Joan Peck is the mayor Longmont deserves
Joan Peck is a tireless advocate for the hard-working residents of Longmont. We need her leadership as mayor for our future.
Joan has a strong and clear vision of what she intends to initiate and finish. Her accomplishments are built upon hard work, not arrogance, vindictiveness, and grandstanding. She has started and operated a small business, supervised and managed employees, worked in the banking and tech industries, and she has been a public school librarian and substitute teacher.
Joan listens carefully to all sides, then she does the research. She builds coalitions. She stays focused, insisting upon results based upon the principles of our democratic republic. She leads and succeeds with initiatives such as the charter amendment to ban fracking in city limits; the petition to prevent Union Reservoir from becoming a publicly-financed religious enclave; the expansion of Longmont’s air quality monitoring; transportation advocacy with BNSF/RTD/Governor Polis. She is steadfast in her advocacy for quality early childhood education and affordable housing for all residents of Longmont.
I have served for six years with Joan Peck and I have served for three years with her main opponent. There is no comparison: I cannot remember a single successful project he initiated. But he did manage to delay the implementation of the affordable housing ordinance for over a year and repeatedly demanded residential metro districts, a known burden for homeowners. Check out the financial contributors to this election. Joan does not represent the special interests who are profiting from and manipulating our elections and Council. Joan represents all residents of Longmont.
As a wife, mother, grandmother, neighbor, and public servant, Joan has dedicated the last 44 years to listening to and representing the good-hearted people of Longmont.
Stand up for your future. Vote for Joan Peck, the mayor we deserve.
Polly Christensen/Longmont (Christensen is a current member of Longmont’s city council)
Peck cares for residents’ best interests
I strongly support Joan Peck for mayor. During her six years as a council member, Joan has proved to be a strong leader and a fair representative for Longmont residents. Joan is unafraid to stand up for us when developers try to sneak in metro districts and fracking because she knows the critical importance of clean air and water, affordable homes, good jobs, and safe neighborhoods and schools for a healthy, happy life.
Establishing a commuter rail service from Longmont to Denver is also important to Joan, as this can significantly reduce the impact of too many cars on the road as our population soars. Joan has developed many valuable relationships over the years she has been working on this complicated project that will help her get the job done as mayor.
I personally know Joan to be a kind person and an honest, hardworking leader, unbeholden to big money, who genuinely cares for our residents’ best interests. This fall she has been walking the city and speaking with countless residents to know what kind of practical, meaningful policies and actions to implement to address our most important concerns. I voted for Joan Peck and hope you will, too!
Elizabeth Olson/Longmont
Michael Christy believes in service
We are writing to express our wholehearted support for Michael Christy for Boulder City Council. We have known Michael for more than 16 years and can attest to the many qualities that will make him an ideal member of city council. He is a man of his word and of highest integrity. He is a collaborative leader and community builder. He is a husband, father, volunteer, attorney, professor, cyclist, runner, and dog lover.
Michael’s thoughtful approach to finding solutions allows room for all voices, not just the loudest. He has honed his mediation skills not just to listen to all sides of complex arguments but to help people find common ground and consensus. His ability to differentiate fact from opinion and evaluate alternatives without bias was likely behind his being asked to return to California to become a judge, a role he only declined because Boulder is where his family, home, and heart are.
Michael believes in service. As a former JAG officer, he demonstrates his desire to make a positive difference in the community through action. He volunteers with Boulder’s Shelter for the Homeless, Community Mediation and Resolution Center and Cannabis Licensing Board. Whenever there is a call to action he jumps in to lend a hand.
Boulder’s opportunities and challenges require leaders who unite rather than divide; who respect the opinions of all, not just those with whom they agree. Michael possesses the humility and integrity to be an inclusive and collaborative member at the table. He will strive to make sound decisions that are best for all residents, for our local businesses, for our community and, ultimately, for this place we call home.
I urge all voters in Boulder to support Michael Christy in this election, for a truly Better Boulder.
Jackie & Nicko van Someren/Boulder
Take a “LEAP” forward for Latino children
Latino children continue to suffer the academic brunt of this ongoing pandemic. As a former K-12 Educator, I am particularly dismayed at the lack of resources and support for BIPOC students across Colorado.
This pandemic has laid bare the stark educational inequities and disparities between students of color and their white counterparts. For Latino students, the pandemic has laid a heavier, negative thumb on the socioeconomic playing field that a good education almost always levels.
New 2019-2020 standardized testing results from the Colorado Department of Education showed white students outperformed Hispanic and Black students in math and language arts by more than 30 percentage points. These are core subjects essential to every child’s foundational education.
During the past 18 months, my organization has distributed over $2.1 million to approximately 2,100 families across the Front Range who cannot access public benefits. Not one of these families spent their dollars on educational support for their children. These dollars went to housing, food, clothing, healthcare, and other more pressing needs.
It is now, with a special sense of urgency we can create a new normal as educational resources dwindled during the pandemic and the opportunity gap continued to widen for our students.
Prop 119, otherwise known as the Learning Enrichment Academic Program (LEAP), will help our kids ‘catch up’ from pandemic-fueled learning loss by providing financial aid so that families can afford after-school learning support such as internet, technology, tutoring.
Prop 119 helps take cost out of the picture by providing $1,500 in annual financial aid per student for out-of-school support, with priority given to those low- and moderate-income families.
Prop 119 is a first-of-its-kind measure that has been developed by education experts from across the state to help our students. It will increase equity and flexibility to help close the learning gaps so that students—particularly those of color and those living in poverty—can advance their learning.
Our Latino community has been hit hard by the pandemic, now is the time to make a positive educational impact that will help our kids, our families, and our future leaders succeed.
Join me and dozens of other supporters of the bipartisan proposition in voting YES on Prop 119.
Rudy Gonzales is the Executive Director at Servicios de La Raza, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing and advocating for culturally responsive, essential human services and opportunities
We can be the source of caring and compassion
Such a great idea to increase compassion and caring in the community and around the country. (“More compassion and caring, please,” by R. Lawrence, Boulder Weekly, October 14, 2021) Respectfully listening to each other is the key. Looking at the big picture, many across the country are suffering: hunger, homelessness, the ravages of poverty and our sad history of racism. But the recent relief bill from Congress brought an increase to the Child and Earned Income Tax Credits, creating ladders out of poverty.
In the two months since it passed, 3.5 million children left poverty. The Build Back Better legislation could make those tax credits permanent, provide paths to home security to cut homelessness, create better child care programs and more. Globally, there is a compassionate effort to ensure all people have access to the COVID vaccines.
We can do our part to put forward this compassionate work by calling on the President (202-456-1111) to lead the way out of global COVID and calling on our members of Congress (202-224-3121) to pass the Build Back Better legislation. This can be the compassionate and caring beginning of a better country and world.
Willie Dickerson/Snohomish, WA
To protect voting rights, we must end the filibuster
Since the 2020 presidential election, state Republicans have passed 33 voter suppression laws in 19 states across the country. And there will be more coming out of GOP-held state legislatures before the end of the year unless Congress acts swiftly to protect our voting rights.
So far, I have seen more talk than action in the way President Biden has handled our voting rights crisis. He’s advocated for voting rights legislation and asked Congress to take action, but he’s failed to do one very obvious thing that would change this fight: unequivocally support ending the filibuster.
The Jim Crow filibuster is the thing standing in the way of passing once in a generation legislation like the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. If Biden actually wants the Senate to pass those bills, he needs to use his influence as president to get the senate to abolish the filibuster.
Anything less is a failure to meet this crisis.
Karen Rosenschein/Boulder
