Lakewood Informer

Resident generated news about Lakewood, Colorado

Lakewood Informer

Resident generated news about Lakewood, Colorado

"Voice of the people" with megaphone

Voice of the People: Election Thoughts

City leaders are expressing surprise over the zoning election results and showing how completely out of touch they are with their constituents.  Instead of acknowledging this fact, or even stepping down in favor of someone who is more grounded, leaders renewed their commitment to some level of zoning changes.

Meanwhile, several trends are emerging as residents acknowledge they need more accountability:

  1. Calls to not split the vote
  2. Calls for more candidates
  3. Recall

Don’t Split The Vote

The reader email below is representative of several calls for residents to get organized and run a single, anti-establishment candidate, rather than splitting the vote:

I wanted to share my view that everyone is probably aware of. If this gets in the conversation maybe it’ll happen. If the citizens truly want an improvement to how their city’s run it’s important that there’s only two people on the ballot for future elected positions. Maybe it’s easier said than done. It’ll take being united and picking just one to run against the statue quo. Two candidates splitting the vote won’t have much of a chance especially when needing to change policy direction. It’ll take one or more candidates making a sacrifice and stepping back through peer pressure if necessary. If they won’t do that to help fix the broken system maybe it’s part of a bigger plan after all. Nothing will change otherwise. No doubt future election strategy is already in the planning stage.

Call For Candidates

What this election showed was that Lakewood has a lot of motivated, effective people that are not satisfied with Lakewood leaders. Ultimately, residents are looking for representatives of Lakewood people, rather than outsiders. As the reddit exchange below points out, and as seen before in Lakewood Informer news, Lakewood representatives currently favor outsiders, including special-interest, real estate developers.

If you are interested in running for office, people are looking for you to step up. Next year is big elections like City Council and smaller special district elections, like water and fire. Feel free to email Lakewood Informer news for more information.

"There really is no excuse for low voter turnout. 100k ballots go out and less than half of those get submitted. People in this country used to stand for something" Response: "Cause the support is not from Lakewood residents, it's all from outsiders"

Recall

There is a lot of backroom chatter about recall, all dependent on finding candidates, as discussed above.  Below is one semi-public example from nextdoor.com.

"How soon can we start voting out existing city council members?" Reply "I hate that this website platforms people with a lot of time on their hands."

Divided Community

While the people who won the election are gearing up for a prolonged battle, the people who lost are understandably upset. The reddit thread below shows the nasty tone this sometimes takes. Lakewood still has some interesting times ahead.

“This is not over — we have things in the code that need to be updated”  – Mayor Wendi Strom 

Scroll to top