And it's past twelve thirty. I'm super excited about that. I asked you guys to on my snitch line by emailing me Mandy Connell at iHeartMedia dot com tell me about the shenanigans that are going on your community. And I said this a couple of weeks ago. Within two minutes, I had five different emails saying, You've got to talk to the Lakewood Informer. Now I am talking to the Lakewood Informer. Now, Karen Morgan joining me in the studio.
Let's talk about your website, Lakewoodinformer dot com. But first let's talk about why you decided to start reporting on shenanigans in Lakewood. What happened to you?
Hi, thanks so much for having me.
I appreciate the opportunity because there are shenanigans at the local level, and once you notice, then you can spot it at the higher level.
So I appreciated.
In my case in Lakewood, I was working with my kids my husband with building model rockets and we wanted to go to the park and shoot them off, and they we got pushed out of the Lakewood Parks. There is a law on the books that says model shall not be prohibited what they do prohibit then, So where was the law that said they shall not be prohibited?
Was that a state law?
It's city ordinance? Wait?
Wait, so they violated their own city ordinance.
They redefined model rockets as dangerous missiles as a gun ordinance?
Are you kidding me? So now science is out in Lakewood. So they pushed you out of the park. And what happened after that?
Well, then I got involved in other things, and I say, this happens all the time. For example, you know, now I'm looking at pick an issue. It happens there. I
write a lot about crime. People come and complain about the crime in Lakewood all the time, They come to city council meetings, in public comment online on next door, and nothing happens, right, as a matter of fact, And then we bring it up and they they say that the police deprioritize certain all the city crimes, the drug paraphernalia, they're trespassing, the nuisance crimes.
Yes, yes, And they say it doesn't really matter. And then they say, well.
It doesn't rise to the level of our interfering because we just don't have the staff.
Well, which one is it?
Right?
Is crime so high that you don't have time for this, and which one is or are these policies working.
And therefore you should have time for right, you should.
Have time for the major crime.
Yeah, they want it both ways.
They want to tell you that these policies are working to not enforce and to forgive crime, and they go the extra mile to say that everything is fine, but it's not fine because things are still bad.
Well, it's interesting that you're on here today because my next guest coming up at one is former Denver Police Chief Paul Paisen. He's with a Common Sense Institute and they did a breakdown of Denver and Colorado Springs and amazingly, and of course correlation is not causation, but Colorado Springs spends a much bigger portion of its budget on police. It has more police officers per capita, belie, and they
have a lower crime rate. I mean, I'm not saying they're connected, but at some point we've got to connect this. How big is the Lakewood Police Department's budget as a percentage of the overall budget? Do you know?
You know, I don't know the numbers offhand.
I know this year they did not ask for a budget increase. They are shifting resources into more it's resource management, it's community officers so that they will give out resources instead of and they are this year they're going to be doing more AI assisted report writing.
That's what they're saying. But I researched that early.
On, and for the size of Lakewood, for the population, we should have enough police officers.
That's not the problem.
All things being equal, we should have enough police officers.
What is different in Lakewood?
And could it have something to do with we have these laws on the books that we're just not enforcing right people, the residents don't know that. The residents still call in and ask for help, and city council outright refuse to tell them multiple time. We refuse to study the situation, refuse to tell people that's what is going on, and that's got to have something to.
Do with it. So what do you think it is about Lakewood specifically? Because depending on first of all, depending on what part of Lakewood. Lakewood is a lot like Aurora in the sense that there are parts of Lakewood that are beautiful, like really beautiful, and then there are parts of Lakewood that are way more beat up. So how does that all play into making Lakewood what it is.
You know, that's very interesting because that is really getting to be divisive at the city council level. It's you guys have a one section, works four and five. You have a beautiful part of the city, So you should be concentrating over here along cold facts for example, and putting the resources over there. We should be spending more
money and going like this. But you know, overall, people come to the city with all of these problems and they're asking for help, and it almost doesn't matter where you live or what your problem is because the city council isn't listening. Right, city officials are not listening. People are now coming into the hundreds to city council meetings once, where that in.
And of itself is remarkable because no one goes to city council meetings. I mean it's right, you guys. Nobody wakes up in the morning and goes, yes, I get.
To go to a city council meeting tonight.
So the fact that people are showing up by the hundreds, what are specifically some of the biggest issues in Lakewood. We've already talked about crime. Are you guys having the same issues that we're having in Douglas County and in a Rapo County where you have people that have been there for a long time, you want to preserve the character of wherever they are right. And then development, you know, obviously they want the tax space, they want a larger
business community or whatever. Are you having those same kind of conflicts at the board as well?
Absolutely? Absolutely so. They're coming in one of the big issues. I mean, that's affordable housing right right is the big build up. And you've mentioned at how do you make affordable housing work for all these other different cities? And I don't even know if it's the tax base, but anyway, people have come for that.
They show up, they.
Ask for setbacks on their property, They ask for park money, a park land to be set aside. They ask for these things, and then the city has one excuse after another. That's really what it comes down to, one excuse after another. And then if that's not good enough, what the city is doing now is taking it up to the state level and inserting provisions into.
Bills to make the excuses to the city. And then they say, oh, there's nothing we.
Can do, like what give me an example.
For example, ten ninety three HOSPITALT ten ninety three just passed. That was a limit to local growth.
We have another one.
How does that look? I am not familiar with that.
It's an anti growth restriction.
Is in an anti anti growth restriction, meaning you can't vote to municipality, can't say we're going to limit growth. Right, well, and that was I've lived in multiple communities in Florida, because I've already been through this once in Florida where everyone from the northeast invaded, right, so there are there were any time they tried to limit growth. All they did was jack up remaining property prices so high that it had the opposite effect of trying to bring, you know,
make anything more affordable. It was kind of a disaster.
And I should say that's not this bill specifically, because I already repealed that in common right. But for example, we have Lakewood as fighting for parkland dedication.
And actually, let me back up, because I know better.
House Bill twenty five, twelve eleven, that is something silly.
It's a water tap fees.
Okay, how much you're going to charge to tap into the system your share of the overall infrastructure?
Right going on?
Would wants to limit that, they have wanted to limit that for decades.
And now is their opportunity.
So they have there inserting that at the state level to make sure can do that here in Lakewood. And that is they're saying a little bit of limiting tap fees, it's a lot of making sure you develop every square inch of land because if you don't put concrete there, then you have to pay for extra water.
In and irrigation. Whatt just go through the roof. So it's really a development aid.
Do you feel like the Lakewood City Council is to beholden to developers? Is that a common feeling in Lakewood?
You know, there's a balance you really have to strike with the development. But what I do know is that you can't take away the local control of the water districts who set their fees. And for disclosure, i am a director elected director on one of these water districts. You can't take away the local control from people who know how to set the fees to do some city agenda or state agenda for that matter, because the only agenda of these little water districts is to get the bills paid.
Right, So let's take a quick time out. Karen Morgan is my guest from the Lakewood Informer. I want to ask you some of your favorite stories that you have covered, and I want to talk about Bill mar Park for just a second, because that was mentioned specifically by multiple people, and this is kind of what we're talking about now, where development and green space are colliding. Will be right back. Happy Friday to everybody, even those of you driving slowly
in your fast car. I never realized how ironic it was that this car the song is called fast Cars and it's so slow in silence, Shush by the way way in on our Twitter, our Facebook, or our Instagram pages. We just asked if anyone else drives like a psycho in silence. I'm with Karen Morgan, the Lakewood Informer, and Karen a couple questions, one from this texture, Mandy, can you ask her for detai as to why Lakewood Council member Rich Oliver gave up his seat? Please? What happened there?
Rich was really fighting upstream and nobody wanted to listen. They shot him down, They wanted to censure him at one point, and he walked away said there's no point in being here. This is not a collaborative effort and there's nothing he can do so we just called it out and stopped wasting his time. I admire that I'm getting him.
On the show. Let's talk about Bellmar Park for a moment. This is a big thing going on in Lakewood. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. This is my outsider looking inview. Bellmar Park residents said we want to protect green space for this development, and they did. They pass an initiative or something, or they pushed something forward, and then the city council basically went, nah ah, how close am I?
You're so close? Except you missed all the shenanigans.
Okay, I did be the lead.
There was more.
Yes, they're trying to protect the open space. The new development going in is going to be developed right up into the lot line on Bellmar Park, which on one hand is your right. On the other hand, it's really encroaching into the space. The development space will be pushed out. It will destroy the setbacks that have already exist.
People got upset about it. Cities said there's nothing they can do.
Residents did get together and I'm the least qualified to speak on this. Save open Space Lakewood and save Bellmarpark dot com. They're the ones who have really put in the time, but they asked for the things. They didn't get any accommodations. They started a petition, they got six thousand, they got more than six thousand.
They got to the.
World and Register officials, funders, Yes, and what to mandate that you have to give land. You can't buy your way out of the right on dedication. That's what they were trying to do. They got the initiative passed and they were going through. But during this process, marshananigans and they inserted into a state bill that you couldn't do this.
Yeah, so they preempted the bill before it could even get going while it was getting petitioned.
Now, Lakewood didn't do this, They didn't do it at the city council level. They did at the state level.
And now as part of another state bill this year, they're saying that these citizen initiatives just can't be done because they're illegal.
They're going against state law.
So this person, said Mandy on bellemar Lakewood City Council are using the excuse that they cannot put it up as a ballot measure on the usage of land versus green space. So my question is are they just lazy or would they rather have the state do the work that they were voted to do. And that's you're telling me it's the second right there.
I think it's the second.
But you know, they said that they didn't want to risk people voting for something illegally.
I think they just knew that they were going to do that.
Yeah, I would urge anybody in Lakewood to go to Lakewoodinformer dot Com. I put a link to it on the blog today. Kiaren's actually got information interviews with special election candidates, which I think is really great that you now have enough gravitas that people reckons they should talk to you. I haven't listened to them yet, but I think that's wonderful for you. That really says that what you're doing at the Lakewoodinformer dot Com is getting it done well.
I appreciate it. I appreciate the time today.
I appreciate those candidates who talk to us because that speaks well for their ability to listen too.
So yeah, Karen Morgan, thank you for what you do. And when you get a big scoop, we'll have you back on again. I appreciate it so much. Thank you, all right, we'll be right back. Chief Paul former chief Paul pays and joins us. The Common Sense Institute did a report talking about some of the stuff Karen is talking about in Lakewood, only with Denver and Colorado Springs, and it is really interesting but totally unsurprising. We'll be right back