Resident generated news about Lakewood, Colorado
Resident generated news about Lakewood, Colorado
By Regina Hopkins, in the Westword
There is a glaring lack of long-term thinking when it comes to neighborhood continuity and planning in Lakewood.
City council’s radical rezoning is a blueprint for rushed, cheap, builder-grade development over thoughtful planning. Mature trees? Bulldozed for convenience. Infrastructure for fire, water, traffic, parks? Afterthoughts, already failing to keep up with current demands.
The independent hearing officer made a determination absolving Lakewood and the referendum petitioners in the campaign finance complaint. The complaint was registered by Kip Kolkmeier against the zoning referendum petitioners. The findings say that there is room for interpretation how to safeguard a democratic government.
All the information on this is included at this link to the independent hearing officer’s decision. The document is 197 pages in length but includes the original complaint, the City Clerk’s response to the Complaint, the 8 page hearing officer decision and the full transcript of the hearing.
Struggling social media site Nextdoor published and raved about these 13 recent posts on their site. They described the author as a ‘trusted neighbor’ who was ‘making a difference in the neighborhood’! They also repeatedly encouraged the author to keep posting and asked ‘What will you share next?’ and displayed a large button to create a new post.
Then suddenly, the exact same posts that neighbors were ‘really interested in’ were banned with no notice and no warning as being SPAM even though Nextdoor had repeatedly encouraged the author to post such content on their site.
Lakewood residents questioned why an offender was out on parole after a burgerly turned homocide in Lakewood on December 6, 2025. In fact, more residents commented on parole than offered congratulations to police for a speedy resolution. Comments such as “Another parolee that never should have been released!!” were common to Lakewood Police Department’s (LPD) Facebook post on the issue.
The City of Lakewood has effectively pulled the rug out from under the people by imposing impossible deadlines on the citizen referendum process, making meaningful participation nearly impossible.
There are several updates to the zoning referendum, including sufficiency, new legal challenges and the city staff writing new campaign finance law.
Zoning petition #3 has passed the count for initial sufficiency. Petition #3 was to repeal Ordinance O-2025-29, replacing Article 3 of the zoning code concerning a lot of single-family zoning provisions. Petition #3 will join 1 and 2 in waiting for final approval before going to City Council.
Zoning Petition #4 has been submitted to Lakewood. That completes the signature gathering process to repeal all parts of the newly passed zoning code.
There are rumors that all petition signatures have been challenged and will require a new hearing and costly legal defense. Details pending.
Campaign Finance Challenge
Recent meetings from the Jeffco School Board Partnership for Fiscal Sustainability discussed raising the mill levy and how to market that decision to residents. This demonstrates yet another government body shaping propaganda to support a future ballot measure. Jeffco Schools, like Lakewood and Jefferson County, hired a consultant to help with a mill levy question. At this point, a community survey has asked about revenue generation. Budget presentations show data about raising the levy. Budget reductions are discussed as a part of the solution.
The point of these meetings was to “prepare and involve the community to support future revenue generation,” as seen in the slide below. This is using district resources to get resident support in what will likely be a ballot question on the mill levy. School communications are also a tool to discuss any upcoming cuts or revenue changes.
From savebelmarpark.com
Homelessness, and especially people who are unhoused, is a growing concern in the US. Upzoning advocates have pointed to the high cost of housing as a key driver of homelessness and that upzoning would make housing more affordable and therefore would reduce the number of unhoused persons in a city.
‘Upzoning’ is a city planning strategy to increase housing density and therefore housing supply via related zoning changes to support the strategy.
The new zoning rewrite drastically changed the very definition of a residential dwelling unit. Residents may be accustomed to using words like single-family, duplex, or even shelter. All that has now gone away. All of them are now considered the same. They are all “residential dwelling.”
That means that any of them, including a homeless shelter, can be your new nextdoor neighbor and there’s nothing to stop it.
The 2012 zoning code broke out 9 categories for uses and permitted them per zone, depending on suitability.
The same table in the 2025 rewrite shows only three categories. The highlighted categories from 2012 have all been compressed into one category, “residential dwelling”.
City Council decided to break up the zoning code into four separate public hearings. There will now be 4 separate ordinances that will have second readings on separate dates. Council expressed the strong desire to have voting completed BEFORE the November elections. These changes are big enough to be an election issue, but City Council is taking that off the table by guaranteeing that residents’ votes will not matter for zoning changes. The new dates for second reading are: The original motion was to delay the second reading and also break up the code into digestible pieces. There was more talk of making the code easier to understand than there was of making changes, but the break-up was mostly agreeable. However, with some Councilors disagreeing with the delay, that was changed to maintain a second reading on the Aug 25 date for the first piece. It is unclear if Council is hearing opposition from residents or whether Council believes people just don’t understand what’s going on. “Education” was mentioned several times. Councilor Low read off many city “touchpoints” that would indicate everyone had been informed enough, and any delay was unjustified. About half the council, including Councilors Mayott-Guerrero and Shahrezaei, argued that people were expecting the second reading on August 25 and may not understand that the dates had changed so that wasn’t an option. In reality, even this first reading was delayed due to pressure against these sweeping changes, so that argument was unconvincing. Several Councilors mentioned that they had to have the final vote before elections. So the final opportunity to vote would be a special meeting November 3. No one seemed willing to let this issue be settled as an election matter or be voted on by new councilors. Deputy City Manager Ben Goldstein said that new maps will be available as of Tuesday, August 12, 2025, on https://www.lakewoodtogether.org/zoningupdates. Until now, there was no map that was clear enough to see individual neighborhoods for people to see how changes would affect them.
