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09_17_24_am_headlines Andraa VonBoeselager
Ash House Ordered Closed
About sixty CU Boulder students have been displaced by a city order shutting down a University Hill apartment building.
The City of Boulder issued the order closing the Ash House late yesterday, alleging code violations. The city said in a press release that recently-added bedrooms to the privately owned building exceed limits, and do not meet code and life-safety requirements.
Students told the Boulder Reporting Lab they received notices to vacate the building around three o’clock yesterday afternoon. They had about three hours to gather their things and leave, with no help on where they could go, or when they might be able to return.
The city approved the historic building for residential use about a year ago, according to the city press release. The approval allowed for forty-eight residents, but up to sixty had have been living there.
City officials are calling it “an incredibly unfortunate situation,” and said they regret the disruptions it is causing. But they said that safety has to come first, and conditions at the apartment building represent an immediate risk.
Read Boulder Reporting Lab Story
Pearl Wildfire
Firefighters in Larimer County are entering their second day battling a wildfire that has burned over more than one hundred acres and is zero percent contained as of last night.
The Pearl fire northwest of Fort Collins is human-caused, according to Larimer County officials cited by The Denver Post, and started on private property.
There are have been mandatory evacuations in the Crystal Lakes area, north of Black Mountain to the Wyoming state line, and south to Lake Erie, according to The Post yesterday evening. The initial evacuation area was expanded by early afternoon to include people living in the area of County Roads 86 and 170.
The Larimer County Sheriff’s office said that the fire crew includes seventy-five firefighters, along with three air tankers and three helicopters. More have been ordered.
An evacuation center was established at Livermore Community Hall, and an overnight shelter opened at Cache La Poudre Middle School.
Read Larimer County News Release
Denver Cold Weather Shelters
Denver is expanding and improving its cold weather shelter services for people experiencing homelessness. KGNU’s Andraa Von has the story.
The city and county will begin providing emergency shelter around the clock when overnight temperatures are forecasted to drop to 25 degrees or colder. The same rules will apply when two inches of snow accumulation is expected.
The expanded services will double the hours of cold weather shelter availability this upcoming winter.
The current cold weather temperature threshold is twenty degrees. According to a City and County of Denver press release, Mayor Mike Johnston says that a few degrees should not be the most important factor in someone having a warm place to stay.
Shelter capacity, meal services, and access to transportation will also be expanded, according to the press release. All of the changes, including consolidating operations for newcomers to the city, take effect later this month.
PUC Investigates Xcel Outage Reports
State regulators are investigating recent power outages reported by Xcel Energy customers, to see whether the rate of outages and complaints is increasing.
The Chair of Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission says that their probe is primarily a search for more information into the outages and complaints. The commission’s staff recommended last week that the outages be investigated. The staff will write a report and make recommendations, according to The Denver Post.
Regulators say that there are no indications that Xcel Energy has done anything wrong.
Customers intensely criticized Xcel came under intense criticism for its decision back in the last spring to preemptively cut the power to about 55,000 of its Front Range customers, as a safety measure during a period of extreme high winds.
King Soopers Trial
The prosecution has rested its case against the man charged in the mass murder at a Boulder King Soopers grocery store. KGNU’s Steve Miller has more.
Forensic psychiatrist Loandra Torres took the stand as the prosecution’s last witness. She told the court that she and the other doctor who examined Ahmad Alissa after the 2021 shooting found no evidence of insanity during the incident.
Dr. Torres added that while conducting a number of sanity evaluations, she never heard Alissa say anything that sounded delusional, according to The Daily Camera.
After the prosecution rested yesterday, the defense called its first witness to the stand – Dr. Hareesh Pillai, a psychiatrist who diagnosed Alissa with schizophrenia at a state hospital. Dr. Pillai said he believes Alissa has both poor insight and judgment.
Ten people were killed at the King Soopers store in South Boulder three-and-a-half years ago. Alissa has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Fired Employee Pride Event Lawsuit
A former High Plains Library District employee is suing the Weld County library, on the grounds that she was wrongfully terminated.
Rosa Granado says in her lawsuit that she was fired from her job at the High Plains Library District last year, after she protested the library’s decision to cancel a Pride event she helped to plan.
Granado was an Associate Director of Public Services for the library district. Her lawsuit alleges that her termination was in retaliation for her writing to the district’s board of trustees, objecting to their cancellation of the library’s annual LGBTQ+ Pride event.
The suit further says that library officials used anti-LGBTQ rhetoric after a successful Pride event in 2022, according to The Denver Post.
Granado’s case is similar to another case involving the High Plains Library District. In that case, the library agreed to pay $250,000 to a librarian who was fired after she protested the cancellation of programs for LGBTQ+ teenagers and youth of color.
Iris Avenue Bike Lanes
The Boulder City Council this week will hear about plans to make Iris Avenue safer by reducing the number of lanes, and adding a protected bike lane.
The city’s Transportation Advisory Board endorsed the plan last week. They’ll present their recommendations and findings to the city council at their meeting this Thursday. The Daily Camera says depending on how that goes, the council could vote on the plan sometime next month.
The safety plans call for reducing Iris Avenue lanes from four to three, and adding a center lane for turning. The Camera reports says that could reduce the number of crashes up to nearly fifty percent. from between nineteen and forty-seven percent.
Plans also call for a ten-foot wide, two-lane bike lane on one side of the street, from Folsom to Broadway. It would be separated from the street by a concrete barrier.
If it’s approved, construction would take about eighteen months.
Read Boulder Reporting Lab Story
