Time to thaw your turkey!
Sorry, usually I like to greet our dear readers a little more gently, but every minute counts if you still have a frozen Butterball that you’re hoping to serve Thursday.
Between the Thanksgiving prep and the ongoing special legislative session, I almost didn’t notice that the Broncos — this can’t be right, can it? — won their fourth game in a row.
I’d dwell on the poignant sadness of a once-proud fanbase being so jazzed about reaching .500, but we have entirely too much news to get to.
So let’s spatchcock this turkey and get to it already.
ELECTIONS
Next November, Colorado voters will likely be asked to radically overhaul the state’s election system. In short, every candidate for an office at the state legislature level or higher would be put on the same primary ballot, regardless of party affiliation. Then the top four vote-getters would advance to the general election, which would be a ranked-choice election. Sandra Fish has much more on how the initiative would work and why Kent Thiry, the former CEO of DaVita, is funding this push.
HIGH COST OF COLORADO
One of my favorite stand-up one-liners is from the dearly departed Mitch Hedberg: “Rice is great when you’re hungry and you want 2,000 of something.” But these days, as restaurants are operating on razor-thin margins, every grain counts. In the latest installment of our High Cost of Colorado series, Tamara Chuang talks to the operators of Kokoro about how pressure from all sides has restaurants rethinking their fundamentals.
POLITICS
It looks like everyone took different lessons away from Proposition HH’s failure at the ballot box. Brian Eason spent the weekend analyzing the options that lawmakers are working through during the special session to provide property tax relief, including the progressive wing of the Democratic party’s measure that would double a tax credit for the working poor.
OUTDOORS
The jump in spending on outdoor recreation between 2021 and 2022
The outdoor business continues to establish itself as a pillar of the entire American economy, Jason Blevins reports. Employing 5 million workers and accounting for 2.2% of the nation’s gross domestic product, outdoor recreation still has room to grow, especially as the federal government weighs legislation that would make recreation a bigger part of land management plans and more.
CLUB Q SHOOTING
On the one-year mark since the mass shooting, hundreds of people gathered Sunday outside of the club in Colorado Springs to honor the five people who were killed, the 18 people injured and the community forever changed in the rampage that lasted less than a minute.
ENVIRONMENT
I grew up in the ’90s, when the main problem on Captain Planet’s mind was the hole in the ozone layer. But as Michael Booth reports, the world came together and banned the chemicals most responsible at the Montreal Protocol, and what was once a planetary threat is now described by the Boulder scientists who monitor it as “a very modest ozone hole.” Learn more with Michael’s interview with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration senior scientist Stephen Montzka.
MORE NEWS
Historic drought, poor planning, competing political agendas and climate-change denial contributed to dangerously low levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell, experts say. So what’s actually being done to reverse the damage? Jerd Smith of our partner at Fresh Water News dives into the complex decision-making that can throw the entire river system into disaster.
🔑 = source has article meter or paywall
COLUMNS
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy and submit columns, suggest writers or provide feedback at [email protected].
Thanks for kicking off this busy week with us. If you need me, I’m going to be practice-proofing my pull-apart sour cream and chives rolls so I can get a perfect batch by Thursday.
— Eric & Olivia
