DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. — Over the last few months, Denver7 has covered extensively a citizen-led initiative in Douglas County to increase the number of county commissioners from three to five.
On Friday, organizers held an event at Lone Tree Brewing, as they come down the home stretch to get signatures to get the measure on November's ballot.
"The fourth quarter is here, and we have 13 days to get it done," said 3 To 5 organizer Angela Thomas.
She told Denver7's Douglas County Reporter Tyler Melito that they need a little more than 15,000 verified signatures to get the measure added to the ballot in November.
Currently, Thomas said they are at a little more than 11,000.
"We have 13 days to finish up to reach around 18,000," Thomas explained. "We need 15,040 verified signatures, but we're going for about 20% more than that."
Thomas said once they submit the signatures they have received to the county clerk's office, every signature will be verified to ensure no one signed multiple times, and all signatures correspond to a Douglas County resident.
"We do a pre-validation ourselves, where we run it through our database to see if they match up, so we can hopefully know how many verified signatures we have before we submit it to the clerk's office," Thomas described.
Some voters at Friday's event, like Jon Meredith, who has called DougCo home for 20 years, said for him, the reason he chose to sign the petition boiled down to accountability.
"I think George Teal probably said it best, where it's very simple for him to get agreement for a single other commissioner without having to apply to any of Colorado's sunshine laws, and he can have off-the-record discussions and make whatever deal he likes, and the public doesn't get to know about it," Meredith told Melito.
Meredith said before this whole process, he didn't know how much the county commissioners were responsible for.
"I suppose I hadn't realized after having lived in Douglas County for 20 years how few people are responsible for such a large budget and for making large decisions about land use and other things that really affect us," Meredith said.
He was proud to hear the number of people who have already signed the petition.
"I'm just truly impressed by the citizens of Douglas County coming out trying to make their government better," said Meredith.
He shared a message to voters who haven't signed yet.
"You should sign this petition because it places the decision whether or not to expand the county commission's three to five in the hands of Douglas County's voters," Meredith said.
Former Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas spoke with Melito in late June for this story, sharing her thoughts on the expansion of commissioners.
"If we have five commissioners, then Douglas County will have a voice," Thomas said. "I moved to Douglas County in 1984. Castle Rock had a population of 8,000. The county had a population of 23,000. Now the population is 400,000."
Thomas said she used to work up to 80 hours a week to ensure everything in the county she was responsible for was done to a standard she was proud of.
Now, she believes the current commissioners — Abe Laydon, George Teal and Kevin Van Winkle — are stretched too thin, citing a meeting of the county's health board on June 11.
"Those meetings only happen four times a year," Thomas explained. "There are five board members, two of them are county commissioners, George Teal and Kevin Van Winkle, but on June 11, neither one of them was able to make the meeting, and one of the other members was sick, so there was no quorum, and no business could take place. And there was business that Mike Hill, the executive director, needed to have happen. So the board president, Doug Benevento, said, 'Well, we'll just do a quick phone meeting next week.' Well, that doesn't give the public the opportunity to participate and watch their government in action."
Thomas added that having five commissioners, in her opinion, would greater ensure commissioners would be able to attend all the things that require their attention.
"We are a representative government," Thomas said.
Denver7 reached out to Commissioner Teal about the June 11 meeting. At the time this story was published, he had not responded.
We also reached out to Commissioner Laydon, who previously told Melito in regard to adding commissioners: "Things rarely improve by adding politicians." He also has not responded at the time of writing.
In regards to a commissioner's ability to attend meetings, Thomas pointed to conversations she's had with officials in counties that already have five commissioners.
"I worked with commissioners from El Paso and Arapaho and Adams and Weld, where they have five commissioners, and so the commissioners were able to go and be better representatives because they weren't having to go to more and more meetings because those responsibilities were split between five commissioners instead of three," Thomas explained.
Not everyone is in favor of the 3 To 5 initiative though.
In Denver7's original coverage of the initiative, we shared how the Douglas County Republican Party was opposed to the measure.
First Vice Chair Matt Smith told Denver7's Melito on Thursday that he and the party were doubling down.
"This is not the right way to handle this, in my opinion, and in our opinion," Smith said. "Douglas County is going really well. It's a top destination county, not just in Colorado, but in the United States of America. We have high credit ratings. We have a balanced budget. Why are we going to mess with something that's working?"
Smith said he and the party felt the best way to make a change in government would be via a recall petition.
"This feels like a local example of court packing, just, you know, folks are not happy with the results. They're going to try to change government instead of handling it with a recall petition," Smith said.
Per Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold's website, a recall petition has the following requirement: "The signature threshold to place a recall question on the ballot for a state or county elected official is 25% of the total votes cast at the last preceding general election for that office."
Smith acknowledged a question regarding the bipartisan support in DougCo for the 3 To 5 measure.
"We don't represent 100% of every Republican. We're elected to represent the Douglas County Republican body, so that's how we're making those decisions," Smith detailed. "We do understand that there is some bipartisan support, and so you know this is part of the Democratic process, and so we support everyone's opinion and how they choose to vote on this."
Recently, the DougCo Republican party posted on Facebook that 98% of people who sign the petition don't fully read what they are signing. Smith acknowledged that 98% was not a scientific number, but stood by the claim in the post.
"A lot of the folks that we're talking to about this issue, they don't understand everything — you know, all the implications that come with this, from term limits and things like that this is going to affect," Smith told Melito.
Organizers have until July 25 to officially turn in their collected signatures to the county clerk's office.
The expansion of commissioners in a Colorado county isn't a new concept.
Currently, five counties in the state expanded from three commissioners to five.
El Paso and Weld Counties were the first to do so in 1976.
Pitkin County followed shortly after in 1978.
Then, voters in Arapahoe and Adams Counties approved expansion in 1997 and 2012, respectively.
Denver and Broomfield are combined city-county governments with no traditional county commission structure.
Colorado law (C.R.S. § 30-10-306.5) allows counties with populations of 70,000 or more to expand from three to five with there only being two ways to do so: a voter-approved ballot measure or home rule charters.
