$765 Million To Play Ball

Ask an affordable housing developer for horror stories about parking, and they will rattle off tales of stringent local requirements that have limited how much housing they build — and even sidelining projects. In Lakewood, Metro West Housing Solutions dropped a plan to build 44 subsidized apartments in part because the city would have required a parking garage costing more than $1 million.

The subject line of a press release this month from Weld County was stark and foreboding: “County’s assessed value sees 20% decrease.” The cratering of taxable property value in the large county that hugs metro Denver’s northeast corner — from nearly $25 billion in 2023 to just under $20 billion this year — would probably send many county finance directors running to the medicine cabinet for a fistful of antacids. But for Cheryl Pattelli, it’s all part of managing the books for a county whose economy relies largely on boom-and-bust commodity industries, like agriculture and energy, that can experience wild swings in both price and production. Energy, in particular, plays an outsized role.

Colorado prosecutors want to increase the total number of beds in the state’s youth detention centers by 50% amid rising juvenile-related violent crime — a dramatic upswing in youth incarceration that has been met with fierce pushback from juvenile justice advocates. The Colorado District Attorneys’ Council is working with a bipartisan pair of lawmakers in the Colorado legislature on a bill that would allow the state to hold 324 youth in pre-trial detention at any one time, up from the current cap of 215. Prosecutors argue the state doesn’t have enough beds to house violent youth offenders awaiting trial. As a result, they say, authorities are forced to release teens who might otherwise be deemed a danger to the public in order to free up spots for someone else. “We’re not meeting the moment to protect public safety or to provide intervention for juveniles who really need it,” said Rep.

Baseball player Juan Soto got a very large payday from the New York Mets.

Make deportation real again.

Are we to believe Ketanji Brown-Jackson, of that 2.5%, is the single most qualified and experienced black female judge in America?