Resident generated news about Lakewood, Colorado
Resident generated news about Lakewood, Colorado
No, not when you see pink slime coming out of your bath tub faucet. When shit backs up in your basement. Probably a plumber, who will tell you it’s $500 just to come out and have a look (since this will probably happen around 2:37 AM, on a Saturday night/morning). And, a few days later, once the shock of the damage wears off a little bit and anger starts settings in, you’ll probably get on the phone with your local water and sanitation district.
“This won’t impact Lakewood,” say City Councilors at the February 26, 2026, Legislative Committee meeting. Nevertheless, the committee supported a total of four state legislative bills citing regional benefit or planting a flag for Democrat leadership. Without a solid benefit to Lakewood, it is unclear whether lobbying at the state level is representing city interests or personal beliefs.
From Girl Scout of Colorado
Girl Scout of Colorado is hosting a family-friendly summer camp fair on March 28, 2 – 4 p.m. at Lakewood Link Recreation Center (1295 S. Reed St., Lakewood, CO, 80232.) Open to everyone, this event will help attendees discover the perfect summer camp experience for their child or the family. This is an indoor, drop-in event for families to explore all the outdoor programs Girl Scouts of Colorado offers.
Guest post from George Mugerian
Many residents understandably worry about development in their neighborhoods. We value the character of Lakewood. We value stability. But we also have to ask an important question: at what cost do we preserve the status quo?
Repost from savebelmarpark.com
The City of Lakewood, Colorado has approved a city-wide upzoning scheme largely in response to the influence of private equity developers and the ‘redress’ movement as described at their website redressmovement.org.
Redress posted an article titled: ‘A Step Closer to Ending Segregation Zoning in Lakewood, CO’
On September 8, 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled against Lakewood in an important court case against Metro PCS. As a result, Lakewood now owes around $42 million in tax refunds to Metro PCS and other cell phone carriers. That was big news, but what happened after the court decision is just as important.
Lakewood withheld the financial ramifications of the Metro PCS court decision during crucial budget planning. Although Lakewood didn’t know the total amount involved, the staff was aware that they would have to refund millions of dollars to the cell phone companies. Yet there was no public presentation of possible impacts during the crucial September and October budgeting months. Instead, Lakewood spent millions on controversial projects as soon as they could. Millions that could have gone toward the mandated refund.
From Somebody Should Do Something
JeffCo’s Common Clay of the New West prides themselves on yapping about “equity, diversity and affordable housing.’’ Seeing how they are so well versed in the cultures of the world, they should be able to translate the Russian saying of “Когда жареный петух клюнет” – for the rest of us, mere mortals, it says, “When a fried rooster pecks you” or, for those in JeffCo, “once your house (almost, maybe) burns down, then you’ll care.”
In early September of 2025, yet another community in JeffCo got to experience an evacuation notice, in part, due to the development they live in being placed in an area with known fire risk. To add some spice to the situation, in a manner too common to most of Colorado, the roads in and out of the neighborhood are not sufficient to provide viable evacuation routes.
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
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 Jeffco School Board can’t evaluate the Superintendent on “trust” if they can’t figure out how to add it to her evaluation metrics. Even though such metrics have been repeatedly suggested, the board is unable or unwilling to figure out how to increase accountability, shown by this year’s 4 to 1 vote to pass the evaluation without more accountability.
During the 2025 evaluation approval, School Board Member Danielle Varda asked how to implement the new evaluation metrics the school board agreed to add in previous sessions. The rest of the school board refused to take the time.
Two new evaluation metrics were suggested in 2025, the main one being a new measure for trust, the other being for test scores.
In what sounded like a demand, Superintendent Dorland asked for co-accountability if a new evaluation measure based on trust was going to be implemented.
Some would say that sounded a lot like the statement, “if I go down, you go down.”
