Entrenched Bureaucracy Archives

Lakewood greenlights Kairoi to introduce invasive plants to BelmarPark

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on March 31, 2025. Leave a Comment

Photo by Regina Hopkins

In case you are wondering, the Irongate Complex at 777 S Yarrow Street has been converted to rubble by the demolition crew. Large piles of concrete rubble await removal.

Moving on to the topic of the day, a portion of Belmar Park is designated for grading on the developer’s grading plan. We estimate the area of the park to be graded amounts to thousands of square feet assuming the grading plan mentioned does not change.

However, Lakewood’s Planning Department states the opposite: “The proposed development of this property does not involve or include any parkland…”

Obviously, any area of the park destroyed by heavy equipment activities related to the Kairoi market-priced housing project will have to be fully restored to original or better condition, right? Wrong again.

According to the Erosion Control Report submitted to Lakewood by Kairoi’s civil engineers, only 70% of a restored area needs to be restored with ‘vegetation visible’ according to p.22. There is no requirement that the park be fully restored to original or better condition!

Let’s say someone crashed into your parked car and does significant damage. After body shop repairs, only 70% of the damage is repaired. Are you OK with that? If you are, apply for a job at the City of Lakewood where that level of completion is apparently acceptable when it comes to requiring developers to do the right thing.

Once an area has been graded, the developer will usually attempt to restore the area.

Read the entire newsletter…

Picture of master site plan for The Bend

Site Plan for the Ex-Superfund Landfill

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on March 24, 2025.

Thanks to a Lakewood Informer reader and local resident, the site plan for The Bend has been revealed! Contrary to previous reporting, plans have indeed been laid but when discussed in public meetings, those plans were “punted” till later. The north half was not a focus for the City because the planning department granted the developer a phased development status since remediation plans have not been set.

Our reader supplied a full list of instructions to access this information online, which were not provided with Lakewood’s CORA response. To view the plans, the public must register with the eTRAKiT site and login.

The address associated with the project is 11601 W 2^nd Pl. In eTRAKiT, search for the following project numbers:

FI24-0012 (final plat)
SP24-0006 (site plan)
ZP24-0005 (preplanning letter)
MD24-0001(metro district)

The master plan reveals the area north of 4^th Ave that is currently labeled “do not disturb” will eventually have more residential housing than the south end, totaling about 2000, rather than 2000 only on the south end.

There is currently no public plan for remediation or start times while the developer, Lincoln Properties, works to secure the pieces necessary to get a metropolitan district approved. The metro district will be used as a funding mechanism, rather than a service mechanism, and nothing can proceed without funding.

The difference between a funding mechanism and service mechanism is important because metropolitan districts are granted government privileges based on providing public services.

To get any kind of infrastructure built on the landfill, the site will need remediation. The safety of the future residents would dictate that full site remediation be completed before building. It’s possible the profits from the south side will be used to fund the north side, or be used to repay developer investment before moving on to the more costly north side.

A bank or private investors might demand remediation first since the success and cost of remediation will dictate overall project success. Federal grants are available to assist, which in this case is only right since the federal government caused the contamination. State grants are also available, many of which are pass-through for federal funds.

Much of the rest of the funding will come through Lakewood’s Urban Renewal financing and metro district bonds. With Lakewood-approved, government-backed guarantees through metro districts, the developer can privatize the benefits while socializing the risks. The benefit to the public will be the ability to live on this revitalized land.

In this case, there is no public living there and asking for a democratic vote on public services. Those future residents are depending on the city to represent their interests. There is no direct representation for taxation.

Update: Manager’s Salary Even Higher

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on March 23, 2025.

Lakewood resident Bob Adams brings receipts! Lakewood Informer news stated that City Manager Cathy Hodgson made a base salary of $280,000, as stated during the December 19, 2022 City Council meeting.

Mr. Adams made an open records request to find out that the City Manager’s 2024 annual base salary was $335,949. This does not include benefits.

The adjustment could be year-over-year increases, which would be a 20% increase over two years. It could also be that the original $280,000 stated during council meetings was incorrect, if so, my apologies.

Many City Councilors justify this high salary based on Manager Hodgson’s 15 years of experience. There is, understandably, no public discussion on personnel matters. However, the review used to be tied to a metric like resident satisfaction. With declining satisfaction, the resident survey came out with less frequency and is no longer a performance metric.

From Bob Adams, 2023, open records request from Lakewood:

Screenshot of excel sheet showing salary

New zoning rules propose to take Lakewood back to “bedroom” community concept

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on March 20, 2025.

Repost from Dave Weichman

On top of everything else going on these days, the Lakewood establishment is planning to change the city’s comprehensive plan and zoning codes to allow for more population density and cheaper housing. As usual there is way too much devil in the details to wrap one’s head around.

However, there is one area that gives me a deja vu. Back when I was on City Council (in 2012) there was a major change in zoning. One of the innovations was the concept of “mixed-use” zones.

We on Council bought into the idea there could be buildings with multiple uses. The example we were sold on was a vision where the first floor of the building could have commercial uses like restaurants or shops. The second floor could be offices for businesses. The third and fourth floors could be apartments or condos for residential use.

Therefore there could be three different types of uses within the same building. This would reduce the need for traveling to different zones for a range of uses – i.e. one could work, shop, play and live all within a single building. So city zoning was changed to create “mixed-use” zones that would allow for several different types of uses within the same structure.

However, when it came time to actually build this type of zoning ALL these buildings were 100% housing. Commercial uses and offices remained located in other parts of the metro area. The City argued mixed-use did not mean there actually had to be more than one use going on in a building but rather there was a range of possible uses to choose from. According to this line of reasoning, the builder could choose to either build all housing, or all commercial or all offices.

When voters complained about this bait and switch tactic, there was an effort to require that mixed-use buildings actually have more than one use going on. There was a major City Council effort led by Ward 4’s David Skilling to change the zoning rules for properties in Mixed-Use Employment (MU-E) districts.

Mr. Skilling was able to pass an ordinance that changed MU-E zones to prohibit more than 50% of the building being used for housing. However, since developers never had any intention of building mixed use projects but rather were just interested in finding a way to build housing in zones previously limited to commercial or office use, not a single project was eventually build using this model.

After these zoning rules went into effect, developers with properties zoned as MU-Employment came back to the city and requested permission to re-zone these properties into a category that would allow them to build 100% housing.

Fast forward to 2025. The current proposed “reform” of the City’s zoning codes seeks to just get rid of the 50% limit on housing in MU-E zones. That way developers could continue to just focus on building more housing. As for commercial and office uses, the proposed zoning would go back to the old scheme of making Lakewood the “bedroom” community for metro Denver.

So this new zoning is essentially a GOING BACK to the glory days of multi-family residential housing and riding the train into Denver for work or shopping.

Screenshot of the Dec 19, 2022 City Council meeting

City Manager’s Annual Review

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on March 20, 2025.

By Lenore Herskovitz

On Monday, March 24 the City Council will hold the first of 2 Special Meetings regarding the Annual Review of the City Manager, Kathy Hodgson. Residents are not privy to the standards or metrics that are used to evaluate the job performance of our most powerful and most highly compensated city officials. At one time, the City of Lakewood Community Survey was issued every 2 to 3 years which included approval ratings for the city’s performance. In 2010, when Kathy Hodgson took office this approval rating was 67%. By 2022, this had dropped to 38%. Since then, this survey has not circulated. Until 2022 these survey results were included in the evaluation process (See Lakewood Informer news report from 2022). On Dec. 19, 2022, the City Council met to amend the City Manager’s 2014 Employment Agreement and establish the 2022 Employment Agreement. This was supposed to be discussed on Dec. 5 in an Executive session but 4 Councillors (Able, Springsteen, Olver, and Janssen) opposed the session because they felt they had not been provided enough information in advance of the meeting.

At the Dec. 19 meeting there was confusion about whether the representatives were voting solely on the amendments or on the new contract because the packet that was presented only included a staff memo and the resolution containing the proposed amendments. There was no redlined version showing what had been removed from the 2014 contract or any copy of what the new contract would be in its entirety. One thing that had been eliminated was any use of the community survey results when determining the City Manager’s compensation. Only City Council would make that determination moving forward. In spite of the fact that no complete copy of the 2022 contract was provided, the majority of council members voted to pass it. Those voting in favor included our present mayor then Councilor Strom, Mayor Pro Tem (then Councilor) Shahrezaei, and Councilor Mayott-Guerrero. Those opposed were the same 4 who voted against the Dec. 5 executive session which forced the public hearing on the 19th. As a result, the determination regarding the City Manager’s review and compensation rests in the hands of our elected council members. How often do these individuals hold the City Manager accountable? Is there really any oversight when department heads fail to comply with city codes or ordinances? For example, when the previous Director of Community Resources failed to evaluate fees-in-lieu on an annual basis from 2018 to 2023 as required by ordinance, were there any consequences? The City Manager appoints this and other directorial positions and is responsible for supervising them. Recently, it was discovered that perhaps the Chief of Sustainability and Community Development and his staff had not been following the 2018 Parkland Dedication ordinance, which can be seen in a letter dated October 23, 2024 on page 2 of this document under Item 11 Parkland Dedication, the developer, who had not yet been issued a building permit, was being charged the old fee of $254,545 an acre as opposed to the $432,727 fee that went into effect on June 1, 2024.

PLANNING COMMENTS V4_SP22-0020 Download

Are ordinances mere suggestions rather than laws to be followed under this City Manager? Is discretion to reinterpret the law acceptable now? Who, if anyone, is providing oversight and accountability from department heads, or do mistakes just get scapegoated or buried altogether?

After years of complaints, meetings are still posted on the wrong site. There still is no consolidated, easily accessible City Directory to identify employees by department and their city contact information. At the annual planning session, councilors have requested better communication between themselves and staff. The City Manager was supposed to provide in-person quarterly updates on goals set at the retreat. Instead, there are updates on the city dashboard in addition to a workshop that was held in person (with no recording available to the public who couldn’t attend). For years, City Council has seemed willing to overlook these shortfalls.

If you wish to share your views about the City Manager’s performance feel free to contact: CityCouncilMembers@Lakewood.org
You can also contact your individual councilors through the link provided (https://www.lakewood.org/Government/City-Council/City-Council-Members)

The Bend Development Incomplete Site Plan

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on March 14, 2025.

16 March, 2025 Thanks to a reader who provided new information, this post requires a major rewrite. Please stop reading now and stay tuned!

What will Lincoln Property Company (LPC) do with the toxic landfill on The Bend development at 4^th and Union? No one knows.

One part of the property has development plans, including the area SOUTH of 4^th Ave. This area is supposedly free of contamination and can be developed by following safety rules.

The area NORTH of 4^th Ave is where no development can occur because it wasn’t fully remediated, only covered with dirt. There has been no plan filed for this land so the site plan is incomplete.

The city needs the plan for the entire parcel of land to design adequate resources and to reassure residents the area is safe. But if anyone knows the full site plans, Lakewood Informer can’t find them.

Google map of The Bend property at 4th and Union showing the landfill on the north half and the development site on the south half

Lakewood Informer filed an open records request for the site plan. Instead of supplying the document, the city said to get it online.

Open Records response from Lakewod giving website to tind documents — Open records response from Lakewood

To be fair, knowing where to find the documents yourself is a valuable tool for any government website, which always seems convoluted. The Urban Renewal application materials were posted for the meeting back in January. However, there was no site plan included. (Thank you to the city staff who handle requests)

Going to the eTRAKiT development site revealed no permits or projects for that parcel ID.

Screenshot of eTRAKiT website showing "no rresults" — Screenshot from eTRAKiT website for The Bend parcel

There is obviously a site plan, pre-development application, development application, or whatever is applicable according to Lakewood property development steps. Lakewood and LPC have been working on this site for years. And perhaps there is a good reason why I can’t get the material myself online. But regardless, I do not have that information to share.

Public statements from LPC confirm that they will decide what to do with that land later. They have acknowledged that there is no plan for land right now, even as a concept.

How can the city approve a site plan that doesn’t include the entire site?

How can the city let homes be developed across the street, literally, from an acknowledged environmental hazard site, without getting some kind of plan for that land?

Aside from the safety factor to the people living there, the city needs a full site plan to develop adequate infrastructure. This site is anticipated to include almost 2,000 homes, which will impact traffic, water, fire and police resources. Are the resources currently being planned enough for the entire parcel? Or only half? Why not disclose the plans for the entire site?

Citizen Initiative Repealed

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on February 25, 2025.

A quick update from Cathy Kentner

Dear Friends of Lakewood,

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, City Council repealed our citizen initiative last night. They kept none of the requests from the petitioners.

Thank you to everyone who made comments! Please stay involved and keep letting your voice be heard. The fact that the developer-funded establishment didn’t even let us vote on this issue is evidence that we are making good, valid points.

The next thing coming up for the City as a whole is the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance amendments. The next thing for the Belmar Park project is the Planning Commission hearing to approve the site plan, not yet scheduled but likely to be in April or May.

Thank you,

Cathy

Equal Representation on Budget Board Denied

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on February 8, 2025.

City Council Members Jacob Labure and Paula Nystrom asked for equal representation on the Budget and Audit Board, January 27, 2025. They were denied. Only three wards will be represented on the Board.

The Budget and Audit Board is vitally important for accountability. Many policies and programs that staff originate are never disclosed to the public. They only show up in funding requests. And as evidenced by the 2024 vote to de-TABOR, city staff is not often turned down.

Councilor LaBure was involved in the last rewrite of the Budget Board. LaBure fought hard to get each ward representation on the Board, saying it was common practice to not only have five Councilors on the Board but to allow any Council Member to come and make comments.

Now the current Board doesn’t even allow comments.

Councilors Shahrezaei and Mayott-Guerrero both said that allowing that many Councilors, as worked for years, would now be unmanageable. Shahrezaei pointed out that at one point, a single councilor made 37 questions to staff and that amount of work was too hard.

There is no general rule for how many questions the paid city staff should answer as part of being publicly accountable for a multi-million-dollar budget.

In 2024, when Mayor Strom downsized committee sizes, then-Councilor Rich Olver was upset to be removed. Strom explained that she thought she was doing him a favor because he often didn’t have time. Olver was not present at the meeting for the initial appointments to protest. But his argument resonated with Councilor Dave Rein who supported increasing representation.

Councilor Low also supported the proposal saying, “Budget is one of the most important things we do. Ward 3 should have representation.”

2025 Council Members on the Budget Board are:

Jeslin Shahrezaei, Ward 1
Isabel Cruz, Ward 2
Dave Rein, Ward 4

Scorecard: Allow Equal Representation

Strom: Nay

Shahrezaei: Nay

Sinks: Nay

Mayott-Guerrero: Nay

Cruz: Nay

Low: Aye

Rein: Aye

LaBure: Aye

Nystrom: Aye

A Look Back

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on January 16, 2023. 1 Comment

Guest post by Lenore Herskovitz

On February 19, 2022 the City held an “ in person only” Annual Planning Retreat. The attendees consisted mostly of Council members, the Mayor, the city manager and 4 members of the public. The only record of this meeting was a written summary provided by the facilitator Heather Bergman. This year’s retreat is scheduled for January 28 so it seems like an opportune time to look back at the status of the priorities that were set last year.

The priorites fell into several categories including:

affordable housing
homelessness
sustainability/resilience/climate change
public safety
economic stability
parks and development (in part, distressed and abandoned properties)

These topics were assigned 4 designations to determine the focal efforts of the City in moving forward: potential new initiatives, staff circle backs, current efforts and study sessions.

During one of the retreat exercises, the councilors prioritized 6 potential new initiatives:

addressing homelessness emergency response;
developing innovative solutions to workforce home ownership;
taking a proactive approach to distressed properties;
addressing the Safe Lots ordinance change;
addressing rental housing options; and
developing additional dog parks.

When the city manager was asked if she thought the 6 goals were achievable, she cut the list in half citing staff shortages and budgetary constraints.

So where do we stand as of January, 2023?

On the plus side, a Safe Lots ordinance change took effect, but according to Councilor Vincent, only one church in Lakewood ( located in Ward 2) is participating in the program.

Distressed properties finally made the Council agenda as a study session on December 19, ten months after the retreat. On February 6, 2023 there is a study session scheduled with a presentation on the Strategic Housing Plan. It is uncertain what this entails. The use of the term “strategic” is interesting because staff had altered the name of the Strategic Growth Initiative (SGI) to the Residential Growth Limitation Ordinance, which has a more negative connotation. Now the word “strategic” is being used to describe staff’s housing plan.

Last spring the majority of City Council members voted to disband the Development Dialogues the day before the group planned to address inclusionary zoning claiming it was redundant because the Housing Policy Commission would be dealing with this issue. This commission spent 2022 focused on short term rental (STR) policies. On January 23, 2023 there will be a first reading of the STR ordinance. More than 8 months have lapsed without dealing with inclusionary zoning. What progress could have been made if the Development Dialogues had been permitted to do their work on this?

Regarding public safety concerns, Councilor Janssen held a well-attended community meeting independent of City Hall to discuss this very important topic. Speakers included an Aurora City Council member and a state legislator. The majority of council members have been reluctant to address public safety concerns in spite of the rise in crime and repeated attempts by constituents and Councilors Janssen and Springsteen to discuss these issues at Council meetings. On January 9, at the most recent Council meeting, Councilor Janssen submitted a request for legislative modification to create a Public Safety Committee. This will be discussed further at the upcoming retreat.

At the last annual planning meeting a mid year follow-up was discussed but never happened. Presently, the evaluation of progress on priorities occurs annually. Once a year accountability is not sufficient. Perhaps after priorities are established on January 28, updates can be presented to the public at City Council meetings on a quarterly basis to let the community know exactly how issues raised are being addressed. Hopefully then we will be able to look back at 2023 as a year of goal fulfillment.

Interview with Rich Olver

Written by Lakewood News from Karen on December 24, 2022. 1 Comment

Council Member Rich Olver graciously sat down with us on December 22, to talk about the recent meeting where he was muted during discussions regarding incentives for the Lakewood City Manager.

I have cut the video into a couple parts for viewability. Both contain information and news for Lakewood, Colorado

Part 1: How the job is going and other tidbits about how the City Council and the City of Lakewood Colorado works

Part 2: The December meetings about the City Manager incentives where Councilors were muted

Notable remarks from Rich:

I prefer to be called Rich
My first paying job, when I was 14 and I was from dairy country so I got a job on a dairy farm. One of the things I had to do was curry the cows. If you aren’t familiar that’s like cleaning them. Basically they poop and lay down in it and it’s all over their backsides. Someone has to clean that off. So anyway that was not the best job in the world to start with. But I’d have to go with, this one’s worse.
I wanted to come in and talk to parks department and talk to them about future dog parks. And I did do that when I was a candidate. And that was allowed. But when I tried to do that as a Councilor, well the first time I just got blown off, and the next time I met with the City Manager I said “I think you are just blowing me off here” and the response was, “well we don’t want councilors coming in and talking to staff at staff meetings when they are discussing real issues”.
I believe it’s the city department heads that are actually setting policy.
What really happened [at the annual retreat] was that they went with big umbrella ideas [sustainability]. Then [city staff] can say they did the check box and say they are doing [Lakewood City] council’s priorities right now. It didn’t matter what we had said, they were already going to be able to check that box. And so we really didn’t have much influence over what was going to happen this year. We had some, a little bit. But the reality is that the priorities are set by the department heads and whoever sets the projects that people are going to work on.
I totally came into this thinking that I would be joining a team. And boy I was wrong about that. Although staff itself might be a team. Council itself is not part of a team.

“They said that, in the May meeting, the Mayor and Mayor pro tem should do the renegotiation.

Only those two would do the negotiations for the contract, for the contract modifications. It was only a small piece of the contract and some oversight.
They took away a lot of oversight.

…it’s the number one job we have [to oversee the City Manager and contract]”
Rich Olver

One of the reasons that they kept it to two people, was to keep it secret.
Because they talk about, “It’s a personnel thing. We can’t have people saying bad things about the City Manager, because that’s defamation and she can sue us.”
So they decided instead of keeping things out in public, to hide everything and that meant to hide everything you only have two people and on the other hand this is the most important thing we do we need more people, we need at least six, but then you can’t have six because then you’d have to publish and let in anyone that wants to go. It’s a bit of a system that’s broken.
The org chart starts with citizens, then Council, then the City Manager and then it branches out to everybody. Well that’s what the org chart shows but the reality is that citizens are over here and the City Manager is [off to the side] with branching off from her.
We were supposed to go into this executive session for an hour, see the document and come up with any ideas to change it. Talk about a last minute thing. We needed to see it ahead of time to say this is a good idea.

“Charlie started the comments and he paused and the Mayor muted him and recognized someone else to talk.

…the floor should have come back to me, so I started speaking so he muted me and went to the next person.
it went back to Charlie and then the Mayor muted him two minutes into his talk and passed the floor to me. The Mayor interrupted me several times and he muted me several times

[The mayor] has done this many times to Councilor Springsteen, and no one has really spoken up when he has done that to her.”
Rich Olver

So if the people change the people on Council so that the minority, of which I’m a part of, became the majority, then we could change the contract back to something a little more reasonable.

Other updates (See the end of Part 2 for this discussion):

City of Lakewood is a bedroom community that should involve more Councilors and better planning so in places like Rooney Valley so we don’t have a home desert with no commercial services.
Denver Federal Center sale has not closed. The buyers asked for two extensions and is not looking to close at the end of January.