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With the holidays rapidly approaching, I find late December is a great time for family, friends, festivities, and a little reflection. The end of 2024 marks an important milestone: The first quarter of this century is now behind us. If you’re like me, the turn of the millennium doesn’t feel that long ago, yet the disco era is now closer to the year 2000 than we are. Time has a way of moving quickly, and constant change makes history easy to forget.

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.

Isaac Perez-Williams doesn’t have a house or a car, but that could soon change thanks to Urban Peak, a nonprofit in Denver that helps young people experiencing homelessness. The Denver Post Season To Share is the annual holiday fundraising campaign for The Denver Post and The Denver Post Community Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

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.

The Colorado Avalanche’s offensive attack can look like a symphony of puck and player movement when it’s really clicking. Colorado’s star-studded top line and defense pairing zipped the puck around early in the second period during a 4-0 dismantling of the New Jersey Devils at Prudential Center. Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar played catch as they moved around the offensive zone. Eventually, Makar took the puck into the right circle and sent it back to MacKinnon in the left circle, for what looked like a sure goal after the two dynamos had deftly manipulated the space and the defenders trying to chase them. MacKinnon wound up and rifled a one-timer toward the target.

Kris Bryant’s sanctuary is the batting cage attached to his parents’ home in Las Vegas. The cage, 65 feet long and 18 feet wide, is the centerpiece of a 1,600-square-foot workout facility. Bryant built it in 2014 as a present to his father, Mike, who first taught him how to hit and made a career out of teaching kids how to hit a baseball. Bryant used his $6.7 million signing bonus to give his father a piece of baseball heaven, including a $3,300 pitching machine.