, or Senate Bill 85, was signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday.

“From now on, dogs and cats that are subjects to scientific research in Colorado will be valued for their service and given the opportunity to find a forever home,” Polis said in a statement.

The law requires facilities “to offer a dog or cat to an animal shelter or a pet animal rescue for the purpose of adoption before euthanizing the animal,” or to find them homes through an internal adoption program.

Research facilities will also be required to report how many dogs and cats they send to animal shelters or adopt out through internal programs every year.

Researchers can still euthanize dogs and cats for research, health or safety reasons,

Bill sponsor Sen. John Carson, R-Highlands Ranch, said the law is common sense and a great way to encourage pet adoption in general. Five of the last six pets in Carson’s family have been adopted, he added.

Another of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Manny Rutinel, D-Commerce City, said the law reflects Colorado’s commitment to compassion.

“This law will ensure that animals used in health-related research are given the dignity of a second chance,” Rutinel said in a statement.

, previously called The Humane Society of the United States, was one of the main advocates for the bill, state director Aubyn Royall said.

The group also supported a different version of the bill introduced last year, which did not make it to the governor’s desk. Last year’s bill also required state-level reporting on mice and rats used for research, which seemed to be “a step too far” for some legislators and stakeholders, Royall said.

“Just covering two species made it a little more straightforward,” Royall said. “While we recognize some of these animals would not be good for a home… some of them would make great pets and deserve that second chance.”

Health-related research facilities report how many animals are used as test subjects to the .

In 2023, the most recent report available, facilities that used dogs and/or cats for research included Colorado State University and Fort Collins research facilities Inotiv and High Quality Research.

Royall said she’s seeing a shift in public perception of animal test subjects and more organizations seeking out non-animal testing methods for medical devices and medications.

“We’re excited to embrace that,” she said

The 21-year-old has lived on Urban Peak’s campus, located at 1630 S. Acoma St., since last year. In that time, he has managed to save almost $15,000, which he plans to use to buy a car soon and apply for a Section 8 voucher, a federal subsidy for low-income families.

“All my problems in my life right now are financial,” said Perez-Williams, an Amazon delivery driver.

Urban Peak, a recipient of a Denver Post Season To Share grant, provides services to people experiencing homelessness, including a shelter, other forms of housing and mental health support. The nonprofit serves about 1,000 people per year, according to its website.

This summer, Urban Peak opened a new campus called the Mothership, which allowed the organization to go from having 40 beds to 136 beds for teens and young adults in the four-story, 60,000-square-foot building. also has art and music studios and provides transitional housing, which is a temporary place for teens and young adults to stay until they find more long-term housing.

“It’s really this idea of wrapping services around youth,” CEO Christina Carlson said.

The goal for the Mothership is to have six “neighborhoods” that can house youth from different backgrounds, such as people in addiction recovery. Urban Peak hopes to open the neighborhood for youth in recovery in the coming months, she said.

Urban Peak also expanded who it serves with the Mothership. Previously, the nonprofit only provided shelter to 15-to-21-year-olds. Now, Urban Peak can shelter 12-to-24-year-olds, which means fewer young people have to stay at adult shelters, Carlson said.

“By breaking the cycle of homelessness we save lives, change trajectories and build independence,” she said. “It’s a way for young people to set their path forward and be able to make decisions about what’s next in their lives.”

Perez-Williams moved into the shelter last year after getting a welding certificate from Colorado Mountain College in Leadville. He needed a place to stay and didn’t want to spend money on a hotel room.

Perez shares a room with one other person. There’s also a kitchen area and a place to hang out, he said.

But the biggest benefit to being at Urban Peak, Perez said, is that it has helped him financially.

“I’m not taking it for granted,” he said of living at Urban Peak.

Urban Peak

Address: 1630 S. Acoma St., Denver CO 80223

In operation since: 1988

Number of employees:  87

Annual budget: $9,812,418

Number of clients served: 937 in fiscal 2023

Sandra Hernandez knows what a struggle it can be for students to learn English while in high school.

She’s been raising four multilingual children, including a 17-year-old niece who just returned from Mexico to live with her in Durango in southwest Colorado.

So every time Hernandez was asked to fill out a survey from school, she suggested the same thing: more support for students learning English.

Finally, after hearing many similar requests, a family liaison at Durango High School pitched the idea to host a summer program focused on helping newly arrived migrant students who need more practice with their English before the school year begins.

This summer, the Durango district enrolled about 10 students in the program for four weeks before the school year started, including Hernandez’s niece, Abril Esmeralda.

Hernandez praised the program, and her district for listening to her request.

“I can already see how she’s developing,” Hernandez said of her niece.

Such programs fill a critical need for families and educators across the state. Colorado districts immigrant students throughout the last school year. Teachers in places like Denver, Aurora, and Jeffco have described feeling overwhelmed at times by the arrival of so many new students, and the experience has prompted changes across schools.

The same has happened in rural Durango, a district of about 5,200 students where about 4% of students identify as English learners. The district received 36 new-to-English students last school year, compared with six in 2021.

Last year, the district welcomed new-to-the-country families enrolling for school with a printed guide containing information about school start times, supply lists, and free lunches, plus pictures of all the key people to know and how to get in contact with them.

But this year’s summer program was the big hit with families and students who participated.

The program went beyond practicing English. Students also worked on art projects about what it means to be home. The idea came from a former Colorado Teacher of the Year, who’s been sharing it for years as a way to get students and their communities to connect.

The students’ projects were presented to families first, then to teachers who were able to use the works to get to know the students they might encounter in their classes. Next week, the projects will be on display at the community library.

Leaders say the work has already helped students feel like they belong.

Kira Cunningham, the Durango district����ap newcomer specialist, said she watched students from the summer program walking into their first day of the school year last month. One student, who had arrived in the U.S. just before the last school year ended, caught her attention.

“He was strutting into the building, fist-bumping all the staff members out front,” Cunningham said. “It was just such a delight to see. The confidence was just kind of coming out of their pores.”

The district spent just $3,219 on the program. The goal was to help students practice their English skills in a comfortable environment before the start of the school year, giving them confidence to participate more during the school year.

“Truly, I feel that because of the classes, I have a lot more confidence to be able to explain things,” said 17-year-old Brandon Chame, one of the participants. “I’m less afraid of making a mistake.”

Conquering fear was the idea behind the art project, said Leticia Guzman Ingram, the , an educator in the Roaring Fork School District, and now also a professor at Colorado Mountain College.

Guzman Ingram said she first thought of the idea of an art project about home when she saw fear between her newcomer students and local community members. Students told her they were afraid that one of her white male friends they encountered was going to call immigration on them. The man told her he was afraid the students were troublemakers.

“Everybody is afraid of each other,” Guzman Ingram said. “But then you realize you’re so much more alike than you think. It doesn’t matter what color skin you have. Mothers all want their kids to be happy and to succeed. Sometimes we forget.”

She thought of an art project, she said, because “art����ap easy. It����ap something everyone can share.”

The project also incorporates writing. In Durango, students wrote a narrative about their project and themselves. Then they practice speaking English when they get to present it to others.

After doing the project in various ways with different classes of students, Guzman Ingram said she sees how art and having students speak about their life experiences can inspire educators, give students confidence, and change the community’s perspectives.

She also likes to take newcomer students on field trips to put their new English skills to use asking for directions at the airport, or for help at the grocery store. She gets the workers at those places involved ahead of time, so they know that they’re helping her students who want to be fluent in English, and it breaks the fear, she said.

“I’ve seen it as a teacher that when these students feel safe and they feel like their voice is heard, they try harder and work harder,” Guzman Ingram said. “When they feel accepted they flourish. That happens with all of us.”

For her project, Hernandez’s niece, Abril, drew a river because home made her think of peaceful surroundings.

For Brandon, who was also born in Durango but raised in Mexico, home reminded him of a warrior — a representation of the historical Mexican culture he liked to learn about in his former home. It����ap something he carries with him wherever he goes.

Brandon has been back in Durango with his parents for just over a year now. He’s attending school, and working at a local hotel kitchen. He loves his job, and the fact that the money he earns doesn’t feel as crucial to his family’s survival as it did when he was in Mexico.

In Mexico, he had to give up school recently to work full time. It����ap part of what drove his family to decide they needed to come back to the U.S. Now he’s able to work and study. And he’s thinking ahead to college, and a possible career in culinary arts or criminology.

At his high school in Durango, he said he’s encountered supportive teachers, so when Cunningham asked if Brandon would help present the art projects to teachers, he was nervous, but he agreed.

Now Brandon brags about how he was able to present, mostly in English and unscripted — speaking mostly from his heart, he said.

He hopes other immigrant students get to experience programs like Durango’s. And he has been able to offer advice to teachers encountering more immigrant students.

“I told them the majority of Latino students who arrive here tend to be nervous about speaking,” Brandon said. “We know we’re not very familiar with the language, like to be able to explain things fully. It����ap not that we don’t want to participate, it����ap that embarrassment, and nerves stop us. Just get close to them and ask them questions. Little by little, it gets better.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Many of Colorado’s colleges and universities offer free tuition for lower-income, in-state families who meet certain eligibility requirements.

These tuition promise programs, as they’re known, cover the gap in funds left over once federal or state grants are awarded after students fill out the (FAFSA) or the .

More information about eligibility requirements can be found on the university’s websites.

Adams State University

Beginning in fall 2024, the Alamosa-based Adams State University will cover all tuition and fees for students with a parental adjusted gross income of $70,000 a year or less in all counties south of Denver. The counties include: Alamosa, Archuleta, Baca, Bent, Chaffee, Cheyenne, Conejos, Costilla, Crowley, Custer, Delta, Douglas, El Paso, Elbert, Fremont, Gunnison, Hindsdale, Huerfano, Kiowa, Kit Carson, La Plata, Lake, Las Animas, Lincoln, Mesa, Mineral, Montezuma, Montrose, Otero, Ouray, Park, Pitkin, Prowers, Pueblo, Rio Grande, Saguache, San Juan, San Miguel and Teller. Tuition for an in-state undergraduate student who lived on campus during the 2023-2024 academic year was nearly $4,900 for 15 credits.

Colorado College

The private, Colorado Springs college offers for incoming students. If a student’s family income is less than $60,000 a year, that family will not have to pay for tuition, room and board. If the family’s adjusted gross annual income is between $60,000 and $125,000, the family will not have to pay for tuition but will pay for room and board. Families with yearly incomes between $125,000 and $250,000 will pay the same or less than the cost of attendance at the flagship state university in Colorado, the University of Colorado Boulder. Tuition, housing, meal plans, books and health insurance are more than $90,000 for the 2023-2024 Colorado College school year.

Colorado Mesa University

Starting in fall 2024, the Grand Junction university guarantees that from the 22 counties on the Western Slope or the three regional Ute Tribes can attend Colorado Mesa University and CMU Tech tuition-free if their family’s income is $65,000 a year or less. The 22 counties include: Moffat, Rio Blanco, Garfield, Mesa, Delta, Montrose, San Miguel, Dolores, Montezuma, La Plata, San Juan, Ouray, Routt, Eagle, Pitkin, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Jackson, Archuleta, Grand, Summit and Lake. The three Ute tribes include: Southern Ute, Mountain Ute and Unitah-Ouray. A full year of college for an on-campus, in-state undergraduate student including tuition, fees, housing, meals and course materials is estimated to .

Colorado Mountain College

Colorado Mountain College — which has campuses in Aspen, Breckenridge, Carbondale, Dillon, Glenwood Springs, Leadville, Rifle, Salida, Spring Valley, Steamboat Springs and Vail Valley at Edwards — for any Colorado resident whose annual family income is below $70,000. Independent students — typically those over the age of 24 — can get their tuition covered if their yearly household income is $50,000 or less. In-state tuition, housing, meals and course materials for two semesters are more than $20,900.

Colorado State University

At the Fort Collins-based Colorado State University, Colorado residents eligible for the federal Pell Grant qualify for the state’s need-based aid program and CSU’s Tuition Assistance Grant. The combination of these grant programs covers not only tuition and fees but also a portion of housing and food. For residents who are just out of Pell Grant eligibility, CSU still covers the cost of tuition. CSU uses the FAFSA and CASFA (for undocumented students) to determine eligibility. The university’s estimated cost of attendance for 2023-2024 is $32,439 for in-state students living on campus.

Colorado State University Pueblo

Eligible students can receive free tuition at Colorado State University Pueblo if their total family income reported on the FAFSA is $70,000 a year or less. Eligible students must be in-state, first-time college students or transfer students who are enrolled full-time. The tuition funding covers a maximum of 15 credits per semester. Eligible students must maintain a 3.0 cumulative GPA or higher. The average cost of attendance for a full-time, on-campus undergraduate student is estimated to be about $28,000 for two semesters.

Fort Lewis College

The Durango-based institution promises to cover tuition costs for Colorado students whose families earn $70,000 or less. To be eligible, students must be Colorado residents working toward their first bachelor’s degree and be enrolled in college full-time. Students have to maintain good academic progress to renew the award and are responsible for additional expenses such as student fees, room and board and books. In-state, undergraduate tuition at Fort Lewis College is estimated to cost $7,560 per year while on-campus housing and meals are more than $13,300.

Metropolitan State University of Denver

Eligible students whose family’s yearly income is $60,000 or less can have their in-state tuition and fees covered for up to 15 credits. Eligibility requirements include being a first-time college student, taking a full-time course load, having a 2.0 cumulative GPA and , among others. Tuition and fees for a full academic year at MSU Denver for a Colorado resident are $8,788.

University of Colorado Boulder

Colorado residents with the greatest financial needs could be eligible to receive free tuition and fees at the state’s flagship university. The university expects students who are eligible for Pell Grants — which is determined by filling out the FAFSA — and undocumented students who cannot fill out the FAFSA but can show significant financial need will qualify. include being an undergraduate working on the first bachelor’s degree, enrolling full-time and meeting satisfactory academic progress each semester. A Colorado resident’s estimated cost for one academic year of tuition, housing, food, books and supplies at CU Boulder is more than $35,500.

University of Colorado Denver

The University of Colorado Denver offers a financial aid award package that includes a combination of grants, scholarships and work-study sufficient to fund the student share of tuition and fees for eligible, low-income students. being a Colorado resident who is attending as a first-time freshman or new transfer student from a Colorado community college; having a family income at or below 100% of the federally established poverty level (), being eligible to receive a federal Pell Grant and being enrolled for at least 12 credit hours for each semester. In-state undergraduates are estimated to pay around $11,400 for tuition and fees for an academic year at CU Denver.

University of Northern Colorado

This Greeley-based university is nearing the launch of a tuition guarantee program that will go into effect for new and continuing qualifying students in the fall. The program will be available to Colorado residents pursuing their first bachelor’s degrees and ensures eligible students, with annual household incomes of $65,000 or less, will have their standard tuition and fees covered. The cost of attendance, including tuition, books and housing for a Colorado resident living on campus, is more than $31,600 a year.

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Updated 11 a.m. Jan. 17, 2024: This story has been updated to correct the tuition figure for MSU Denver.

Few local officials have taken up Polis’ request so far, including in metro Denver. And Douglas County, which separately had pursued a 4% across-the-board cut to residential property values, was rebuffed Monday when a unanimous state board rejected the move, citing fairness and the impact on other taxing entities, including schools.

The decision added a crosscurrent to the larger suggestion by Polis: That the state’s hundreds of taxing districts voluntarily take a smaller piece of the property tax pie by temporarily reducing their mill levies. Those are the tax rates used to calculate tax bills, and they will be finalized as the budget season wraps up in coming weeks. The mill levies don’t need to be certified until early January.

The mill levy is a key factor in the property tax calculation — and with historic increases in property assessments this year, owners face a corresponding spike in their tax bills. The legislature and Polis pared back the increase in a special session last month but warned they could only do so much without hamstringing the local governments that rely on property taxes. They also established a taskforce to look at long-term solutions to the issue.

Meanwhile, local taxing authorities were left with a choice: Lower tax rates for sticker-shocked residents or hold onto their revenue after years of pandemic- and inflation-fueled uncertainty.

“We passed mill levy overrides — why would we back off what we told our communities we would do?” said Bret Miles, head of the Colorado Association of School Executives.

He was summarizing the feeling among school districts, which received some 51% of the $12.8 billion in property taxes paid statewide last year, according to a state report. Of the rest, county governments received nearly 23%, special districts (including library, sanitation and fire districts) got 20.5% and cities pocketed 4.6%.

Polis, in late November, penned a letter to all local government board chairs. In a guest column, he pitched his request to lower mill levies as “a huge opportunity and responsibility to act in the upcoming weeks to help reduce the cost of living for Coloradans.”

A recent state law allows local taxing authorities to temporarily reduce their mill levies without threatening their ability to restore their rates in the future.

But local hiring crunches, deferred maintenance, programs approved by local voters and an uneven distribution of those spiking property values — which averaged about 40% at the median statewide — leave plenty of disincentive for local governments.

Property taxes tend to be the most local of taxes: Collected locally and spent locally, all for local needs. The state has a role in setting the assessment rate but doesn’t directly control mill levies.

Some taxing districts are still evaluating their mill levies, The Denver Post found. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs, which certifies local taxing districts’ mill levies, doesn’t yet have a comprehensive look available since those aren’t due until next month.

“Colorado took urgent action during the special session, and I’m encouraged by the local leaders who stepped up to build on that, providing property tax relief to their communities from to Larimer County and El Paso Counties, and others around the state,” Polis said in a statement provided by his office Tuesday, after this story was published.

Some cut rates, while Douglas County’s relief attempt fails

A handful of Colorado cities, towns and counties have made their own moves to provide property tax relief — however modest — to homeowners.

Last week, Garfield County on the Western Slope approved a one-year reduction in its mill levy, which the county characterizes as a tax credit. Commissioner John Martin cautioned in a recent news release that the credit “is for the county alone and not for other (taxing) districts” in Garfield County.

That means its impact for the average homeowner is limited. The same goes for Summit County, which this week is set to consider approving a 4.4% reduction to mill levies as part of its 2024 budget-setting process.

The mountain resort county has some of the most expensive housing in the state. Average residential values in the county have jumped more than 63% from 2021, according to state projections.

Given that there are 42 taxing entities in Summit County and the county’s general fund takes in around $17 million of $150 million in total property tax revenue headed into government coffers, the proposed relief is nominal. For a $1 million home, the one-year estimated savings as a result of the county’s potential temporary mill levy cut is just $22.

“If we were really going to create significant savings for taxpayers, we’d have to have schools and other (taxing) entities doing the same thing,” Commissioner Tamara Pogue said, adding that every bit counts. “We want to do whatever we can to help with affordability in Summit County.”

The 4.4% mill levy cut, she said, is all Summit County can do to ease the property tax burden “without making deep cuts to services in the county.” It also must guard against the chance values will drop in the next recession.

In September, Republican-led Douglas County opted for a unique approach to cut property taxes: Reducing assessments for all residences. It would have cut values by about $4 billion total and, the county estimated, would have saved property owners an average of about $223 on their 2024 tax bills, according to projections made before lawmakers’ special session.

“Residential property owners in Douglas County, facing a nearly 50% property tax increase, the highest in the Denver metro, demanded we act within our power as a board, to provide relief,” the Board of Commissioners said in a statement to The Post.

But the move failed at a hearing by the State Board of Equalization on Monday. That board is aimed at ensuring fair assessment — and its members disagreed with Douglas County officials’ view of the fairness of their move.

“While I’m not questioning anyone’s integrity, I think it����ap important to note that a move like this, with the goal of reducing property taxes … is not our primary role,” said Colorado House Speaker Julie McCluskie, who serves on the state board, said of its function.

Sen. Chris Hansen, a Denver Democrat who also sits on the board, noted that Douglas County’s decision to cut values would have broader impact, leaving the local school board with a hole of about $8 million that the state then would need to step in to fill.

Several firefighters and local fire board members also spoke up during the hearing, arguing the county’s reduction would hurt their funding and put cross-county neighbors, who otherwise share the fire district, at odds.

The governor said he disagreed with the board.

“I was very disappointed in the equalization board’s decision,” Polis said in his statement to The Post. “While Douglas County’s approach isn’t a long-term solution, it did provide relief this year. We need a long-term balanced approach from the blue ribbon commission and I look forward to seeing their work in the coming year.”

Douglas County’s commissioners that they planned to challenge the board’s decision.

Local needs, voters’ decisions are factors for some

Garfield, Summit and Douglas counties’ efforts have stood out — but many more local districts have not made public moves to reduce their mill levies.

Colorado Counties Inc., the Colorado Special District Association, the Colorado Association of School Executives and the Colorado Municipal League aren’t directly tracking where their members are landing on the mill levy question, but none said they had detected a widespread rush to tamp down on local collections.

“We had the full range of reaction, all the way from districts saying ‘We’re working with communities, we got it’ — and then people questioning if (state officials) understood how hard we’re trying to work to keep up with competitive salaries for our people,” said Miles, CASE’s executive director.

Meanwhile, some resort communities have seen such drastic increases in property values that they’re essentially self-funding local services with minimal help from the state.

Others are responding to local needs. Voters in Brighton-based School District 27J, for example, just raised its mill levy in 2022 specifically for staff salary increases and school resource officers, the first such increase in decades, .

Why, Miles asked, would the board there turn around and give that money back?

Not every mill is equal. A densely populated community with soaring property values can squeeze more money from a small increase in its overall mill levy than a sprawling rural community with stagnant values can by seeking a big increase.

In southeastern Colorado, Kiowa County has one of highest mill levies in the state — and one of the smallest budgets. The county’s total assessed value of about $39.6 million is the lowest in the state. By comparison, 18 more highly populated counties measured their assessed values in the billions of dollars, according to on property taxes, the most recent available.

“If you look at our annual tax revenue and our budget you will see that we have so little other areas of revenue that it is not feasible to cut property taxes,” Kiowa County administrator Tina Adamson said in an email.

The three Republican county commissioners responded to Polis’ call to reduce property taxes with worry that a cut to their mill levy would undermine the small county’s ability to provide required services. While praising Polis’ concern for Coloradans’ tax burdens, they also asked him to step away from local affairs — especially after they saw the shellacking voters gave to Proposition HH, state Democrats’ bid in the Nov. 7 election to deliver tax relief while also reducing state tax refunds.

“We would respectfully request you accept the vote of the people and respect the democratic process in which this country was built on!” the commissioners wrote in a letter to the governor. “We unanimously decline your proposal to undermine the voters of Colorado and put in place changes that could affect their ability to obtain much needed services in Kiowa County.”

At the municipal level, the impact of mill levy reductions amounts to even less than what counties can do. That’s because cities and towns get the bulk of their revenues from sales tax revenues, not property taxes.

Even so, the Northern Infrastructure General Improvement District in Commerce City cut its mill levy next year from 14 mills to 8 mills in October, with each mill representing $1 of tax per $1,000 in assessed value.

The district is responsible for laying down roads and other infrastructure in the northern part of the Adams County city. The move, which follows a similar 6-mill reduction in the district last year, is estimated to save homeowners living in that part of the city about $40 per $100,000 of value on a single-family home.

City spokesman Travis Huntington said the recent run-up in home values statewide was “the primary motivating force” for the city council, which acts as the general improvement district’s board, to pull the trigger on the cut.

“We understand and do feel peoples’ pain, and we hear it,” he said.

At least two other Front Range cities, Colorado Springs and Castle Rock, have reduced their mill levies slightly for the coming year. But those decisions were required by state and local tax restrictions, in either case — and not made in response to the governor’s public plea.

This story has been updated to include a statement from Gov. Jared Polis.

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Every team that has hoisted the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy has earned it. First, a team must slog through an 82-game schedule, then win 16 more games in the NBA Playoffs while playing the league’s best teams, stocked with the best players.

From 2000-2022, the overall number 1 seeds have only won seven championships. Proof that winning a title extracts blood, sweat, tears, and toil from the victor.

Prior to the playoffs, many basketball observers believed the Phoenix Suns would advance to the NBA Finals.

In 47 regular season games, Kevin Durant averaged 29.1 ppg, 6.7 rebounds, and 5.0 assists by shooting 56.0 % from the field, 40.4% on threes’, and 91.9 % on free throws. In the playoffs, Devin Booker scorched the Nuggets, averaging 30.8 ppg, 7.8 assists, and shooting a torrid 56.9 % from the field and 54.8% on threes. Nevertheless, the Nuggets won in six games, clinching the series in Phoenix, 125-100.

The valiant efforts of Anthony Davis and LeBron James couldn’t prevent the Nuggets from sweeping the Lakers. Denver decoded every scheme the Lakers attempted. Nikola Jokic played bully ball against Davis and the undersized Rui Hachimara. He and Jamal Murray unveiled the NBA’s most lethal two-man game. Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Jr., and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope contributed timely shooting, basketball smarts, and defensive intensity, which makes the Nuggets the most complete team in basketball.

Nuggets haters, get real.

Marc D. Greenwood, Opelika, Alabama

Give us all a (tax) break

It has been suggesteds an effort to keep money from being refunded to taxpayers by way of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) under the guise of reducing the impact of the increases we have seen in 2023 property valuations across the state. I would recommend the method recently announced by the Colorado Mountain College be considered.

recently that because of “considerable increases in 2023 property valuations, the Colorado Mountain College Board of Trustees plans to reduce its mill levy to keep revenue growth near inflation.”

Question: Why can not all taxing jurisdictions do this?

Bill Ferguson, Buena Vista

Who’s minding the baby? Chris Christie

As a lifelong Democrat, I admittedly have never been especially fond of Republican Chris Christie, who recently announced his presidential candidacy. However, I have gained respect for Christie.

As soon as he made his announcement, Donald Trump made fun of his weight. Christie could not have made a more appropriate response by saying that when babies act like spoiled brats, you send them to their rooms, not to the White House.

I think this exchange between Trump and Christie demonstrates the negative impact the former president has had on the Republican Party, from the “Let����ap Go Brandon” slogan to countless other acts of meanness by so many other extreme right-wing members. Hopefully, decency can be restored to the Republican party as the future of our nation depends on it.

David Ryan, Montrose

Enjoy Fort Morgan’s hometown feel

Thank You, Fort Morgan. My family enjoyed your unique efforts to welcome residents and visitors back to your downtown by embracing the makeover trend as a city. The murals are wonderful, adding warmth and color to brick buildings. It must be working because we saw Teamsters enjoying a big picnic, a variety of affordable merchandise in stores, friendly merchants, active disc golfers, great ice cream and sorbets, and Gov. Jared Polis exchanging greetings. The Platte is high and the swimming pool is open.

Tamara Rowe, Denver

Editor’s note: Fort Morgan is the featured city in HGTV’s season two of “Home Town Takeover.”

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Not only is the space new, but the attitude around it is reinvented, too.

The Auraria Campus institution is intentionally avoiding calling the location a “food pantry” in an attempt to shed the stigma students may have around the term and encourage them to use the offerings shame-free.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in demand from our students, and I think part of that is the continued impacts of the pandemic and cost of living in Denver, but also about us doing a better job at communicating what support looks like and how to find support and that you don’t have to be in crisis to connect with your community and get a bit of help,” said Miguel Huerta, MSU Denver’s assistant director of community engagement and programs.

But MSU Denver is just one of many Colorado higher education institutions working to keep students and their families fed.

As college student demographics shift to include a more diverse population — parents, low-income learners and people facing housing instability, for example — colleges must adapt to meet students where they’re at, said Roberto Montoya, chief educational equity officer at the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

Nearly 40% of students at two-year higher education institutions and almost 30% of students at four-year institutions are food insecure, according to a across the country conducted by the .

Locally, colleges are seeing a huge demand for food resources, particularly as ongoing fallout from the pandemic, Montoya said.

“We need our institutions to be learner-ready as opposed to learners being college-ready,” Montoya said. “This requires us to change and rethink how we approach serving our students and doing it through the lens of dignity. It requires us to understand learners have differentiated needs and we have to be able to respond to those needs in a nimble way. I think institutions are doing a great job of that.”

Hunger-free checklist

The state higher education department maintains a hunger-free campus checklist, a statewide initiative providing a rubric that institutions can follow to better address food insecurity on their campuses. Some of the tasks include offering food pantries, holding hunger-related awareness events and helping students sign up for .

The Colorado institutions that currently meet the hunger-free requirements are: , , all , , in Fort Collins and , , MSU Denver, , , and the , and campuses.

At MSU Denver, the last iteration of Rowdy’s Corner was much smaller, tucked away in a “closet-like” space that lacked much decoration or personality, Huerta said. The new location is 10 times larger in a centrally-located spot inside the Tivoli Student Union and was built to resemble a market and community space.

“It’s more aesthetically pleasing,” Huerta said.

Students often feel like they’re taking food away from someone who needs it more than they do by using Rowdy’s Corner, Huerta said, but the school is trying to banish this way of thinking and stress that it’s OK to stop by and grab something if you’re hungry.

In addition to items like fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, snacks, hygiene and school supplies, Huerta said Rowdy’s Corner intends to be a conduit for other services that can help students in need, including financial coaching, nutrition consulting, cooking demonstrations and signing students up for SNAP benefits.

“Breaking the stigma”

About a third of Aims Community College students who participated in a college-wide survey last year said they were skipping meals because they couldn’t afford to eat more than once a day.

“There is a high number of college students that are food insecure,” said Patty Schulz, Aims’s hunger-free campus coordinator. “They’re choosing not to eat so that their kids can eat, or they’re skipping meals because they can’t afford to eat more than once a day. So we started doing some research on how we could mitigate that.”

The community college opened Arty’s Pantry, an on-campus resource for food and supplies available on the school’s Greeley, Windsor, Fort Lupton and Loveland campuses.

In the past five years, as Aims leadership noticed an increasing need to address hunger among the student population, the college initiated a number of events and programs designed to help. Examples include free cooking demonstrations to providing students with a $20 Walmart gift card each week during the pandemic to an on-campus free food and supply pantry with an online ordering system.

Arty’s Pantry partners with Weld Food Bank and offers students an array of items such as canned tuna, pasta and sauce, coffee, shampoo, tampons and condoms — all for free. Students can place one order per week and receive 15 credits to use to stock up on goods they may need.

Arty’s averages about 150 orders per week, Schulz said.

The food pantry started in 2018 and expanded to online ordering with no-contact pickup during the pandemic. As the need has grown, so has the pantry, said Schulz, who has applied for grants to help keep it stocked.

“One of the main things I want to focus on is breaking the stigma of using this resource,” Schulz said. “There’s nothing wrong with using this resource if you need it. It’s like financial aid for food.”

She didn’t have a lift ticket, but he rented skis for her. She wore jeans, with socks for mittens.

“He walked me up the bunny hill, set me down and let me go,” said Saldivar, who immigrated from Mexico with her parents when she was an infant. “We just did that, and I learned to ski. I was so lucky, even though my mom and dad had a very typical immigrant story of working in restaurants. My dad gave me this gift. It set me on a path of winter sports that is still a huge passion of mine.

“So many of our youth do not get that opportunity to fall in love with the sport.”

Saldivar and a lot of other committed folks in Leadville — North America’s highest unincorporated city at 10,152 feet — are trying to bring that kind of opportunity to children of modest means in Lake County. She is executive director of Get Outdoors Leadville, a county program entirely funded by grants from Great Outdoors Colorado and other sources. GOL, as locals call it, provides summer and winter programs for local youth. It also maintains a “gear library” at the Leadville campus of Colorado Mountain College for those who cannot afford to buy their own equipment.

“We give exposure and an access point to the sport that has been so exclusive in the past,” Saldivar said. “We’re trying to make sure our youth have an opportunity to learn to ski, to be outside and feel like they belong here.”

Many in the community are working toward that goal. Cloud City Mountain Sports is a non-profit that provides access to alpine and nordic ski teams at a fraction of what it costs in other ski towns. It owns a ski slope adjacent to the CMC campus, which the college supports by providing snowmaking and grooming operations performed by students in its Ski Area Operations program.

Ben Cairns, dean of CMC’s Leadville campus, is also the volunteer president of Cloud City Mountain Sports, and he coaches the Lake County High School ski team. Before taking the CMC job last year, he was principal of the high school.

“CMC is so interested right now in the ski industry, in questions of affordability in mountain towns, increasingly having students and staff who are having trouble living in mountain towns,” Cairns said. “So this affordable approach to skiing is really interesting. The relationship between CMC and the ski club is so interconnected.”

About 27% of the children in Lake County are poor, with about 67% receiving free or reduced-cost school lunches, according to John McMurtry, executive director of the Lake County Community Fund. The Lake County school district is about 70% Hispanic, many the children of immigrants. More than 70% of the county’s workforce have jobs outside of the county, with many commuting over mountain passes to Summit County or Vail to work in the service industry.

Colorado Mountain College has 11 locations across the state with three residential campuses, once of which is in Leadville. Last year, CMC was designated a Hispanic Serving Institution by the federal government — a distinction awarded to colleges that have more than 25% Hispanic enrollment — which makes CMC eligible for additional grant funding. Many of CMC’s Hispanic students have parents who do not speak English.

“Lots of our families are washing dishes, doing the really challenging work,” Cairns said of Leadville’s demographic makeup. “We’d love for more students to venture into other parts of the ski industry that are more secure, higher paying. And it’s all here at CMC.”

At the Leadville campus, students can earn a two-year associate degree in Ski Area Operations. Using the college’s two snowcats, they learn how to groom slopes, build terrain parks and conduct snowmaking operations. They learn lift maintenance and repair. They can receive basic training in ski patrolling, get EMT training and learn how to put on events like ski races and rail jams.

“We’re surrounded here by world-renowned resorts,” McMurtry said. “The ski industry is a billion-dollar industry. With CMC and this tremendous human resource we have here in Lake County, working in the ski industry could be a wonderful career.”

Brian Rosser, one of two full-time faculty members assigned to the program, couldn’t agree more. He has spent three decades working in the industry.

“There is no business like snow business,” Rosser said. “It is an industry that is full of people who are passionate about snow sports.”

Erick Corral Parra commutes 40 miles from Edwards to attend Ski Area Operations classes in Leadville. On Tuesday morning,he had four hours of classroom instruction as part of a course called Terrain Park and Halfpipe Operations, followed by an afternoon outdoor lab where a dozen students built a terrain park by running 10,000-pound snowcats, raking and shoveling snow, building rails and other features.

“I love this environment; I love working in the ski industry; I love working outside,” said Parra, 20, a snowboarder. “It’s pretty cool that my campus has a backyard (terrain) park that anyone can try out. I really enjoy building whatever we’re going to do for the day.”

But without widening access to skiing and snowboarding, Lake County youth may not be inclined to pursue ski industry careers. In his role as leader of the CMC Leadville campus and head of Cloud City Mountain Sports, Cairns yearns to provide opportunities for more minority youth.

“Right now, our ski team does not look like the demographic of Leadville,” Cairns said. “Our ski team is still largely kids who grew up skiing, who have parents who work in the ski industry. What we have learned is that it����ap really hard (for a kid) to add ski racing as a school sport in middle school or high school. We have to expand our reach into a learn-to-ski program so a student who gets to sixth or seventh grade feels comfortable jumping into a race course.”

Ski Cooper, where the Cloud City skiers do much of their training, is 10 miles from town. Now the ski club is raising funds to install a surface lift on the small ski slope that Cloud City owns next to the CMC campus. Currently, skiers have to hike for their turns there, but a surface lift would make it ideal for beginners.

“Cooper has been a great partner, but it����ap really hard to get a kid out to Cooper, get all their gear and put them in a lesson,” Cairns said. “We’re 100% convinced that if we do learn-to-ski here as an after-school program, that is the key, rather than trying to get kids out to Cooper on Saturday.”

That’s one reason the partnership between the college, the ski club, and Get Outdoors Leadville is so valuable.

“If you can get young people to connect to the ski industry, to feel comfortable on skis, to feel comfortable on snow, and if we could then help those students realize this is an awesome industry and career and matriculate into our ski operations program, that would be a dream,” Cairns said.

“That really is our goal, both as Cloud City Mountain Sports and as CMC: to help our community connect to the winter sports industry. And then, to realize there are really viable career paths that are really rewarding, and really fun, in the outdoors.”

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“Well, she was an ally,” Levy recalls, “but she was very insistent that for people in her district, a lot of their economic security depends on those coal mines and she was going to put their needs very high.”

“It took guts, as a Democrat, to stand firm when there was a real strong push for everybody to be on board with renewable energy,” Levy says. “It just took a lot of guts for her to stand up and say, ‘Yeah, I can be on board, but you have to do something for my constituents.’”

Former colleagues of Mitsch Bush, who is now running for Congress in the closely watched 3rd District of western and southern Colorado, describe her as a policy wonk and pragmatist with little interest in grabbing headlines. Her tenures as a state legislator and Routt County commissioner were defined by an almost obsessive attention to detail and a willingness to work with all sides, those colleagues recall.

“If you look at her bills, they’re not flashy, they’re not headline-grabbing, but they’re important policy changes that actually helped people’s lives in the district she represented,” said Rep. Daneya Esgar, a Pueblo Democrat.

Mitsch Bush’s political career followed a familiar trajectory — local politics followed by state politics followed by a run for Congress — but it began late in her life, after a full academic career. With snow-white hair, she is not the typical congressional candidate, a fact her friends and supporters readily acknowledge, and embrace.

“Diane is very much her own person and does not fit into anyone’s mold. She just does not,” said Rep. Edie Hooton, a Boulder Democrat who calls her a mentor. “Fortunately, as time goes on, there are fewer and fewer molds that any of us have to fit into.”

If elected, the 70-year-old Mitsch Bush would be the oldest member of the Colorado congressional delegation and the oldest person in Colorado history elected to their first congressional term. She is more than twice the age of Lauren Boebert, her 33-year-old Republican opponent.

“Voters are going to look at this 70-year-old and they’re going to see a rerun and they’re going to look at (Boebert) and see a fresh face,” said Scott McInnis, a Republican Mesa County commissioner who represented the 3rd Congressional District from 1993 to 2005.

“That����ap a huge advantage in a political race. I like the Democrat — I’ve met her on numerous occasions — but I’d face the same thing if I was running. I’m 67.”

From academia to politics

Mitsch Bush grew up in a working-class home in St. Paul, Minnesota, raised by a single mother who took out payday loans to cover rent. Their lot in life improved after her mother joined a union, Mitsch Bush recalls. With union membership came dignity, respect, and a more secure financial future. For a young Mitsch Bush, that meant college, and three sociology degrees from the University of Minnesota.

Her 1979 doctoral dissertation, which can still be purchased for $41 online, is 357 pages long and titled “The Legitimation of Violence in Early Adolescence: A Longitudinal Analysis.” It begins with six quotes about violence, including one from counterculture icon Jerry Rubin that contains both a racial slur for Black people and an insulting term for police: “When a policeman shoots a n, that����ap ‘law and order.’ But when a black man defends himself against a pig, that����ap ‘violence.’”

Mitsch Bush’s campaign says she was married to a police officer at the time and doesn’t agree with Rubin’s description of violence or his language. She was merely demonstrating her understanding of the field of study and the topic she was researching, which was the legitimation of violence, her campaign says.

The dissertation set out to determine why some people view particular forms of violence as legitimate and other forms of violence as illegitimate. She followed 798 students in a large Midwestern city from sixth grade to seventh grade and interviewed them throughout to determine how parental and peer encouragement of violence — along with violence at school — shaped their views. Among other findings, she concluded that class played little role in the kids’ views of violence.

“She was a very good student, very conscientious,” recalls Paul Reynolds, a former sociology professor at the University of Minnesota and chair of the committee that supervised her doctoral thesis.

Reynolds says Mitsch Bush had a promising career in sociology ahead, but chose a skiing and outdoor life in Colorado over the time-consuming rigors of academic research at top universities. She taught at Colorado State University and then Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs before retiring in late 2004.

When Reynolds left the University of Minnesota in 2008 and coincidentally chose to retire in Steamboat, he was surprised to learn that a former student of his was now a county commissioner. He has been active in Mitsch Bush’s campaigns ever since, including as manager of her 2010 county commission re-election. That was an easy one, since her Republican challenger was and barred from being on the ballot, leaving Mitsch Bush unopposed.

“She focuses very much on all the details, and sometimes you can’t do that, you need to take a broader picture,” Reynolds said. “The biggest problem that campaign managers have is keeping her focused on the broader issues and not get too bogged down in all of the details.”

Her former campaign manager says she has a “compulsive attention to detail” that makes her a better lawmaker than candidate. “That����ap kind of a disadvantage when she’s on the stump because when somebody in the audience asks a question, they get a 10-minute discussion with all of the subtle nuances and it overwhelms the audience,” Reynolds said with a laugh. “It kind of distracts from her message.”

Routt County commissioners in those years had to address the issues that still plague much of Colorado — affordable housing, oil and gas development — and made harder by the economic downturn, according to longtime commissioner Nancy Stahoviak, a Republican who served with Mitsch Bush for six years.

“We took a pretty strong stance that oil and gas development was welcome in Routt County, however it was not going to be done at the expense of any one community or any one population of people or any one resource,” she recalls.

“We were not political people,” Stahoviak said of the three commissioners. “When I was a commissioner, I was a Republican and Diane was a Democrat, the other commissioner was a Democrat. But we didn’t see each other that way.”

In 2012, Mitsch Bush made a leap from the commission to the legislature, winning a seat in House District 26, an Idaho-shaped patch of Routt and Eagle counties in northwest Colorado. She won the Democratic-leaning seat by a dozen percentage points that year, by a similar margin in 2014, and by more than 20 points in 2016 before leaving the Capitol to run unsuccessfully for Congress in 2018.

‘It was never for show’

Rep. Millie Hamner, a Dillon Democrat, knew there was a problem. It was 2014 and she was hearing stories from constituents about truckers who skirted the law by driving the winding roads of the world-renowned Independence Pass, saving gas and time but sometimes getting stuck and jeopardizing other drivers’ safety.

was to double, or in some cases triple, the penalties on lawbreaking truckers. With the help of Mitsch Bush, who chaired the House Transportation Committee, they brought lobbyists for the trucking industry on board with the bill and passed it. Hamner was impressed by the Democrat from Steamboat Springs.

“She was known for her stakeholder meetings, where she would bring all sides into a room to figure out how to get to a solution,” Esgar recalls. “When Diane brought a bill forward, you knew it had been vetted, you knew it had been researched.”

For a Democrat, she had unusual areas of expertise. Not only transportation, but also agriculture and water, too areas that Republicans typically had more experience with. Since most House Democrats then and now live along the Front Range, it often fell on Mitsch Bush to explain agriculture and water policy.

“She was the go-to person for me, as a freshman who really wanted to understand Colorado ag issues,” said Hooton, who still calls Mitsch Bush from time to time to discuss agriculture and water. “She was the person I went to and she spoke very passionately and eloquently about agriculture in Colorado from her pretty solidly Democratic perspective.”

In some cases, legislation that Mitsch Bush championed didn’t become law until after she left, such as a tire traction law for Interstate 70. In other cases, like the the Independence Pass bill, she was able to forge a bipartisan consensus with the Republican-controlled Senate. In very few cases did her legislation garner big media headlines or appearances on the nightly news, and that was fine with her.

“She never played to the cameras,” says Levy. “It was never for show.”

Editor’s note: This is the second of two profiles of candidates for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. You can read the first story, about Lauren Boebert, here.

I am a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipient. The Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of the DACA program that protects me and nearly 700,000 other young immigrants nationwide like me. The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration’s attempt in September 2017 to rescind the program failed to provide adequate legal justification. The ruling is a monumental victory, a source of much-needed relief.

Since it was implemented in 2012, the DACA program has granted young immigrants such as myself, who came to this country as children with our families, the opportunity to live, work and go to school without the threat of deportation. These protections, granted after a rigorous background check and application process, have allowed over 14,500 young immigrants in Colorado to make a home for ourselves in the only place we’ve ever really known.

When I was four, my mom grew exhausted and hopeless. She was tired of not knowing where our next meal was going to come from or thinking about me getting kidnapped on my way to preschool. The only thing on her mind was survival and the only way we could survive was to leave. Our ray of sunshine was the U.S.A.; Colorado to be exact. Within months, my mom was able to obtain everything she yearned for back home: a stable home, a car, and groceries in the fridge.

Time passed and I became a teenager. Little by little I started realizing that I was different than other kids in school with me. I never got to brag about going to Cancun for spring break; even worse, I could not get my driver’s permit or look into colleges to pursue higher education. All of those things were closed to me since I did not have legal residency status.

The older I got the more I felt isolated and trapped because I could not plan for my future like everyone else.

In 2012 the Obama administration gave me hope by creating the DACA program. DACA gave me the ability to work legally and took away the fear of being deported. I have been able to attend Colorado Mountain College and I now work as a family engagement specialist serving immigrant families like myself. I am finally able to be a productive member of society, and there is not a greater feeling than being able to provide and choose for yourself. DACA gave wings to those of us who believed we would never be able to fly. I am forever grateful.

We have more than earned our protections and have made good use of them. Here in Colorado, DACA recipients are working hard, building business, starting families and serving in our communities. Many of us, 4,300 DACA recipients to be specific, are working on the frontlines in the midst of the pandemic as essential workers in the food, health care, construction and education industries. We are playing a critical role in Colorado’s continued economic growth. Every year, DACA recipients pay an estimated $59.1 million in state and local taxes, $113 million in federal taxes, and spend over $527 million.

We’re hard at work, contributing to our state and helping our communities. Colorado is home, and I am beyond ecstatic that the Supreme Court has preserved the program that has protected us.

However, the Supreme Court decision is only temporary and does not permanently guarantee our protection. The Trump administration could, and has already threatened, to try again to strip us of our homes and communities. Ultimately, the only way to provide certainty for Dreamers like me is for Congress to establish permanent protections through legislation like the American Dream and Promise Act. This bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives last year on an overwhelming and bipartisan basis, gives Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders a pathway to earn permanent citizenship.

Now, we need the Senate to replicate the House’s efforts and pass permanent protections. I am hopeful that Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner will draw inspiration from the court����ap ruling and work with their colleagues on both sides of the aisle to finally put this issue to rest and protect Dreamers like me who are proud to call this nation home.

For too long, Dreamers have lived in fear and uncertainty. Dreamers are your friends, your neighbors and your colleagues. We are Coloradans and we are Americans. This Immigrant Heritage Month, it����ap time for change and time that we are given the protections we have earned.

Daniela Corral is a DACA recipient and a health and wellness specialist with an organization focused on early childhood services.

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