On the final day of the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of United States government the delegates had produced. His answer has become famous:
“A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
Maintaining the idea of a representative republic remains a hot topic 238 years later. While the millions who marched in “No Kings” rallies across the nation on Saturday expressed fears that the Framers’ idea is being replaced by a monarchy or a dictatorship, next month’s election in Northern Colorado and the Boulder Valley will be brimming with citizen-initiated ballot issues that lean in a different direction: direct democracy, with voters’ voices either dictating or overruling decisions made by their elected representatives.
“That’s an indication of people’s dissatisfaction with representative government, frustration with the process,” said former Colorado deputy secretary of state Christopher Beall, an attorney with Denver-based Recht Kornfeld PC and a University of Denver law professor. “Colorado is not alone in having lots of ballot measures like that.”
A Colorado ballot might contain “initiatives,” citizen-sponsored proposals, as well as “referendums,” which are votes to repeal existing laws, and “legislative” measures sponsored by elected lawmakers.
Citizen-led ballot issues are much more expensive than working with elected officials on compromises, he said, “but for some, they’re not interested in compromise, and they’ll use the ballot as a threat, left and right. The advocacy group says that ‘if you don’t give me what I want in the legislative process, I’m going to go to the ballot.’
“We’ve decided we’re going to let the majority decide instead of anointing a king,” he said. “The trouble is, we live in a society that has lots of ideas about what the government should do.”
Others are much more supportive of direct democracy.
Suzanne Taheri of Denver-based West Group Law + Policy and another former Colorado deputy secretary of state, told BizWest that “Democracy works when people can challenge their leaders, like in Colorado where the right to petition is protected. It doesn’t work when the Constitution doesn’t give citizens enough power to keep the government accountable.”
University of Southern California professor John Matsusaka, author of “Let the People Rule,” noted in an interview on the online forum “The Conversation” that “if elected officials adopt policies favored by the majority, then there would be little reason for citizens to sponsor initiatives. Part of the reason, then, for so many initiatives in Colorado recently is likely that voters are not feeling well-represented by their elected representatives, at least on certain issues.
“From this perspective, having a large number of ballot measures is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself,” he said. “I’d even argue that the measures are a healthy way of trying to solve the problem of poor representation.”
At least five such measures, placed on municipal ballots by citizens who organized and did the grueling work of circulating petitions, often with the help of paid signature gatherers, will be decided two weeks from Tuesday.
Among them:
• Fort Collins voters will decide whether to designate 100% of the former site of Colorado State University’s Hughes Stadium as a city-managed natural area, a measure in direct competition with a City Council-crafted issue on the same ballot that would allow multiple uses on the scenic parcel at the base of the foothills — a site acquired by the city from CSU because of another citizen-initiated ballot issue in 2021. If both issues pass on Nov. 4, the one that receives the most votes will win.
• Louisville voters will decide whether to order residential zoning and affordable housing on large tracts of land such as Redtail Ridge that are envisioned as mainly commercial, and whether to overhaul the city’s impact-fee system to make developers pay for additional public infrastructure. Earlier this month, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution opposing both measures.
• Estes Park voters could require written approval for rezoning requests and planned unit developments from not only the property-owning applicant but two-thirds of owners within 500 feet of the site. Voters also could repeal a section of the Estes Park Development Code that grants density bonuses in multifamily zones for attainable & workforce housing and sets building height limits in residential zoning.
Another citizen-initiated petition drive that would have let Boulder voters decide on closing a western portion of Pearl Street to cars came to an abrupt end in May when Pearl for You, the organization leading the charge to collect signatures to put the matter on November’s ballot, decided not to pursue its ballot issue in the face of vocal pushback from Boulder business operators and economic leaders.
Greeley divided
Perhaps the region’s most contentious issue, however, could make its way onto Greeley municipal ballots next year. It revolves around opponents’ actions against the city-approved financing plan for a $1.1 billion entertainment district on the west edge of Greeley. That issue has sparked two separate citizen-initiated petition drives, large amounts of spending from nonprofit groups and a flurry of lawsuits and heated allegations.
The Greeley City Council approved in May the financing plan for the entertainment district dubbed Catalyst on city-owned land near Weld County Road 17 and U.S. Highway 34 that would anchor a large residential and commercial development called Cascadia proposed by Windsor-based developer Martin Lind. The plan authorized the use of $115 million worth of “certificates of participation” to lease several high-profile city facilities as collateral to pay for the plan, money that would be paid back through the revenue that Catalyst would generate. Catalyst would include a hotel, water park and an ice arena that would house Lind’s Colorado Eagles minor-league hockey team.
Calling the financing plan too risky, a citizens group called Greeley Deserves Better was formed last summer and collected nearly 1,000 more verified signatures of registered Greeley voters than it needed to place repeal of the financing plan on the November ballot. However, four Greeley residents protested the validity of the petitions, triggering an Aug. 26 hearing before city-appointed arbiter Karen Goldman, who ruled five days later that ordinances such as the one passed by the City Council were administrative in nature, not legislative, and thus cannot be repealed by voters under state law. Greeley Deserves Better then asked Weld District Court to overturn Goldman’s ruling, but District Judge Allison J. Esser blocked the issue on the day before the Sept. 5 deadline for adding it to the Nov. 4 ballot, contending that the dispute needed further review. If she eventually overrules the hearing officer, that issue could still make it onto a 2026 ballot.
A rendering of the proposed $1.1 billion hotel-hockey arena- water park development in west Greeley that is part of the Cascadia project. Courtesy Water Valley Co.Stymied so far in their first attempt, opponents formed another group called Greeley Demands Better, and on Thursday submitted almost 8,000 petition signatures to overturn the City Council’s September approval of a planned-unit development for Cascadia and Catalyst. Greeley City Clerk Heidi Leatherwood’s office now has less than two weeks to review the submittals, which could either force the council to repeal its zoning vote or let voters decide in a special election, to be held within 90 days of her determination that the signatures are sufficient. Work on roads and utilities could continue, since that infrastructure is not tied to the zoning approval.
Both groups have been dogged by allegations from Catalyst and Cascadia supporters that “dark money” interests, both from the region and from outside the state, are fueling the opposition.
We Are Greeley, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit registered to a Fort Lupton address, has donated nearly $68,000, mostly in in-kind services, to the citizen-led petition drives opposing issues related to Catalyst and Cascadia. Campaign finance reports indicated that it had given Greeley Deserves Better $3,000 in cash and a total of $34,800 worth of “in-kind services” for petition gathering, according to an amended campaign-finance disclosure submitted Sept. 22 to Leatherwood’s office. And Greeley Demands Better reported that the nonprofit gave $30,000 more for providing that group with signature gathering.
Taheri, attorney for both Greeley Deserves Better and Greeley Demands Better, told BizWest that We Are Greeley “provides protection from retaliation for funders and supporters of the repeal effort,” adding that “this organization became necessary after numerous established business leaders and long-time community members expressed fears and instances of retaliation from city officials and project proponents for questioning the Cascadia financing arrangement. The organization allows concerned leaders to support the repeal effort without fear of the bullying that has become a hallmark of the project’s supporters.”
Meanwhile, a group called “With Many Hands,” a project of the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, has dived into the Greeley issue, sparking an official complaint from Greeley Forward, a group of Cascadia and Catalyst supporters that has carried its concerns to the Elections Division of the Colorado Secretary of State’s office.
Leatherwood’s office found that sufficient evidence existed that With Many Hands had violated the state’s Fair Campaign Practices act and referred Greeley Forward’s complaint to the secretary of state for review. The complaint alleged that With Many Hands violated the law by failing to register an issue committee and failing to include a proper “paid for by” disclaimer on certain communications including paid advertising on Facebook and other social media outlets that urged Greeley voters to sign the petition to get Greeley Deserves Better’s repeal issue onto the ballot.
Greeley Forward’s campaign finance complaint alleged that, beginning on July 10, With Many Hands “has illegally spent thousands of dollars on political advertising by not registering with the city, without disclosing its funding sources and without including the required advertising or political disclosures required by law. These activities violate Colorado’s Fair Campaign Practices Act, and are unacceptable under any standard of transparency and fairness.”
The complaint alleged up to $9,500 in paid Facebook and Instagram ads run by With Many Hands, as well as an advertised posting for a political organizer who would work from Aug. 1 to Nov. 1 and be paid $10,000, “all without a single required registration, disclosure, or financial report filed with the City of Greeley.”
Do groups such as We Are Greeley and With Many Hands have to reveal who is pumping money into their efforts? According to Beall, attorney for Greeley Forward and the August protesters, “this is a more complicated issue than a straight yes or no.
“A 501(c)(4) is not required by state law to disclose all of its donors,” he said, although the Internal Revenue Service does require disclosure of major donors on the entity’s Form 990 that is filed in the next calendar year.
“But Colorado campaign finance law does require disclosure of a donor if that donor ‘earmarks’ a donation to a (c)(4) for the purpose of giving the donor’s money to an issue committee for issue campaigning,” Beall said. “Most (c)(4) orgs know about this requirement, and they therefore avoid having donors earmark their donations.
“In any event, it is only simplistically true that Colorado law does not require disclosure of donors. In certain circumstances, it does.”
No matter who’s funding With Many Hands, the organization’s appeal was a powerful one for Joel Patterson, a journeyman electrician and member of Local 68 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers whose previous political activity had been mostly limited to social-media interaction and registration with the Green Party.
He told BizWest that a With Many Hands organizer “contacted me, first by text that was usually automated, but then she called. And they weren’t asking for money.”
He read the group’s website, which “does lay out aspects of what they do, who they are,” Patterson said. That led him to get involved in the Cascadia issue.
“It’s the first time I’ve gotten more active on a community level,” he said. “It’s been empowering.”
Patterson said he recognized the “counterweights and checks” of representative government. Petition drives “require a significant amount of citizens to sign on,” he said. “The amount of people it requires shows it’s a significant concern; it’s not like you sign a petition and it becomes law.”
However, he added that “elections only come along every so often, and sometimes you can’t wait for an election.”
As for monetary contributions, Patterson said he was more concerned with the cash politicians get from interest groups to ram through certain laws and projects. Citizen-led ballot issues, he said, are ways voters can say, “It doesn’t matter what your donors want. We’re going to overpower your donors.”
The Cascadia and Catalyst approvals, he said, “are where communities on a local level need to step in and get more active.
“I’d been barely aware of it at the start of this year,” Patterson said, “but I knew that there were a lot of concerns that were just not answered. That’s a lot of money, so people want to know if it’s being used for a practical, sustainable purpose.
“So we started asking questions, the community talking with each other, and it was amazing to find out just how many people were concerned, a significant number of people,” Patterson said. “They aren’t trying to stop the project; they just want it to go to a public vote.”
The city’s response had been less than satisfactory, Patterson said.
“This has kind of been, ‘We’re going to send you a sales pitch instead of information.’ Many people don’t trust that.”
That attitude is frustrating to Greeley city manager Raymond Lee.
“We thought we were being pretty forthcoming with the information,” Lee said Oct. 14 at a BizWest CEO Roundtable in Windsor. “We had over 30 public meetings in some form or fashion, and we still had people saying we didn’t know anything about the project. We don’t trust the project. We don’t think the city should be in this type of business. Or the developer should be doing this. We have all these types of questions going on that we’re trying to respond to in a timely and responsible fashion, but it seems like it’s still playing catch-up in this whole equation.”
The city’s biggest problem, Lee said, is separating fact from fiction.
“The misinformation that’s out there and driving the conversation is incredible,” he said. “We’re even seeing it in our (City Council) election coming up. This Cascadia has been the catalyst for different people running in our community, and the biggest thing for us is getting them the right information as it relates to what these projects mean to our community, what does it mean to our long-term growth potential, what does it mean for infrastructure and growth from that standpoint.”
The proposed downtown Greeley civic campus “is another almost billion-dollar project in Greeley” but “doesn’t generate the same type of revenue that we’re looking at on the west end,” Lee said. “How are we going to pay for that? Some of that is robbing Peter to pay Paul as we look at that Catalyst project and moving that over to try to help the debt that will be issued for a new city hall, boutique hotel and the development that we’re seeing in our downtown that is forthcoming as well. But the misinformation is getting ahead of that, and we’ve been struggling to get ahead of the misinformation and really have an honest dialogue.”
Lee said “political organizations from other communities, other states’ groups, coming into our community and setting up shop has not been a thing for our community for a very long time.
“We have With Many Hands, a very strong California political group that’s now stationed in Greeley and really talking about a ‘community benefit’ agreement” similar to the one being negotiated between owners of the National Football League’s Denver Broncos and residents of Denver’s La Alma and Lincoln Park neighborhoods before construction can begin on a new stadium in the Burnham Yard area.
With Many Hands held a public town hall meeting at Greeley’s recently reopened Downtown Armory to collect citizen input about what such an agreement could contain “in order to get what we need out of economic-development projects,” the group wrote on its Facebook page. “What kind of local jobs will these projects provide? Will profits support affordable housing, child care, infrastructure for all this flooding? These are the questions community members want answered.”
Lee said “we’re going to do that, but they’re pushing our citizens on what they should be asking for their community, and … one thing they’re asking is that 50% of new development in our community needs to be affordable. Well, no. That can’t happen. We can’t afford that. Or capping rent for 40 years? Those things are not real things that we can do.
“And it’s just really trying to educate our citizens about how you can’t control price caps in a market to that degree and think development is going to come,” Lee said. “You can’t do those things. Development won’t follow behind that, and it really handicaps your long-term economic-development goals that you’re trying to achieve as a community.”
The city is limited in how it can respond to misinformation, Lee said.
“Once you have something on the ballot, we can’t spend any tax money” by law, he said. “I get the root of it, it’s good. We shouldn’t be able to ask citizens for a tax measure and spend millions to promote that. But it gets to be really difficult when something’s set for a ballot. You can throw a lot of ads on Facebook and scare a community. As a local government, we have to be hands-off and hope there’s a private group to pick up that fight.”
Again, it comes down to a debate over how government should work.
“We don’t live in a direct democracy. This is a representative democracy,” said Tom Hacker, a former journalist who was one of the four Greeley citizens who filed the protest against Greeley Deserves Better’s ballot issue. “We have councils and legislatures making decisions because it is the electorate’s way to do this.”
The Catalyst financing plan, he said after the August hearing, “was built over a long period of time, with lots of public notice. There was no doubt in my mind that there was certainly sufficient opportunity for people to become involved in this.”
However, Jon Caldara, president of the Golden-based Independence Institute, countered in an email to BizWest that “I don’t understand why those in power are so hateful of the simple consent that our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights demands. They will do anything to avoid asking citizens permission before raising taxes, keeping excessive revenues, or going into debt. They’ll call taxes ‘fees’ to avoid consent. They’ll call debt ‘Certificates of Participation’ to avoid consent.
“Why not just ask the people you’ll be taxing and placing into debt first? They fear they are not representing the people, and asking consent could prove their fears are justified,” Caldara said. “The citizens of Greeley have every right to be incensed.”
‘Part of the give and take’
Fort Collins city manager Kelly DiMartino echoed some of Lee’s frustrations at the CEO Roundtable.
The 2021 Hughes Stadium citizen-led initiative “was directing the city to buy the property for a set amount, which was interesting — businesses never do that,” she said. “Now it’s come back around with the ultimate use of the property.
“The misinformation out there is very hard to combat sometimes,” she said, “but at least for the first time, we’ll have a clear choice for the voters, with two measures: one that is a citizen-initiated for Hughes to keep it 100% open space, and then one that is based on a hefty engagement process that we had called a Civic Assembly, where people were selected by lottery and spent multiple weekends really digging into the information, and they put together a recommendation.”
Local government, DiMartino said, “operates on a currency of trust. For us, it’s really thinking about the pacing of projects now. Things are taking longer because we have to build in time with the civic capacity.”
But that’s a complicated concept to convey to voters, she said.
“How do you have these nuanced conversations? How do we find the spaces to have the nuanced conversations so you don’t chip away the trust? At the end of the day, that’s what matters the most to us,” she said, “is the trust of our residents and our commercial sector.”
Social media has made that task exponentially more difficult, said Windsor town manager Shane Hale. Windsor voters in 2023 overwhelmingly defied the will of their town board over the issue of the so-called “backlots,” a three-block sliver of undeveloped property between the backs of Main Street businesses and the railroad tracks. The town and the Downtown Development Authority had hoped to develop those lots, which the DDA and the town own, into additional commercial space, housing and parking.
“I think things can blow up through social media with so much incorrect information,” Hale said at the CEO Roundtable. “There’s an old saying that a lie can go around the world before the truth gets its pants on in the morning, and that’s only been multiplied by social media.”
It doesn’t help that social media has helped push federal, state and local divisions to near-incendiary levels, said Boulder Chamber CEO John Tayer.
“Tensions are running high in business circles due to all the pressures accumulated, from federal policies to holdover challenges in a post-COVID economy,” he said. “The business leaders and economic interests are much more sensitive to anything that looks like an additional burden they have to carry,” which makes conversations about “thoughtful investments in infrastructure that create economic success” that much more difficult.
“Citizen action is always a dynamic that our business community has faced throughout time when there are projects that draw public attention,” Tayer said. “These are the things the Chamber and other economic-development groups regularly have to work through to make sure the citizens are informed about the investments these projects represent.
“I think we’re getting better on educating our residents and joining in public discourse in ways that lead to less attacks in the back end,” Tayer said. “That’s why organizations like ours exist.”
Social media, he said, nourishes “a heightened level of anxiety and also the tools that can elevate that into actions that are detrimental to positive progress for our communities. You just have to look at Nextdoor and recognize how much misinformation is propagated to know that we need to get accurate and informed information out to our residents and about public and community investments.”
Outgoing Fort Collins mayor Jeni Arndt said such controversies are simply the nature of the beast.
“In Colorado, we have a very strong citizen initiative process, and multiple paths for citizens to weigh in on our laws,” she said. “I think the people have a lot of rights, but we get the state we want. People have the right to repeal ordinances and redress the government. One person’s ‘out of hand’ is another one’s ‘hell yes.’
“I trust the voters, gosh darn it,” Arndt said. “They make good decisions on the whole.”
Beall agreed.
“This is part of the give and take, the messiness of governing ourselves,” he said. “Some people are sort of surprised at how messy democracy is. Yes, it is contentious and feels like it’s divisive.”
But in the end, Beall falls back on the observation made by former British prime minister Winston Churchill during a speech in the House of Commons in 1947:
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.jsThis article was first published by BizWest, an independent news organization, and is published under a license agreement. © 2025 BizWest Media LLC.
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