The measure, which was submitted as Initiative 175, would cement road-spending requirements in the state constitution and divert more than $500 million a year from other priorities. It would also reduce the amount of money now set aside for transit and other non-road uses.

The proponents of the initiative, which include construction industry groups, submitted the required number of valid signatures from each state Senate district to appear on the Nov. 3 general election ballot, with a total of 143,112 valid signatures, state elections division officials confirmed.

Because the measure would change Colorado’s constitution, the petitions were required to include at least 2% of the total registered electors in each Senate district, in addition to the 124,238 total signature threshold for all proposed initiatives.

Voters will decide whether state revenue collected from transportation-related sources should be used only on “road transportation,” defined as building and fixing roads and bridges, improving driver safety, covering road planning and engineering costs, and funding the Colorado State Patrol.

If the measure passes, motor vehicle sales tax and gas tax revenues, and two-thirds of the taxes on sales of vehicle parts, would go into the state’s Highway Users Tax Fund. The would spend 60% of the funds. County and municipal governments would spend 40%.

In recent months, state lawmakers and transportation advocates appealed unsuccessfully to the backers of Initiative 175 to drop the measure. In the final days of the legislative session last month, lawmakers passed a bill that will rework some state funding and reduce the gasoline tax if voters pass the measure in an attempt to neutralize its effects on the state budget.

The new law also includes the creation of a road repair and maintenance enterprise funded by fees on oversized vehicles — an addition that was intended to try to mollify the initiative’s supporters.

The Aurora City Council is poised to ask voters this fall to break that funding drought. It’s set to take a final vote Monday night on three measures for the November ballot that would raise $264.5 million through bond sales to pay for dozens of projects across the city.

“There’s going to be 65 projects that we’re going to ask funding for,” said Councilman Curtis Gardner, who has worked for more than two years heading up a task force to determine what city priorities should receive funding.

Dubbed the bond issue is split into three buckets: transportation infrastructure, public safety and community facilities. Among the , if voters say yes, are a new fire station for the fast-growing southeast section of the city, a new recreation center in the city’s northeast and expansion of a stretch of overcrowded Gun Club Road to four lanes.

Also on tap would be a new library branch for the city’s northeast quadrant, improvements to two library branches, trail and road enhancements at the Aurora Reservoir, and replacement of the Peoria Street bridge over Sand Creek.

“The Peoria bridge was built in the early 1960s and has a 40-year lifespan,” Gardner said.

The bonds would be paid back through a 0.325% increase in Aurora’s sales and use tax, which amounts to just over 3 cents per $10 purchase.

That would mean the total sales tax shoppers would pay at stores in the Adams County portion of Aurora would go from 8.5% to 8.825%, Gardner said. In the part of the city that falls in Arapahoe County, the sales tax would jump from 8% to 8.325%.

The tax would sunset in 30 years. The council approved sending the measures to the ballot on a first reading earlier this month.

Five prior efforts to raise money through tax hikes of various stripes have failed at Aurora’s ballot box going back to 2005. But Gardner doesn’t think that will happen this time.

“One of the reasons it failed in the past is that there were no specific projects proposed,” he said. “People want to know where their money is going.”

Polling conducted earlier this year by Keating Research, Gardner said, showed that the Build Up Aurora ballot measures have solid support. And recently approved tax measures in the city indicate that voters are willing to open their wallets when they think the cause is worthy.

In November 2024, voters passed a $1 billion bond for Aurora Public Schools to build three new schools and complete other renovations and expansions. The Aurora district����ap $30 million mill levy — which will go toward general building maintenance, mental health services and teacher salaries — also passed.

In that same election, voters — many living in Aurora — released Arapahoe County from imposed by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

“Aurora voters have not always been averse to tax questions,” Gardner said.

The vote in Aurora will come just a year after voters in Denver passed a $950 million bond issue that was split into five ballot measures, with the money allocated to transportation and mobility, parks and recreation, health and human services, and housing.

Patrick Waggoner, the president of the Aurora Library Board of Trustees, said he is thankful for the approximately $24 million from the new city bond issue that would be spent to remodel the Mission Viejo and Central branches and build from scratch a new library near the Aurora Highlands neighborhood.

“There is absolutely nothing by the airport or south of it, or by Buckley (Space Force Base) — and that’s where all the growth is,” he said.

It was less than a year ago that Aurora closed two branches because of budgetary issues — bringing its branch count from seven to five. Waggoner is relieved that if the Build Up Aurora measures pass, the city will have one new branch to serve people.

“It’s like this third space, in this day and age, that provides the ability to check out a book, use a restroom for free, look for a job or take a class,” he said.

For Aurora Fire Rescue, the nearly $40 million that is identified in the ballot package for its facilities is a godsend to Justin Dodds, the president of Aurora Firefighters Protective Association Local 1290. The money would pay to refurbish two fire stations and build a new one in the underserved Southshore and Blackstone neighborhoods in southeast Aurora.

The union represents Aurora Fire Rescue’s 430 firefighters.

“The city of Aurora is continuing to develop out east, and we’re short of fire stations,” he said.

Response times to the southeast part of the city are not meeting standards, Dodds said.

Meanwhile, Fire Station 4, at East Mississippi Avenue and South Peoria Street, recently closed due to gas leaks. Dodds said the station was built in 1966 and was supposed to have a useful life of 25 years.

He hopes the money from the bond issue can help Aurora Fire Rescue stay ahead of the city’s growth, rather than just scrambling to keep up with it.

“We should be building stations at the same time communities are going in,” Dodds said.

After all that work, the Lakewood City Council finished the job in December, passing final changes to the city’s land-use blueprint designed to pave the way for the construction of more diverse and dense housing, like triplexes and quadplexes, anywhere in Colorado’s fifth-largest city.

“It was very condensed, very intense in terms of the time we put into it,” Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom said.

Fast-forward to the April 7 special election brought to a ballot by residents unhappy with the changes. When the initial results popped up on the city’s website at 8 p.m. — showing — Strom was dumbfounded.

“In that first 10 seconds when you get those results, it was a pretty good kick in the gut,” she said.

How Lakewood might proceed from here is anything but clear. The special election result was just the latest twist in a yearslong battle over how to make housing more affordable for Coloradans, especially those in low-income and working-class families who have largely been priced out of the market.

The election also highlighted a battle that has played out in other Colorado communities in recent years. In , Steamboat Springs and Littleton, among other places, attempts by elected leaders to spur housing price relief through zoning changes or affordable housing initiatives have run headlong into residents’ desire to keep their communities as they are.

Lakewood’s mayor is still committed to changing the city’s zoning code, but she acknowledged that she and her colleagues may need to take a different approach.

“The code is so complex — it’s hard to expect a voter to understand it to that degree,” Strom said.

Karen Gordey headed up the Lakewood Citizens Alliance, one of several issue committees that formed last year to collect signatures for a citizen ballot initiative to repeal the city’s zoning updates. The 15-year Lakewood resident said the city tried to do too much all at once, while failing to appreciate how important the look and feel of a neighborhood is to those who live there.

“The hope is that this election sent a strong message to the council — to listen to the citizens and not make radical zoning changes,” Gordey said. “This went way too far.”

State Rep. Rebekah Stewart, a former Lakewood councilwoman, worked on earlier iterations of the code changes that voters spurned. She said the city’s leaders crafted ambitious ordinances that provided the tools and incentives to alleviate Lakewood’s housing shortage.

The state had an estimated shortfall of 106,000 homes and apartments in 2023, the most recent year available, and needed to build at least 34,100 housing units per year, not counting vacation homes, over the next 10 years to keep up with slower population growth, according to .

Despite a recent slowdown in metro Denver home prices that have surged upward for a decade or more, the median sale price of a single-family home came in at $630,000 in February — up 2.4% from January’s $615,000.

Price relief won’t come, Stewart said, if everything simply stays as it is.

“This has been years and years of work and community stakeholding that was undone in a single night,” she said of the Lakewood council’s redrafting process during the last half of 2025. “We have a problem, and the election didn’t solve that.”

Complying with state housing law

Voters’ decision earlier this month may also have raised another problem: Lakewood’s compliance with state laws passed in 2024 and last year that aim to increase and diversify housing stock across the state.

The bills, passed by legislative Democrats, broadly require cities — especially those on the Front Range — to implement various zoning changes and undertake detailed planning to ease and incentivize housing development. The measures push accessory dwelling units, the packing of more residential units around transit stops and a reduction in the square footage that must be devoted to parking.

“I do believe Lakewood is now out of compliance with state laws, which is really unfortunate,” Stewart said.

But Strom isn’t convinced that her city is crosswise with state law. The mayor is confident the city can tweak its code less comprehensively to ensure it is complying with the state’s housing mandates.

“There may be instances where we can do little one-offs (to come into compliance),” Strom said.

A shows 18 cities out of compliance with one or more of the housing laws passed over the last two years. Lakewood is not one of them, but the list is current as of April 1, which preceded Lakewood’s special election.

Cities and counties that don’t comply with the laws run the risk of losing out on tens of millions of dollars in state grant funding, Gov. Jared Polis’ office has said.

Several metro Denver cities sued the state last year over the laws, claiming that the mandates encroach on their home-rule authority to manage land-use policies as they see fit. Several of those plaintiff communities, including Aurora, Westminster, Lafayette and Centennial, appear on the state’s list as being out of compliance with the state statutes.

The Lafayette City Council is in the homestretch of , an effort that began last year. A survey conducted by the city showed mixed support for the proposed changes, with about 48% of respondents backing “missing middle” housing in a limited way, particularly if it’s paired with strong design standards to maintain neighborhood character, according to .

Missing middle refers to housing of slightly higher density, including duplexes, triplexes and attached townhomes, that might fit near single-family homes without being as imposing as large apartment buildings.

The Denver Post requested an interview with the governor, or an adviser on housing policy, to ascertain what effect the special election results could have on Lakewood’s standing. Polis’ office provided a statement instead.

“The governor is committed to working with Lakewood and other local governments to reduce or eliminate government imposed barriers and red tape that block or increase the cost of housing and we are assessing the impacts of this election,” said Eric Maruyama, a spokesman for the governor.

Max Nardo, a housing and smart growth senior associate with the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, said it wasn’t clear what price communities might pay if they don’t comply with state housing laws. Colorado, he said, didn’t really start addressing housing and zoning issues at the state level until about three years ago. And many of the measures passed by the legislature, he said, are still being rolled out.

The problem is bigger than mere compliance with state laws, Nardo said. Lakewood had gone beyond what the state required, he said.

“Lakewood was doing more — its reforms included smaller homes on smaller lots throughout the city,” Nardo said. “It followed a two-year process and had favorable polling in the community. What more can you ask for?”

His organization put out a news release two days after Lakewood’s special election, calling it a “low-turnout” election that didn’t accurately reflect the will of the city of 156,000 people. The release noted that just over 22,000 voters overturned the zoning changes, “roughly 20% of all registered voters in the city.”

“Research consistently shows that the residents most likely to participate in local zoning debates and special elections tend to be older, wealthier homeowners who bought into their communities years ago at much lower prices, and have more time and capacity to engage in public processes than renters, essential workers, or young families,” the organization said in its release.

Housing policy is necessarily a statewide issue because the housing market is not confined to any one community, Nardo said.

“This outcome underscores that this is a collective action,” he said. “A city cannot solve it by acting alone.”

‘Checks and balances’

Kevin Bommer, the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, called the notion of local governments in Colorado needing to defer to state lawmakers on the subject of housing policy “hogwash.”

Cities and towns are best equipped to know what is needed inside their borders, he said, not part-time legislators who convene for less than five months a year in Denver. The housing laws that the General Assembly passed over the last couple of years created pressure and artificially accelerated a process that takes time and public input, Bommer said.

“If folks at the state Capitol hadn’t pushed this forward with mandates, the municipalities could take the time to work with their citizens and come up with a long-term vision,” he said.

It didn’t surprise him that residents would revolt when they didn’t feel their elected representatives were taking the right approach to overhauling zoning codes in a way that could potentially impact their neighborhoods.

“This clearly shows that residents are the ultimate form of local control. And ultimately, they said the vision that was laid out (by the City Council) was one that they aren’t on board with,” Bommer said. “The last time I checked, that was called participatory democracy — it isn’t always pretty.”

Godrey, who led the charge to repeal Lakewood’s zoning rewrite, said the city could find other ways to address the housing shortage without opening up the city’s many single-family neighborhoods to “blanket upzoning.” Converting vacant office space to residential uses is one approach, she said.

“This election was about having checks and balances — and you got to hear the voice of the people,” she said.

Peter LiFari, the executive director of Maiker Housing Partners, says it’s the powerful emotional element that comes with homeownership that makes the issue difficult to solve locally. Maiker is the housing authority in Adams County.

“Homeowners are highly motivated to protect their most precious asset,” he said. “There are some things that we can’t easily make a decision about at the local level because they’re so visceral.”

Despite the council’s loss at the ballot box this month, LiFari said Lakewood’s attempt to address its housing challenges was far from over. Crafting and refining housing policy takes years, if not decades, he said.

But without that thoughtful work, he said, Colorado is never going to fix its affordable housing crisis.

“I would tell Lakewood to go at it again — it takes a couple of bites at the apple for people to get comfortable with this,” LiFari said.

Strom, the mayor, said the issue may go quiet for a little while as she and her colleagues lick their wounds from what was a bruising electoral battle. But the need to adjust the city’s zoning code to account for Lakewood’s evolving housing situation is not going to disappear.

“This is not over — we have things in the code that need to be updated,” she said.

The special election vote strikes a blow against those who have been pushing for more density in the state’s fifth-largest city in the hopes of increasing housing supply and lowering home prices.

The four measures passed by nearly 2-to-1 ratios, with more than 15,000 votes in favor of repealing each ordinance and approximately 8,700 votes to keep them, according to

Tuesday’s special election was set in January after a group of citizens gathered enough signatures to get the measures on the ballot as part of an attempt to reverse the city’s zoning changes. Cathy Kentner, who headed the anti-rezoning committee Lakewood For All, said she was “very happy” with Tuesday’s result.

“It’s truly a win for the people over big-money special interests,” she said, noting that her side was far outspent by those pushing for the zoning changes. “I think the voters are saying they expect more from their (city) councilors. They voted for these councilors, and they expect them to represent them. And this zoning change is not representing your constituents.”

Kentner said this was the second citizen initiative put on the ballot in Lakewood in the past decade, a sign the city needs to do a better job talking to its 156,000 residents before enacting big changes to land-use policy.

“To move forward with zoning, they need to talk to the people whose property rights they’re changing,” she said.

Sophia Mayott-Guerrero, a former Lakewood City Council member who serves as campaign manager for Make Lakewood Livable, conceded that the rezoning effort had failed Tuesday.

But she said the special election was a “low-information, low-turnout” election that was marked by “fear-mongering” on the other side.

“I understand if what you believe is that you will lose your home, that you would vote this way,” Mayott-Guerrero said. “But we have a system of housing and zoning that needs to be updated. It’s based on things from 50 years ago, and with this defeat tonight, we will continue to have a housing affordability crisis.”

The City Council passed four ordinances in 2025 that together encourage the construction of more varied housing types, and by extension, greater density — with the ultimate aim of lowering home prices in a notoriously expensive metro housing market.

Despite a recent slowdown in metro-Denver home prices that have galloped inexorably upward for a decade or more, the median sales price of a single-family home came in at $630,000 in February — up 2.4% from January’s $615,000.

The median sales price, however, remains 2.2% below where it was a year earlier.

The changes the City Council made last year allow diverse housing types — duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes and townhomes — anywhere in the city. They also limit new home sizes to 5,000 square feet and encourage the conversion of vacant or underused commercial buildings to housing.

The new rules went into effect Jan. 1.

Opponents of the rezoning effort said the changes would endanger the character of established neighborhoods while not actually helping reduce home prices. In a news release issued this year, the opposition called Lakewood’s rezoning efforts “a blueprint for crammed, profit-driven development, bulldozed trees and ignored infrastructure.”

Those backing the city’s rezoning effort countered that without policies designed to diversify Lakewood’s housing inventory, working-class families representing teachers, firefighters and health care workers will never be able to afford a home in the city.

Mayott-Guerrero told The Denver Post last month that “the idea that we can keep structuring our housing in the same way and get a different result doesn’t make sense to me.”

The battle over affordable housing runs deep in Colorado, with the state mandating higher density in recent years and, in turn, being sued by cities that claim the legislation treads on their home-rule authority. Last fall, Littleton voters passed a measure that better protects single-family-home neighborhoods from multifamily housing projects.

The campaign to retain Lakewood’s rezoning regulations has outraised the opposition by a ratio of nearly 6-to-1 — $269,000 to $46,000, according to on March 31.

The issue committee Make Lakewood Livable — which supports keeping Lakewood’s rezoning ordinances — has pulled down big-dollar contributions from developers, including $10,000 from Cardel Homes and $50,000 from Boulder-based Conscience Bay.

Its top donor is the Action Now Initiative. The Houston-based nonprofit advocacy organization, which is a part of the national philanthropy Arnold Ventures, gave Make Lakewood Livable $75,000.

Arnold Ventures was launched by John Arnold, a former Enron executive and hedge fund manager who previously spent in support of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s election and a 2024 Denver affordable housing sales tax proposal that was rejected narrowly by voters.

The top contribution on the side in favor of repealing Lakewood’s rezoning, which was supported by three issue committees, is $2,500.

This year, the budget — and its $1.5 billion shortfall — has hung over the rest of the legislative doings since the gavels first, uh, gaveled in January. Now, as March brightens into April, the half-dozen lawmakers charged with crafting that gargantuan document are nearly finished. The Joint Budget Committee is likely to wrap up its work this week, and the budget itself should be introduced in the state House next week.

That’ll kick off a week of floor debates and amendment marathons.

You can listen to those final Joint Budget Committee meetings on the ; the group will be meeting throughout the week.

Before then, though, the House and Senate have busy floor schedules as the chambers’ leadership works to clear as many bills as possible before they lose a week wading through the budget. In the House, lawmakers this week are tentatively scheduled to debate bills regulating in psychotherapy; changing how cities can under the voter-passed Proposition 123 fund; and from public view.

Colorado lawmakers pass bill to ban 3D printing of guns after veto threat forces amendments

In the Senate, lawmakers today already passed bills and renaming . Elsewhere this week, that chamber is also (tentatively) scheduled to debate a bill ; a measure that seeks to push back against ; and a bill related to .

Here's what else to expect this week:

Bill signings

As more legislation flows out of the House and Senate, we're starting to see the cadence of bill-signings increase. We've already seen more press releases announcing that "POLIS SIGNS BILL INTO LAW." Expect more of that as the 2026 session enters its home stretch, with just over six weeks remaining.

Tuesday

The Senate Finance Committee will discuss , which would require state departments to review their regulations and rules every five years. That's part of a quiet but ongoing effort by the business community to examine the state's regulatory framework.

Wednesday

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on , a Republican-backed bill that seeks to regulate law enforcement technology like license plate readers and facial recognition technology.

Thursday

The Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee will debate , which would extend some voting deadlines to give people more time to receive and submit mailed ballots.

A note about Fridays

As a general rule, Fridays are often when lawmakers in the House and Senate debate their most contentious bills. It's usually when gun control measures are heard, for instance. So, if you're keeping an eye on the legislature and want to see the more extensive and contentious debates, Fridays are .

The city’s decision comes as Front Range rail officials move toward placing a measure on the November ballot that would fund the Fort Collins-to-Pueblo intercity train system. The new line could feature as many as 10 round-trip journeys a day, and Littleton is among cities planning for the potential development it could spur near stations.

But first, Littleton had to deal with practical considerations in determining where to put the first stop south of Denver’s Union Station. The cost difference between the two potential station locations, as described by Deputy City Manager Kathleen Osher at a , constituted a “wild span.”

By the numbers, engineering and construction costs for a new train station near West Mineral Avenue, east of Santa Fe Drive, were projected to run less than $15 million. To design and build a new station in downtown Littleton could cost anywhere from $100 million to as much as $1 billion, according to the two locations.

The city attributes the explosive downtown price tag to the significant work that would be required to widen the rail corridor to accommodate a platform and passing tracks, including land acquisition and the reconstruction of several bridges.

That stark differential was enough to convince the council last week that Mineral Station, which is a few miles south of downtown Littleton and serves as the final stop on the Regional Transportation District’s southwest light rail line, is the best site for a new passenger rail platform.

plans to run its trains on nearby freight tracks under a sharing agreement with the railroads that own them.

“Downtown would have been cool — but pricey,” Councilman Joel Zink said March 17.

Littleton’s decision further solidifies the necessary infrastructure for a train line that is expected to begin full service in 2031, featuring a dozen stations. Other include Loveland, Longmont, Boulder, Westminster, Denver and Colorado Springs.

The only station still in question lies one stop south of Littleton in Douglas County.

Front Range rail district general manager Sal Pace said that will likely be settled this week, when the district’s board meets to decide between a proposed site near Monument and one farther north near Sterling Ranch.

Pace told The Denver Post in an interview that he will recommend the Sterling Ranch site to the board. Located where Titan Road meets U.S. 85, it’s the best place for Douglas County’s rail stop, he said.

Economic driver for Littleton

For Littleton Mayor Kyle Schlachter, the potential for a rail station to inject economic life into his city is huge. A consultant’s report that was discussed in depth during last week’s council meeting projected a potential $750 million benefit to Littleton’s economy over the next 30 years from a station at Mineral.

More specifically, Matrix Design Group and ArLand Land Use Economics projected that a Front Range rail station at Mineral would spur $325 million in new development investment in multifamily housing, retail and office space, while generating 1,620 jobs over 30 years.

“This is going to be a transformative project for not just Littleton, but for the whole Front Range,” Schlachter said.

But first, there is the matter of getting a measure on the ballot this fall. Pace said the district is envisioning asking voters living in the 13-county district for a 0.4% to 0.5% sales tax to fund the system.

“We’re operating as though we’re going to be ready (for the November election),” he said, noting that ballot language would have to be filed with state election officials by July.

Earlier this month, the district launched a contest for the public to choose a moniker for the future passenger train.

Front Range rail officials are also awaiting a decision from RTD’s board about whether the transit agency will help pay for a “starter service” along the northern Front Range, including a train linking Denver and Boulder. It would begin operating by 2029, before the full service begins a couple years later.

RTD’s pending vote comes at a particularly challenging time for the agency. Just last week, managers told the board of directors that the agency needed to address a $215 million deficit by 2027 — or risk reducing or eliminating bus and train service across its 2,345-square-mile service area.

A budget of $885 million has been set for the starter service. RTD’s portion of that has not been determined.

Despite the uncertainty, RTD Director and board Chair Patrick O’Keefe said a new passenger rail platform in Littleton would be an “economic driver” for the city of 45,000. O’Keefe represents the district that would encompass the new rail station.

“I’m very hopeful that there will be another viable asset in that part of the metro area to move people around,” he said.

The details for track sharing with BNSF Railway have been “heavily negotiated,” Pace said, though final design plans are still pending.

“We fully expect the Class 1 railroads to be willing partners with us,” he said.

Both downtown Littleton and Mineral Station sit next to the BNSF right of way and, as such, have been candidates for the Front Range rail stop since the district was formed five years ago. The city’s downtown area is well known, with pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares lined with handsome brick buildings, specialty shops and restaurants.

But downtown is far more constrained as the site of a rail station. The consultants’ analysis estimated that creating the room for a platform could require the purchase of more than $57 million worth of adjoining property, with potential impacts to the Colorado Center for the Blind, a nearby apartment building and the Alamo Avenue bridge.

“With Mineral, it is a little more of a straightforward station,” said Kenna Davis, a senior transportation planner for the city.

Compared to downtown Littleton, the Mineral site has more than six times as much space for the station and parking. And the zoning is more generous at Mineral, allowing for buildings as high as six stories, versus downtown’s four-story height limit.

The area around the Mineral light rail station has been filling in with housing and retail for more than 20 years. The Aspen Grove shopping center is situated just to the north of the station and is rising just to the south.

Less than a mile away, work crews are assembling , a large residential and commercial development that will feature a long-awaited Costco that’s set to open this summer. And last year, Littleton embarked on a project to make major improvements to the intersection of Santa Fe and Mineral Avenue — which sees 90,000 vehicles per day on average — with a that should reduce congestion.

The work is expected to wrap up in 2027.

“I think the big thing with Mineral is that there’s a lot of opportunity,” Davis said.

Questions remain

Schlachter, the mayor, still has questions about how standing up a station at Mineral will roll out.

“How much is the city going to be involved?” he asked. “How much investment does the city have to make, versus the (passenger rail) district?”

While firm numbers haven’t been announced, Pace said there will be a “share-back,” amounting to tens of millions of dollars shared with municipalities from revenues generated by the proposed sales tax. He estimated Littleton could see as much as $50 million in share-back money over a quarter-century.

“We’ll be sending money back to the communities with stations,” he said. “The stations aren’t just a train station but an anchor for development and a transportation hub.”

With the anticipated hoopla over the possibility of an intercity train station at Mineral, Littleton’s mayor doesn’t want the city’s downtown being overlooked. The city just started its , an effort to beautify the shopping district with new lighting, new street designs, enhanced bike connections and newly planted trees.

The overhaul is expected to be completed in 2028.

“We’re not just going to forget about downtown,” Schlachter said.

, the advocacy group backing , submitted nearly 169,000 signatures to petition the measure onto the ballot. The measure needed about 125,000 to qualify. The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office validated the petitions Monday.

The ballot measure seeks to define males and females based on their biological reproductive systems, and prohibit them from competing on K-12 and college sports teams that don’t comport with their sex assigned at birth. The measure would need a simple majority of votes this November to become law in 2027.

Earlier this month, Protect Kids Colorado secured a spot on the ballot for a measure to require life sentences for people convicted of child sex trafficking.

The group has also submitted signatures for a ballot measure that would prohibit gender-affirming surgery for transgender children and minors younger than 18. The Secretary of State’s Office has not yet ruled on that measure.

“What we have accomplished together is only the beginning,” Erin Lee, executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, said in a statement. “More than 3,000 Coloradans from every walk of life, collecting more than half a million signatures, stepped forward with their time, talent and treasure because protecting children is not a partisan issue; it����ap a moral one. Two qualified, one more to go!”

The proposed ban on transgender youth competing on teams that match their gender identity immediately drew outcry from , an LGBTQ+ rights organization. Mardi Moore, the group’s chief executive officer, said the measure “is not rooted in Colorado values,” and that the legislature has shot down .

“This is an attack on Colorado families modeled after national extremist efforts. Coloradans believe in fairness, freedom, and the right of every person to live their lives,” Moore said in a statement. “We will work tirelessly between now and November to make sure voters understand exactly what this effort is about. It����ap about bullying little kids and taking opportunities away from a handful of people.”

The for years has recognized the right of transgender athletes to play on sports teams that match their gender identities. Following a lawsuit, however, the organization agreed last year not to penalize school districts with transgender athlete bans.

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging the legality of bans on transgender girls and women playing school sports in Idaho and West Virginia. The justices states to enact such prohibitions.

The zoning changes were designed to encourage construction of denser housing in Colorado’s fifth-largest city. Ballots for the April 7 special election, which , will be sent to voters starting Monday as Lakewood plays host to the latest Colorado battle over housing density.

The issue committee Make Lakewood Livable — which supports keeping Lakewood’s rezoning ordinances — has pulled in since the start of the year, while three committees urging voters to scrap the zoning changes have raised just under $40,000, according to reports filed by March 9.

The pro-rezoning side has pulled down big-dollar contributions from developers — $10,000 from Cardel Homes and $50,000 from Boulder-based Conscience Bay — while its top donor is Action Now Initiative. The Houston-based nonprofit advocacy organization, which is a part of gave Make Lakewood Livable $75,000.

Arnold Ventures was launched by John Arnold, a former Enron executive and hedge fund manager who previously spent in support of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s election and a 2024 Denver affordable housing sales tax proposal that was narrowly rejected by voters.

The top contribution on the side attempting to repeal Lakewood’s rezoning was $2,500.

“Ours is a true grassroots campaign,” said Karin Schantz, who supports undoing the zoning changes that she feels threaten rural neighborhoods like hers. “I chose my neighborhood because I wanted to be in the agricultural part of the city.”

Schantz, who has kept horses, chickens and goats on her tree-shaded Morse Park property over the nearly 20 years she has lived there, worries that Lakewood’s rezoning will allow “cluster homes” and other higher-density housing types to take root next to her half-acre property.

“It was a blanket rezoning of all of Lakewood,” said Schantz, who established the issue committee Imagine Lakewood to combat the rezoning. “And it’s really affecting the historic older neighborhoods.”

Sophia Mayott-Guerrero, a former Lakewood City Council member who now serves as campaign manager for Make Lakewood Livable, said the city spent more than two years — across 30 public meetings — hammering out the zoning changes.

The new code allows diverse housing stock anywhere in the city, limits new home sizes to 5,000 square feet, and encourages the conversion of vacant or underused commercial buildings to housing. Some of the housing types pushed by rezoning advocates are duplexes, triplexes and accessory dwelling units that come with less square footage but provide more dwelling units per acre than traditional standalone homes.

“The zoning code is designed to foster the type of housing that is built for the missing middle,” Mayott-Guerrero said, referring to types of residential buildings that can accommodate multiple families but aren’t as big as an apartment building. “The idea that we can keep structuring our housing in the same way and get a different result doesn’t make sense to me.”

Home prices in metro Denver have been a problem, especially for working-class people and young families, for years. Last month, the median price of a single-family home came in at $630,000, a 2.4% increase from the price in January.

But signs of relief for homebuyers have popped up in the last couple of years, with a recent report from First American Data & Analytics finding that the Denver region recorded the biggest drop in starter home prices over the past year of any major metropolitan area.

The battle over affordable housing runs deep in Colorado, with the state mandating higher density in recent years and, in turn, being sued by cities that claim the legislation treads on their home-rule authority. Last fall, Littleton voters passed a measure that better protects single-family home neighborhoods from multifamily housing projects.

Dissatisfied Lakewood residents collected more than 10,000 signatures last fall in a challenge to the council’s rezoning ordinances. In January, the council voted to send the four questions to next month’s special election.

Zach Martinez, the director of policy and advocacy at Gary Advocacy, says Lakewood’s rezoning ordinances are exactly what Colorado cities need to pass to make life more affordable for residents.

“The two things that are most costly for families are housing and child care,” he said. “The general approach in Lakewood is good because it allows people to build more housing on smaller pieces of land.”

Gary Advocacy is the policy arm of the philanthropic organization Gary Community Ventures, which was once headed by Johnston. The organization gave $25,000 to Make Lakewood Livable.

“People need affordable homes and that’s our priority,” Martinez said.

Charlie Anderson, the executive vice president of infrastructure for Arnold Ventures, echoed that sentiment in a statement.

“A lack of housing supply, particularly starter homes, has led to an affordability crisis for Coloradans,” he wrote. “Arnold Ventures has provided grants to support efforts in Colorado and across the country, including work in Lakewood, to build homes faster, better, and at lower cost, making housing more affordable for families and workers.”

Make Lakewood Livable is supported by a , including Housing Forward Colorado and Metro West Housing Solutions. It also has the backing of the Jefferson County commissioners and U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen and former U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter.

But the , the issue committee that has raised the most money on the repeal side, takes pride in not having big backing from “national or state advocacy groups parachuting into local issues.” It describes its campaign as one “started by local residents.”

Cathy Kentner, who heads up Lakewood for All — another group supporting the repeal effort — said the city’s rezoning initiative would do little to bring down home prices. It leaves too much power in the hands of developers to build what pencils out best for them, rather than focusing on building an affordable product, she said.

“This new zoning is likely to reduce homeownership opportunities because it allows an investor to replace a single-family home with a multiplex,” she said. “A ‘no’ vote benefits corporations and the wealthy elite, and a ‘yes’ vote is for the people.”

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser backed Colorado’s existing rules — which have drawn the ire of the Trump administration — during separate, hour-long forums focused on Latino issues. While hitting familar lines about the economy and President Donald Trump, Bennet and Weiser each highlighted their prior history on immigration, including Bennet’s work on a and Weiser’s lawsuit against a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy who tipped off Immigration and Customs Enforcement about a University of Utah student who was later arrested and detained.

They also tied their own personal stories as the sons of immigrants to people “fleeing desperate situations,” as the attorney general put it. His mother, who was in attendance Sunday, was born in a Nazi concentration camp, while Bennet told the crowd at the hotel in downtown Denver that much of his Polish mother’s family were killed in the Holocaust.

But it was Weiser who received the lion’s share of applause and cheers from the crowd of roughly 150 people Sunday. The room clapped when he described his office’s “59 … and counting” lawsuits against the Trump administration, and again when he accused unnamed people of trying to “be nice” and “accommodate” Trump by voting to confirm the president’s agriculture secretary and trying to provide immigrants’ data to ICE. The line appeared to be a swipe at both Bennet, who voted to confirm Brooke Rollins to head the Department of Agriculture, and Gov. Jared Polis, who fought to turn over some employment records to ICE.

“One of us is working at the state level, knows our state really well,” Weiser said of the contrast between himself and Bennet. “And the other is in Washington, with 17 years of experience, where we should keep him, serving us where he can best use this avenue for Colorado.”

The forums were jointly held by Voces Unidas and the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, Latino and immigrant advocacy groups. The event, held in downtown Denver, came three and a half months before the primary election that will give Bennet or Weiser pole position to replace the term-limited Polis next year.

Latinos represent the largest minority group in Colorado, of the state’s roughly 6 million residents, and like much of the rest of the state’s voters, Latinos have consistently ranked Colorado’s high cost of living as their top issue, including in polling released late last year. Both Bennet and Weiser pledged to build more affordable housing should they be elected governor, and each criticized the achievement gap between Latino and white students, which Bennet called “intolerable.”

But anxiety over Trump’s mass deportation campaign is also pervasive, that November poll found: Forty percent of the registered voters who responded to the survey said that they or their communities feared arrest by immigration authorities, even if they were U.S. citizens or have some form of legal status.

Bennet, who has previously been dismissive of Weiser’s lawsuit tally, said the next governor needed to focus not only on “Trump, Trump, Trump” but on a vision “for the productive and positive role that immigrants and immigration play in our economy.”

“We have not done what needs to be done,” he said of efforts to improve Colorado’s cost of living. “If we had what needed to be done in Colorado, we wouldn’t have the second-most expensive housing in America. We wouldn’t have the fifth-most expensive child care in America.”

Asked about several bills in front of the legislature this year, Bennet said he needed to take a look at them before he could commit to supporting them. The bills would require more data collection and training related to ; more ; and in the state. But he voiced general support for further ICE regulations, and he highlighted his past work on evictions.

As for the temperature bill, Bennet said the state needed to balance protecting workers with ensuring the state’s economy continued to grow. That drew a boo from one audience member, and when Bennet then suggested that “laws and regulations” in the state contributed to the closure of some businesses, a woman seated in front of him gave him a double thumbs-down.

In response, Bennet pointed to the poll showing that affordability was the top issue for Latinos, and he argued that a growing economy was necessary to improve wages.

Weiser, who took the stage after Bennet and was asked the same questions, expressed general support for the goals of the legislation. He said his office was still studying the evictions bill and that he was offering support on the ICE measure to ensure it would survive legal challenges.

As for the temperature measure, he said he supported it in the long term but that its projected cost would likely pose a significant barrier amid the legislature’s ongoing budget crisis.

Neither COLOR nor Voces Unidas has yet endorsed a candidate in the race. The primary election is .

Should a similar proposal come before voters again, state lawmakers want the public to know the budget impact the ballot measure would have.

The Colorado House passed a bill Friday that would require more information to be included in the ballot language of some voter initiatives. If they direct the state to spend money without providing a source, they’d have to either identify which existing programs would be cut to pay for it — or list the large pots of state money that may be affected, like Medicaid or school funding.

was passed along party lines, clearing its first chamber. The proposal is aimed at ballot measures that seek to increase state spending without an attached funding source, such as a tax increase.

“By having more information, we’re providing that transparency, and we’re allowing the citizens to have a more informed choice as they’re voting for these initiatives,” Rep. Cecelia Espenoza, a Denver Democrat, told lawmakers during a committee debate last month. She’s sponsoring the bill with fellow Denver Democratic Rep. Sean Camacho.

Espenoza and Camacho both linked the bill to the 2024 passage of Proposition 130, the police funding ballot measure.

The proposal, backed by the conservative group Advance Colorado, did not provide a funding source or identify where the $350 million should come from. Though the ballot measure also didn’t say the state needed to provide all of that money at once, lawmakers were already bracing for a budget shortfall last year and groaned under the strain of finding any more funding.

Should HB-1084 pass and a similar ballot measure is run again, the proponents could identify state funding they want to redirect to pay for their idea. But if that money isn’t enough, or if the proponents don’t identify any programs to cut, the ballot language would have to include a warning that the proposal would likely require cuts to Medicaid and school funding. The language would include a specific dollar amount to be reduced, as well.

All of the House’s Republican members opposed the bill.

“This bill speculates numbers in a way that frames citizens’ initiatives as harmful,” said Rep. Brandi Bradley of Littleton. “This is not neutral information; this is about government shaping the narrative about policies the government does not like.”

The bill now moves to the Senate, where it needs several votes before it can go to Gov. Jared Polis for consideration.