of challenges: a white-hot real estate market, high interest rates and soaring property taxes. You can add surging home insurance rates to the pile of problems eroding the landscape of affordable housing options.
Colorado homeowners are reporting premium increases ranging from roughly 30% to more than 130% in just the past few years. People are getting the bad news that their policies won’t be renewed. Some insurance companies are deciding not to write new policies to cut their risks.
And condo owners are getting hit with special assessments and higher dues because premiums are skyrocketing for homeowners associations. The groups must often resort to non-standard carriers, which typically charge sky-high rates for lesser coverage.
“We truly have the hardest market that we’ve seen in a generation for property insurance,” said Carole Walker, executive director of the trade organization Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association.
Colorado’s not alone. Inflation, higher home costs and the rising number and severity of natural disasters and wildfires are pushing up insurance costs. The average premium rate increase nationwide in 2023 was 11.3%, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
But Colorado’s recent increases stand out. The state was one of three with the biggest cumulative change in rates 2018-2023. Colorado logged a 57.9% jump, just behind Texas at 59.9%. Arizona saw a 52.9% increase.
A convergence of factors is driving the run-up in costs, Walker said. Higher inflation is one of those. “You have everything that insurance pays for going up in cost.”
Building materials are more expensive. Labor costs are up and labor shortages create delays and add to the expense. Walker said insurance-related lawsuits also help push up premiums.
An even larger force is the fallout from increasingly costly wildfires, hail storms and other disasters. Insurance companies doing business in Colorado reported the fourth-highest losses in the country for five years, according to data compiled for a 2023 report by the Colorado Division of Insurance.
“I hate to say it, but we all likely need to adjust to higher premiums over the long term,” Walker said.
The effects of the mounting risks are being felt by a lesser known, but crucial link in the chain that connects to homeowners: the reinsurance market. Reinsurers are typically large, global companies that provide insurance to insurance companies to help spread the risk.
“The international impact of climate change, of increasing climate disasters, the severity of those disasters is causing reinsurers to consider their risk, reduce their exposure or increase their premiums,” said Vince Plymell, spokesman for the insurance division.
As a result, the effects of hurricanes and earthquakes in other parts of the country or world can eventually show up in a Colorado homeowner’s insurance bill, said Jason Lapham, the state’s deputy commissioner for property and casualty insurance.
Closer to home are the growing risks of wildfire and hail storms. Colorado is second in the nation for hail-damage claims and second only to California for the number of homes at risk from wildfires. Colorado hasn’t seen the kind of wide scale refusal of companies to write new policies that California has, but Lapham said there is a trend of some companies not re-upping policies in areas prone to wildfires or other disasters or taking “a pause” on new clients.
“It doesn’t mean they’re leaving the state entirely, but for those people who are affected, the effect is the same,” Lapham said.
State officials don’t have a lot of insight into the modeling used by companies to decide which areas are too risky to insure, Lapham said. “We’re focused on getting a better understanding and creating transparency, not just for us but also for policy holders.”
Levi Ware, project manager from Red Hawk Roofing company from Denver, takes pictures of a roof damaged by large hail and a tornado along Chesapeake Street in Highlands Ranch on June 23, 2023. A rare tornado hit the Highlands Ranch area Thursday afternoon causing damage to roofs and uprooting large trees. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
What’s worse than rising premiums?
There were plenty of insurance options for Bryan Watts and his wife when they bought a house in Guffey in Park County, west of Cripple Creek. The premium was about $2,000 in 2019 and rose gradually to $2,522 for the 2023-2024 policy year.
“Things changed dramatically in August 2023 when we received a notice of non-renewal at the policy maturity of June 2024,” Watts said. “I called them and was told it was simply due to wildfire risk.”
Watts tried to reason with the company, saying he had done a lot of work to reduce threats from wildfire. He offered to send pictures of his home or show an inspector around his property. But the insurer told him that it wasn’t going to cover homes in his zip code.
“I thought, ‘Well, no big deal. I’ll just move to another carrier,’” Watts said. “I had no idea how bad it had gotten just in the last year or two.”
A broker Watts worked with found only nonstandard insurers willing to cover his home. The insurers might take on customers that more traditional companies consider too risky, but the coverage comes at a high price. In Watts’ case, the quote was for nearly $35,000.
After making calls on his own, Watts found one of the big-name companies willing to write a policy for $4,800. A hang-up for companies that turned him down was that the nearest fire station is about 16 miles from his home. “They’re looking for substations that are 10 miles or closer,” Watts said.
Like a lot of people, Watts has a mortgage on his house, which means he needs to carry insurance. “There are going to be very few people who are able to live out here without a mortgage,” he said.
Escalating home insurance premiums and companies scaling back coverage are creating angst in the real estate industry. Brian Tanner, vice president of public policy for the Colorado Association of Realtors, said agents are seeing properties lose coverage or unable to find insurance.
“All of this together is incredibly problematic for a market that we already know is strained. We need more available units,” Tanner said. “If we have existing residences that cannot secure insurance, that is absolutely a market disruptor.”
Real estate agents are scrambling to help clients to find coverage, Tanner said. He is concerned about rising rates on people on fixed incomes.
The state is creating an insurer of last resort, officially called the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, which will be paid for by assessments on the insurance industry. But it won’t be up and running until 2025 and applicants must have been turned down by at least three carriers.
Walker said the goal is to relieve pressure on the standard carriers by shifting some of the high risks, which the industry hopes will stabilize the market.
“Everybody I talk to is talking about the property insurance issue,” said Sarah Thorsteinson, CEO of the Altitude Realtors association, which includes Summit and Routt counties.
Real estate agents working in mountain communities started looking at the effect of wildfire risks on home insurance rates around 2012. That’s when the association started education and fire-mitigation programs for members and the public to head off possible mandates it worried could increase costs for buyers and sellers.
Thorsteinson represents property owners as a non-voting member of the Colorado Fire Commission. She said the association’s biggest concern with rising insurance premiums is housing affordability.
The ongoing struggle by homeowners associations, HOAs, to secure insurance has grown tougher, Thorsteinson said. She has heard of HOA dues doubling and tripling for condo owners in her area after insurance premiums shot up.
“We’ve seen increases of 100% or more for HOA policies,” said Lapham with the state insurance division.
Even before the recent rate increases, it was common for HOAs to have to seek providers in the non-standard market, also called the surplus lines market. “My guess is that it’s more common now than it has been simply because of the tightening of the market generally,” Lapham said.
Many of the more well-known insurers have gotten out of the condo business, Walker said, leaving the nonstandard carriers, whose policies are more expensive and have higher deductibles.
The more traditional insurers exited in part because of fears around construction-related lawsuits by HOAs. A 2017 law that requires a majority of homeowners to approve pursuing a lawsuit rather than just the HOA board has done little to coax insurers to write policies for condo buildings.
In some cases, HOA boards, trying to avoid raising dues, have put off infrastructure improvements and maintenance, making insurers nervous about the liabilities, Walker said.
The Hiland Hills Townhomes HOA was able to line up a new insurer in 2023, but had to budget for a 30% increase in premiums. Dues went up from $336 a month to $460 per unit.
“The coverage decreased overall. This year we’re budgeting for another 15% increase,” said Dmitry Gall, the HOA board president at the Denver complex.
The HOA was able to shuffle some items in the policy to hold down the increase. Gall said the association is cutting back in other areas to help pay the premium.
The HOA where Jon Christianson has a rental unit saw its insurance premium leap from the $167,000 budgeted last year to nearly $607,000. His fees doubled, “with a special assessment coming,” he said.
A letter from the HOA board that Christianson shared with The Denver Post said the previous insurance carrier got out of the Colorado market. Several companies declined to offer bids on a new policy because of the height and age of the three buildings in the complex and the fire suppression system.
Then the insurance for Christianson’s primary residence rose by 40%.
“I’ve never filed a claim. I’ve been with same insurance company for five years,” Christianson said. “This is becoming unsustainable.”
Carole Walker, the Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association, stands for a photo outside the residential building where she lives in Denver on May 7, 2024. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
A marathon, not a sprint
The Marshall fire, which killed two people and destroyed 1,084 homes and businesses, receives a lot of the blame for Colorado’s escalating home insurance rates. The Dec. 30, 2021, wildfire raged through Louisville, Superior and parts of unincorporated Boulder County, leaving more than $2 billion in property damage in its wake.
Walker said although the Marshall fire was a devastating event, the reasons for rising rates are more complex. For instance, more people are moving into areas along the Front Range that frequently get battered by hail. Walker said Colorado’s most expensive hail storm hit in May 2017, wreaking $2.7 billion in damage in today’s dollars.
But for Alan McDaniel, who has an insurance agency in Castle Rock, the threat of wildfire is the primary obstacle when looking for ways to get a handle on rising insurance costs.
“I’m lucky enough that the carrier I mostly use, Farmers Insurance, isn’t not renewing policies, but others are,” McDaniel said.
He has worked with homeowners around Larkspur and other areas deemed too risky for wildfires by some insurers. “You have to fill out a fire-mitigation plan, take pictures and prove to my underwriter that it’s worth taking on because they’ve done all the steps they need to do,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel and other insurance agents have met with fire agencies to learn more about reducing wildfire risks and programs like Firewise, a national program overseen by the state forest service in Colorado. A goal is to lower homeowners’ premiums by making changes.
“In light of the Marshall fire, we did get inquiries from some homeowners and associations that were facing increased premiums as well as potentially losing coverage,” said Bart Chambers, the fire marshal for the Castle Rock Fire and Rescue Department.
Chambers has met with insurance agents to help them understand the steps needed to better protect homes and businesses. The fire department collaborates with town planners on decreasing wildfire threats and hopes to increase the number of certified Firewise neighborhoods in Castle Rock.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Chambers said. “It needs to be maintained and followed through continuously.”
Chambers spent 30 years with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
“We saw that on the front end there and we’re seeing it nationally now 20 years later, not only with wildfires but also with natural disasters,” Chambers said. “In Colorado, we can look at other people’s losses and make it better locally.”
