Neighborhood eyesore

I don’t know if the City of Littleton was competing in an art contest or keeping our streets safe. Phillips Avenue from Clarkson to County Line Road looks like a “circus drawn out of place” street and an unfriendly abomination to a beautiful neighborhood. I think it’s a bit excessive! Green squares? Black and white rubber obstacles to keep cars from hitting bicycle riders? Really?

I can think of better ways of maintaining safety, street maintenance and more efficient ways of spending my tax dollars. Seriously, this was an over reach and is an eyesore in our neighborhood.

Kathy Turley

Littleton

A mounting crisis

The Denver Gazette’s recent editorial suggests that Colorado’s national parks are “business as usual” despite the deep staffing shortage at the National Park Service. This is exactly what we feared when we sounded the alarm. We knew the damage might not be visible on the surface this summer, but it’s a facade.

Since February, the Park Service has lost 1 in 4 staff members. To maintain appearances, national parks were ordered to keep parks open despite dangerously low staff and prioritize visitor-facing services. This has pulled staff away from roles in science, maintenance, education, and the long-term planning that protects these places for the future.

At Black Canyon of the Gunnison for instance, staff size has been cut by a third. All of the custodial staff are gone, meaning higher-grade maintenance employees are stuck cleaning bathrooms instead of repairing infrastructure. Rangers are so scarce that a sign warned visitors to “self-rescue” in an emergency because there was not a single ranger on site (photo attached). This is not business as usual. It’s a mounting crisis.

National parks are one of our country’s greatest investments, representing less than one-fifteenth of 1% of the federal budget. Yet, for every dollar we invest, national parks return $15 to local economies and generate billions for businesses. But the Trump administration’s proposed $900 million cut could eliminate staffing and funding for roughly 350 national park sites, from the smallest to some of the largest.

America’s national parks were set aside to be protected forever, not just for a summer or for our next visit, but for our children and grandchildren to experience many years from now. With a hollowed-out workforce, we risk losing the very resources these parks were created to safeguard, including wildlife, hiking trails, campgrounds, and our history that cannot be replaced.

Priya Nanjappa

Lakewood

Trying to make people see

I’ve sat in a bathroom with 16 preschoolers, in the dark, trying to keep them quiet during a lockdown drill. Thursday morning’s press conference from Evergreen said that many students and teachers went into lockdown mode and that the shooter kept trying doors only to find them locked. Lives were saved because of those drills.

But all the people who want their guns have become more important than our children.

It doesn’t seem to matter whose child it is or where the shooting occurs. There doesn’t seem to be any way to make people see.

Tracy Geygan

Broomfield