LAKEWOOD INFORMER

From Colorado Updates “Adam Paul, the new Director of Regional Affairs, has over 20 years of public service experience. He is serving his second term as Lakewood’s Mayor, focusing on issues like affordable housing, homelessness, fiscal stability, and environmental sustainability. In his new role, Paul will work with various agencies and jurisdictions to improve communication and coordination.” Read more…

Volunteer in Lakewood! On September 23, Serve Spot Lakewood is hosting the first Love Lakewood Day, a city-wide day volunteer day. Serve Spot partnered with the city, schools, and other organizations to engage the community in service. This year, there are project sites at schools, nonprofits, and a church. Volunteers will be packing food, picking up litter, painting, delivering food, and more from 9am to noon! Go to servespotlakewood.com for more information or sign up here! If you have any questions or need help signing up, reach out to me at mwilch@benefitsinaction.org or 720-378-4321.  Serve Spot Lakewood is a nonprofit organization created to strengthen collaboration and leverage resources between three coalitions started by the mayor: the Lakewood Faith Coalition, the Lakewood Service Club Coalition, and the Coalition to End Hunger in Lakewood.

Many residents from the Belmar Commons area showed up at Lakewood City Council meeting to ask Lakewood to reconsider dense re-development without adequate street development or consideration for the park sanctuary. Lakewood has responded with additional information, including the fact that Belmar Park is not a bird sanctuary. After the public outpouring, the Mayor responded that residents should continue to work on the issue with their Councilor. Attendees expressed their skepticism that any action would result from that conversation, as well they should since the Mayor already said no action could be taken by the Council. The response from city indicated that all of the resident concerns were unfounded. One resident shared her public statement: “My name Is Barbara Millman. I have lived in Lakewood for 30 years. Ward 2. “One of the true jewels of the City of Lakewood park system, Belmar Park, is a peaceful enclave in the center of town.” That is a direct quote from the city of Lakewood’s website describing Belmar Park. I agree. I visit it often because it’s my sanctuary away from the rush of city life and noise. The majority of people I encounter there are friendly and appear happy. I am happy walking my dog on its well worn paths, spotting at a pond’s edge turtles lined up on a log facing the sun, further away seeing Canada Geese parade down the center of Kountze Lake, nesting cormorants content on a little island, and a Great Blue Heron taking off for...

A discussion developed on nextdoor.com regarding Jefferson County dispensing needles in areas where residents experience problems associated with drug use and homeless. Zane Gordon responded with some of the most well-researched answers so we decided to go more in depth with an interview. Part 1 Part 2 Partial transcript and interview highlights: GORDON: Why are you providing needles? To continue it. Right? I mean, that’s a very important point. And, I take a look at it from an economic view. Economics is the study of incentives. That’s really what it is. Ultimately, What drives human behavior and decision?And so obviously, you don’t pay your taxes. Going to jail isn’t a very unfavorable aspect, right? That’s a negative consequence. There are something called nudges. This is behavioral. There’s a study out there regarding providing small cash incentive. And what they see is that even with a small cash incentive had a strong positive influence on getting employees off cigarette use. So the concept of nudging is like you’re just kind of nudging people to where you want to get them. Because you’re saying that there was a reason, they now they had a reason to perform in a certain way. An incentive has to spur more use otherwise you take all of economics and you throw out the window. This is this is revolutionary in the concept of economics: Hey, we can provide a nudge to people and they won’t respond to it. MORGAN: The argument is that we’re talking about...

Lakewood Informer will be hosting a candidate forum for Lakewood’s Mayoral Candidates. It will be a recorded conversation posted by 10 am on October 4th. Cathy Kentner and Don Burkhart have both agreed to participate. Wendi Strom is unable to join us. If you have questions, please submit them to thedesk@lakewoodinformer.com for consideration. Thank you, candidates, for your participation in this new setting that will be available to all Lakewood residents.