Is there a shortage of child-care options in Colorado? It may be difficult to prove it statistically, but Liz Mora doesn’t have any doubt about the answer to the question.

“Get on the waiting list as soon as you know you’re pregnant,” said Mora, executive director of the Durango Women’s Resource Center. “Begin with Head Start, but get on every possible list.”

The need for more child care may not be a new issue, but it is garnering attention as different entities pool resources to increase available slots and maximize their community’s licensing capacity.

Mora was able to secure an immediate position for her first child but had to wait months before she found childcare placement for her second. She said the lack of availability can lead to many problems for parents, including not being able to hold a full-time job.

“Finding day care can become a huge barrier for women who need full-time employment,” Mora said. “If you don’t have a safe place for your kids, you can’t work.”

Affordability is not always the problem.

“For dual-income families, which represent over 60 percent of children, child care is still unavailable,” said Luke Prince, marketing director for Pea Pods Family Childcare Homes, based in Durango. “It’s not that money is the problem. If parents have it, they’ll most likely still be put on the waiting list.”

The availability of child-care resources is dependent, of course, on the availability of staff.

The Treehouse Early Learning Center of Montezuma County provides child care for children from 8 weeks to 12 years in age.

Brandi Henderson, director of the center, said it’s difficult to maintain staff.

“The biggest challenge is getting providers and finding qualified, quality staff,” she said. “Being such a small area, the availability of qualified staff is definitely lacking.”

“I’ve definitely learned a lot and seen a lot of great things happen, but there’s a lot of room for improvement,” she said. “For our area, the things we do are great, but of course I’d like to see an increased availability of care.”

Tamara Volz, director of the Early Childhood Council (ECC) of La Plata County, partly attributes the shortage of providers across the state to new state quality standards.

“There are a lot of new, rigorous standards to measure child care and that’s why it’s been so hard to find providers and teachers,” she said. “We’re trying to get folks up to speed on the next quality ratings system, but it’s a huge effort with different levels of quality tied into it.”

Colorado Shines, a program under the umbrella of the Colorado Department of Human Services, provides the new state Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). Through this program, the state offers additional professional development opportunities for child-care staff.

“There’s a wonderful Early Childhood Council here that is really involved in influencing and making an impact on needed changes,” she said. “There was no such thing in California.”

Henderson said the ECC, a coalition of community members and agencies who work together to create a quality and comprehensive early-childhood system, is making a big difference in providing more providers.

The La Plata County ECC, a collaborative with five other counties, recently increased the number of infant and toddler care spots in child-care facilities as well as homes in Southwest Colorado by 51 – 33 in La Plata County, 14 in Montezuma County, and four in Archuleta.

Henderson said the childcare shortage is not unique to Montezuma and La Plata counties.

“It’s a statewide problem,” she said. “There’s a lack of qualified, quality teachers all the way through elementary and middle-school levels. It’s been an ongoing problem for years among most centers and we really need to focus on getting the word out there and brainstorm new ideas to bring in more providers.”

Volz said despite some improvement in the availability of care for toddlers and infants, the crisis is expanding. The next problem, she predicted, will be a shortage of teachers, largely because of poor pay.

“It will really be a perfect storm because the next big crisis will be in finding teachers,” Volz said. “We’re already seeing this in our workforce. There are simply not enough qualified teachers for spots that need to be filled.”

Lindsey Dorneman, communications and projects manager for the Colorado Office of Early Childhood (COEC), said state leaders understand an issue exists but it is hard to discern exactly what it looks like. “The state recognizes that access to quality child care is likely a statewide issue, but we are only able to estimate the need based on the total number of licensed child-care slots versus the total number of children under the age of five years in the state,” Dorneman said.

One of the primary figures looked at to determine child-care need is license capacity – the maximum number of children who may be cared for in a center at any one time and the number of children in that region who may be in need of care.

Comparing Colorado to the rest of the nation poses some challenges.

“Meaningful comparisons across states are difficult to make as each state has its own licensing rules, and, as a result, the amount of available licensed care represents different things,” Dorneman said.

She also said that relative availability is not the same as the ability to meet demand and that stay-at-home moms and Family Friend and Neighborhood child care affects this number.

“This has an impact on demand in an area and it’s difficult to tease out whether additional child-care slots would change demand in every area,” she said.

However, the state is working on addressing the issue.

“The state’s goal is to ensure that there is equal access to licensed quality care for children whose parents choose to place their kids in child care and early education programs,” Dorneman said.

Pea Pods, a grassroots program providing child-care management, is trying to improve the situation by connecting providers and parents in Southwest Colorado, monitoring and streamlining homes to meet quality standards and helping parents find these homes for their children.

Prince said one of the obstacles to increasing the number of child-care providers is the licensing process, which takes an average of six months to complete and can be expensive.

Pea Pods offers no-interest loans for the certification process for providers who need financial support. The loans are provided by the El Pomar Foundation, which gives grants to Colorado nonprofits.

“If someone wants to do this, we will find a way,” Prince said. “It can actually be a very lucrative business opportunity for parents that they don’t know about. The money is in the homes, we just need to get people involved.” The State of Colorado is also in the process of making micro-grants and micro-loans available to child-care providers interested in getting licensed.

These funds are expected to be available in early 2016.

Henderson agreed with Prince that the option of becoming a child-care provider is viable, but many people don’t know it is a possibility.

“It’s not the same recognition as K-through-12 teachers would get and since it’s not on the same standard, pay is often much, much less,” Henderson said. “It’s definitely not a high-paying position for the responsibility. You have to have a passion for children. You don’t do it to become rich; you do it to watch children grow and explore.”

Prince agreed that it is a fulfilling job prospect.

“To have a job is one thing, but to have a job with purpose and meaning is so much bigger than that,” Prince said. “It’s not just babysitting, it’s early education.”

Henderson said she would like to see the pay increase. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve been trying to do something better with the pay scale,” she said, but added that because of the lack of resources in the area and its being a smaller community, the interest may not be there.

Southwest Community College and Fort Lewis College both offer courses in early childhood care.

Prince said that personalized home care is definitely preferable for a child’s development.

“Moms are the best child-care providers, especially in the early years,” he said. “Children do better in a home environment rather than [big] child-care centers with fluorescent lights.”

Laurel Foster, a stay-at-home mother of two in Durango, agreed.

“The difference between at-home care and care at a larger center is the number of children,” she said. “If that ratio goes above a certain number, the quality goes way down and it starts affecting cognitive skills, social skills, behavior, really everything. Children really need one-on-one attention.”

But she said among the mothers she knows, she is the only one who is a stay-at-home mom.

“All my ‘mommy’ friends have jobs outside of the home and they struggle with finding care,” Foster said.

For many, the quality of care is as important as just finding it.

Megan Ruvalcaba of Cortez, 26, has one son and is a stay-at-home mom.

“I’ve always been really careful about who watches him,” she said. “You can’t be too careful of who you trust.”

Although Colorado is considered a key swing state in the 2016 presidential race by candidates of both major parties, Colorado Republicans are taking some wind out of the state’s sails by not showing their hand until late in the campaign game next spring.

Reacting to a 2014 Republican National Committee change in bylaws, the executive committee of the Colorado Republican Party has cancelled the presidential straw polls at the 2016 caucuses.

Previously, the Colorado Republicans held an election-year precinct caucus in which registered party members held a presidential straw poll – a show of hands – to decide which of the candidates campaigning for the presidential nomination within their own party was preferred by party members.

Delegates representing the precinct were also selected at that time. The delegates were expected to support the candidate that won the presidential preference poll when they attended party assemblies at the county, district and state levels and ultimately the national party convention where a candidate was selected to run for president. The process did not “bind” the delegate to support the candidate selected at the precinct level, or any step along the way.

It was the same approach in both parties.

But then the Republican National Committee changed its bylaws saying that the delegates are now “bound” to their preferred candidate beginning with the presidential preference poll taken at the precinct caucuses.

As a result, no vote for Republican presidential nominations will be taken at the precinct caucus.

According to Ryan Lynch, chairman of the Colorado Republican party, “the National Republican Committee essentially decided that today there is no such thing as an informal presidential straw poll. If your precinct caucus takes a presidential poll and elects national delegates, then those delegates are bound to the candidates that won in the poll.”

The Colorado Republican executive committee felt that the delegates elected in the March caucuses and the candidate they would be bound to – especially with such a large field of candidates – might not be relevant in July at the national convention.

“Of course, some say that a candidate could release the delegates if he/she dropped out, but what if they don’t?” Ryan explained in a telephone interview with the Free Press.

“So the Colorado party decided to do away with precinct presidential preference polls entirely this year because there are so many different candidates and what is applicable in March may not be so in July.”

Although the campaigns will not be spending money on the same advertising campaign strategy they would prior to this decision, the unbound Colorado delegates themselves become a hot commodity at the national convention in July.

The Republican precinct caucuses will be held on March 1, 2016, as scheduled, “but it will look more like the 2014 caucus than the 2012,” explained Lynch. “We’ll begin electing precinct captains and committee people and delegates that will then move on to the county assemblies a few weeks later and from there through the district to the state and the national convention. We hope people will register to participate in the caucus if they haven’t already done so.”

Not so for the Montezuma County Democrats. They have been busily engaged since early last summer urging voters to register with a party, while explaining the advantages of participating in a caucus process, hopefully theirs, which will be held Tuesday, March 1, 2016.

Ric Pleše, co-chair of the Montezuma County Democratic Party, urges citizens to take time during the holiday season to register their party affiliation with the county clerk’s office, or online at the Colorado Secretary of State website. Registration is required before Dec. 31 in order to participate in the Colorado presidential precinct caucuses, scheduled for March 1, 2016. Photo by Sonja Horoshko

Ric Pleše, Montezuma County Democratic co-chair, told the Free Press that the local interest in the Democratic precinct caucus is “pretty energized. I suspect it will be a big turnout because it’s a major contest again.”

Fun times?

Montezuma County is divided into 11 precincts for the Democrats. Eight will be convening in the County Annex building, while the other three will meet in Dolores, Mancos and Towaoc.

People can check with the Montezuma County Clerk, or local party headquarters to find their precinct caucus and location.

“At our larger caucus in the annex building the cluster of eight precincts will meet in separate areas,” Pleše said. “I’ll take an initial straw poll from each precinct – a show of hands — and then people can speak on behalf of a candidate, usually to persuade people to change their vote. At the end of the speeches I call for another vote and then a final vote of all the precincts.”

People should commit to staying for the whole caucus, he said. “It can be lengthy, an hour and half to two hours or more, but it can also be fun.”

A lot of work

Only 15 states still use the many-level caucus system, one of the older forms of polling voter preferences. Participating in precinct caucuses is the first and most powerful step individual Montezuma County voters can take to influence the nominations.

It’s where initial presidential polls are taken, preferences are selected and delegates are selected to go to the county assembly or convention.

Pleše describes the process in increasing increments of population and land base. “The date for the county (get together) is not set yet, but will follow the precinct caucus no later than 25 days after,” he says, “and we’ll post it on our website.” The Congressional Districts Assembly/Convention then meets between April 1 and 15 and the State Assembly/ Convention convenes Saturday, April 16.

The 47th Democratic National Convention is scheduled July 25-28. The 41st Republican National Convention will be held July 18-21.

“It is a lot of work to organize the caucuses. This year the precinct committee people are really motivating people to get there. It’s been a big contribution to voter turn-out.”

Ann Brown has worked in local politics for over 35 years. “There was a time, even not too long ago, when Montezuma County was a Democratic stronghold,” she said. “My granddad, a Democrat, was Montezuma County treasurer and I’ve been past committee person and worked door to door campaigns as far back as 1959 for JFK.”

Pleše said Brown’s knowledge of political operations and strategy is formidable. “She’s a great resource for understanding why the caucus is such an integral part of the democratic process.”

The precinct caucus is the first step in a multi-step system, explained Brown. “We sometimes met in people’s homes like a neighborhood get-together. We always had a lot to talk about.”

It’s a very powerful step to take, she said. “Imagine if we held primaries, which essentially tally up the votes at the end of election day, instead of a caucus which commits delegates to candidates at a grassroots level. How many urban voters would turn out vs. rural voters? Urban interests will dominate by sheer numbers. In some states the result is winner-takes-all [delegates] as in California. Smaller states and rural areas have little influence on the party nominations if the primary system is used. There’s simply more people in an urban area.”

Different systems

Elsewhere in the Four Corners region, the first step in the presidential nominating process varies by state and sometimes by parties within the state. Utah voters hold their precinct caucuses on Tuesday, March 22. The Utah Dems title theirs a “Neighborhood Open Caucus” where any voter, regardless of party affiliation, may vote in the Democratic Party primary, but not both. As an example, a Republican may choose to pass up his party primary to vote in the Democratic primary. Independents may vote in the Democratic party primary, too, and both the Republican and Independent may vote in the Democratic primary without affecting their registered affiliation.

Utah Republicans use a “Modified Caucus,” meaning persons registered with one of the major parties may only vote in that party’s primary. However, Independents are allowed to vote in the Republican party primary/caucus, but then, by Republican provision, are automatically registered into the Republican party at the time of the primary. This tends to reduce the number of voters who take advantage of the privilege.

Arizona and New Mexico use a closed primary system, meaning citizens wishing to vote in a presidential primary may only cast their ballot in the primary of their registered party. The Arizona Republican and Democratic primary is also scheduled for Tuesday, March 22. In New Mexico both parties will hold the presidential and state/local primary on Tuesday, June 7.

A failed primary

Colorado Democratic and Republican legislators failed in their attempt earlier this year to draft a measure that would create a primary system in Colorado. It would have put Colorado in the limelight during the presidential campaigns, they claimed, by allowing the states’ nearly 40 percent unaffiliated voters to vote in either a Democratic or Republican primary to chose the candidates nominated by those parties without changing their party registration.

The argument that some people made to change the Colorado election process from a caucus system to a primary focused on increasing voter participation, predicting that the numbers of voters would swell while the reorganization offered Colorado a chance to move the calendar dates for state presidential nominations forward in the year, closer to the Iowa precinct caucuses and New Hampshire primaries.

But according to a recent Denver Post blog, when the efforts to change to the primary system were emerging in 2013, then state Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, said letting voters who aren’t Republicans determine the outcome of a GOP primary is like letting a ‘non-Catholic pick the pope.’”

If you are already a registered with a party and have lived in a Montezuma County precinct for more than 30 days you are good to go. But if you are unaffiliated and want to register to participate in a caucus, it must be done at least two months before the caucus. That deadline will fall on the New Year holiday.

Molly Cooper, a Democratic precinct captain in Dolores, and House District coordinator, said she is stressing that registration must be done before Dec. 31. “You can go to the Colorado Secretary of State on-line registration or govotecolorado.com. It’s very easy, but it takes the system a little time to get the paperwork back to the county clerk here and then send you a notification, about 20 days. We are urging people to do it now.”

When the completed on-line registration is submitted to the Montezuma County Clerk and Recorder it is processed and entered into the books and an official information card is sent to the registrant.

“This is my first time getting involved on a caucus level,” said Cooper, who is campaigning for Bernie Sanders. “This is the place that your vote is most powerful. As an example, if your precinct has 300 registered Democrats and only thirty of you show up at the caucus, your vote is amplified by ten. That’s why we hope people show up, why we are urging people to register before Dec. 31.”

The other deadline both she and Pleše stress is start-time. “Our precinct caucuses start at 7 p.m. If you aren’t in the room with your ID in hand – Colorado driver’s license or identification card – and checked in by that time you cannot participate. That’s the regulation and we stick to it,” he explains. “Show up well before 7.”

Paperwork issues and registration details cause delays at the door. “Sometimes we can’t find a person’s name, or they didn’t register in time and they’re not on the list. We are exacting with everyone and that can back up the process. We also want to direct people to the correct precinct locations if they have come to the wrong one.”

What’s really cool about working on a campaign at this level, adds Cooper, is that it teaches you about hands-on democracy. “You really build passion about the election and the candidates when you invest in this kind of local grassroots effort. You get to see it, live it.”

Cannabis thrives in this illegal grow site along the Dolores River. Despite the fact that pot is legal to grow and use in Colorado, the state is seeing more black-market marijuana operations. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice and Bureau of Land Management

At first blush it may seem paradoxical. But despite pot being legal to grow, sell and consume in Colorado, the state is also becoming an increasingly popular home for major black-market cannabis operations.

“We have seen a notable increase this year in illegal marijuana grows in western Colorado,” U.S. Attorney John Walsh said recently in a statement announcing the indictment of two men for conspiring to produce and distribute wholesale quantities of the drug. “As we work with the DEA, BLM and local law-enforcement partners, we are seizing large amounts of marijuana.

“In addition, we have charged a total of 12 individuals, many here illegally from Mexico, for tending to these marijuana grows,” Walsh said in the press release.

Luis Garcia, 33, and Luis Rios-Cortes, 23, were arrested last month following a raid on a property nominally owned by Garcia’s sister near Cedaredge during which nearly a ton of dried marijuana was seized and drying sheds and equipment “consistent with items used in a large-scale operation” were found, according to the accompanying affidavit of Jason Greenfield, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

These cannabis plants being cultivated illegally along the Dolores River were found during raids conducted in September. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice and Bureau of Land Management

Those indictments closely followed September busts at two sophisticated pot farms along the Dolores River between Gateway and Naturita on public land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.

Garcia continues to be investigated for his role in those operations, which resulted in the arrest of 10 other suspects who allegedly were tending the blossoming crops just as they were ready for harvest.

The protracted drought in California, where federal lands have been used for many years to cultivate illicit commercial crops of marijuana, is believed to be one big reason clandestine farmers have been drawn to this area, explained Jeff Dorschner, a spokesperson for the U.S Attorney’s Office.

“Generally California is known for their large number of public-lands marijuana grows, but they’ve had a horrible drought and bad fire seasons [recently],” Dorschner said in an interview with the Free Press. “On the other hand, “Colorado has had a better-than-normal growing season.”

“Also (because of) the more liberal posture on marijuana, people wrongly speculated that this would be a better place to grow marijuana this year.”

“Legal pot carries a regulatory system with it – what are important but burdensome requirements – and illegal growers don’t have to follow those burdensome regulations

“And they don’t have to pay taxes, so illegal marijuana can be cheaper.

“We believe the market is mostly out-of-state,” he added, having been shipped to Florida in two instances.

In mid-September, BLM rangers and other law-enforcement nabbed four Mexican nationals at one grow site along Highway 141 across the Dolores that was hidden by dense foliage. More than 1,200 thriving mature plants were confiscated.

Those suspects also were charged with conspiring to grow and distribute pot as well as degradation of public lands.

Debris strewn about two illegal cannabis grow sites found recently on the Dolores River included water bottles and food containers for workers, as well as containers of fertilizers and pesticides, some of which are banned in the United States. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice and Bureau of Land Management

Camouflaged tents, camping supplies, generators and hand-held radios were found at the site. An irrigation system that apparently sucked water from the river into a cistern was being employed.

Then on Sept. 30, rangers and other agents raided a markedly similar operation just four miles away – with the same sort of irrigation, radios and gear.

According to Greenfield’s affidavit, Garcia had been under surveillance since April, when the supervisor of a BLM crew working along the Dolores River to eradicate invasive species (other than pot plants) had first noticed two pickups regularly coming and going from the otherwise remote stretch of the river, sometimes loaded with passengers and equipment, other times empty except for the driver, and often parked along the river for extended periods with no one around. Both those vehicles were regularly driven by Garcia and registered to his sister, Esther Garcia, and her husband Fredy, residents of nearby Parachute. Esther Garcia was also the listed owner of a property near Cedaredge in the gated community of San Juan Vista.

After months of tracing Luis Garcia’s movements, agents had gathered sufficient evidence to obtain search warrants for both properties that were executed Nov. 13.

In Parachute, Esther and her husband were told they could leave the residence, according to the affidavit, but agreed to be interviewed.

Esther Garcia allegedly told Greenfield that her brother regularly gave her money for her family’s living expenses and that she had agreed to put the truck in her name along with the property near Cedaredge, for which he had given her a $20,000 cashier’s check for the down payment.

An undisclosed “large amount of U.S. currency” was found in the bedroom of Esther Garcia and her husband during the search.

Also discovered were numerous documents related to the purchase of the San Juan Vista property, and other papers with the names of suspects who had been arrested during the sweeps along the Dolores.

Simultaneously, agents executed a search warrant at the San Juan Vista location, nabbing Rios-Cortes and seizing close to a ton of pot, while another unidentified suspect fled into the woods and escaped.

Dressed in camouflage clothing like many of the other suspects, and armed with a semi-automatic handgun, Rios- Cortez surrendered to agents after briefly considering flight, the affidavit noted, but making no attempt to use the holstered sidearm.

Agents then filled a U-Haul trailer with close to a ton of dried and drying cannabis bud, according to Greenfield’s affidavit, 36 sealed and initialed plastic lawn bags containing about 40 pounds each and six large tarps with about 70 pounds apiece. The bud had been discovered in tents and a large processing shed that had been spotted during a flyover of the property.

Garcia, who was being tailed while heading toward the San Juan Vista location, was stopped and taken into custody by Delta County sheriff ’s officers and held on traffic charges until the raid was completed.

Interviewed at the Mesa County jail, Garcia – while readily acknowledging that the plethora of pot found on his sister’s property belonged to him – then spun a fantastic yarn akin to the fairy tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. The suspect maintained it had all been produced from just a half-dozen plants, the maximum number allowed under Colorado law for personal use.

“Luis Garcia informed agents that this was his first attempt at growing and that the six plants of marijuana got away from him and that was why he had so much,” Greenfield recounted.

“A short time later, the agents terminated the interview.”

In addition to the criminal aspects of using public lands for pot farming, the impacts on the land itself as well as on legitimate users are a mounting concern.

Pesticides and fertilizers that are not legal in the U.S. have been found at some grow sites, Dorschner said.

“Grows on public lands are hurting the environment, the ecosystem where they’re growing it.

“The land takes quite a beating,” he said. “The public-lands agencies, whether it’s the BLM or the Forest Service – has to try to restore that land to its original condition, which is expensive and difficult.”

And those charged with protecting the nation’s treasured public lands couldn’t agree more.

Chris Joyner, BLM public affairs specialist with the western Colorado BLM office, told the Free Press such illicit farming inevitably scars the land, leaving behind mountains of trash, excrement and other blight that legitimate users should not have to confront.

“When you start to have semi-permanent dwellings, it has impacts on the different types of plant species and there’s quite a bit of hazardous waste on site –different types of material associated with the grows,” Joyner said.

Additionally, long-term occupancy in areas like those of the recent busts along the Dolores creates trails through delicate cryptobiotic soils that can take decades or longer to recover, he said. And, of course, there are concerns about what might happen if unwitting hikers or rafters stumble across growers at an illegal site. The sites along the Dolores were reportedly quite close to the river and to a highway. Growers may be armed and very protective of their plots.

“Just the criminal nature of what they were doing has a nexus that certainly isn’t safe for the public to enjoy their lands,” Joyner added.

“It is a huge concern for us any time people are misusing their public lands,” he said.

“We try to manage for the benefit of current and future generations, and one person’s negligent use of public land with a grow operation can affect a lot of people.”

A traffic signal would be installed at the intersection of Main and Hawkins streets in Cortez under a
plan proposed by the Colorado Department of Transportation. Photo by Gail Binkly

Slower, safer, smoother.

That’s the vision for traffic along U.S. Highway 160 through Cortez.

On Nov. 24, Mike McVaugh, a traffic and safety engineer with the Colorado Department of Transportation, unveiled ideas for achieving some of those goals. McVaugh gave a PowerPoint presentation to the city council that suggests a number of ways vehicles could be slowed down, safety improved, and movement facilitated.

The catch is, of course, all those proposed modifications would cost money – in some cases, a lot of it.

Still, the council is planning to think them over.

More comfortable

Safety on Cortez’s Main Street, which is also U.S. Highway 160, has been a concern for almost as long as the city has existed. The perils facing pedestrians were the focus of a cover story in the Free Press clear back in November 2004, about a month after then-city manager Hal Shepherd had been struck by a truck while crossing the street near City Hall. He survived with a fractured wrist, bruised ribs, and a concussion. (The article is online at fourcornersfreepress.com. Search under “Pedestrian Safety.”)

Yet Mark Twain’s adage about the weather – everyone talks about it, but no one does anything – could have been applied to the safety issue. While it wasn’t precisely true that nothing was done to protect motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians, improvements seemed few and far between.

But for the past nine months, CDOT and an engineering firm, Fehr & Peers of Denver, have been working with the city to try to make U.S. 160 through Cortez more comfortable for the traveling public, with a particular focus on improving the downtown corridor.

The impetus for the effort came from the city, according to McVaugh. “The city asked us a couple of years ago if we could work together to do this,” he told the Free Press in a phone interview.

After holding three public meetings as well as meetings with individual business owners, the agency and the engineering firm came up with the “U.S. 160 Access Control Plan and Roadway Reconfiguration” presented to the council Nov. 24. The plan takes into account citizen comments, which addressed a host of issues – everything from the need for more pedestrian crossings and traffic lights to the bizarrely high curbs in front of the Wilson Building at 10 W. Main downtown.

“This process went pretty fast,” McVaugh said. “It was a good one, with good interaction. Sometimes there are a lot of differing opinions to work through, but not in this case.”

Go slow

For planning purposes, the highway corridor was divided into three segments that have different characteristics:

• Maple Street to Harrison Street (the downtown area);
• Harrison to Sligo streets (the City Park section)
• Sligo to Patton streets (the eastern gateway)

In the downtown segment, citizen concerns generally boiled down to the need for safer pedestrian crossings, beautification and “better branding,” and wider parking.

In response, the team came up with suggestions to narrow traffic lanes and add landscaped medians. The narrower lanes would leave space for a buffer between traffic and parallel parking along the street, so people have more room to open car doors.

However, McVaugh said there simply wasn’t room to accommodate a designated bike lane. What is proposed instead are “sharrows” – clearly marked shared lanes for bikes and motor vehicles.

The proposed medians would be installed in portions of the turn lane now running down the center of Main. They would certainly mean restricting access to some properties, McVaugh said. While motorists are presently able to turn left into and out of almost all businesses, some of the accesses would become “right in, right out” (in front of Wendy’s restaurant, for example) and a few would be “right out only” or would have other restrictions.

McVaugh said he recommends the medians be 20 inches in height. “That allows you to do more significant improvements” on the medians, such as landscaping and sculptures, he told the council. The medians would be “crashworthy” of vehicles moving at speeds up to 45 mph

In addition to providing beautification opportunities, the medians have the benefit of slowing drivers. Narrower lanes also tend to help reduce speeds far more effectively than speed-limit signs.

McVaugh told the Free Press such medians do influence drivers to be more cautious because they don’t want to run into something that high.

“Look at how fast people drive south of town on Broadway, even though there’s a [lower] median,” he said. “They don’t feel it’s a hazard that they need to be aware of. This 20-inch median definitely changes your perception and also provides more protection for a pedestrian than a regular curb does.”

Medians would be installed most of the way through the city, with some exceptions. For instance, McVaugh said the owners of Burger Boy at 400 E. Main asked that there not be a median in front of their eatery. “We have it planned as a striped median instead of a full one,” McVaugh said. This means left turns will continue to be allowed there.

People who came to the public meetings were polled electronically about their feelings regarding different proposals. The polling found strong support for all the key elements of the downtown plan: landscaped medians, gateway signs, bike markings, and a buffer between parking and travel lanes.

Safer crossings

In the City Park section from Harrison to Sligo, which is wider than the downtown stretch, planners propose reducing lane width and adding a buffered bike lane, as well as parallel parking in front of City Park.

“You could have on-street parking in front of City Park, from Park Street to Mildred Avenue, on one side,” McVaugh said.

Again in this stretch, a number of accesses would become “right in, right out” for better safety. One such area would be in front of City Market, where multiple accesses would be consolidated.

“A left turn onto the highway is the most dangerous movement you can make,” McVaugh noted.

Pedestrians would get a huge boon in the form of a mid-block crosswalk in front of City Park, with a rapid rectangular flashing beacon. When walkers push a button, lights will flash to warn motorists of their presence. The median gives pedestrians a “refuge” in the middle of the street, McVaugh said.

Such crosswalks, he said, earn 70 percent compliance from drivers vs. a paltry 30 percent compliance for a traditional crosswalk (something many local pedestrians can attest to).

Raised medians would be added, and a new traffic signal could be installed at Edith Street (near McDonald’s). The idea of a light at Edith polled well, he said – as did parking in front of City Park, buffered bike lanes, and the landscaped medians.

There is a proposed crosswalk at Edith, but it’s “good but not great,” McVaugh said. In the proposal, pedestrians have no median for refuge in the middle of the crossing, and are walking into a left-turn lane. If the crosswalk were relocated away from the intersection to one of the raised medians and a flashing beacon were installed, the crossing would be safer. It would be even better if a new traffic signal were put in, he said.

Because there would be a bike lane in this section, green pavement markings would be added where right-turn lanes cross the bike paths.

Another pedestrian crossing with a flashing beacon would be installed in the block in front of Sunshine Motors on the north, allowing folks on foot to cross to Dairy Queen, Pizza Hut, and other businesses on the opposite side.

In the “eastern gateway” section, which is broader and has a higher speed limit, people’s concerns included limited visibility at certain access points, the need for more pedestrian crossings, and the difficulty of turning onto Main from some side streets.

Because the highway is wide and relatively straight, it encourages drivers to go faster, McVaugh said. “Right now once you leave Mildred there are no signals until Sligo, and people speed up,” he said.

One suggested measure was to reduce the highway width from 67 to 63 feet and add two feet to the sidewalk on each side.

In this stretch, there would again be buffered bike lanes, but no on-street parking. Medians would probably be 8 feet wide.

A traffic signal would be installed at Hawkins Street to provide safer access to the three hotels there — the Baymont, Comfort Inn, and Holiday Inn Express.

At Colorado Highway 145 near Lakeside Lanes, McVaugh said, there is concern that the merge lane heading east is overly long, allowing people to speed up too much before they try to blend in with other traffic. “We want to make them merge when they’re going slower,” he said. Shortening this two-lane section would provide more area for a “gateway treatment,” he said, including a median that could be 20 to 24 feet wide.

At the council meeting, Councilman Orly Lucero commented that 24 feet of median would be a lot of landscaping to maintain, but McVaugh said it wouldn’t have to be all greenery – it could have xeriscaping and/or sculptures.

McVaugh said when asked to prioritize the proposed improvements, the people polled picked improvements to the downtown segment first, followed by pedestrian crossings and safety measures.

The question of cost

The big question, of course, is how much any of these changes would cost and whether funding could be made available.

Funding is key to how quickly any of the improvements could be implemented. And Cortez, which is in the process of buying the former Cortez Journal building and remodeling it to be the new City Hall, is not flush with extra funds.

McVaugh said he would like to see the city enter into an intergovernmental agreement with CDOT. An IGA involves no financial commitment, he said, but it would establish the proposed traffic plan as the set of guidelines to follow for future development.

“Right now, if someone wants to develop a property on the highway, they have to go through the state access code,” he said. An IGA, on the other hand, would establish the proposed design and improvements as the standard in Cortez. “The IGA will override the highway access code,” McVaugh said.

“With an IGA you’re looking at the corridor and the future of Cortez as a whole.”

He emphasized that the IGA would be a “living document” and could be amended as needed.

With or without an IGA, the price tag for the entire package of improvements would be steep. McVaugh declined to give even a ballpark figure, but he said not everything has to be done at once. “With the limited funding we all have, this is not something that is going to happen in two or three years,” he told the Free Press. “It might take 10 or 15.”

However, “There are things that can be done fast” and relatively inexpensively, such as the improved medians, he said. “Things can be done in incremental steps.”

City Manager Shane Hale asked how quickly improvements could be made downtown. McVaugh said in conjunction with re-striping that section of Main Street, CDOT would also like to do “microsurfacing” of the entire stretch, grinding it down and connecting the underlying concrete panels to eliminate some of the “thumping” that occurs when motorists drive along it. “This is probably two to three years out,” he said, and would cost about $3 million.

Hale asked whether the street could be repainted immediately. McVaugh said it was possible but, “I’m not committing to it.”

“Some immediate relief in the downtown corridor would be great,” Hale replied.

A restripe alone would not be expensive. McVaugh said one recently done in Salida on a stretch similar in size to the one in Cortez (but asphalt rather than concrete) cost $200,000. “But if we could smooth up the road and make the ride a little more comfortable, I’d rather spend the $3 million,” he said.

Hale said he is frequently approached by members of the hotel community voicing concern about their clients having to cross the highway on foot without a crosswalk. It’s a big issue, he said, and pedestrians have been hit.

“We’re probably not ever going to have enough money to do everything in this plan,” Hale said, “but we may be able to address big public-safety measures and downtown issues.”

Installing a crossing at Hawkins in front of the three hotels might be relatively inexpensive, he said, and would be a good step, as well as measures to improve “walkability” downtown.

Mayor Karen Sheek said a combination of improvements should be implemented. “We have a tendency in this community to talk a lot about what we’re going to do,” she said. “And then nothing happens. If we can take care of low-hanging fruit so people can say, ‘This is a result of that study I participated in’,” it would be good, Sheek said.

The council will consider the proposals during upcoming public-works budget talks.