CAPERRoadAheadPart1

SUNDAY HAWAIIAN LU'AU: TRADITIONS FROM THE BIG ISLAND COME TO UNC. A3 THE FIGHT FROM WITHIN Diagnosed just a few months after his mother, Greeley Central athlete Brady Guyette faces his toughest competitor yet — cancer.

Read about their story in the Sports section, starting on B1.

Serving Greeley and Weld County greeleytribune.com

APRIL 10, 2011

GREELEY, COLORADO $1.50 VOL. 139 NO. 149

THE ROAD AHEAD, PART ONE | A TRIBUNE SPECIAL PROJECT

DERBY

DAYS

A2: Cub Scouts from all over Weld County compete for bragging rights in the annual Pinewood Derby.

Forks in the road Tracing the path to Greeley’s present highlights the power of today’s decisions to shape the future.

LIFE AND

DEATH

C1: Six generations and 125 years later, Allnutt Funeral Service still lives for the death business.

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com

RICHARD WEISS STANDS IN his west Greeley jewelry store, which has been located at 955 52nd Ave. Court since 2006.

COMING

UP

Weiss moved the store from downtown Greeley to be closer to his customer base in west Greeley.

» Then and now: 819 10th St.

BY NATE A. MILLER

Monday: Old fashioned wagons — Radio Flyers — bring back some of Robert Schlotthauer’s best memories.

F

rom the office of his west Greeley jewelry store, Richard Weiss can see a thriving downtown at the heart of a flourishing northern Colorado community. That downtown is 5 miles and nearly 50 years ago.

“Retail was king. People from all over Weld County and as far away as Fort Morgan and Sterling would make the trip to Greeley to buy and shop, and window-shop,” remembered Weiss, the 70-year-old president of Weiss Jewelers, 955 52nd Ave. Court No. 200.

THERE ARE

47

EMPLOYMENT ADS IN TODAY'S CLASSIFIEDS SECTION.

« INSIDE C1-C4: E1-E10: B7: D1-D8: A2: D4: A7: A6: B1-B8: E7:

Business Classifieds Games Life Lottery Movie listings Obituaries Opinion Sports TV grid

RICHARD WEISS/For The Tribune

EARLY 1950s: Weiss Jewelers

42 pages, 5 sections

« WEATHER

WEATHER

TODAY ler, mostly dy with rain howers

Cooler, mostly cloudy with rain

56 Low 31

THER, XX

NMILLER@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

High 56 Low 31

B8: Weather JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com

NOW: Nolan’s Jewelry

The store has been in Weiss’ family since his grandfather opened it in 1915 in downtown Greeley.

“Greeley was a very prosperous town,” Weiss said. He would help his dad dress the store windows with watches, jewelry and other merchandise to catch the eye of the window-shoppers who came downtown, drawn by movie theaters — there were three — and large retail outlets such as Montgomery Ward.

After dinner, they would come back and put the merchandise in the vault for the night. This was the rhythm of life for retailers at the center of one of the state’s largest cities.

That began to change about half a century ago when Interstate 25 was built, linking Denver and Cheyenne — and bypassing Greeley. The interstate changed the city in ways no one had planned and no one imagined. Greeley grew west toward the interstate, leaving the downtown a fading afterthought for some businesses and commuters who called the new western neighborhoods their home. Generations of others decided to stand and fight to maintain Greeley’s identity and its historic eastern core, the commercial and residential districts surrounding the grand

» About the series This is the first installment in The Road Ahead, a series of stories that explores the power of plans to shape Greeley: past, present and future.

This first story helps to explain how we arrived here as a community.

Subsequent installments — once a month in our Sunday edition — will look at present-day Greeley and then at the opportunities ahead and the paths we might take.

Weld County Courthouse.

No one knows what the city would look like today had the interstate followed a route more similar to U.S. 85, which put Greeley at the heart of northern Colorado. But this much is clear: No other decision from the city’s past better illustrates the power of plans to live long past those who make them. It also underscores how planning decisions made today could have far-reaching ramifications for decades to come.

«

CONTINUED A4: The Road Ahead

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A4 »

The Road Ahead

SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2011

« THE TRIBUNE

« A5

» Then and now » 1302 1st Ave.

» 808 8th Ave.

» 701 10th Ave.

» Mile markers

A look at key events on Greeley’s road to today Great Western Sugar Co. plant is built. The plant establishes Greeley 1902 as a center for the agricultural industry and brings waves of immigrants to Greeley.

CITY OF GREELEY MUSEUMS/For The Tribune

1905: The Great Western sugar beet factory, which was built in 1902

1910: The Greeley Post Office, which was razed in 1962

CITY OF GREELEY MUSEUMS/For The Tribune

CITY OF GREELEY MUSEUMS/For The Tribune

1987: Construction of the Union Colony Civic Center, looking west on 7th Street

Mountain water system is implemented. The project created a 40-mile 1907 wooden transmission pipe to deliver water.

Warren Monfort begins a cattle feedlot operation after he and his 1921 wife move to a farm north of Greeley.

The Greeley Spud Rodeo begins.

The event becomes the Greeley 1922 Stampede, the largest Fourth of July rodeo in the country.

Construction of the Colorado Big-Thompson 1937-1957 Project, which allows for diversion of water from the Western Slope to the Front Range, including Greeley.

Greeley airport moves to its current location.

1944 The A $3.2 million Weld County Public Hospital is built at 16th Street and 1952 17th Avenue. Expansions follow in 1957, 1975, 1978 and 1980.

government reorganizes under a home rule charter.

1958 Greeley’s Greeley-Capitol Pack meatpacking plant opens. A year later, it’s 1960 purchased by the Monfort family.

Construction of Interstate 25. The interstate 1961-1965 bypasses Greeley, following existing state rightJIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com

NOW: Construction on the new Leprino Foods plant, scheduled to open this winter

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com

NOW: The Jerome office building, which is home to a number of businesses

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com

NOW: The Union Colony Civic Center, from the same vantage point

I-25 one of several key decisions that shaped city

» Online

For an interactive timeline that shows how Greeley’s boundaries have shifted and an extended list of key events in the city’s history, go to www. greeleytribune.com and click on the link to this story.

« THE ROAD AHEAD From A1

‘Wouldn’t want it running down 23rd Avenue’

“We would have been a very different community if I-25 had been here rather than in Fort Collins, but they made a different decision,” said Becky Safarik, Greeley community development director. “The value to me is understanding that there was a decision made at that time, and we now work with what we have.”

For all its importance, however, I-25 alone defines neither Greeley’s past nor its present. Other key decisions in the past half-century that shaped the city for better or worse include: » Construction of the hospital that became North Colorado Medical Center. » The Colorado-Big Thompson water project. » Opening of the Greeley-Capitol Pack meatpacking plant in northeast Greeley, which became JBS. » Construction of the U.S. 85 Bypass. » Building of the Greeley Mall. » Demolition of the old downtown post office. » Financing and building of Union Colony Civic Center. » Location of the Hewlett-Packard plant in west Greeley, and its closing two decades later. » Anheuser-Busch’s decision to build a brewery in Fort Collins after Greeley officials couldn’t make a land deal work. » Charter schools, including University Schools, springing up in west Greeley as the city moved west and parents fled public schools and sought alternative ways of educating their children. » Annexation of thousands of acres of land on the west side of town as far west as Weld County Road 17, but east of the interstate. » Construction of the Leprino cheese factory at the site of the old Great Western Sugar Co. plant. While it’s too soon to tell how Leprino will help shape the city, it’s clear the development builds on Greeley’s history as a center for agriculture.

Safarik, whose department is charged with helping city leaders make the best decisions possible about Greeley’s future, said she doesn’t lament past decisions. There’s no point. As she puts it, she’s in the future business.

“We’ve been standing on the shoulders of the folks who were ahead of us to try to take a peek at what the future is,” she said. “It’s our turn to kind of move the next group of folks on our shoulders and say, ‘What do you see?’

Life is coming at us all the time.”

It’s not entirely clear why I-25 took the path it did. The details of the decision are spread over state, federal and local entities and buried under more than five decades of history. Greeley’s leaders may have actively worked to keep the highway far from developed areas, feared the impact it would have on established transportation routes, such as U.S. 85, or been simply ambivalent.

Ultimately, the decision that likely shaped Greeley the most may not have been Greeley’s to make.

Colorado Department of Transportation Region 4 historian Robert Autobee said the course I-25 took, which followed a historic route known as the Cherokee Trail, likely was a slam-dunk.

“It was pretty obvious that because the state already had the right-of-way, it made sense for them not to go out and make mass-scale purchases of land from people,” he said. “It followed the alignment of an old trail, which is what most roads do.”

Some longtime Greeley residents say city fathers fought the highway because of concerns about its impact on agriculture and because of worries about how it would affect the U.S. 85 corridor. There’s speculation that an informal group of influential leaders known as The Committee quietly communicated to state and federal authorities that the city wanted no part of the planned interstate.

Autobee said CDOT officials who worked on the project he spoke to don’t remember any controversy at the time about where to locate the northern stretch of I-25.

“You have to remember that we’re looking at the early ’60s here, and this was kind of right before the time when the public became more involved,” he said.

Autobee said that doesn’t mean there weren’t informal, quiet conversations between Highway Administration officials and representatives from Norton municipalities across the state. Municipal leaders weren’t blind to the role the interstate system could play.

Greeley Mayor Tom Norton was an engineering student at Colorado State University in the mid-1960s when I-25 was built.

“I was going to CSU, and I was driving that during its construction,” he said. “Being a civil engineer, we would go look at it.”

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com

THE PROMENADE SHOPS AT CENTERRA sit next to Interstate 25 in this photo taken in 2008. According to Colorado Department of Transportation historian Robert Autobee, the course of I-25 followed a historic route known as the Cherokee Trail.

There are two sides to the interstate story, he said. If the highway had gone through Greeley, it likely would have brought the city more of the technology-driven development Fort Collins has seen in the past half-century. On the other hand, the highway almost certainly would have changed Greeley’s identity, pulling it away from the agricultural roots that developed the city and, he said, will play a key role in its future.

Longtime Greeley Webster resident Bill Webster, who ran a feedlot in east Greeley for many years in addition to stints as a Weld County commissioner and in the state Legislature, said if I-25 had gone through the city, it would have divided the community.

“I, in my mind, don’t think it was all that bad that it went where it went,” he said. “That highway has been a help to us, but I think the distance to our community has been all right. I just

wouldn’t want it running down 23rd Avenue right now.”

Had the highway run through the center of the city — on a path similar to U.S. 85, for example — it’s easy to imagine that a number of Greeley’s historic buildings would have been sacrificed in the name of progress as interstate-driven development poured out of downtown. Examples of surviving historic buildings abound: » The old train depot became the headquarters for the Greeley Chamber of Commerce, 902 7th Ave. » The former Greeley Tribune building, 714 8th St., became a museum. » The Camfield Building, 615 8th Ave, which was built in 1909, was restored in recent years. » The Colorado Armory, 614 8th St., became a restaurant and bar.

While Webster said ultimately he’s glad the interstate did not redraw the map of Greeley, he acknowledged it has shaped the community.

“Because of the industries that unfortunately have located in Fort Collins

and down the I-25 strip, we have far more commuters now going over there to go to work and coming back here as a bedroom community,” he said.

Weiss saw the impact of the interstate from the vantage point of his jewelry store.

“The trend is to move toward I-25,” he said. “When I-25 went in to the west of Greeley and opened up that part of Colorado, it was to Greeley’s detriment and to Fort Collins’ present status, which is pretty good, from what I’m able to tell.”

‘Where the action is’ Since the completion of the interstate, Greeley has moved inexorably west.

Autobee was a graduate student at the University of Northern Colorado in the 1990s. He came back to Greeley some 15 years later when he took his current job.

“It’s created two Greeleys,” he said.

“The interstate is where the action is.”

Greeley’s westward movement started slowly. For nearly a century after its founding in 1871, the city’s boundaries stayed east of 35th Avenue.

Development in the 1980s — known as the tech boom — spurred much of the initial westward movement, said Peggy Ford Waldo, the programming curator for the city of Greeley’s museums.

The movement continued in the 1990s and early 2000s as companies such as State Farm Insurance and ConAgra — which became JBS — relocated their corporate headquarters to the far western edges of the city in a bid to get closer to the interstate.

In the early 2000s, city leaders debated annexing land all the way from the city’s western edge to the I-25 corridor. For a variety of reasons, the plan ran out of steam, and the city annexed to its current western boundary of Weld County Road 17.

Longtime Greeley resident and former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown said the city has missed opportunities because it didn’t embrace the interstate.

“We, for a long time as a city, tried to force people to locate downtown,” said the former University of Northern Colorado president and congressman. “The thought of the planning commission was if you denied zoning and permission to go on the west side of town that Brown you would eventually force those businesses downtown and revitalize downtown.

There was a good motivation.”

But it just didn’t work.

“People who couldn’t get an opportunity for zoning in Greeley simply went to Fort Collins and some to Loveland, as well,” he said. “The consequence was we lost an awful lot of commerce and property tax base.”

On the other hand, if Greeley had annexed all the way out to I-25, where the massive Centerra development now sits at the junction of U.S. 34, the city would have gained tax revenue but lost in other ways, community development director Safarik said.

“It’s certainly a huge development that’s spawning all sorts of other development along I-25,” she said of Centerra. “It’s hard to imagine that if it was part of Greeley that we would feel like it’s part of Greeley. It would really stretch us further west.”

Development in otherwise isolated areas means higher development fees, to pay for the cost of stretching services, she said.

«

CONTINUED A8: The Road Ahead

of-way along U.S. 87.

The downtown post office building is razed. Residents gather across 1962 the street and cheer for the building to resist the wrecking ball.

» I-25 was road to riches for Fort Collins It’s difficult to overstate the significance of Interstate 25 in the development of Greeley’s neighbor to the northwest, Fort Collins.

“If you take the historic view of the relationship between I-25 and Fort Collins, from the time that I-25 was even probably a one-lane highway, it’s always been advantageous to Fort Collins because it’s provided a better connection between Fort Collins in the regional environment and the Denver metro area,” said Lester Kaplan, who served as the first planning director for Fort Collins in the late 1970s. “Roads create opportunities, and a major road like that — a major interstate — has given Fort Collins superior connectivity in northern Colorado than, I would say, Greeley.”

Just as I-25 played a large role in shaping the way Greeley grew west after the interstate was built in the 1960s, it also shaped Fort Collins. The city grew east and began to grapple with its own difficult questions about how to manage growth along the interstate.

“If you look at it more in modern times, like over the last five years, I-25 has become more significant because there have been planning questions as to whether or not Fort Collins should annex east of I-25 because that area then does not have the same relationship to the greater part of Fort Collins, and it starts feeling as if it’s an addition, or something that’s remote from greater Fort Collins. That has created some differences of opinion.”

Some residents worry the development of big box retailers and other outlets along the I-25 corridor will pull business out of other parts of the city, while others worry the city is falling behind neighboring communities in the race to develop the area.

Ray Martinez was mayor of Fort Collins from 1999 to 2005. He remembers some of the debate about annexing a strip of land east of I-25 that would eventually house a Walmart on Harmony Road.

“We didn’t annex it in, and Timnath did.

Guess what they put there? A big box,” he said. “The very thing they didn’t want to happen is exactly what happened.”

Martinez said the development has done well while other areas of the city — such as midtown Fort Collins between Prospect and Harmony roads — have struggled to remain relevant.

Despite this, Martinez, too, views the interstate as ultimately good for Fort Collins.

“It makes an easier connection and a nexus for them to get into downtown Fort Collins, especially Old Town,” he said. “There’s always been a movement of people who are against any type of development whatsoever, whether it’s in town or along the highway.”

— Nate Miller

U.S. 85 Bypass opens. This eases north-south congestion but allows 1963 travelers to bypass downtown.

Aims Community College is founded. The first buildings on the 1967 west campus are constructed in 1971.

Greeley approves sale of liquor within city boundaries after nearly 1969 100 years as a temperance community.

State College becomes the University of Northern Colorado.

1970 Colorado $8 million Greeley Mall opens with 23 stores and 13 acres of parking.

1973 The The Monforts construct new feedlots in rural areas to address 1974 concerns about the smell.

The Greeley City Council hires consultants and creates a citizens 1978 committee to review proposals to improve recreational and cultural facilities in Greeley. The committee recommends a new senior center, recreation center and performing arts center.

Hewlett-Packard Co. buys 550 acres near 71st Avenue and 1980 10th Street. A 250,000-square-foot plant opens three years later with 487 employees.

Labor unrest at the Monfort plant causes 1980-1982 the company to temporarily close it. When it closed, 950 employees earned as much as $9.18 an hour. It reopens with 750 employees making up to $7 per hour.

The hospital becomes North Colorado Medical Center. A year later, it 1982 becomes a nonprofit corporation, after having been taxpayer-funded.

Greeley annexes land north of the city and offers incentives to lure 1982 an Anheuser-Busch brewery. The owner of the mineral rights on the proposed site refuses to sell. Anheuser-Busch locates in Fort Collins.

announces it will vacate its facility over two years.

2000 HPGreeley City leaders debate plan to annex land west of Greeley to the I-25 2000 corridor. While the city does make major annexations to the west, it stops short of I-25.

sells its Greeley operation to Swift & Co. 2002 ConAgra NCMC Inc. board signs a 15-year contract with Phoenix-based 2002 Banner Health to manage the hospital.

Ballot Issue 2A that funds several quality of life projects — including 2002 the Ice Haus and the Family FunPlex — passes.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raid Swift 2006 meatpacking plant as part of nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration.

Swift sells to Sao Paulo, Brazilbased JBS S.A., which expands 2007 production at Greeley plant to include a third shift.

Construction begins on a $270 million cheese plant on the 2009 site of the former Great Western Sugar plant.

Sources: Greeley Museums, city of Greeley, Tribune archives, Greeley-Weld County Airport, Colorado Department of Transportation Region 4 Historian Robert Autobee, Greeley Museums programming curator Peggy Ford Waldo

A6 »

«SundayVoices

Sunday, April 10, 2011 » The Tribune

Theresa Myers, section editor « (970) 352-0211, ext. 11252 « tmyers@greeleytribune.com

Tribune opinion

Participation in planning is important Input on transportation plan will help shape future

I

series, “The Road Ahead,” the decisions governmental entities make today do affect a community down the road, just as the decisions made 50 years ago have formed our communities today.

Some of the strongest examples of this are in the area of transportation. The location of Interstate 25 ultimately dictated how the city of Greeley would grow. It affected where businesses would locate, where residential development would occur and where schools would be built. It also had an impact on the struggles to maintain a downtown in Greeley and led to the westward expansion of the entire city.

The North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization council is trying to develop a regional transporta-

f you host a meeting and no one shows up, does that mean no one cares?

We hope not.

The North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization council has hosted a series of meetings in northern Colorado in an attempt to get public input regarding a report the group is developing on regional transportation needs.

OK, it’s not a sexy subject.

But still, we are a bit surprised about the lack of interest in the meetings. The first meeting, no one showed up. At a meet-

ing last week in Greeley, four people attended.

It might be hard to sell people on the importance of regional transportation, but it’s been a issue for years. Trying to develop a system of transporting people between the larger cities in northern Colorado as we plan for growth in the area is an important topic to contemplate.

So far, however, residents seem ambivalent about regional transportation issues.

That’s what makes planning a difficult concept to tackle.

As evident in today’s Tribune

Question of the week

The drawing board

tion plan that will take into account needs and growth through 2035. Some of the important questions they have to contemplate include: » What will commuter patterns be over the next few decades? » With rising energy costs and busier roads, will there be a greater demand for public transportation? » As growth continues in northern Colorado, will travel patterns change? For instance, as I-25 gets more congested, will U.S. 85 become busier?

Will there be a need for more arterial roads that can handle larger amounts of traffic? » What type of transportation will be needed and most efficient for residents of northern Colorado in the future?

These are important plan-

ning questions to ask, but it might be difficult for residents to grasp the relevance of these topics now. Looking to the future and contemplating our transportation needs isn’t an easy concept to grasp. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.

We hope all residents who have an interest and stake in our future transportation needs will contemplate these subjects and consider taking part in the regional transportation group’s planning effort.

The draft report from the organization is available online at www.transitplus.biz under the “current projects” tab.

The decisions we make today about transportation will impact our area 10, 20 even 50 years down the road. They need to be taken seriously.

Last week’s question and results How do you pay for most of your purchases and/or bills? » Debit card

54.33% 433 votes

» Credit card

18.44% 147 votes

» Check

15.18% 121 votes

» Cash

11.54% 92 votes

» PayPal

.50% 4 votes

Total votes:

797

Comments

» I use my debit card for big purchases and the bills. I still give myself a cash "allowance" every week to help me keep an eye on my spending habits for things like going out to eat, entertainment, etc. And my landlord will only accept a check.

This week’s question What do you enjoy most about Spring? » The return of baseball » The blooming flowers and trees » The warmer weather » Planting a garden » The gale-force winds Note Our question of the week is a sounding board, not a scientific survey. The results of this survey are evidence only of what some readers think. With that spirit in mind, we hope you participate in our dialogue about important topics of the day.

Selected comments will be published.

Preference for publication will be given to signed letters to the editor.

To participate Go to www.greeleytribune.com, where your vote will be tallied. You also can write a letter 300 words or fewer and send it to letters@greeleytribune.com or The Tribune, P.O. Box 1690, Greeley, CO 80632.

The results will be published on next Sunday’s Voices page.

Editorial Board Bart Smith: publisher (970) 392-4403, bsmith@greeleytribune.com Randy Bangert: editor (970) 392-4435, rbangert@greeleytribune.com Larry Ryckman: local news editor (970) 392-4422, lryckman@greeleytribune.com Kelly tracer: community online mngr.

(970) 392-4420, ktracer@greeleytribune.com Theresa Myers: editorial page editor (970) 352-0211, ext. 11252 tmyers@greeleytribune.com Dan England: adventure editor (970) 352-0211, ext. 11225 dengland@greeleytribune.com Edwin Ruis: digital media manager (970) 352-0211, ext. 11253, eruis@greeleytribune.com Stephanie Mighell: advertising sales (970) 352-0211, ext. 11326, smighell@greeleytribune.com Joe Luethmers: circulation manager (970) 392-4404, jluethmers@greeleytribune.com

The Road Ahead

Series to highlight future of area Who do we want to be 50 years from now?

In a nutshell, that’s the impetus for the news project you see in today’s A section titled “The Road Ahead.”

Our newspaper decided awhile back that now is a good time for Greeley to look inward at who we are and who we want to be when we grow up.

The series will continue throughout the year. One Sunday a month, we will devote significant reportRandy ing and writing to the topic Bangert of where we want to go as a The community. tribune The series will be divided into three segments: Greeley’s past, present and future. But most of the stories will focus on Greeley’s future.

Today’s initial segment takes a look at how Greeley arrived at where it is today. Rather than review the entire 140-plus years of Greeley’s history, we decided to start with a decision that was made more than 50 years ago — the path that Interstate 25 would take through northern Colorado.

We thought the decision to build I-25 closer to the mountains instead of closer to Greeley perfectly illustrates the point of the

Sound off Letters to the editor: Must be 300 words or fewer and are subject to editing to conform to Tribune style. Limit submissions to one letter every 30 days. Typically, letters will be published in the order received, space allowing. Please specify if the letter includes timesensitive material. We will not publish letters that are

entire series: Decisions made today will have an impact on what kind of community Greeley becomes 50 years from now.

Interestingly, somewhat of an urban legend has developed over the years about the I-25 decision. The myth is that Greeley leaders opposed putting the interstate anywhere near our community.

The truth, it appears, is that Colorado highway officials swiftly made up their minds that the interstate should follow a path closer to Loveland and Fort Collins because the right-of-way had already been acquired along a historic route known as the Cherokee Trail, which later became U.S. Highway 87 connecting Denver to Cheyenne.

In fact, as early as 1947, the interstate route from Denver to Cheyenne was designated, but it would be nearly 20 years later before it was completed.

Regardless of why the decision was made, it’s clear in the rear-view mirror that the decision greatly affected what kind of community Greeley would become. It was one of many key decisions that shaped our city, and today’s stories hopefully provide some clarity to readers who want to look back.

The second segment of our coverage, to be published about a month from now, will focus on this question: Who are we now? We’ll hold up a mirror to the Greeley of 2011 and in very

vague, contain poetry, are dominated by secondary sources, are open letters to a third party, are written to another publication or are personal attacks on public or private individuals. Also, you must include attribution of facts not commonly known.

Provide your full name, hometown and a telephone number, which will be used for verification purposes only.

Columns: The Tribune seeks

detailed, numeric and narrative ways, we’ll remind our readers about what kind of community we have become.

The third segment will consume the most of our time and effort. Every month through the rest of this year — and likely continuing into 2012 — we’ll devote a Sunday package to explore the issue of who we want to be.

It should come as no surprise to anybody that Greeley faces several challenges. We’ll shine a light on those, and explore how our challenges can be turned into positive outcomes for our community. It should also come as no surprise that Greeley also faces incredible opportunities as we think about our future.

Our series won’t point the way to the future. It’s up to the people of Greeley to draft a roadmap for the future, to chart the course that will take Greeley forward for decades to come.

We believe Greeley’s best years are ahead of us, and we hope our writing and reporting can help the community explore the different paths we might take to get there.

Tribune Editor Randy Bangert can be reached at (970) 392-4435 or rbangert@greeleytribune.com.

well-written, timely opinion columns from area residents on subjects that we believe will interest our readers.

Columns are limited to 600 words, and one writer can only publish every 60 days.

All columns are subject to editing and may be reduced to letter-to-the-editor length, which is 300 words. Columns with libelous statements, lacking attribution or sources for cited facts will also be rejected or edited. Writers

must also include a photo and a one- or two-sentence biographical statement.

All letters policies apply.

This policy does not apply to regular columns and features.

In person: 501 8th Ave., Greeley Mailing address: The Tribune, P.O. Box 1690, Greeley, CO 80632 Email: letters@greeleytribune. com Fax: (970) 356-5780

«Letters to the editor are limited to 300 words. Full name, address and phone number are required. Email to letters@greeleytribune.com or send to The Tribune, P.O. Box 1690, Greeley, CO 80632.

PAY IT FORWARD: ABOUT 200 COMMUNITY MEMBERS GATHER TO CLEAN UNIVERSITY DISTRICT. A2

CHANGE IS

COMING

GOING

TRADITIONAL

With the repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' this Tuesday, gays in the military are ready to live out in the open. A7

Celebrate Oktoberfest by cooking up some homemade German treats. D1

SUNDAY SEPT. 18, 2011

Serving Greeley and Weld County greeleytribune.com

GREELEY, COLORADO $1.50 VOL. 139 NO. 310

THE ROAD AHEAD, PART SIX | A TRIBUNE SPECIAL PROJECT

LAND

LEASES C1: Many Weld County landowners are leasing their property to take advantage of the oil and gas boom.

Water works

The city of Thornton fired the first shot in the war for water 25 years ago.

Now Greeley and other Weld communities are planning their own strikes.

BY ERIC BROWN

EBROWN@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

T

hrough a series of transactions between a city and farmers 25 years ago, the alarms sounded.

The city of Thornton’s purchase of about 21,000 acres of ground near Ault and Pierce in 1986 — an acquisition made by the municipality to obtain the 17,000 acre-feet of irrigated agriculture water on that farmland — served as the wake-up call for northern Colorado that had been coming for years, experts say.

It forced everyone to recognize the realities of living in a semi-arid region: When it comes to cities and farms, there is no growth without water. And the growth of one can threaten the survival of the other.

“This region saw a lot of things change after that,” said Brian Werner, public information officer and historian at Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District in Berthoud, who has worked for the NCWCD for 30 years.

“Because of the work of our forefathers in northern Colorado, we’ve historically had excellent supplies of water,” he added. “When the city of Thornton made that purchase, it opened everyone’s eyes up here to the fact that municipalities to the south of us were seeking our supplies.

“It was probably a long time coming.”

Others, including Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway, also remember Thornton’s purchase as a historic moment.

“Up to that point, the ‘buying and drying’ of farmland by municipalities was discussed, but wasn’t a reality,” he said.

Since then, municipalities frequently buy agriculture land for water rights. But Werner and Conway want to stop the trend to protect the future of agriculture in northern Colorado.

BULLDOGS

BITE

B1: Despite 45-minute rain delay, University High defeats Mead in a Class 3A nonconference game Saturday, 46-8.

CITY

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CONTINUED A4: Road Ahead

PHOTO: ERIC BELLAMY/ebellamy@greeleytribune. com

» About the series

How do you envision Greeley in 30, 40 or 50 years?

What are the subjects the city needs to address?

Email roadahead@ greeleytribune.com or post comments on this story at www.facebook. com/greeley tribune.

U.S. Highway 287 alignment options

Glade Reservoir 170,000 Acre feet

Wellington Poudre Valley Canal Windsor Ditch

25

Galeton Reservoir

85

Glade Horsetooth Pipeline

45,000 Acre feet

Ault 14

14

Fort Collins

Horsetooth Reservoir

Larimer & Weld Canal

South Platte Water Eaton Conservation Project

Windsor

SPWCP Pipeline

» MAPS of the Northern Integrated Supply Project and Windy Gap Firming Project » A TIME LINE of key events in Greeley’s water history » A SNAPSHOT of other major water projects in northern Colorado

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This is the sixth installment in The Road Ahead, a series of stories that explores the power of plans to shape Greeley: past, present and future.

Today’s installment looks at water storage and Greeley’s plans to provide for the future. The next installment of The Road Ahead, which runs monthly in our Sunday edition, will look at Greeley-Evans School District 6.

What’s inside » What do » On Pages A4 and A5: you think?

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A sprinkler waters alfalfa east of Pierce on Friday. The city of Thornton purchased about 21,000 total acres of ground near Ault and Pierce in 1986 — an acquisition made by the municipality to obtain the 17,000 acre-feet of irrigated agriculture water on that farmland.

After 25 years, Thornton has yet to build the infrastructure necessary to transport that water supply 60 miles south to its residents, and, for the most part, has been leasing the land back to irrigated agriculture producers.

However, Emily Hunt, water resources manager with Thornton, said the city plans to start using about a third of that land for water use some time between 2020 and 2025, and since 2005 has not leased that portion of land to farmers, instead placing it under a re-vegetation program.

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THERE ARE

» Thornton’s plan

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A3: Local artist Armando Silva leads a group of students in his summer program to create a community mural.

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» Greeley’s water history The confluPre-1830s ence of the Poudre and South

Platte rivers is inhabited by nomadic Indian tribes, mainly the Arapahoe and Cheyenne. They eat native plants and animals and do not change the river’s flow.

The Yeager becomes the first ditch built on the Poudre River. Located above Fort Collins, it diverts water to irrigate hay fields along the river’s flood plains.

The Watrous, Whedbee, Second and Dry ditches are dug.

The

1860

1861 1866 Boyd/Freeman

The Road Ahead

« THE TRIBUNE

» Projected NISP cost breakdowns

» Windy Gap Firming Project

Permitted Participant yield Central Weld County WD 3,500 acre-feet Dacono 1,000 acre-feet Eaton 1,300 acre-feet Erie 6,500 acre-feet Evans 1,600 acre-feet Firestone 1,300 acre-feet Frederick 2,600 acre-feet Fort Collins-Loveland WD 3,000 acre-feet Fort Lupton 3,000 acre-feet Fort Morgan 3,600 acre-feet Lafayette 1,800 acre-feet Lefthand Water District 4,900 acre-feet Morgan County Quality WD 1,300 acre-feet Severance 1,300 acre-feet Windsor 3,300 acre-feet TOTALS 40,000 acre-feet

Current requested Participant storage volume Broomfield 25,200 acre-feet Central Weld County Water District 330 acre-feet Erie 6,000 acre-feet Evans 1,750 acre-feet Fort Lupton 1,050 acre-feet Greeley 7,000 acre-feet Lafayette 1,800 acre-feet Little Thompson Water District 4,850 acre-feet Longmont 12,000 acre-feet Louisville 2,700 acre-feet Loveland 7,000 acre-feet Middle Park Water Conservation District — Platte River Power Authority 12,000 acre-feet Superior 4,500 acre-feet TOTAL 86,180 acre-feet

Project percent Total 8.75 $42,809,000 2.50 $12,231,000 3.25 $15,900,000 16.25 $79,502,000 4.00 $19,570,000 3.25 $15,900,000 6.50 $31,801,000 7.50 $36,693,000 7.50 $36,693,000 9.00 $44,032,000 4.50 $22,016,000 12.25 $59,932,000 3.25 $15,900,000 3.25 $15,900,000 8.25 $40,363,000 100 $489,242,000

Participant contributions through 2011 $3,313,286 $47,967 $770,568 $159,971 $48,176 $1,763,612 $270,370 $222,528 $2,248,441 $406,522 $1,554,420 $30,000 $2,166,843 $959,410 $13,962,114

Pioneer Ditch is built near Greeley.

The No. 3 Ditch begins operation in June 1870 and is the first completed ditch in the Greeley area.

The 13-mile ditch begins west of 71st Avenue and ends just south of the Weld CountyGreeley Airport at Fern Avenue.

1870

1876 State adopts the

Doctrine of Prior Appropriation.

The prior system is based on the principle, “first in time, first in right.”

1905 1907

1921 1937-1957

1940-1945 1947

1969

1969-1987 1991

1995

2003

Source: The city of Greeley

They have two other major water concerns: the amount of water flowing down-river and out of the state, and the rapid population growth along the northern Front Range.

“The bottom line is, at this rate, we’re going to run out of water,” Werner said.

MORE WATER STORAGE IS KEY

With an eye toward the future, municipalities and water districts in northern Colorado have spent the past couple of decades pushing water development plans.

And Werner, Conway and many others believe that more water storage, along with water conservation, is the key to securing the future of northern Colorado — where cities face doubled populations within the next 20 to 40 years.

The Statewide Water Supply Initiative study conducted for the state’s leading water policy board estimates that in the South Platte Basin alone there will be a water supply gap of between 36,000 and 170,000 acre-feet by 2050.

Water storage for the future is viewed as so vital to the northern Front Range that the 15 participating municipalities and water districts of the Northern Integrated Supply Project, or NISP, have spent about $10 million during the past seven years just to plan and analyze the endeavor.

But there is no guarantee that NISP — a project that includes the construction of two new reservoirs in northern Colorado — will ever take shape. The federal government continues to analyze the Environmental Impact Statement.

U.S. Highway 287 alignment options

Glade Reservoir 170,000 Acre feet

Wellington Poudre Valley Canal Windsor Ditch

» The Glade Reservoir would be located northwest of Fort Collins and north of Horsetooth Reservoir and could store 170,000 acre-feet of water, making it the largest reservoir in northern Colorado.

The water to fill Glade Reservoir would be diverted from the Poudre River using the existing Poudre Valley Canal. There would be no new structures on the river,

45,000 Acre feet

Ault 14

14

Fort Collins

Horsetooth Reservoir

Larimer & Weld Canal

South Platte Water Eaton Conservation Project

SPWCP Pipeline

Windsor 287

25

Loveland 34

TWO NEW RESERVOIRS

Galeton Reservoir

85

Glade Horsetooth Pipeline

A CLOSER LOOK AT NISP

NISP — estimated to cost nearly $500 million — is a regional water supply project coordinated by the water conservancy district with the goal of providing participants with about 40,000 acre-feet of new water supply annually.

One acre-foot of water serves 2½ families of four for one year.

It’s the largest water-storage project in northern Colorado since the Colorado-Big Thompson Project was built between 1937 and 1957. If approved by the federal government, the project could take four to eight years to complete.

25

according to the NCWCD. » The Galeton Reservoir would be located east of Ault and northeast of Greeley and hold about 40,000 acre-feet of water.

The water would be diverted from the South Platte River downstream from Greeley.

Galeton water would be delivered to two agricultural irrigation companies — the New Cache La Poudre Irrigating Company in Lucerne and the Larimer and Weld Irrigation Company in Eaton — in exchange for Poudre River water they currently use.

NCWCD officials say more than half of the water that NISP will divert from the Poudre River is water that has already been diverted for decades.

MORE REASONS NISP IS BEING PUSHED

According to officials at the water conservancy district, in

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« ROAD AHEAD From A1

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Storage and conservation is key

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1890

ERIC BELLAMY/ebellamy@greeleytribune.com ebellamy@greeleytribune.com

THE SPILLWAY AT SEAMAN Reservoir on Tuesday in the Poudre Canyon.

Ri

1879 1886

Eaton Ditch completed.

Early Greeley settlers build first water system, a series of infiltration wells.

First trans-mountain diversions, Sky Line, Michigan and Grand River ditches are built to bring water from the Western Slope.

Greeley buys farm at the Poudre River’s mouth in Bellvue, 35 miles northwest of town. The farm contains a very senior water right. Greeley combines this right with another senior water right and establishes a water supply that would satisfy the city for 40 years. The two rights still form the base of Greeley’s water system.

Boyd Lake first used for water storage.

Greeley completes Bellvue water treatment facility, consisting of 2.5 acres of slow sand filters. Thirty-six miles of 20-inch diameter wooden pipeline stretch past irrigated lands near the foothills to bring Poudre River water to Greeley.

Barnes Meadow Reservoir is built, providing 5.5 million gallons of storage.

In 1937, President Roosevelt appropriates $900,000 to begin construction on the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. It would deliver 13.4 million gallons of water per day to Eastern Slope communities, including Greeley.

Greeley builds Seaman Dam and Reservoir. In 1945, Greeley finishes Milton Seaman Reservoir on the north fork of the Poudre River.

Greeley buys highmountain reservoirs consisting of 11 water supply structures in the Poudre Basin, providing 561,000 gallons of water.

Greeley begins accepting shares of the Greeley-Loveland Irrigation System.

Greeley completes construction of Boyd Lake Water Treatment Plant, allowing it to use Big Thompson River water.

Greeley and six other Front Range municipalities develop the Windy Gap Firming Project. The project delivers water from the Colorado River to the Eastern Slope.

Greeley buys 3.2 billion gallons of water from local farmers, then rents it back to them for 20 years.

The Greeley Water and Sewer Board adopts a water conservation implementation plan.

Greeley Water Master Plan is completed. The plan defines specific steps to provide a reliable water supply for Greeley to the year 2020.

nR iv e r

2009, more than 90,000 acrefeet of water left Colorado that would have been available for NISP storage, had the project been online.

The 15 municipalities and water districts included in the proposed NISP — which includes the cities of Windsor, Evans and Eaton and the Central Weld County Water District, but not the city of Greeley — sit in an area that receives about 15 inches of rain, less than half the precipitation in the Midwest.

Supporters’ studies suggest that without NISP, more than 60,000 acres of farmland in the area could dry up because cities would have to buy agricultural water rights instead of using the water that would be available through NISP. The project has generated endorsements from numerous major farm organization in the region and their

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statewide affiliates.

NCWCD officials and NISP supporters say the addition of two new NISP reservoirs — in addition to addressing future water needs — would provide jobs and offer recreational opportunities.

NOT EVERYONE IS ON BOARD

The Save the Poudre Coalition — comprised of 20 environmental organizations — has opposed NISP since the project began taking shape in 2004.

“We support Greeley and Weld County meeting their water needs, but we do not support taking more water out of and destroying the Poudre,” said Gary Wockner, an ecological scientist, activist and writer from Fort Collins who serves as the executive

«

CONTINUED A5: Road Ahead

The Road Ahead

The Tribune »

« Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011

« A5

Greeley has its own water plans

»»Previous water projects in northern Colorado

« Road Ahead From A4

»»Colorado-Big Thompson

director and spokesman for the Save the Poudre Coalition, which he co-founded.

Wockner said 60 percent of the water that comes through the Poudre Canyon is already drained out of the river before it reaches Fort Collins, and NISP would take that amount down to 25 percent. That further depletion of the river would hurt wildlife, fisheries, forests and recreational use along the river in Fort Collins — a city that’s invested vast amounts of money into open spaces along the Poudre River, Wockner said.

The city of Fort Collins has also voiced concerns about the project.

In response to NISP, the Save the Poudre Coalition has created The Healthy Rivers Alternative, a proposed water-supply project that would combine “aggressive water conservation, water reusing and recycling, better land-use planning and growth management, and improved cooperative relationships with farmers,” instead of “draining the Poudre,” as Wockner believes NISP would do.

Werner says The Healthy Rivers Alternative “doesn’t work in reality.”

“We can’t conserve our way to the needed future supply,” said Werner, noting that much of the NCWCD’s efforts focus on water conservation. “Many municipalities and water districts in our region have put forth great efforts toward conservation, and they’ve made a tremendous difference. But that’s not going to solve all of our needs.”

Built between 1938 and 1957, the Colorado-Big Thompson Project is the largest transmountain water diversion project in Colorado. The C-BT Project provides supplemental water to 30 cities and towns, including Greeley. The water is also used to help irrigate about 693,000 acres of northeastern Colorado farmland.

Twelve reservoirs, 35 miles of tunnels, 95 miles of canals and 700 miles of transmission lines comprise the complex collection, distribution and power system. The C-BT system spans 150 miles east to west and 65 miles from north to south.

A Lack of Alternatives for Some Municipalities

Werner and Conway said there are few choices for the smaller of the 15 NISP participants — with less money and resources — that are waiting for the federal government to OK the project.

They noted that some

ERIC BELLAMY/ebellamy@greeleytribune.com

An interpretive representation of the water in the Colorado-

Big Thompson Project sits behind the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District’s office in Berthoud. The diorama is open to the public. of the municipalities and water districts have already exhausted their water supplies in recent dry years, and that the only alternative for them during those times is to buy water rights from agriculture producers.

“Some of the municipalities and water districts in this area are at a critical crossroads,” Conway said.

“That’s why we have to go down swinging on (NISP).”

The City of Greeley’s Water Storage Efforts

Greeley is not a NISP participant; it has storage plans of its own.

Jon Monson, director of the city of Greeley’s Water and Sewer Department, said the city’s current supply will meet the needs of the community for only 25 more years, maybe less.

In preparation, Greeley officials want to expand the Milton Seaman Reservoir, one of six high-mountain reservoirs from which the city draws its water.

The reservoir holds about 5,000 acre-feet of water, and the proposed project calls for it to be expanded more than 10-fold to 53,000 acre-feet. The expansion would allow Gree-

ley to pull 7,800 acre-feet of water off the reservoir annually, up from the 750 acre-feet it can pull now.

Greeley uses about 45,000 acre-feet of water per year; demand is expected to grow to about 65,000 acre-feet by 2050.

After initiating efforts in 2004, the draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project is expected by 2013, and a final EIS is expected by 2015. Afterward, construction would take two years and filling the reservoir could take another five to 10 years.

The city is also seeking approval to build gravel pits for storage on the Poudre and Big Thompson rivers. If approved, all three should be completed within 10 years.

Another water storage effort is The Windy Gap Firming Project. The 25-year-old Windy Gap Project near Granby diverts water from the Colorado River to the Front Range via the Colorado-Big Thompson Project on a space-available basis.

According to Monson, during wet years when water is available for Windy Gap diversions, Lake Granby is often full with

little or no space for the water. During dry years, the water right can be too junior to come into priority, so no water is available to pump.

Greeley is allotted 4,400 acre-feet of water annually from the Windy Gap Project, but that supply hasn’t always been available. The Windy Gap Firming Project was proposed to ensure reliable future deliveries.

Nine other municipalities, including Evans, participates in the project, along with the Central Weld County Water District and two other districts.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is expected to publish the final Environmental Impact Statement for the Windy Gap Firming Project in November.

All of Greeley’s future efforts combined, if approved, would sustain the city’s water needs until about 2050, Monson said, although it will come at a price. City water rates are expected to increase by about 45 percent during the next decade.

“Everyone wants more water,” Monson said, “and they’re going to have to pay for it.”

»»Carter Lake Outlet Carter Lake is in the foothills of southern Larimer County west of the town of Berthoud. Part of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, the reservoir provides water to thousands of acres of agricultural land and more than 300,000 municipal and industrial users in Larimer, Weld, Morgan, Boulder and Broomfield counties.

»»Windy Gap Completed in 1984, the Windy Gap Project is just west of Granby on Colorado’s Western Slope. The project consists of a diversion dam on the Colorado River, a 445-acre-foot reservoir, a pumping plant and a 6-mile pipeline to Lake Granby.

The Windy Gap Project can deliver an average of 48,000 acre feet of water annually, primarily between April and July. During the spring runoff, Fraser River water is pumped from Windy Gap Reservoir to Lake Granby, where it is stored for delivery through the Colorado-Big Thompson Project facilities to Front Range water users.

»»Southern Water Supply The Southern Water Supply Pipeline conveys water from the Windy Gap and ColoradoBig Thompson projects to various Front Range cities within

the District and Subdistrict boundaries.

Construction on the first phase of the pipeline, from Carter Lake to Broomfield, began in November 1993. The second, from Platteville to Fort Lupton and Hudson, was complete in July 1996. Construction on the last 41-mile section — from Platteville to Morgan County — began in October 1998 and was completed in September 1999.

The water originates from existing sources. No new dams or reservoirs were constructed for the project.

Participants in the project include Fort Morgan, Fort Lupton, Broomfield, Hudson, Berthoud, Longmont, Erie and Louisville, as well as the Morgan County Quality Water District, Little Thompson Water District, Central Weld Conservancy Water District and Superior Metropolitan District. Each entity pays its share of the design, construction, operation and maintenance costs.

»»Pleasant Valley Pipeline The Pleasant Valley Pipeline Project is a joint effort between NCWCD and the cities of Fort Collins, Greeley and the Soldier Canyon water districts (East Larimer County Water District, Fort Collins-Loveland Water District and North Weld County Water District) to increase water supply reliability and flexibility.

Plans for the pipeline began in 1997 when representatives from Fort Collins, Greeley and the Soldier Canyon water districts first met to discuss the proposed project. Pipeline construction began in March of 2003 and concluded a year later.

The 8.5-mile buried pipeline carries Poudre River water from the Munroe Gravity Canal to the Fort Collins and the Soldier Canyon water districts’ treatment plants during the summer. In the winter flows are reversed, sending water from the Soldier Canyon outlet at Horsetooth Reservoir to Greeley’s Bellvue treatment plant near the Poudre River.

Source: Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District

Thank you.

Thank you for choosing Greeley Medical Clinic as the best medical clinic in Weld County in The Tribune’s 2011 Hot Picks contest.

We are honored.

Since our beginning in 1933, we have been committed to providing a full range of quality healthcare services to residents of Weld County.

Whatever you need to get healthy and to stay healthy,

we’re here for you.

Dr. Mark Grossnickle

Michelle Simonsson Doug Smoot

1900 16th St. | Greeley 970.353.1551 pvhs.org

Dr. Rick Kiser

STILL SEARCHING: UNC FOOTBALL REMAINS WINLESS AFTER RALLY FALLS SHORT. B1

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A growing number of independent coffee houses in Greeley are finding success with a cozy, noncorporate atmosphere. Life/D1

Windsor rolls into the state tournament with a pair of lopsided victories in the Class 4A Region 4 championships. B1

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GREELEY, COLORADO $1.50 VOL. 139 NO. 338

THE ROAD AHEAD: PART SEVEN, DAY ONE | A TRIBUNE SPECIAL PROJECT

TURNAROUND

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Greeley-Evans School District 6 leaders once tried to replicate Pueblo City School District 60’s success. Now they’re trying to avoid its mistakes.

A2: Inspired by Harry Potter, muggles come together for Colorado's first quidditch tournament at UNC.

TINY THREATS C1: The focus on antiterrorism efforts after the Sept. 11 attacks let a different threat slip into the country.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

WHAT'S COMING MONDAY: Some say it's the funding, some says it's the approach, but everyone agrees the Denver School of Science and Technology gets results.

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HERITAGE ELEMENTARY KINDERGARTEN TEACHER Kathy Lloyd leads her young students into a lunch line Monday in Pueblo.

BY SHERRIE PEIF

SPEIF@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

P

UEBLO — Six years ago, President George W. Bush called Pueblo City School District 60 an example for all other school districts in the country.

Most of the district’s students were Latino and living in poverty — the very group that the federal No Child Left Behind act was designed to reach.

Pueblo’s District 60 excelled at reaching those students.

At the same time District 60 was winning accolades, a struggling Greeley-Evans School District 6 was being placed on the state’s academic “watch list.” Greeley had to take action or risk losing its accreditation and state funding.

Greeley officials knew Pueblo and Greeley were similar in size, demographics and funding, so a group went to Pueblo to see what it was doing so well with such a challenging group of students. Greeley adopted some of the Pueblo’s philosophies, and in two years, emerged from the watch list. Scores increased, drawing praise from state education officials for bringing the largest district to ever be placed on the watch list off faster than anyone thought possible.

DEAL SALES EVENT

NANTENA BELLER/For The Tribune

DARREN DEAN LIES BACK on a beanbag while reading “The Doodler” at one

of the learning stations his fifth-grade class participated in Monday at Bella Romero Elementary School in Greeley.

» About the series This is the seventh installment in The Road Ahead, a series of stories that explores the power of plans to shape Greeley: past, present and future.

Amid a contentious campaign among 14 school board candidates this year, there’s one thing everyone can agree on: Good schools are important for the community’s future. Today, The Tribune looks at the path local schools have taken in the first installment of a two-part look at education. Monday’s story looks at a successful model the district could consider on the road ahead.

In six years, however, Pueblo went from being one of the nation’s top districts to barely breathing. District 60 officials learned last month that the state was accrediting it as a turnaround district, the lowest classification allowed. It has five years to bring the district up two levels, or the state will close its schools and convert them to charters.

Now, with so many similarities between the two cities and school districts, could Greeley — currently classified as an “improvement” district — be headed in the same direction — again?

«

CONTINUED A4: Road Ahead

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The Road Ahead

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»»At a glance

Side-by-side comparison of Greeley-Evans School District 6 and Pueblo City Schools District 60 Comparison point Pueblo Greeley Schools 36 31* Elementary 19 15 Middle 5 4 K-8 2 2 High 4 3 Magnet 2 0** Charter 4 4 Alternative 0 2 Enrollment 18,420 19,623 Minority 70 percent 62.7 percent Hispanic 65 percent 58 percent Black 2 percent 1 percent Asian 1 percent 1 percent Native American 1 percent less than 0.25 percent Two or more races 1 percent 1 percent White 29 percent 37 percent Free and reduced lunch enrollment 68 percent 60.5 percent Gifted and talented 5 percent 6 percent Special education enrollment 11 percent 10.3 percent English language learners 6 percent 25.1 percent Migrant 0.3 percent 2.4 percent Immigrants 0 percent 1.7 percent Title 1 36 percent 30.8 percent Graduation rates 61 percent 64.2 percent * Note, prior to the consolidation of schools one year ago, Greeley had 36. Pueblo is in consolidation plan now ** Note, Chappelow and John Evans were included in the K-8 and Middle numbers Information compiled from the Colorado Department of Education Website, www.cde.state. co.us, and represents the 2010-11 school year.

»»English language learners English language learner enrollment among the 15 largest districts in Colorado (178 total).

ELL Rank among (Rank) District (Enrollment) percentage the top 15 (6) Adams-Arapahoe 28J (38,605) 39.2 1 (2) Denver Public Schools (78,317) 35.1 2 (13) Greeley-Evans School District 6 (19,623) 25.1 3 (9) St. Vrain Valley Re-1J (27,379) 15.1 4 (5) Adams 12 5-Star Schools (41,957) 15 5 (4) Cherry Creek (52,166) 9.9 6 (8) Colorado Springs 11 (29,459) 9.8 7 (7) Boulder Valley (29,526) 9.7 8 (10) Poudre R1 (29,923) 7.5 9 (1) Jefferson County (85,938) 7 10 (14) Pueblo City Schools 60 (18,420) 5.6 Tied 11 (15) Littleton 6 (15,733) 5.6 Tied 11 (12) Mesa County Valley 51 (22,091) 5 13 (3) Douglas County (61,465) 3.8 14 (11) Academy 20 (23,119) 1.7 15 Neighboring districts (51) Valley Re-1 (1,986) (16) Thompson R-2J Schools (15,310) (38) Johnstown/Milliken (3,138) (53) Eaton Re-2 (1,749) (71) Platte Valley Re-7 (35) Windsor-Severance Re-4 (4,364)

17.8 7.5 8.5 6.6 6.3 1.6

N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Information compiled from the Colorado Department of Education Website, www.cde.state. co.us, and represents the 2010-11 school year.

»»Free and reduced lunch Free and reduced lunch percentages among the 15 largest districts in Colorado (178 total).

Free and reduced Rank of (Rank) District (Enrollment) lunch percentage 178 (3) Douglas County (61,465) 10.9 ** (11) Academy 20 (23,119) 11.3 ** (7) Boulder Valley (29,526) 18.4 ** (15) Littleton 6 (15,733) 20.0 ** (4) Cherry Creek (52,166) 25.8 ** (10) Poudre R1 (29,923) 27.6 ** (1) Jefferson County (85,938) 30.6 ** (9) St. Vrain Valley Re-1J (27,379) 32.4 * (5) Adams 12 5-Star Schools (41,957) 34.0 * (12) Mesa County Valley 51 (22,091) 45.5 * (8) Colorado Springs 11 (29,459) 51.8 * (13) Greeley-Evans School District 6 (19,623) 60.5 41st (6) Adams-Arapahoe 28J (38,605) 65.2 35th (14) Pueblo City Schools 60 (18,420) 67.6 31st (2) Denver Public Schools (78,317) 72.9 16th Neighboring districts (16) Thompson R-2J Schools (15,310) (35) Windsor-Severance Re-4 (4,364) (38) Johnstown/Milliken (3,138) (51) Valley Re-1 (1,986) (53) Eaton Re-2 (1,749) (71) Platte Valley Re-7

32.2 20.3 36.4 56.8 32.3 45.0

* ** * * * *

* School districts that are between 50th and 148th highest in percentages of free and reduced lunch enrollees. ** School districts that are among the 35 lowest districts in free and reduced lunch enrollees.

Information compiled from the Colorado Department of Education Website: www.cde.state. co.us, and represents the 2010-11 school year.

»»Funding at a glance Per pupil funding, which includes any mill levy overrides, among the 15 largest districts in Colorado (178 total).

Per pupil Rank of (Rank) District (Enrollment) funding 178 Mill levy?

(7) Boulder Valley (29,526) $8,405.96 78 Yes (15) Littleton 6 (15,733) $8,206.83 87 Yes (2) Denver Public Schools (78,317) $7,997.52 92 Yes (8) Colorado Springs 11 (29,459) $7,872.10 96 Yes (10) Poudre R1 (29,923) $7,766.47 100 Yes (4) Cherry Creek (52,166) $7,677.31 105 Yes (5) Adams 12 5-Star Schools (41,957) $7,528.58 110 Yes (11) Academy 20 (23,119) $7,424.26 116 Yes (6) Adams-Arapahoe 28J (38,605) $7,414.56 117 Yes (1) Jefferson County (85,938) $7,285.32 120 Yes (9) St. Vrain Valley Re-1J (27,379) $7,042.13 135 Yes (3) Douglas County (61,465) $6,860.01 147 Yes (12) Mesa County Valley 51 (22,091) $6,711.80 155 Yes (14) Pueblo City Schools 60 (18,420) $6,463.19 167 No (13) Greeley-Evans School District 6 (19,623) $6,404.37 169 No Neighboring districts (71) Platte Valley Re-7 (51) Valley Re-1 (1,986) (16) Thompson R-2J Schools (15,310) (53) Eaton Re-2 (1,749) (35) Windsor-Severance Re-4 (4,364) (38) Johnstown/Milliken (3,138)

$8,393.63 $7,686.20 $7,172.76 $7,024.25 $6,831.37 $6,371.53

79 103 126 139 148 171

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Information compiled from the Colorado Department of Education Website: www.cde.state. co.us, and represents the 2010-11 school year.

« The Tribune

« A5

District 6 leaders think they can avoid Pueblo’s problems « Road Ahead From A1 Sister cities

There are 175 miles between the administrative offices of District 6 and Pueblo City Schools. But the three-hour drive between northern and southern Colorado is about the only thing that separates these two school districts.

From their enrollment and free and reduced lunch counts to their minority population and gifted and talented students, the two cities could be twins.

But things are grim these days for the state’s 13th- and 14th-largest districts.

Poverty is up and achievement is down, developments most say are closely related. Both have free and reduced lunch counts in the 65 percent range and a high minority population.

The reasons for the demographics and poverty are very different, officials in Pueblo say, and they believe Greeley can learn from their mistakes.

Pueblo’s demographics are decades in the making. The Latino population is in its sixth and seventh generation.

Greeley’s growing Latino population, on the other hand, is comprised of many immigrants who have moved here in the past 20 years.

Greeley has nearly five times as many students who are considered English-language learners. Pueblo has just 5.6 percent of its students learning English. Greeley’s numbers last year were at 25 percent, but preliminary reports for the 2011-12 year went up nearly 4 percentage points to more than 29 percent.

Most non-native speakers in Pueblo are Spanish-speaking. District 6 has 36 different languages spoken in its classrooms, with Spanish being the main foreign language.

Pueblo’s poverty is the result of a steel mill industry that for decades didn’t require a high school education, and then tanked in the 1980s before rebounding more than a decade ago. Greeley’s poverty is more situational. A poor economy has put many people out of work, and the immigrants coming into the area are making minimal wages in the fields and in blue-collar work.

“District 60 has more of an aging infrastructure and population than you do in District 6,” said Rod Slyhoff, president of the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce. “In reality, though, I don’t think it’s that different.”

In 2010, Pueblo’s enrollment was 18,420, just 1,200 students less than Greeley’s 19,623. More than 12,500 Pueblo students qualified for free and reduced lunches, an indicator of poverty.

Even more startling, perhaps, is of those students, 1,453 were on reduced status, leaving more than 10,000 students, or 60 percent of the district children, on free lunches, which indicates a more severe level of poverty.

To qualify for free lunches, a family of four can make no more than $29,055 per year.

In Greeley, an identical 1,453 of the district’s 19,623 students qualified for reduced lunches, leaving slightly more than 10,000 students, or nearly 53 percent of the students, on free status.

In contrast, the neighboring Windsor-Severance Re-4 School District has just 20.3 percent of its students on free or reduced lunches.

Pueblo and Greeley also receive about the same amount per student from taxpayers: Pueblo at $6,463 per student and Greeley at $6,404. In comparison, Aspen receives more than $12,000 per pupil and Windsor receives $6,831.

Budget cuts forced District 6 to close or consolidate six schools two years ago, and Pueblo is developing a similar plan.

This year Greeley also imposed furlough days and dipped into its emergency fund.

Everyone from Pueblo’s district superintendent to the vice president of the board of education say Pueblo and Greeley have, for decades, ridden a roller coaster with their educational systems.

Right now, some believe the two are headed down a path toward failure. Still others think it is only a matter of time before the two districts are back on top again.

The progression/regression When Joyce Bales became the superintendent of Pueblo City Schools in 2002, she had big plans. Every student was going to read and read well. And within a few years, those plans were working. By 2005, the percentage of students scoring proficient or above increased by an average of 35 percent since CSAPs began. Latino students gained 59 percent on all tests. District 60 made national news for its successes.

Along with Bush’s recognition, U.S. News and World Report featured District 60 in a report on public education and “schools of excellence.”

“Pueblo did it better than anybody because they had all the training; they had extensive training and coaches in place,” Greeley-Evans School District 6 Superintendent Ranelle Lang said.

“They got a huge bump from that early on, and that’s where it’s easiest to catch kids up.”

District 6 administrators and board members who went to Pueblo looking for help eventually implemented some of Bales’ ideas, philosophies and techniques.

Lang said the main program District 6 implemented came from the work of

NANTENA BELLER/For The Tribune

First-graders at Bella Romero Elementary School peek in on the worms they’ve been studying in their supplementary science class Monday. From left, Enrique Abundis, Domi-

nic Loma, Christopher Prado and Joanna Ramirez meet with the rest of their class in the school library once a week after lunch to work with special-education teacher David Turner.

»»On Page A8 Tribune Opinion: Change may be part of the formula for better learning.

Guest column: Change is coming; educators must adapt

the Colorado Department of Education, basing it on a national study on reading that said there were five areas of reading that had to be taught for children to completely absorb the content: phonemic awareness (the ability to hear, identify and manipulate the sounds that make up words), phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

District 6 adopted the core reading program from Pueblo, which focused mostly on the phonemic awareness part, and added the other components to it.

District 6 also chose to use a program of books and teaching materials that it could customize and that was less expensive.

“When Pueblo was doing its work it was all new to the state,” Lang said.

“We realized there is a method to how kids read. English is the most complex language in the world.”

By putting all of its chips on reading, however, Pueblo left itself vulnerable in other areas, such as math and science.

Another even bigger problem was that its reading program turned out to be too expensive to sustain for the long haul.

When the economy went south, the funds dried up.

“It was a targeted intervention program,” said Brenda Krage, assistant superintendent for learning services for Pueblo schools. “We had to take the limited resources we had, every available human and penny was funneled to reading. The unintended consequence was we did not maintain a balance in the K-12 curriculum in all subjects.”

Pueblo had to put textbook adoptions on hold and cut back on resources at the middle school level.

“When you put all the resources in one place, you see the growth,” Krage said. “And with all the cuts now, we’re falling behind because we can’t roll out (new programs).”

It’s the opposite for District 6, Lang said. She said the district can sustain the program given the current economic situation, but it needs the community to trust it’s working.

Pueblo’s struggles started after Bales left in 2006. John Covington, who came in behind Bales, spent a large chunk of the district’s resources developing a strategic plan and left the district after three years. The woman hired as his replacement, Kathy West, had worked in the district for more than two decades but didn’t even last a year.

“She was not a good leader,” Slyhoff said. “There was a real void in the leadership of the district. But it wasn’t just Kathy. It was Covington as well with his strategic plan. They ruffled a lot of feathers with the teachers and the administration.

“Covington abruptly left, and the board was reluctant to go on another nationwide search in such a short period of time, so they thrust Kathy into that role.”

Maggie Lopez, who came to the

Photo courtesy of the Pueblo Chieftain

Eva Baca Elementary School students enjoy the fruit and juice snack for which their school qualifies Monday in Pueblo. district from Academy 20 in Colorado Springs, consistently one of the top districts in the state, became interim superintendent in 2009-10 and was officially appointed the following fall.

Some Greeley school board members believe District 6 is on the right track with its programs and that its main problem is one of perception.

“We do great things in this district,” Mark Hinze said at a recent community engagement meeting. “We graduate Boettcher Scholars. Last year our students earned more than $10 million in scholarships. We have National Merit Scholars in this district. Since we were put on watch, we have put in place some programs that are really working.”

»»Classifications

What to do Greeley can still learn a lot from Pueblo, officials say. This time, however, the lessons would focus more on what not to do.

Much of the trouble in Pueblo came from multiple changes in administrators — it’s had four superintendents since 2002, and three in the past five years — and a lack of funding to continue the program.

Bales’ reading program was very expensive and required a lot of extra work

NANTENA BELLER/For The Tribune

First-Grader Robert Ramirez watches as special-edu-

cation teacher David Turner reaches for a red worm Monday. Once a week, the students at Bella Romero Elementary School in Greeley attend special classes such as art, music, science, technology and physical education.

The Colorado State Board of Education assigns school districts to one of five accountability classifications each year: Accredited with Distinction, which is awarded to the highest achieving districts; Accredited; Accredited with Improvement; Accredited with Priority Improvement; and Accredited with Turnaround.

Districts in the bottom two categories must create plans that outline how they will improve their districts within five years or the state can close down schools and convert them to charters. Districts in turnaround status are guided by the state in writing those plans and must approve those plans.

Last year, the state classified Greeley as an “Improvement” district. Sixteen schools were on performance plans, 14 improvement, three priority improvement and one on turnaround.

The state classified Pueblo as a “Priority Improvement” district. Fifteen schools were on performance plans, 11 on improvement, nine on priority improvement and 11 on turnaround.

This year Greeley is expected to stay on improvement while Pueblo expects to be placed on turnaround status.

to put it in place.

Lang said Greeley is fortunate that District 6’s program is less expensive than Pueblo’s, but it does take patience on the part of the community and the district’s teachers to believe it’s going to work.

“We’re getting better, but we’re not there yet,” said Nancy Devine, chief academic officer for District 6. “We have children that can read. But we have to get teachers in place that will stay the course. The teachers are on a journey.”

Lang said those who call the program scripted or regimented must understand it must be systematic.

“With the standards in place, the government doesn’t care if you taught it, they want to know if the children learned it,” Lang said. “It’s the responsibility of the adults to change their behavior to adapt to the children who come to us. It’s not the children’s responsibility to adapt to teaching changes.”

Lang compared changing the curriculum and its delivery method already in motion to a car going down a mountain.

“If the brakes fail, it’s not like you go down as slow as you went up,” she said. “The biggest challenge we face is the history of educators discarding programs. It’s changed from a system of teaching to a system of learning. This is not about the teachers having fun. We are here to teach, not have fun. It’s not about having an entertaining activity for yourself.”

Lopez said the school board, administration, teachers, staff and community all must work together to improve achievement.

“You have to create the awareness of, ‘Hey, we have an achievement issue that is very serious; we need to get help,’ ” she said. “What do you think? Or, here’s what you can do, even having a parent say they can buy pencils for a classroom once a month. It sounds small, but in a district with small resources it’s huge.”

Lopez said there is no excuse for not achieving.

“That is my bottom line,” she said.

“We have to achieve. It doesn’t matter what the color of their skin is, how much money their family makes, what their home experience is or isn’t. We have to pay attention to that stuff, but we also have to do our very best job we can in educating our children. Sometimes that means great sacrifices for adults, and so be it.”

She added that it doesn’t have to be about money, either. Every resident has a special skill to contribute, whether it’s reading to a child for 30 minutes a week or a retired math teacher sitting with a high school student struggling in algebra.

“Little acts of contribution of our own expertise will be very important,” she said. “If you’ve got great schools, you’ve typically got great community involvement.”

Pueblo Board of Education Vice President Phyllis Sanchez said the Greeley community must understand the relationship between a school board and the superintendent and support that relationship.

“It’s extremely important that the superintendent and the board work well together,” Sanchez said. “It doesn’t mean you’re rubber stamping her. She is our only employee. Does it mean you agree all the time? Absolutely not, but it’s very difficult if you don’t trust your CEO who has the background and experience level.”

Sanchez said the city government also should ask how it can support the schools.

“Certainly down the road you don’t want to be an inner-city school district,” Sanchez said. “That’s why turning around the achievement is not only necessary but urgent. Look at what other big cities are facing with that label. It’s a negative connotation. Our kids don’t deserve it. Our teachers don’t deserve it.

Our schools don’t deserve it. You have to have a desire to work together as a team of professionals for the kids.”

For Pueblo, the hill is much larger to climb. The timeline No Child Left Behind has set for children to be proficient is sooner than the state has set for the district to improve.

But people are excited about Lopez and her ideas. With new legislation in Colorado for accountability and new testing set to come out next year, Pueblo officials believe they can get their teachers to rally around new programs.

Slyhoff, who is also part of a larger network of business owners, residents, higher education leaders and district personnel called the Community Compact, said he’s confident Pueblo will support the district. He said the economic future of Pueblo depends on having good schools.

“We’ve seen a lot of different things happen over the years,” Slyhoff said.

“There have been some gains and some slippage. We’re embarking on a program that puts community members in the schools for tutoring help and other mentoring plans. It’s what you do as a community. You don’t abandon them.”

Lang said so long as the District 6 budget doesn’t decrease, she can continue to improve the scores with the curriculum and money in place.

She has no interest in following the path that led Pueblo to its current crisis.

“Pueblo could be the poster child for us,” Lang said. “That’s what happened in Pueblo. If we blink, we could go down a slippery slope.”

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THE ROAD AHEAD: PART SEVEN, DAY TWO | A TRIBUNE SPECIAL PROJECT

LEADING THE WAY Some say it’s the funding, some say it’s the approach, but everyone agrees the Denver School of Science and Technology gets results.

Weld voters to tackle tax increase and term limit measures Fort Lupton, Platteville could extend elected officials’ term length

By Nate A. Miller nmiller@greeleytribune.com

Two municipalities in Weld County will ask voters this year to remove or loosen the state’s constitutional term limit requirements.

A measure on the ballot in Fort Lupton would allow elected officials in the city to serve for three consecutive terms. The state constitution limits elected officials to two consecutive terms, but allows municipalities to change that requirement.

In Platteville, a ballot measure asks voters to allow the town’s elected officials to serve indefinitely, so long as they keep winning elections.

In Fort Lupton, officials hope the loosened term limits allow for more city council candidates.

“In the past we’ve had some vacancies on the council just because people were term-limited and people in the wards didn’t step up,” said Fort Lupton City PHOTOS BY MALLORY OLENIUS/For The Tribune

ADVISERS AGREE TO 20 PUSH-UPS in recognition of the lowest number of tardies of the year at the Denver School

of Science and Technology’s Green Valley Ranch Middle School on Friday in Denver. DSST stands apart from most schools because of its particular sets of rules that are strictly enforced.

BY SHERRIE PEIF

SPEIF@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

D

ENVER — Microsoft founder Bill Gates called the Denver School of Science and Technology a national model that is successfully serving low-income students.

Oprah Winfrey called it one of the most groundbreaking schools in the country.

Bill Kurtz, the chief executive officer of DSST, calls it a values-based culture that expects great things from kids and gives them what they need to accomplish those things.

DSST has been successful and won national praise despite having a student body that isn’t all that different from Greeley: a high percentage of minorities, kids who qualify for free and reduced lunches, and students who are English language learners.

PUNCTUALITY IS UP TO each student at Green Valley Ranch Middle School, and hallways are to be passed through in complete silence.

Winfrey and others have lavished millions of dollars on DSST, but school officials say their success has more to do with policies than money. And even administrators of Greeley-Evans School District 6 say there may be lessons to learn from DSST. People develop people, Kurtz said. And DSST has developed a lot of them — successfully.

Since its first graduating class in 2008, it has boasted a near 90 percent four-year, on-time graduation rate, and 100 percent of DSST’s high school graduates have been accepted to four-year colleges; 50 percent of the 2010 class are first-generation college students.

The school DSST Public Schools is a network of charter schools in the Denver Public School District.

David Greenberg founded its pilot school — Stapleton High School — in 2001 on an idea that the school would dedicate itself to providing

«

CONTINUED A8: Road Ahead

» A peek at Valley

» About the series This is the seventh installment in The Road Ahead, a series of stories that explores the power of plans to shape Greeley: past, present and future.

Amid a contentious campaign among 14 school board candidates this year, there’s one thing everyone can agree on: Good schools are important for the community’s future. Today, The Tribune looks at a successful model the district could consider on the road

ahead in the second installment of a two-part look at education. Sunday’s story looked at the path local schools have taken.

« WHAT’S COMING FIGHTING CANCER

This family has a band of warriors ready to help their infant fight cancer. Tuesday’s Tribune.

TODAY An isolated shower possible

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An isolated shower possible

High 61 Low 34 WEATHER, XX

High 61 Low 34

B12: Weather

A7: B7-B11: A4: B9: A2: A11:

Nation Classifieds Comics Games Lottery Movie listings

By Analisa Romano aromano@greeleytribune.com

Joe DeSalvo, a firefighter with the Evans Fire Department, was taming a trailer fire in east Greeley on Wednesday when another emergency call came in.

No one remained in the station to respond.

“Our resources were tied up,” DeSalvo said. “That’s becoming a common occurrence more and more.”

In the past 10 years, the population in Evans has nearly doubled, Fire Chief Warren Jones said. The department has had to reallocate its budget for additional firefighters to keep up with the growth.

However, resources are thinning out, Jones said. Five issues on this year’s election ballot would create the Evans Fire Protection District, an independent body that could raise its own revenue with property taxes, Jones said.

«

CONTINUED A11: Fire department

B1-B12: Sports B11: TV grid

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Evans fire department advocates for autonomous district

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Valley Re-1 School District doesn’t see technology as a quick-fix way to improve student results, but it does see value in its heavy investment in 21-century tools. Page A8

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The Road Ahead

Monday, Oct. 17, 2011 » The Tribune

Investing in technology to build 21st century skills

Valley spends now to save later

By Sherrie Peif speif@greeleytribune.com

G

ILCREST — While GreeleyEvans School District 6 faces shrinking budgets and struggles to buy new books, a school district just 10 miles down the road is giving each of its high school students new laptops and nearly everyone has access to iPads, iPods and eReaders.

Valley Re-1 School District, which encompasses La Salle, Gilcrest and Platteville, is by no means a rich district — it has frozen salaries, cut programs and dipped into reserve funds — but it has chosen to make technology a priority with the hope that it pays off with savings in the future.

Valley gets about $1,000 more in per-pupil funding than District 6 does, but the demographics of the district are similar, with about 18 percent of its students learning English and 57 percent on free and reduced lunches.

Jo Barbie, the district superintendent, said the Valley school board chose to invest in a technology program three years ago in hopes of building 21st century skills, not because it believed the move was a quick-fix to raise achievement levels.

“We recognized that our kids are digital kids,” Barbie said. “They are coming from a background using digital devices. We asked ourselves, could we afford to keep teaching them in a 1970s classroom? Could we really ask them to leave their devices at the door?”

District 6 Superintendent Ranelle Lang said it would be nice to have such technology in the schools, but education still depends on the relationship between teachers and their students.

Photos by ERIC BELLAMY/ebellamy@greeleytribune.com

Freshman Tyler Ryan, front left, and Dominick Wagner, front right, work on a blog Wednesday at Valley High School in Gilcrest. The earth science students were blogging about global warming after hearing two opposing arguments on the subject.

Brianna Storm, front, and Brittany Layne work on Spanish in the hall Wednesday at Valley High School in Gilcrest.

“There was a time when schools were benches with no books, no technology, and they were still learning,” Lang said.

“Technology can advance that, but never replace it. You still have to be able to read and comprehend the words. We need to give the foundational skills of reading, thinking and comprehending.”

Lang said the district is considering allowing students more access to their own devices.

In the 2008-09 school year, Valley began issuing MacBooks

to all incoming freshmen. In addition, over the past few years it has updated computer labs at all elementary and middle schools to include laptop carts, iPads, iPods and eReaders that can be checked out overnight in some cases. Most classrooms have smart boards, and the district encourages teachers to develop websites, podcasts and other Internet-based resources to aid their instruction.

The district went from one T1 data line four years ago to the equivalent of 67 today to handle

the Internet traffic.

Valley lease-purchases the devices directly from Apple and recently agreed to sell the computers to the students when they graduate for $10.

The money to finance the program comes from the unused funds the district has left over each year. Barbie hopes it never dries up, but said the board recently committed to continue the program, despite more looming budget cuts. Barbie said officials believe it will be cheaper to have kids reading digital books than buying textbooks. So far, the district has not bought any textbooks since starting the program.

“Students and teachers are able to access more and more content online,” she said.

District 6 board member Brett Reese has made similar costsaving arguments, but his fellow board members say there is no money to buy computers.

This year the Valley district paid $41,000 for 150 MacBooks for the incoming freshman class.

Freshmen pay a $75 fee. If they take care of the laptop, it drops to $50 their sophomore year, $25 their junior year and it’s free their senior year. They pay small deductibles if there is damage, but

in four years, Barbie said only two computers have “disappeared,” one belonging to a student who left the district and the other belonging to a faculty member.

“It’s a tool for our staff to use,” Barbie said. “It connects us to the world.”

It also allows the district to monitor the students’ use. Some sites are blocked and the computer automatically shuts off at midnight and doesn’t turn on again until 6 a.m. At the end of each year, students turn in the computers and the hard drive is reformatted for the next year, erasing everything on the computer.

“It evens things up for our students who can’t afford their own devices,” Barbie said. “And we are seeing more and more phenomenal things coming from our classrooms.”

Barbie said the district had to shuffle some positions around to provide technical support for the computers, but there was no new additional staff hired.

Students who can’t afford the technology fees can pay the money over the course of the school year, and there are some scholarship funds available.

“We are letting kids live in the world we live in,” she said.

School targets nontraditional students

« Road Ahead From A1

a diverse student body with a liberal arts high school education and a focus on science and technology.

Kurtz came to Denver originally to run the school from Newark, N.J., where he ran an independent school that boasted 90 percent achievement and 90 percent free and reduced lunch enrollment. It was a public school where struggling middle school students went for two years to get caught up. They were then sent to the top high schools in the area to finish their education.

Stapleton, which is in northeast Denver, opened in 2004 and has both middle and high school campuses. In 2009, the idea expanded to other areas of Denver, including Green Valley Ranch off Tower Road near Peña Boulevard — also with middle and high school campuses — and Cole Middle School in north-central Denver. A sixth campus will open in 2012 in southwest Denver on the Colorado Heights University Campus. And a seventh is set to open in 2013 near West Washington Park in the former Byers Junior High School building.

Technology permeates the highly regarded charter academy.

But take one step inside any of its doors, look beyond the touchscreen TVs, and something is obviously different.

From the beginning, it has been DSST’s mission to target nontraditional students, students in poverty and minority students.

It was so important to Greenberg that the original charter application asked Denver Public Schools to write a 40 percent minimum requirement for “at-risk” students.

“We wanted it that way,” said Jenny Meyer, grants administrator for the school. “Part of the culture here is the diversity.

Obviously it depends on the community you’re operating in. But

MALLORY OLENIUS/For The Tribune

Karina Aldava, center, 12, of Montbello, cheers on other classmates during the

morning meeting at The Denver School of Science and Technology’s Green Valley Ranch Middle School on Friday in Denver. if we would have left it to chance, Stapleton would be a much less diverse community.”

The Green Valley Ranch site has 60 percent of its students on free and reduced lunches, Stapleton is at 46 percent and Cole is at 65 percent. By comparison, District 6 has 65 percent of its students on free and reduced lunch. At both DSST and District 6, about 25 percent of the students are English language learners.

Charter contracts for the two new schools will require a minimum of 50 percent of the slots go to at-risk students, also at the request of DSST. The enrollment for both the at-risk students and the general population is a lottery. There is no selection process, and all the schools have long waiting lists.

The difference DSST uses many of the same techniques that other charter schools do: strict dress codes, high sports eligibility requirements and rigorous curriculums.

Kurtz said, however, the success of DSST lies in the six core values that all students, faculty and staff are required to follow: respect, responsibility, integrity, courage, curiosity and doing your best. Students receive points for exhibiting these and are docked points for bad behavior. Points are awarded in a paycheck at the end of each week, and students can use the points to buy a dress-down day or things from the school store.

Before students can enroll, parents and students must sign a contract with the school stating

they fully understand what is expected of them. It’s that behavior that everyone at DSST says keeps kids on track.

Students are divided into advising groups of the same sex and with a same-sex teacher. The groups are named after popular colleges to get kids thinking about college as early as sixth grade.

They chose the same-sex model because studies have shown that students are more comfortable discussing embarrassing issues with others of the same sex, especially at the middle school level when students are beginning to hit puberty, and comfort enhances learning.

Every morning after students settle into their first class, each grade level conducts a “morning meeting,” where students, administrators and

teachers spend 15 minutes discussing achievements/awards and school announcements.

But it’s also used as a peer evaluation and acceptance time to refocus behavior that is not accepted at the school.

Students who are late to school must stand up and apologize to their classmates for wasting their time, but students who break any of the core values are responsible to their classmates on a much bigger level.

The apology isn’t the end.

Once a student apologizes, other students can discuss with him or her any concerns or questions they have. The student body then votes on whether to allow the student to come back to regular classes. If the majority says no, the student must return to in-school suspension and the process starts over.

During in-school suspension, students work on their regular class lessons and talk to the dean of students about what they can do to change what went wrong.

“Those days are very intensive,” said Megan Helseth, charter management organization fellow.

“They talk about what happened, what went wrong, write an apology and figure out how to change those things.”

The school also has three after-school programs, a refocus group, a college prep hour and a mandatory tutoring class. Refocus is for students who get in trouble during the day; college prep is for students who are unprepared for class — even down to not having a pencil or pen ready when required — don’t turn in homework or have other academic issues; and mandatory tutoring is for students falling behind in grades, which are graded on a scale of A, B, C and F. There are no D’s.

“No student is ever going to get

«

continued A9: Road Ahead

The Road Ahead

« The Tribune « Monday, Oct. 17, 2011

»»At a glance Every year the state board of education accredits school districts based on a number of academic indicators, such as Colorado Student Assessment Program test scores; the Colorado Growth Model; closing achievement gaps among subgroups such as English language learners, special education students, minorities and students living in poverty; and workforce readiness at the high schools. The board accredits districts in one of five categories: accredited with distinction, accredited, accredited with improvement plan, accredited with priority improvement plan or accredited with turnaround plan. Here are how the 15 largest school districts were accredited last year along with their numbers for English language learners, free and reduced lunch enrollments and per-pupil funding amounts.

Per-pupil (Rank) District (Enrollment) ELL % FRL % funding Accreditation (1) Jefferson County (85,938) 7 30.6 $7,285.32 Accredited (2) Denver Public Schools (78,317) 35.1 72.9 $7,997.52 Priority (3) Douglas County (61,465) 3.8 10.9 $6,860.01 Accredited (4) Cherry Creek (52,166) 9.9 25.8 $7,677.31 Accredited (5) Adams 12 5-Star Schools (41,957) 15 34.0 $7,528,58 Improvement (6) Adams-Arapaohe 28J (38,605) 39.2 65.2 $7,414.56 Improvement (7) Boulder Valley (29,526) 9.7 18.4 $8,405.96 Accredited (8) Colorado Springs 11 (29,459) 9.8 51.8 $7,872.10 Improvement (9) St. Vrain Valley Re-1J (27,379) 15.1 32.4 $7,042.13 Accredited (10) Poudre R1 (29,923) 7.5 27.6 $7,766.47 Accredited (11) Academy 20 (23,119) 1.7 11.3 $7,424.26 Distinction (12) Mesa County Valley 51 (22,091) 5 45.5 $6,711.80 Improvement (13) Greeley-Evans 6 (19,623) 25.1 60.5 $6,404.37 Improvement (14) Pueblo City Schools 60 (18,420) 5.6 67.6 $6,463.19 Priority (15) Littleton 6 (15,733) 5.6 20 $8,206.83 Distinction Neighboring districts (16) Thompson R-2J Schools (15,310) 7.5 32.2 $7,172.76 Accredited (35) Windsor-Severance Re-4 (4,364) 1.6 20.3 $6,831.37 Accredited (38) Johnstown/Milliken (3,138) 8.5 36.4 $6,371.53 Improvement (51) Valley Re-1 (1,986) 17.8 56.8 $7,686.20 Improvement (53) Eaton Re-2 (1,749) 6.6 32.3 $7,024.25 Accredited (71) Platte Valley Re-7 6.3 45 $8,393.63 Accredited

»»Focus on funding Some argue that District 6 being 169th of 178 districts in per-pupil funding cripples the district for implementing programs. District 6 is on an improvement plan under the new accreditation laws in Colorado. It receives $6,404.37 per student. Here’s a look at how much districts who are on accredited with distinction, priority improvement or turnaround plans get: District Accreditation Per-pupil funding Adams 14 Turnaround $7,679.11 Englewood Turnaround $7,699.10 Huerfano Re-1 Turnaround $7,025.77 Sheridan 2 Turnaround $8,250.36 Vilas Re-5 Turnaround $6,691.72 Westminster 50 Turnaround $8,916.00 Aguilar Reorganized Priority $11,972.55 Branson Reorganized Priority $6,690.17 Center 26J Priority $7,351.53 Debeque Priority $11,730.80 Denver County Priority $7,997.52 Fort Morgan Priority $6,801.81 Ignacio 11JT Priority $8,654.12 Julesburg Priority $6,206.74 Karval Re-2 Priority $6,904.54 Lake County Priority $7,610.38 Las Animas Priority $7,016.59 Montezuma-Cortez Priority $6,259.01 Mountain Valley Priority $11,919.97 Pueblo City Priority $6,463.19 Rocky Ford Priority $7,115.90 South Conejos Re-10 Priority $9,167.75 Academy 20 Distinction $7,424.26 Aspen 1 Distinction $12,094.46 Cheyenne Mountain 12 Distinction $6,900.66 Hinsdale County Re-1 Distinction $13,794.19 Kiowa C-2 Distinction $8,569.22 Lewis-Palmer 38 Distinction $6,912.44 Littleton 6 Distinction $8,206.83 Ouray R-1 Distinction $11,546.91 Plateau Re-5 Distinction $7,099.58 Prairie Re-11 Distinction $11,613.45 Ridgway R-2 Distinction $10,367.08 Steamboat Springs Re-2 Distinction $7,711.51 Telluride R-1 Distinction $10,446.32 Information compiled from the Colorado Department of Education Website: www.cde.state. co.us, and represent the 2010-2011 school year.

« A9

Community buy-in key to success « Road ahead From A8 a zero at DSST,” Helseth said. “We make sure they don’t fall behind.

They all finish their homework.”

Big-screen televisions in the lobbies of the schools broadcast which students have college prep, refocus or mandatory tutoring at the end of each day, reinforcing the idea of peer accountability.

“We need the parents to be very, very committed or there is no way the kid will buy in,” Helseth said.

About 600-700 kids go through college prep each month, and another 400-500 kids a month spend time in refocus.

Helseth said the school does its best not to expel students; administrators would much rather get students on track and see them succeed.

“The students are tuned in to the fact they can go to a neighborhood school and pass,” Meyer said. “We have a high number of students who repeat a grade.

We really try hard to retain those students who need the extra help, especially those who are at risk.”

There is still more. A blue line across the top one-third of desks is where anything not being used in class must sit so the teacher knows the students are not playing with things they don’t need.

And the four-minute passing periods between classes are silent.

Signs on the walls throughout the school remind students that they must walk on the right side of the hall with urgency, respect others’ personal space and keep quiet.

Students are not allowed in their lockers except before and after school and during lunch.

The curriculum DSST is a college preparatory program. One major difference between DSST and a traditional public school, Kurtz said, is the number of classes offered. DSST offers 25 classes to students in sixth through 12th grade.

“The classic high school has between 300-400 classes,” Kurtz said, “because people argue, ‘Our kids will go crazy if they don’t have a choice.’ I know you want kids engaged in school, but when you have kids who can’t read or pass algebra, it doesn’t make sense having elective courses.”

While the schools are focused on a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum,

they still “teach the whole student,” Helseth said, with classes such as cooking, engineering, medical and others. They are designed to bring the students together and build a sense of community.

“We want them to walk out of here being human beings,” Helseth said.

In addition, each school partners with a corporation, such the Anschutz Medical Campus, Lockheed Martin and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, where students do internships as part of their graduation requirements.

Each grade level has about 150 students and 20 to 25 students per class. All students are assigned a laptop when they enter the school beginning in the sixth grade. There is a $150 deposit required, and students also pay for any damages.

The laptop program was developed early in DSST’s history with a grant from Hewlett-Packard.

The school, which started as a high school, began offering middle school because teachers noticed four years wasn’t enough to prepare students for college.

Kurtz said it is unlikely the school will ever offer elementary school because he believes middle school is where the need is.

“We really needed to give kids a better chance at succeeding,” Kurtz said. “We noticed they were coming in with poor academic skills. But we can accomplish what we need to without elementary.

The biggest achievement problems start at the middle school.”

Technology or delivery?

Critics of the state’s school funding system argue that schools would see higher achievement rates with more money because they could invest in technology. Many criticize districts and schools such as DSST — which has received numerous grants and donations from companies nationwide such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s $500,000 donation or Oprah Winfrey’s $1 million donation — with comments like, “We could do that too if we had all that money.”

But Kurtz said it is not the money or the technology. In fact, DSST’s first year was spent in a former DPS high school where the morning meetings were conducted in the parking lot.

“Our model is certainly built on a culture of success,” Kurtz said.

“But it’s my belief that we could open a school in a field in a tent and be successful. Technology has helped us do some things, but most of it is culture and expectations and accountability that go beyond the technology.”

Meyer said the content and the lessons being taught are the same as they would be without computers and smart boards. The technology just improves effectiveness and gives teachers a 21st century way to deliver the message.

“It lets teachers keep track so much easier,” Meyer said. “Results are immediate with software. It can show teachers in five minutes if half the class is not meeting the standard. That kind of technology for our teachers is amazing.”

Kurtz said what strong academics boils down to is schools using technology effectively, but it’s the culture that is created and the teachers who are hired to do the job. He said DSST’s behavior and curriculum model could be implemented in any traditional public school so long as everyone buys into it.

“Much of what we do is the same as any school, you’ll see that we only have 20 parents show up for meetings, too,” he said. “There is nothing in our model that any district school couldn’t do that didn’t want to. There is nothing really stopping people from taking what we do. It’s a question of imagination in do they want to take it?”

Kurtz said when it fails, it’s because schools or districts only take bits and pieces and it won’t hold up to the whole that works.

“There are often other broken parts that overwhelm those new parts,” he said.

Greeley-Evans School District 6 Superintendent Ranelle Lang agreed that DSST’s model would work in a traditional school in Greeley and could be considered.

She cautioned, however, that it couldn’t be implemented in all schools because in order for it to work it needs participation from everyone involved.

“This could certainly work in our district, particularly if it were part of a larger choice initiative,” she said. “This sort of structure is best when adopted with the support of the entire school community, at a school level, and parents and students are well aware of the structures before attending.

It also assumes that there are other choices for the students and families within the district.”

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THE ROAD AHEAD, PART EIGHT | A TRIBUNE SPECIAL PROJECT

Seeds sprouting FARMER

WOES

As more Weld kids opt to follow in their parents’ footsteps, optimism about the future of the family farm is growing.

C1: Production mandates for corn growers have producers worried about a worstcase scenario.

BRAVE

SOULS A2: Many locals keep coming to the annual Lights the Night parade, despite frigid temperatures.

WHAT'S

NEXT?

PHOTOS BY JOSHUA POLSON/jpolson@greeleytribune.com

CHARLIE COLLENTINE AND HIS labrador, Sable, watch as the corn fields are combined by Randy Schwalm on Nov. 18.

Collentine was transporting the harvested corn to Johnstown and was awaiting the next load to be delivered.

Monday: Two Billie Martinez Elementary School teachers have found a way to help girls build confidence and self-respect.

BY ERIC BROWN

EBROWN@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

L

THERE ARE MORE THAN

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JOB ADS IN TODAY'S CLASSIFIEDS SECTION.

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40 pages, 5 sections

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» About the series

This is the eighth installment in The Road Ahead, a series of stories that explores the power of plans to shape Greeley: past, present and future.

The first story helped to explain how we arrived here as a community. Subsequent installments — once a month in our Sunday edition — look at present-day Greeley and then at the opportunities ahead and the paths we might take.

» What’s next

In next month’s installment of The Road Ahead, The Tribune looks at an issue that some people wish would just go away. Call it the “smell of money” or something worse, but the pungent odor that has hung over Greeley for decades can’t be denied. How does it affect the city’s image? How have other cities dealt with similar challenges?

» Catch up

If you’ve missed any of the previous installments — covering Greeley’s past, immigration, the Stampede, U.S. 85, recreation, water and education — you can find them at www.greeleytribune.com/ roadahead.

eaning against the side of a silver 4x4 truck — enjoying a breezy, sunny autumn day of temperatures in the mid-50s, with the hum of nearby U.S. 34 traffic in the background — Charlie Collentine talks quietly, slightly smiling, about the rewarding feeling of a hard day’s work in the fields and speaks with an air of optimism and excitement about his future in farming.

Needed maintenance has been performed on equipment at the farm, a few miles south of Windsor, and now he’s eagerly waiting for the fields to dry up from recent snowstorms so he can begin harvesting corn once again.

“Hopefully we can get back out there by early next week,” he says, observing nearby ground. “We’re getting a little restless.”

Whether the 26-year-old realizes it or not, Collentine is just the man U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has been looking for — young and eager to feed and fuel the world.

During the past year or more, Vilsack has declared the need for 100,000 new farmers across the country, a recognition that the U.S. farm population has been dwindling and aging rapidly.

For the past hundred years, more and more farmland has ended up in the hands of fewer and fewer farmers. Among the reasons: tough economic times, technology that requires fewer people working the soil, price pressures and medical advances that keep farmers working longer. Farm kids left the land in droves, drawn to the cities by jobs and opportunities.

But recently, with jobs tougher to find, commodity prices high and a renewed interest in locally grown food, Collentine and other 20- and 30-somethings, some younger, are deciding to head back to the farm.

“There’s a lot of opportunity in agriculture

today, and maybe people around here are recognizing that,” said Keith Maxey, director of the Weld County office of Colorado State University Extension.

According to the most recent ag census, more than one-third of producers in Weld County were labeled as beginning farmers.

The implications are huge for Weld County and Greeley, which has served as an agricultural hub from the beginning. Today, the county ranks as one of the top ag producers in the nation and much of the local economy depends on functioning farms.

However, farmers young and old face major challenges, including corporate competition, soaring land prices and tight credit that makes it tough to buy land or expand farms. In addition, growing municipalities are competing for the water farmers need to grow their crops.

«

CONTINUED A4: Road Ahead

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The Road Ahead

Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011

« The Tribune

Weld’s agricultural future ‘is in very good hands’ « Road Ahead From A1 Despite the challenges, undergraduate enrollment at Colorado State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences rose last year to its highest levels in nearly a decade.

Some students are even leaving early without degrees, eager to get back to the land. Future Farmers of America membership in Colorado is at an all-time high this year. And more young people are expressing an interest in agriculture every day.

But will it be enough?

Concerns for the industry

According to the most recent U.S. Census of Agriculture, released in 2007, the average American farm operator was 57.1 years old — a figure that has steadily increased since the 1978 census, when the average age was 50.3. In 2007, almost 80 percent of the nation’s farmers were older than 45, and 25 percent were older than 65.

Some new blood has entered the industry, experts say, but the average age continues to increase, with some estimating it to now be 58 or older. The next census of agriculture will be released in 2012.

Secretary Vilsack — along with other officials, including Colorado Department of Agriculture Commissioner John Salazar and Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., — have expressed concerns about the most recent census numbers, saying more young farmers are needed to create a revitalized, sustainable and socially just food system — a foundation of America since its beginning, they say.

Traci Bruckner is assistant director at the Nebraska-based Center for Rural Affairs, an organization that, along with other efforts, provides help to young farmers trying to get started. She said she is concerned about the further consolidation of ag operations and the expansion of corporate farms.

The number of farms in the U.S. has already dropped from about 5.4 million in 1950 to about 2.2 million in 2007, while the average size of the farm nearly doubled during that time.

The trends have turned some rural communities into ghost towns.

She said more large and corporate ag operations would further uneven the playing field for the small and mid-sized farms trying to stay in business — in 2007, 5.7 percent of the nation’s farms accounted for 75 percent of its production — and smaller farms in rural areas being bought out by larger operations would further harm the economies of those small, rural communities.

Keeping family farms in operation and maintaining a strong local agriculture industry is important for the future of the local community, said Bruce Biggi, economic development manager for the city of Greeley.

Agriculture is and always has been big business in Weld County, he said, with its agricultural market value of production now standing at more than $1.5 billion annually — ranking the county eighth in the nation, according to the most recent census of agriculture. Family farms support the city’s giants in the ag industry — JBS USA, a subsidiary of JBS S.A., which is the world’s largest processor of fresh beef and pork; and Leprino Foods, the world’s largest processor of mozzarella cheese — along with local machinery dealerships, animal health facilities and other ag businesses and their memberships are essential to the many farm organizations based in Greeley, such as the Colorado Corn Growers and Colorado Livestock associations.

Leaving the farm

Consolidation hasn’t been as severe in Weld County compared with the rest of the nation. The number of farms locally has decreased by only about 11 percent since 1950; the average size of the farm has increased by only 8 percent. Those numbers indicate many Weld County families have stayed put on the farm, but even local farmers are no strangers to seeing their children head elsewhere.

Kevin Schmidt, a La Salle area farmer, said he doesn’t blame his children — now in their early 30s and late 20s — for not following in his footsteps. His son works for Cargill as a crop insurance salesman and his daughter works for JBS USA’s trucking division.

“They’ve gone on to be successful elsewhere, and I’m very proud of them for that,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt said the family’s farming operation would have needed to be expanded to support multiple families, but with the value of land and water rights continually increasing, trying to buy more ground would have been expensive and possibly risky — especially before commodity prices began to increase.

Schmidt said one of his children might take over his farm once he retires, but he’s not sure.

Chuck Sylvester from the La Salle area doesn’t have kids coming back to take over his local family ranch, and, like Schmidt, understands their reasons.

“What I have here is just too small at this point for anyone to make much of a profit,” said Sylvester, whose two children both live out of state. His children play a role in family ranching operations in Wyoming, where the Sylvesters own thousands of acres, but not in the small Weld County ranch that has been in the family since 1869.

He faces a difficult decision about the future of his family ground near La Salle. There’s a chance one of his grandsons might come back to live on the homestead that’s surrounded by 80 acres, and he plans to donate more than 100 acres of nearby land to Colorado State University, the University of Colorado and 10 other groups, including 4-H and FFA groups.

“As long as I can keep some of it in agriculture one way or another after I’m gone, I’ll be happy,” Sylvester said.

Responding to the problem A number of young Weld County farmers are doing their part to answer the call of an aging ag industry.

In addition to Collentine — the 26-year-old eager to get into the cornfields earlier this month — 24-year-old Erik Frank, who graduated with an agriculture business degree from CSU two years ago, is working to some day spearhead his family’s farming operation near Gilcrest and Platteville, where the Franks own or custom cut about 2,000 acres of corn and wheat.

“I’m pretty optimistic heading into it,” Frank said. “People always have to eat, and if there’s fewer of us farming, it could be a good business to be in.

“Although, I don’t doubt I’ll see some tough times in it down the road. That’s how farming works. I’m expecting that and I’m prepared to take that on.”

According to the 2007 ag census, the average age of the farmer in Weld County was 55.7— just 1.4 years below the national average — but 35 to 40 percent of Weld’s farm operators were “beginning farmers,” or in their first 10 years of farming. Nationally, beginning farmers made up about one-fifth of producers.

Experts say more beginning farmers could be on their way.

»»Weld natives returning home » Les Hardesty’s 23-year-old daughter, Marcie, plans to use her dairy sciences degree from Utah State University to one day take over the family’s Cozy Cow Dairy near Windsor, a 650-head operation where the family also farms about 250 acres of forage for feed. She’s already working at the dairy. » Jerrold Brethauer’s 30-year-old son, Scott, is in line to take over the family’s 800 acres of silage corn and wheat fields near Kersey. » Jared, Jason and Jordan Hungenberg — brothers ages 29, 27 and 25, respectively — are all working for Hungenberg Produce and look to one day take charge of the family’s 3,000 acres of carrots, dry beans, cabbage and corn in the Eaton area. The operation is currently run by their father, Paul, and uncle, Mike. » Steve Eckhardt’s 21-year-old son, Alex, who’s studying agriculture management at Colorado State University, is planning one day to return to and take over the family farmstead that includes about 3,800 acres of sugar

beets, corn, alfalfa, onions and wheat near La Salle. » Dave Rupple’s three sons — Paul, 32, Ryan, 28, and Chad, 23 — are working on the 5,000 acres where the family produces sugar beets, wheat, sunflowers, corn and hay near Keenesburg, and they plan to stay there. » Ty Walter, a 19-year-old who already has his own herd of about 70 head of cattle at the family’s Walter Angus operation near Hudson, plans to run the family business after he earns an agribusiness degree. » Tim Brown, a 21-year-old CSU student studying agriculture economics, has already taken over his family’s 400-acre farm in the Eaton area, where they grow onions, corn and sugar beets. » Gabe Winter, 26, is working his family’s 1,100 acres of crops near Eaton. » Jeff Anderson, a 28-year-old from the Eaton area, works on his family farm and plans to take over the 1,500-acre operation where they grow corn, alfalfa, onion, sugar beets and dry beans.

Photos by JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com

Ryan Fagerberg stands in front of a sea of onions at Fagerberg Produce near Eaton. Ryan represents the fifth generation of Fagerbergs to farm in the area.

Stephen Koontz, an ag economist and professor at Colorado State University, said he’s noticed a sharp increase in young people interested in returning to family farms, particularly across northeast and southeast Colorado, since around 2007 — not long after commodity prices began to skyrocket as corn became used in ethanol production. Koontz said he’s even had students — both in undergraduate and graduate programs — leave before completing their degrees.

“Those students told us that at the time there was just too much opportunity back at the farm, and so they headed home early,” Koontz said.

Last year, CSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences had its highest undergraduate enrollment numbers since 2003.

Bruckner at the Center for Rural Affairs said she has noticed an influx of young people interested in agriculture in the past four years or so.

“It’s exciting to see any younger guys coming onboard,” said Lynn Fagerberg of Fagerberg Produce, whose 28-year-old son, Ryan, is putting his marketing degree from CSU to use at the family business and plans to run the operation some day.

In addition to the family’s onionpacking shed north of Eaton, the Fagerbergs farm 380 acres of onions, dry beans, sugar beets and wheat.

Ryan represents the fifth generation of Fagerbergs to farm in the area.

“For a long time we haven’t seen a lot of kids in the area coming back to the farms,” Lynn added. “For a long time there just wasn’t much incentive for them to do so. They’d see one good year on the farm in the middle of a few bad ones.

“It’s hard work, no doubt about that. But hopefully now we’ll have enough kids coming back to keep things going.”

New blood Most of the young adults expressing interest in farming grew up on family farms themselves, but not Charlie Collentine. He is next in line to take over Randy Schwalm’s family farming operation. Collentine, a 2004 Windsor High School gradu-

produced in the U.S. goes toward ethanol production.

Koontz at CSU and Mark Sponsler, CEO for Colorado Corn based in Greeley, said the demand for corn for ethanol is likely to increase as the process and products become more efficient.

Having the world’s largest mozzarella cheese maker in Weld County also gives the area’s young farmers reason for optimism. Greeley’s new Leprino Foods cheese processing plant began operations Oct. 31, and the facility eventually will have the capacity to take in 7 million pounds of milk per day, about the equivalent of Colorado’s current statewide dairy production.

Some 50,000 to 80,000 additional cows will be needed in the region to meet the needs of Greeley’s Leprino plant once it’s fully operational. Experts expect those additional cows will come from a combination of some consolidation, existing dairies expanding and new dairies coming to the area, with anywhere from 12 to 15 new dairies expected across the region — not just in Weld County.

Bill Wailes, a professor and dairy specialist at CSU, said he expects the average dairy herd size in the state to increase by about 50 percent over the next few years because of Leprino. When Wailes began analyzing the industry 25 years ago, he said the average dairy herd size in Colorado was about 200 head.

The average herd size is now about 1,000 head, and Wailes said that will increase to about 1,500 in the next four or five years.

Local crop farmers should see plenty of demand, Wailes said; the average dairy cow eats about 55 pounds of feed a day.

Challenges remain

Ryan Fagerberg, right, and Fagerberg Produce employee Raul Lopez check the quality of the onions while working on the production line. The Fagerbergs farm 380 acres of onions, dry beans, sugar beets and wheat near Eaton.

ate, had never driven a combine, never planted a crop and had never irrigated a field during his upbringing.

“But the passion and the work ethic is certainly there, and he’s learning quickly,” said Schwalm, the fourth generation of his family to farm in Weld County.

Schwalm never had kids of his own, and — with “only about 10, maybe 15 years of farming left” in his body — refers to Collentine as a “godsend.”

“I’m glad I’ll have someone to leave this to, and I feel very comfortable leaving this to him some day,” said Schwalm, who in addition to being an ag producer — farming nearly 800 acres of corn, wheat, pinto beans and sugar beets — serves as an adviser for the Colorado Young Farmers Education Association. “And when I look around and see the kids who are coming on board to take over family farms, I think the future of agriculture in Weld County is in very good hands.”

Collentine got his first taste of farming when he began helping Schwalm about a year and a half ago. He heard about the job through a neighbor after moving back to Windsor, following a five-year stint in the Marine Corps.

He fell in love with it almost immediately.

“There’s so much to love about it,” said Collentine, who’s also going to school now to become a certified welder — a skill he believes will come in handy in his farming future.

Optimism for the future Salazar, Colorado’s ag commissioner, believes good times could be ahead for agriculture’s next generation.

“The next 10 years of agriculture, maybe more, could be some of the best we’ve seen,” he said, referring to a recent forecast released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We just need to make sure we have enough

young people to take things over.”

China is adding 1 million people to its middle class each year and increased its beef consumption by 15 percent in 2011. Overall, U.S. beef exports in the past three years have increased 36 percent, Salazar said.

That means good things for future farmers. Weld is No. 3 in the country in terms of the value of all livestock, poultry and their products, according to the ag census.

And producing more livestock means good things for local crop farmers, who will be needed to feed those animals, in addition to providing more grain for human consumption.

Additionally, today’s high commodity prices don’t look to decline drastically any time soon, experts say. Commodity prices have increased significantly in recent years — around $2 per bushel in 2005 and standing at nearly $8 earlier this year — largely due to corn being used for ethanol gasoline blending.

More than 25 percent of the corn

Farmers have always faced challenges, and the next generation will have plenty of its own.

Increased food demand and high crop prices have pushed land values up, while the economic downturn has limited the availability of credit.

Tony Miller, senior vice president at First Farm Bank in Greeley, and Weld County Assessor Chris Woodruff estimated that Weld property values have increased about 10 to 15 percent in the past five years.

Farmland values in other regions have almost doubled during the past few years.

For beginning farmers, the ability to come up with enough money to buy or rent land, along with tools, fencing, animals and feed, is likely to determine whether they’ll be in business, said Miller, who works for a local lender with about 60 percent of its loans in agriculture.

In a survey of young farmers conducted by the National Young Farmers’ Coalition, 53 percent of respondents cited lack of capital as their biggest obstacle.

“If you’re not coming from a family farm, or have a mentor to help you get started, it can be awfully tough,” Miller said. “Even with help, it can be really tough to get started farming or to expand operations.”

Miller said most ag loan inquiries from young producers are from those who grew up on farms. He said First Farm Bank has traditionally required about a 30 percent down payment on its loans, but he said many find it difficult to make down payments on farmland today — even with help from family.

He said prime farm ground in the Eaton area, with good water rights, now costs as much as $7,500 per acre. At 30 percent, someone looking to buy 80 acres of land would need $180,000 just for the down payment.

And that’s before other input costs kick in. Sponsler with Colorado Corn said total input costs for corn today range from $800 to

»»Proposed safety rules »»Agri-cultural relevance in Greeley As more young people are needed to take the reins of agriculture in the future, many Weld County farmers and officials have expressed concern about proposed revisions to child labor laws that would strengthen safety standards for young agricultural workers.

The U.S. Department of Labor is proposing revisions that would extend regulations to prohibit child agricultural work with animals, along with pesticides, timber, manure pits and storage bins. The restrictions would bar children younger than 16 from operating most power-driven equipment, and all youth in both agricultural and nonagricultural work from using electronic devices while operating such equipment.

Grain elevators and bins, silos, feedlots, stockyards and livestock exchanges and auctions would be off-limits to nonagricultural workers younger than 18.

However, those proposed revisions would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents.

If passed, the revisions will mark the first update to the Fair Labor Standards Act concerning child farm workers since 1970.

Those in the ag industry say those revisions could hinder valuable learning and working experiences for children interested in agriculture, and could hurt 4-H and FFA programs.

The deadline to comment about the Department of Labor’s proposed revisions is Dec. 1. To view the full details of the proposed rules and submit comments, visit the federal e-rulemaking website at www.regulations.gov and search by regulation identification number 1235-AA06.

You can’t talk about the past, present or future of Greeley without talking about the family farm and the agriculture industry, as Peggy Ford Waldo, a Greeley museums curator, will let you know.

“It’s so embedded in our culture here,” she said. “You can’t really separate the two ... and I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to.”

The area was settled in the 1800s specifically to become a “farming utopia,” she said, in addition to serving as a community of temperance. Greeley’s founding fathers knew that with proper irrigation systems in place, “the Great American Desert could be transformed into a Garden of Eden.

“And that’s what happened.”

Starting more than a century ago, the great amount of farm work in the area — particularly the labor-intensive sugar beet harvests — began bringing migrant workers to the area, some of whom decided to eventually stay here, leading to the vast amount of diversity in the community that’s one of Greeley’s great trademarks, as she described.

Over the years, Greeley’s agricultural presence also determined the types of businesses that filled the streets, among other characteristics of the city. While agriculture’s relevance has diminished in many other communities in recent decades, big players in the industry made their moves to Greeley, allowing more opportunities for local agriculture operations and businesses and for the community to hold tight to its farming heritage.

“Agriculture is and always has been the hallmark of Greeley,” Ford said. “This is a community of people who believe in sus-

Photo courtesy City of Greeley Museums

The Great Western sugar beet factory in 1905.

tainability from the land, and our unique geography allows us to be that way.”

She admitted that other industries becoming major players in the area — such as oil and gas — have altered Greeley’s cultural landscape and may continue to do so.

“But having oil and gas and wind energy development on their farm ground ... along with having companies like JBS and Leprino, and having the growing local food movements that provide opportunities for small farming operations ... will only provide more opportunities to our many farmers, and allow Greeley and Weld County to hold on tight to their roots,” she said. “I just don’t ever see agriculture and farming ever disappearing from our culture.”

$1,000 per acre. Farmers say they’re more than double what they were just a few years ago.

“Just because commodity prices are high doesn’t mean we’re all getting rich,” said La Salle area farmer Dave Eckhardt. “It’s helped, but the input costs don’t make things easy.”

Miller said federal regulators have been warning banks about the risks of ag lending if the tides turn in the industry, leaving farmers who have recently borrowed large amounts of money hanging out to dry.

“No doubt, we want to help young farmers as much as anyone, and we’ll do everything we can to do so,” Miller said. “But while so many good things about the agriculture industry today are causing land values to soar, and while credit is tight, it’s making things difficult.”

Worth the investment?

Koontz at CSU believes there will always be a place for the family farm.

“There will always be consolidation in agriculture, but I see much of that taking place among the corporations; the bigger companies will always be looking for ways to make their operations less expensive and more efficient. But the inputs for those large companies will continue coming from the family farms.

“JBS slaughters livestock that comes from its large feedlots, but those feedlots buy calves from small, local operations. They buy feed from local farmers.

“I don’t know if we’re just seeing a brief trend right now, as far as young people heading back to agriculture.

But if young people are willing to do the work, there will be plenty of work to do on family farms in the future.”

While some are concerned about the future of small farming operations, Bruckner with the Center for Rural Affairs said she believes there is plenty of opportunity, particularly in Colorado, where local and healthy food movements in urban areas have gained momentum.

“Some of the really small farms may have to really revamp their operations to accommodate it, but the local food movement — people who truly care about where their food comes from and who are willing to pay more for it — could really provide some opportunities for those small operations,” she said. “There’s really plenty of possibility all around when it comes to agriculture.”

In the past decade, the number of farmers markets across the nation has more than doubled. In the past year alone, markets increased 17 percent, and Bruckner said she expects further growth.

Biggi with economic development at the city of Greeley said agriculture’s role in the local economy will continue to be significant.

Leprino alone — between jobs, dairy growth and other factors — is expected have a $325 million impact on Greeley over the next 15 years, to go along with a $4.8 billion impact on Weld County.

“With the foundation of agriculture that’s here, there’s always the possibility that more companies will head this way,” he said. “We already have a number of family farms here, we have the large corporations in the industry, animal health facilities ... local technology businesses and others aimed at improving ag operations.

“It’s embedded in our economy, and I don’t see that changing in the future.”

That’s precisely what Collentine and other young Weld County farmers want to hear.

“It’s a job where you serve a purpose and feel good at the end of the day,” Collentine said. “It’s something I’m proud to be going into. And if I can make a little doing it, that’s even better.”

»»2012 farm bill Growing up in a rural community as the son of a farm equipment dealership owner, Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., is one of many who want to make sure an ample supply of young people is ready to step in for aging farmers.

“It’s crucial for our national security, and for our rural communities, that we make it easier for farming operations to be handed down to the next generation and that we are providing opportunities for new avenues in agriculture not yet available,” he said.

He said the 2012 farm bill is a prime opportunity to do so, although he admitted Congress is a long way from finalizing the legislation.

Recently, House and Senate members announced the introduction of the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act of 2011,

a bill intended for inclusion in the 2012 farm bill that highlights federal programs aimed at helping support economic opportunities for young and beginning farmers and ranchers. The bill, introduced last month, attempts to address many of the barriers that new agriculture entrepreneurs face, such as limited access to land and markets, hyper-inflation of land prices, high input costs and a lack of sufficient support networks.

Some of the specific proposals included in the Beginning Farmer bill include the Individual Development Accounts and FSA Microloans, along with other credit provisions, loans and set asides for conservation programs, the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program and agricultural opportunities for military veterans.

“There’s a lot of work yet to do, but hopefully we can do what’s right for our young farmers,” Gardner said.

« A5

»»By the numbers »»Aging population The average age of the American farm operator stood at 57.1 in the most recent ag census, released in 2007. In 1978, the average age was 50.3.

In just five years between the 2002 and 2007 ag censuses, statistics revealed a rapidly aging farm population.

2002 2007 % Change Number of farm operators 3,053,801 3,281,534 +7 Operators younger than 45 851,091 732,322 -14 Operators age 45 to 64 1,527,742 1,725,777 +13 Operators 65 and older 674,968 823,435 +22

»»Farm consolidation While circumstances have led to the consolidation of ag operations across the country, those effects haven’t been felt as much in Weld County.

Weld County farms

Number of farms Acres in farms Average acreage of farms

1950 4,418 2,180,463 493.5

2007 3,921 2,088,715 532.7

% Change -11 -4 +8

U.S. farms

Number of farms Acreage in farms Average acreage of farms

1950 5,382,162 1,158,565,852 215.3

2007 2,204,795 922,095,840 418.2

% Change -59 -20 +94.2

»»Role in the workforce Farming’s role in the nation’s workforce has changed considerably over the years. » In 1900, 41 percent of the U.S. workforce was employed in agriculture. » In 1930, 21.5 percent of the workforce was employed in agriculture. » In 1945, 16 percent of the total labor force worked in agriculture. » In 1970, 4 percent of employed labor force worked in agriculture. » In 2000, 1.9 percent of employed labor force worked in agriculture.

While the number of farmers has decreased, technology is allowing them to feed more people. According to the National Cattleman’s Beef Association, one farmer can currently feed about 130 people.

In 1960, one farmer fed 25 people.

»»‘Beginning farmers’ According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, about one-fifth of the nation’s farm operators were “beginning farmers,” or those who have been farming for 10 consecutive years or less. In Weld County, 35 to 40 percent of farm operators were beginning farmers. » The average age of the nation’s beginning farmers was 48. » One-third were 55 years or older, compared with 70 percent of established operators. » Two-thirds of beginning farmers had a major occupation other than farming, compared with 37 percent of established operators.

»»FFA membership Colorado FFA membership numbers during the past 20 years: 1992-1993 3,136 2002-2003 3,778 1993-1994 3,343 2003-2004 3,868 1994-1995 3,484 2004-2005 4,061 1995-1996 3,655 2005-2006 3,961 1996-1997 3,689 2006-2007 4,168 1997-1998 3,756 2007-2008 4,348 1998-1999 3,591 2008-2009 4,647 1999-2000 3,892 2009-2010 4,718 2000-2001 3,879 2010-2011 4,699 2001-2002 3,819 2011-2012 5,651 The highest membership numbers prior to the previous 20-year period came in 1975-76, when membership reached 3,857.

»»Help available Many agree that the toughest challenge for young farmers is acquiring capital at a time when land values and input costs are high. Below are some programs aimed at helping with the issue. » The Beginning and Socially Disadvantaged Farmer and Rancher Land Contract Guarantee Program program is designed to encourage retiring landowners to sell to beginning or socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers through private, contractual agreements. » The Conservation Reserve Program Transition Option for Beginning Farmer or Rancher Development Program offers a special incentive of two years extra CRP rental payments to owners of land currently in CRP but returning to production who rent or sell the land to beginning or socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. » The Center for Rural Affair’s Land Link program aims to increase opportunities for beginning farmers by using a computer database matching and consulting services to bring beginning farmers and landowners together.

Retirement planning, beginning farmer financing, farm business and environmental assessment information are

used to assist in transferring family operations to the next generation of farmers and ranchers. Land Link services are provided at no charge to the participants. » The Farm Service Agency provides Direct Farm Ownership and Operating Loans for farmers and ranchers.

A percentage of direct ownership and operating loans are reserved for beginning farmers and ranchers, as well as socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. » The FSA provides Guaranteed Farm Ownership and Operating Loans for farmers and ranchers to work with banks, credit unions or other lenders to make loans with an FSA guarantee against significant loss of principal or interest. Like other FSA programs, a percentage of guaranteed ownership and operating loans are reserved for beginning farmers and ranchers, as well as socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.

In their 2011 fiscal year — Oct. 1, 2010, to Sept. 30 — Colorado FSA offices made a total 401 direct and guaranteed loans for a total of $58,081,520. Of that, 180 loans were made to beginning farmers, for a total of $21,379,929.

»»Know your water While Mike Hungenberg of Hungenberg Produce is pleased about young people returning to family farms in Weld County or planning to do so, he does have one concern.

“I don’t see any of these young people getting involved in water discussions,” said Hungenberg, who serves on the board of directors for a ditch company that irrigates his fields. “If they want to have an intelligent opinion on what will be the most important issue of their profession, they need to learn what’s going on. And they need to do it quickly.

It takes about 10 years to get the grasp of what’s going on.”

Water in agriculture has been the focal point of much research and discussion.

Water districts and irrigation companies spend millions in efforts to bring more water to their areas at the same time some experts are researching how farmers can use less.

Tom Trout, research leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agriculture Research Service’s Water Management Research Unit in Fort Collins, is in his fourth year of leading studies at

a 50-acre farm a couple miles east of Greeley to learn how much water crops common to the High Plains region actually use — and to see whether they can consume less and still produce quality yields.

Along with faculty and students from Colorado State University, Trout is growing corn, wheat, pinto beans and sunflowers in rotation and using drip irrigation at the research farm with the goal of applying about 50 percent of the water traditionally used on the crops while still getting 80 percent of the traditional yields.

James Pritchett, an agriculture economist and professor at Colorado State University, said farming operations in the future likely will require a combination of deficit irrigation for crops, along with fallowing some acreage — or not planting crops on that land — in some years and growing more dryland crops, in addition to farmers possibly leasing a portion of their water to municipalities at certain times of the year, as opposed to just selling off their rights.

MARIJUANA DEBATE: COLORADO POT LEGALIZATION PETITION NEARING END. A6

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THE ROAD AHEAD, PART NINE | A TRIBUNE SPECIAL PROJECT

What’s the cost of the smell of money?

Greeley’s odor has long cast a cloud over the city’s reputation.

But is it really that bad these days — and is it worth it?

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JOE COLLINS TESTS THE Scentometer Thursday morning off of North 6th Avenue in Greeley. The area overlooks a large sec-

tion of Greeley, as well as JBS’ processing plant. “There is a potential for any odor in the air to just sit and stagnate,” Collins said.

» How we got here With the cultivation of sugar beet crops, which made for exceptional cattle feed, and the renovation of feedlots, which allowed for more cattle in a smaller space, Greeley’s reputation as a “cow town” grew with its potential as a livestock hub.

In the early 1990s, a feedlot on East 8th Street, coupled with a truck washout nearby, the wastewater treatment facility, a sugar beet factory and meat packing plant made residents reluctant to eat outside or even hang laundry on the line, said Becky Safarik, Greeley’s community development director.

A particularly “ripe” summer in 1994 prompted 170 people to sign a petition asking the city council and Weld County commissioners to do something about the smell, which “perpetuates the notion that Greeley and Weld County are some of the most stench-filled areas of Colorado,” the petition said. Some even sent the city coupons for air freshener products.

The city then established an odor ordinance, which held producers responsible through resident reports to the odor hotline. The ordinance remains in effect.

But odor complaints, on the whole, have followed a more than 20-year trend downward.

“I think it’s a huge success story,” Safarik said.

The Monfort feedlot north of downtown has moved farther east, and the city bought the Meyers feedlot on East 8th Street and shut down the truck wash. The wastewater facility is now an award-winning system that emits very little odor, and a city ordinance no longer allows feedlots within its borders.

Miracle

35 on

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BY ANALISA ROMANO

AROMANO@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

S

ometimes, 29-year-old Laura Quinonez wakes up in the wee hours of the morning because she smells something funny.

Even though she’s lived in Greeley for eight years, she still hasn’t gotten used to the particular odor that can waft south from the meatpacking plant.

“It’s a horrible smell,” Quinonez said. “It’s definitely that smell that bothers me most.”

Many Greeley residents and city officials roll their eyes at yet another mention of smell. Greeley has been down this road before, they say, and they point to major improvements in smell policies and practices.

The city has tried to battle the odor in reality and perception — it helped move feedlots outside of the city in the mid-’90s and created an odor hotline and patrol to respond to complaints. And as of two weeks ago, the JBS USA meatpacking plant spends thousands of dollars more every month to try to scrub away the odor.

But — fair or not — the image of a smelly cow town lingers. It brings an unquantifiable cost to the “smell of money,” at a time when everything else about Greeley says it’s eager and open for business.

Quinonez has a discerning nose; she said she can distinguish between the smell that comes from the packing plant and the smell of livestock surrounding the city.

From all over Weld County, Quinonez smells more than

3,000 farms, which together rank Weld eighth in the nation for its prolific agricultural production.

From there, she smells the process of livestock feeding into the world’s largest provider of animal protein, JBS. Greeley’s and Weld County’s largest employer — 4,100 jobs in 2010 — JBS presents countless opportunities for up and downstream industries, such as feed production, veterinary medicine and transportation, said Bruce Biggi, Greeley’s economic development manager.

“I’m quite happy, as the economic development manager, to have them in the community,” Biggi said.

«

CONTINUED A4: Road Ahead

» The series This is the ninth installment in The Road Ahead, a series of stories that explores the power of plans to shape Greeley.

For previous stories in the series — covering Greeley’s past, immigration, the Stampede, U.S. 85, recreation, water, education and agriculture — go to www.greeleytribune. com/roadahead.

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« The Tribune

« A5

City works to control odors, but it can’t control wind « Road ahead From A1

»»Odor hotline

To report an offensive odor, call the odor hotline at (970) 350-9831.

Code enforcement officers will investigate calls from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Monday-Friday. Calls received after hours will be logged but not investigated.

For the complaint to count toward the three calls within six hours needed for a violation, callers must leave their name, address, phone number and a description of the odor.

If the odor is tracked to a source and the Scentometer reads seven parts odorous particles to one part clean air, or if the city receives three calls about the same odor within six hours, the odorous producer may be cited and required to craft an odor-control plan.

»»Scrubber technology

Reducing odor emissions for many plants, including JBS, requires the technology of a scrubber. But air isn’t actually “scrubbed,” said Margaret McDonald, a spokeswoman for JBS. “Imagine a great big, steel cylinder,” McDonald said. Chemically treated water is pumped up to the top of that cylinder, where odorous air rising from the plant’s cookers is sprayed with the water. A chemical reaction oxidizes the air, which reduces the odor.

The chemical reaction is even more effective when there is a surface where it can take place, McDonald said. If you could slice the cylinder in half, she said, you would see a mesh-like shelf that reaches across the top, with a number of wiffle ball-like objects sitting on that, all to provide a place for odor to dissipate.

Despite what she smells, Quinonez said Greeley has been good to her. She didn’t have to look more than a few blocks from her home on the east side of the University of Northern Colorado when she decided she wanted to go back to school, and she said she’s comfortable raising her son here.

Even so, she said, she and her family plan to move farther west, where she can get a full night of sleep.

The smell of money

T

his is such an old street for Greeley,” said Becky Safarik, Greeley’s community development director, of odor talk in the city. “If people visited here 15 years ago and today, they wouldn’t even be able to suggest that it’s anything like it was before.”

The matter is so old, in fact, that cattle wandering though Nathan Meeker’s “utopian” colony brought about the first string of tension between Greeley’s urban and rural populations as far back as 1870, according to a report Safarik wrote in 1997. The “City of Saints,” as ranchers mockingly called Greeley, spent $20,000 to build a fence that would keep out the cattle.

But in 1995, the city established an odor ordinance — a violation is warranted if the city receives three calls about the same source within six hours, or if the ratio of odor particles to clean air reaches 7:1 — and eliminated feedlots within its borders, Safarik said.

The city also addressed other odors at the time, such as one at a truck wash in east Greeley and improvements to the wastewater treatment facility, which greatly improved the quality of life here, Safarik said.

Pam Bricker, president of Greeley’s Downtown Development Authority, said the smell is nothing like it used to be. But when residents do smell something, it’s important to keep in mind the phrase so famously coined by cattle-feeding operations such as the Monforts’, Bricker said.

It’s the “smell of money.”

“Once in a while, you have to put up with the odor,” Bricker said. “But what is that odor doing for us?”

Jay Ham, a professor with the Colorado State University Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, said one solution to both the manure and the meatpacking odors comes in technology that has already been invented.

“One of the most powerful things to learn more about is for people to selfreport when they’re experiencing a nuisance odor” with new smartphone technology, Ham said.

Residents could use an app to log where they are and the time of day that they smell an offensive odor, he said. In Greeley, they could identify whether they smell a feedlot or a packing plant.

With a presumably higher response rate than the traditional pencil and pad, Ham said, researchers could log the moments of highest response and condense the information to get a better idea of what exactly caused the spike in odor.

“So then, we could develop something like a meteorological warning” for the odor producers, Ham said. “We could use the same social media to say when the weather conditions are just right to carry odor.”

That way, odor producers could time their activities to avoid when residents will notice it most, he said.

“Producers like that idea because they don’t have to spend money on capital outlay,” Ham said. “They just have to change the timing.”

»»‘Right to Farm’ county There are essentially no odor regulations at the state and federal levels, save for swine operations, said Phil Brewer, an environmental specialist who handles odor complaints for Weld County’s Department of Public Health and Environment. That way, counties can mold policies specific to their needs.

Weld County in its code incorporates a “Right to Farm” statement, which notifies residents that the county supports the rural lifestyle — and its byproducts — as a critical part of agricultural and subsequent economic success.

“Persons moving into a rural area must recognize and accept there are drawbacks,” the statement reads.

“Agricultural users of the land should not be expected to change their longestablished agricultural practices to accommodate the intrusions of urban users into a rural area,” including odor production.

Beef: It’s what’s for dinner

G

Quality of life

E »»Solution in the smartphone

seal around the nostrils, and she said she envies Weld County for owning one.

With the Scentometer, Velasquez said, “You gotta stick that in your nose, get a good seal, and still look cool” — something much easier to do with the Nasal Ranger.

While she has practiced using the Scentometer, Velasquez said she has never gotten the 7:1 reading that merits a code violation.

“Your eyes would have to be watering,” Safarik said, to get a reading on the Scentometer, so violations are more likely to come in the form of complaints.

Regardless, Velasquez said she must investigate every odor complaint. She drives out to where the odor complaint was made and tries to triangulate the smell, looking to the wind to direct her to the source.

“At this point, I roll down my window and try to get a good whiff of what’s going on,” Velasquez said in a mock odor chase Monday.

Most of the time, she said the odor has already dissipated by the time she reaches the location of the call. Other times, the complaint comes regarding a feedlot, which she can only log.

Now that feedlots are outside of the city, Safarik said, they’re also outside of Greeley’s control. “But the wind doesn’t care,” she said.

Brewer said the cheese production soon to be in operation at Leprino Foods is presumably odorless. But the number of milking cows in Weld County, which will double with nearly 70,000 additional head, may cause more odor to occasionally waft into Greeley.

It’s hard to tell to what, if any, degree, that might be, Brewer said. But “a doubling of milking cow numbers will not result in a doubling of odor intensity or double the experience of odor for cities and towns.”

ric Berglund, the interim president and CEO of Upstate Colorado, said it’s been a long time since he heard that people don’t come to downtown Greeley because it smells.

“I don’t necessarily think odor is the challenge to getting people to come here,” he said.

Berglund said potential companies are more likely concerned with the labor force, the facility and the cost of doing business as they shop for a viable location.

Biggi said quality of life certainly influences potential residents as they shop for real estate, but how much they may weigh odor in the decision is impossible to quantify or track.

“I don’t really think it plays as significant of a role in residential location as does the school system,” Biggi said. Potential homeowners also look at the price of the home, its proximity to shopping and the quality of the health care system, he said.

But Taryn Drescher, a 25-year-old graduate student at UNC, said she dealt with the smell enough during her four years in Greeley as an undergraduate. Now, she commutes to school from Fort Collins.

“As soon as I could student teach, I was out of here,” Drescher said. Even in Fort Collins, she said she sometimes gets a whiff of a smell she grew familiar with in Greeley. “Everyone takes a dig at it,” she said. “They say, ‘We don’t live there, keep your smell to yourself.’ ” Mac Sunn, a host at the Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant downtown, said he’s never had a customer complain about the odor or refuse to sit on the patio because of it.

“A lot of people have learned to put up with it,” said Sunn, 20. “It doesn’t help the image, though.”

‘Telling the true story’

C

hris Bierdeman, UNC’s new student events coordinator, said a huge part of the student body comes from the Denver area, where there is a prevailing stigma that Greeley is a “stinky cow town where there’s really nothing to do.”

“We get the brunt of every stink in Colorado,” said Bierdeman, who works with prospective students visiting the campus. Student ambassadors usually explain to visitors that the smell isn’t a continual thing, and it’s certainly no reason to choose to not to go to school here, Bierdeman said. “Our job is to show that Greeley has a lot more to offer than what their perception is.”

Five years ago, hundreds of residents in Greeley, Colorado Springs and Denver participated in a survey by North Star, a community marketing company, which led to Greeley’s slogan, “Great. From the Ground Up.” The top three terms that came to mind when participants thought of Greeley were UNC, agriculture and smell, said Sarah MacQuiddy, president of Greeley’s Chamber of Commerce.

In that same survey, 29 percent said their perception of the city changed once they visited the community — and in a positive way, most participants said.

“That is huge,” MacQuiddy said. “I think once you’re here, I don’t think you notice” the odor anymore.

The key to shedding Greeley’s odorous stigma is marketing, MacQuiddy said. The city’s image should be an extension of its slogan, a celebration of “that Western flair. You can be equally comfortable here in a cowboy hat or a business suit,” MacQuiddy said.

When Bricker saw the “South Park” episode that takes a subtle dig at Greeley’s image as a cow town — the “exact opposite of Hawaii” — she said she laughed along with the rest of the show’s audience.

“I think we take ourselves way too seriously,” she said. “If odor is an issue, we’ve gotta turn it around and make it a positive.”

Embracing Greeley’s heritage, Bricker said, is the thing “we haven’t done a good job of.”

JOSHUA POLSON/jpolson@greeleytribune.com

Cows eat at an AJR Farms feedlot located off of Weld County Road 47½ about three miles west of Kersey.

Greeley Mayor Tom Norton said it’s only fitting for the city to capitalize on its agricultural roots. When people focus on what the odor was like a decade ago, Norton said, “I think they’re missing the boat.”

Comments from Broncos players and sports writers during that time — the team trained at UNC for 21 summers until 2003 — didn’t help.

Former quarterback John Elway and other Broncos players made wisecracks about Greeley’s smell every year they trained here. And earlier this year, former running back Terrell Davis slammed Greeley’s smell when he came up to the grand opening of the King Soopers Marketplace on 71st Avenue.

“Every year, it was made a bigger deal than it was” by the press, said Jim Saccomano, media relations director for the Broncos until 2009. “People tell you it’s a big deal, but don’t swallow their baloney. … There’s not a blizzard every day in Buffalo, there’s not a tornado every second in Miami, and there’s not overwhelming odor where you are, either.”

As the county seat, Greeley brought derisive odor comments even before the Broncos came to town, City Manager Roy Otto said.

From there, the media took hold of the odor issue and hasn’t let go, he said.

“You get concerned articles that perpetuate the glass-half-empty attitude,” Otto said. “No community prospers on that type of stuff.”

Berglund said Greeley doesn’t tout the good things going on in the city often enough.

“I think because of our agricultural roots, we’re very humble,” Berglund said, so Greeley hasn’t yet grown accustomed to the idea of selling itself.

But, with Greeley’s basic wealth coming from the ground up, Norton said, “I think it’s a priority to market it as ‘telling the true story.’ ” North Star will report back to the city council next month with results from a second survey it’s conducting on community perceptions, MacQuiddy said, which will drive decisions on how to market the city and improve its image.

Dick Monfort, whose family’s confined feedlot legacy essentially determined Greeley’s future in agriculture, said he’s unsure of whether incorporating agricultural odor would sell as part of the city’s image.

“I do think the smell of manure or farming is a better smell than that of pollution,” Monfort said. “It could be connotative of fresh, organic and natural.”

Even as the coming of Leprino Foods is expected to enhance the ag industry and revive the state’s dairy sector, Greeley’s economy continues to diversify. North Colorado Medical Center is the second-largest employer in Weld County, and oil and gas companies such as Noble Energy and Anadarko are settling in for a long roost near the prolific Niobrara shale.

“Job creation is a positive message,” said Biggi with the city of Greeley. “Employment opportunities are considered to have healthy economies, healthy communities. … And Greeley is definitely leading the state in that area in regard to job creation and increasing wages.”

That, in itself, could help Greeley shed its image as a stinky town. “It’s easier for folks to talk positively, and that investment goes right back into the community,” Biggi said.

MacQuiddy said agrotourism may also play an increasing role in bolstering Greeley’s pride while bringing more visitors to the area.

“Once people get to see the hands-on, organic process, it really does mitigate” the odor stigma, she said.

Being good neighbors

I

n the livestock industry, Weld County’s vast open space grows more important with each new resident.

“I think that everyone in animal agriculture

Joe Collins checks the Scentometer Thursday morning off of North 6th Avenue in Greeley. The Scentometer is used to triangulate smells.

recognizes location has a greater and greater and greater value each day,” said Steve Gabel, owner of Magnum Feedyard LLC near Fort Morgan.

“Even though I have to drive to a remote location to conduct business, because of my location I might be more insulated from those complaints” of odor and other nuisances, he said.

Greeley’s growing urban population has put more pressure on the livestock community to mitigate dust production, which also cuts down on odor emissions, Gabel said, because producers manage their livestock more efficiently.

But the effort to be good neighbors by mitigating odor has also evolved into a conscious one over the years, said Bill Hammerich, CEO of the Colorado Livestock Association.

“You can go back a few years and see the mentality that ‘I was here first, so you live with it,’ ” Hammerich said of the attitude many farmers and ranchers harbored since they settled here. “And I really believe that over time, there has been a shift in the mindset, more to, ‘OK, we’re both here now, so let’s figure out a way we can coexist.’ ” Livestock operations have made several steps toward odor reduction, whether it’s an increase in the scraping of pens, stockpiling manure or even not spreading manure on holidays, Hammerich said.

The Livestock Association, based in Greeley, recently donated $25,000 to initiate a project by researchers at Colorado State University and other institutions. The result was an online tool to help livestock producers better manage their air emissions.

“I think the initial focus is more about dust and other constituents, such as hydrogen sulfide or ammonia,” Hammerich said. “But if we control those, the secondary benefit is odor mitigation.”

The project, called The National Air Quality Site Assessment Tool, asks producers to answer a variety of questions about how they manage, clean and feed their livestock operations, said Shawn Archibeque, an assistant professor at CSU’s Department of Animal Sciences who led the project. Then, it pinpoints

»»Overcoming the ‘Tacoma aroma’ Greeley isn’t alone in its battle against odor stigma.

The city of Tacoma, Wash., was dubbed long ago with the inglorious tag “Tacoma aroma” because of the sulfur-like smell that came from its pulp and paper mill.

But several decades ago, the mill adopted new technology that greatly reduced its odor emissions, said Rob McNair-Huff, the city’s community relations manager. “Over time, it’s something the city has grown out of,” McNair-Huff said of the city’s image as a smelly place. “Unfortunately, people still do use that term. It just rolls right off the tongue.”

Similar to the situation in Greeley, where much derisive talk comes from the Denver area, McNairHuff said he mostly hears residents from Seattle and surrounding areas who mention the old phrase.

Tacoma, too, sits on a major highway going north to south, so drivers’ only experience of the place used to be what they smelled on their commute, he said.

Since then, Tacoma has established itself as an independent, artsy town, mostly through encouraging

an arts movement, especially in the glass medium.

But with a major West Coast port and the paper mill as one of the city’s largest employers, McNair-Huff said the city has still hung onto part of its image as a gritty, blue-collar city with affordable living.

“It’s not exactly how we promote Tacoma to the world,” McNair-Huff said. There are many different views of Tacoma, he said, and the city recognizes it must appeal to different audiences.

He said image is a difficult thing to change.

“It can be done through marketing, but it’s very costly,” McNair-Huff said. The process of shedding the Tacoma aroma stigma was organic — it was technology, growth and artistic movements that drew concentration away from one component of the city and refocused the lens to a larger picture, he said.

Even so, McNair-Huff said he still hears the phrase every once in a while, on social media networks, mostly.

“It’s a long-standing, historical thing,” he said.

which practices produce the most harmful gases and offers solutions to control it.

“The problem with air emissions is a lot of them are counterproductive,” Archibeque said. “If you try to reduce one, you might increase another type.”

For example, keeping the feedlot pen surface as dry as possible greatly reduces the intensity of odor, he said. But that, in turn, will increase dust — one of many challenges ranchers and farmers face as they decide what trade-offs they can afford.

A great deal of odor research has also gone to locational factors, said Jay Ham, a professor with the CSU Department of Soil and Crop Sciences. Today, technology that identifies meteorological tendencies, such as wind direction, could essentially stop additional odor before it ever became a problem, he said.

But producers must ask for help, which they sometimes overlook as they set up shop.

As the urban population in Weld County

grows, Gabel said the livestock industry has had to weigh its options more carefully.

“Those people in the business today who have been able to weather the storm recognize that they have to incorporate those kinds of technologies if rural and urban communities are going to get along and move forward,” Gabel said.

He said he also noticed that more people have come to Greeley from outside of Weld County, rather than migrating within it.

“They don’t understand the significance and importance of agriculture to the county,” he said. “Those of us in the industry think it’s a natural, normal and healthy smell. But someone from Santa Barbara, Calif., might have a different opinion.”

Distinguishing the ‘odor soup’

W

hen scientists studied the cause of odor in manure, Ham said they identified 60 compounds detect-

able by human noses, 20 of which are considered unpleasant or a “nuisance odor.”

Those are the odors that Greeley residents will most likely call in to the city’s odor hotline, said Lisa Velasquez, a code enforcement inspector for the city.

Velasquez and Joe Collins are the only two city employees with “certified noses” — they must go to the Colorado Department of Health and Environment’s odor school and pass a number of tests, including one that requires them to smell 100 different vials of odor to confirm their sense of smell is in the middle of the bell curve.

While feedlots are not allowed within city limits, they are in communities that border Greeley on nearly every side, said Phil Brewer, an environmental specialist who handles odor complaints for Weld County’s Department of Public Health and Environment.

The south edge of Greeley has a particularly strong potential for odor, Brewer said, because of the Five Rivers feedlot south of Gilcrest, a Miller feedlot southwest of LaSalle and a dairy southwest of Greeley.

Drivers headed north on U.S. 85 tend to notice those feedlots before they even reach city limits, although the smell is unjustly associated with Greeley.

When the wind blows from almost any direction, it may pick up odor from a feedlot and drag it into Greeley, which sits in a topographical “bowl” that traps air because of its low elevation, Brewer said.

Ham with CSU said air inversions early in the morning, late in the evening or in the middle of the night also trap odorous gases near the ground in the heating and cooling process that comes with the rising and setting of the sun, so odor will likely be the most intense at those times.

That coincides with the majority of nuisance calls received by the city when it first established the odor hotline, Safarik said, usually between 6-8 a.m. and 4-8 p.m.

The first nine months after the city created the odor hotline, more than 600 complaints rolled in. That number continues to fall, said Karen Scopel, Greeley’s natural resources planner. Last year, code enforcement officials were called out to track down odor in fewer than 20 instances.

While feedlots and the meatpacking plant account for most odor complaints, Scopel said the city also receives complaints about other sources, such as the onion farm, fastfood restaurants, burning wood and cleaning operations.

“Sometimes, we have what we call our odor soup,” Scopel said. It’s the job of the code enforcement officer to determine the source of the odor and test it for a violation with a device called the Scentometer.

Velasquez drove up a small hill in northeast Greeley, where the city’s communication towers and water tower were clearly visible.

The Rocky Mountains loomed to the west, and the hill on the east side peaked just high enough to see a blanket of treetops over the city. It demonstrates perfectly Greeley’s ideal terrain for containing air in a concave trap.

“This is my place. It helps me regroup,” Velasquez said, because it gives her a sense of how and why odorous air tends to settle back on the city. “You can just see it.”

Velasquez said she often goes to that place to test the Scentometer, which measures the ratio of odorous air to clean air particles. She puts two long, glass tubes up to each of her nostrils and sniffs the air in a filtered box, diluting the odorous air with clean air until she no longer smells anything.

There is a second device, called the Nasal Ranger, that is more precise, Velasquez said.

It has electronic readings and a more solid

reeley’s background in agriculture merits pride, Greeley City Councilman Robb Casseday said.

“We feed a large part of the world,” he said.

“But the packing plant odor is a putrid odor.

It’s not the smell of the farm,” and shouldn’t necessarily be included in the city’s marketing efforts, he said.

Casseday was an environmental manager for ConAgra Foods, which managed the packing plant 10 years ago.

The distinct smell from the northern plant comes from steam emitted during rendering periods, said JBS spokeswoman Margaret McDonald.

Rendering is the process of grinding and cooking an animal’s “leftovers” — scraps, bones and unused organs — to ultimately use in products such as candles, Dove soap, biodiesel, pet feed and even Crayola crayons, McDonald said.

“We render about 8 or 9 million pounds of material per week,” McDonald said. “If all of that went to the landfill, it would be 6.3 million cubic feet” in one year. No material — not even the gall stones or bile found in cattle — is wasted, she said. In that way, the company’s practices are extremely sustainable.

The plant also installed a new scrubber just two weeks ago, McDonald said. Scrubber technology oxidizes the steam through a chemical process that washes out the odor.

At the plant’s high production levels, Casseday said it’s financially impossible to entirely rid the steam of odor, though close monitoring should prevent a strong outburst.

In a corporate climate, he said the unfortunate mentality is often to push regulation compliance to drive up profit.

At ConAgra, Casseday said, “I was expected to push that limit to a level that I was not always comfortable with.”

But Casseday said he’s encouraged by the recent dialogue between JBS and the city, which proves the company is willing to work with the community and that the city is serious about keeping the odor under control.

The plant’s new scrubber is the most expensive of its kind, McDonald said. It costs about $2,000 more per week to run, or three times as much as the old system. It’s also a redundant system, meaning a second scrubber sits next to the first one in case it malfunctions.

“Right now, we’re really optimistic that this is going to be a huge improvement,” McDonald said.

JBS has also taken to notifying the city if it does experience a mechanical glitch, and it exports the rendering process during events that draw large crowds to Greeley, such as the Stampede or the Big Sky Conference basketball tournament, she said.

The company also installed new alarms and procedures this spring to prevent burning temperatures during the rendering process, which can’t be eliminated with a scrubber, McDonald said, and JBS meets twice a year with city officials and works to meet a voluntary compliance plan.

If you don’t like it, move

M

ayor Norton said odor in Greeley is simply no longer an issue.

“We have to be vigilant,” he said, in keeping a close and working relationship with JBS, but he said he’s satisfied with how manageable that relationship has been so far.

“We’ve got to understand that they have to make a profit, or they wouldn’t be here,” Norton said.

The city must also consider the degree to which it’s the government’s responsibility to control odor, he said, and what residents are willing to pay to control it.

“I’d just as soon have a nicer house and decide to put up with the occasional whiff,” Bricker said of Greeley’s affordable cost of living. “I’m not frustrated by people who don’t live here and knock it, but by those who live here. If you don’t like it, move somewhere else.”

While Drescher from UNC said she doesn’t like the smell, she said she understands it.

“For a lot of people who live here, it’s their livelihood,” Drescher said. “I think it comes with the territory.”

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UNC women's basketball team feels the frustration when it loses to Montana State, 52-51, B1

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SUNDAY Serving Greeley and Weld County greeleytribune.com

JAN. 22, 2012

GREELEY, COLORADO $1.50 VOL. 141 NO. 71

THE ROAD AHEAD, PART 10 | A TRIBUNE SPECIAL PROJECT

THE WAR FOR YOU WILLING CANVAS

Northern Colorado’s major health care players are engaged in a land-and-air battle, creating opportunities — and perils — for patients.

D1: Tribune photographer intern Raymond Kessler share's one man's imagination with a tattoo gun.

PINEWOOD

DERBY

A2: Cub scouts from Pack 4 race their handmade cars down the track at Weld County Garage's showroom floor.

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com

MED EVAC AIR AMBULANCE service pilot Joe Sherman prepares for a flight while on top of the helipad at North Colorado

WHAT'S

Medical Center in Greeley last week. NCMC and Poudre Valley Health in Fort Collins continue to compete against each other for market share in northern Colorado.

COMING Monday: A University eighth-grader who has battled a rare, lifethreatening disease all his life continues to amaze those who know him.

THERE ARE

32

JOB ADS IN TODAY'S CLASSIFIEDS SECTION.

« INSIDE C1-C4: E1-E10: E8: D1-D8: A2: D4: A7: A6: B1-B8: E7:

Business Classifieds Games Life Lottery Movie listings Obituaries Opinion Sports TV grid

42 pages, 5 sections

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WEATHER

TODAY , turning sunny

42 Low 18

HER, XX

Cooler, turning mostly sunny High 42 Low 18

B8: Weather

BY NATE A. MILLER

NMILLER@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

A

t first, the high-pitched whine of the engines was barely audible over the noise of cars on the street four stories below the rock-covered roof of the west wing of North Colorado Medical Center.

As the rotors began to turn — slowly at first — the acrid smell of engine exhaust overwhelmed the crisp winter air. The engines roared. The red, white and blue helicopter lifted gracefully into the air, turning into the sun and heading west to Aims Community College for a public relations event.

The Med Evac air ambulance operations, which began 30 years ago as Greeley AirLife, represent an important nexus of the past, present and future for Greeley’s hospital.

The helicopter — which makes about 850 flights a year, often to help those in need after TRANSFER CENTER MANAGER LEITON POWELL discusses the coverage range of the Med Evac air ambulance while at North Colorado Medical Center. emergencies such as car crashes — played a key role in helping NCMC expand its reach, bringing in patients from as far away as Wyotion is good for patients, pushing both systems to » About the series ming and Nebraska. This March, for the first time, the deliver the best care possible. helicopter will face competition. Fort Collins-based For patients, however, the health care arms race — This is the 10th installment in The Poudre Valley Health System will launch its own air on land and in the air — helps foster rising costs and Road Ahead, a series of stories that ambulance service based at Medical Center of the creates a dizzying array of sometimes baffling options explores Rockies in Loveland. when it comes to their health care. the power The helicopter service confrontation opens a new For the hospital systems, the competition carries of plans front in the decade-long duel between the two domiwith it a potentially life-and-death danger of failure. to shape nant health systems in the region, PVHS and Phoenix- The smaller PVHS must grow or risk becoming a Greeley. based Banner Health, which operates NCMC and diminished local rather than regional player. The risk To see previous stories in the owns McKee Medical Center in Loveland. for NCMC is that it could be left a withered shell of series — covering Greeley’s past, The two health care systems are eager to maintain a itself, serving primarily those patients on Medicaid, immigration, the Stampede, U.S. healthy mix of poor and affluent patients, particularly Medicare or other low-cost payment methods.

85, recreation, water, education, agthose in west Greeley and Windsor where people are riculture and “the smell of money” more likely to have insurance plans that pay for expen— go to www.greeleytribune.com/ CONTINUED sive procedures and treatments. roadahead.

A4: Road Ahead Officials from both groups contend that competi-

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The Road Ahead

Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012

»»The road to today » 1902: First county hospital built at Island Grove Park. » 1906: Work begins at hospital on the corner of 16th Street and 11th Avenue, which is known as the “pay branch.”

Island Grove facility accepts indigent and long-term-care patients. » 1925: Larimer County Hospital built on outskirts of Fort Collins at cost of $181,001.14. » 1952: New $3.2 million Weld County Public Hospital built at 16th Street and 17th Avenue. Expansions follow in 1957, 1975, 1978 and 1980. » 1962: New Poudre Valley Hospital District uses funds from a property tax mill levy to purchase hospital and the surrounding land. » 1982: Hospital at 16th Street and 17th Avenue becomes North Colorado Medical Center. » 1982: NCMC begins offering AirLife helicopter services. » 1983: NCMC drops taxpayer funding and control of hospital moves from Board of Weld County Commissioners to NCMC Inc., a not-for-profit corporation. » 1994: Poudre Valley Hospital District completes major reorganization. Hospital turned over to new board, which creates a not-for-profit company, Poudre Valley Health Care Inc., which does business as Poudre Valley Health System. PVHS signs a 50-year lease with the hospital. » 1995: NCMC leased to Fargo, N.D.based Lutheran Health Systems. » 1999: Lutheran merges with Samaritan Health Services of Phoenix to form Banner Health. » May 2001: NCMC Inc. board rejects proposed partnership with PVHS to build proposed hospital near Interstate 25. » November 2002: After yearlong talks between PVHS and NCMC break down, PVHS enters talks with Scottsbluff, Neb.-based Regional West Medical Center to build I-25 hospital. » December 2002: PVHS CEO Rulon Stacey announces plans to build hospital in Loveland at I-25 and U.S. 34. » February 2003: PVHS sends out survey to Greeley, Windsor, Loveland and Fort Collins residents seeking thoughts about location and ownership of new hospital. » June 2003: NCMC’s Summit View Medical Commons, 2001 70th Ave., opens. » November 2005: NCMC’s Second Century Project opens. The $98 million renovation project includes new heart center, ultramodern operating rooms and an expansion of Monfort Family Birth Center, to include newborn intensive-care units and labor-delivery suites. » Feb. 14, 2007: Medical Center of the Rockies opens in Loveland. » Dec. 19, 2007: Greeley Medical Clinic drops plans to open a second office in west Greeley and announces plans to anchor a medical office building at Medical Center of the Rockies. » May 19, 2008: PVHS and Greeley Medical Clinic announce plans to provide health care services at Milliken Family Clinic. » June 11, 2008: PVHS announces plans to open a medical wellness and fitness center in Windsor’s Water Valley. » July 24, 2008: NCMC cancels plans to build a North Colorado Medical Center satellite campus in Frederick, months after having announced the plans. » Jan. 22, 2009: NCMC buys Westlake Family Clinic, 5623 19th St. » April 12, 2010: Greeley Medical Clinic signs letter of intent to align with PVHS. » July 8, 2010: Greeley Medical Clinic formally joins PVHS. » July 12, 2010: Banner Health takes over operation of an urgent-care facility in west Greeley that had been run

by Greeley Medical Clinic after NCMC Inc. declined to renew Greeley Medical Clinic’s lease. The facility at 2001 70th Ave., which had been called Urgent Care West, is renamed Summit View Urgent Care. » Aug. 17, 2010: Longmont United Hospital and PVHS announce they will work together to build a medical campus in Frederick at the junction of I-25 and Colo. 52. » Dec. 1, 2010: The Poudre Valley Medical Fitness Center in Windsor’s Water Valley opens. » April 8, 2011: Construction begins on the Greeley Infusion Center, 1675 18th Ave. PVHS will run the center. » April 22, 2011: PVHS and Banner announce they will share patient data through a Health Information Exchange, a secure network that links physicians and other medical care providers across the state. » July 15, 2011: NCMC Inc. board chairman Al Dominguez accuses PVHS of acquiring land in west Greeley to build an “unnecessary hospital.” PVHS spokesman Kevin Darst denies PVHS plans to build a hospital but acknowledges the land purchase. » Sept. 2, 2011: NCMC officials announce plans to close NCMC’s Transitional Care Unit and the Center for Acute In-Patient Rehabilitation because of fewer patients and anticipated reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payments. » Dec. 2, 2011: PVHS announces plans to build and open an emergency department and same-day surgery center in North Gate Village on the southeast corner of 71st Avenue and 10th Street in west Greeley. » Dec. 14, 2011: Banner and Kaiser Permanente, the state’s largest nonprofit health insurer, announce an exclusive agreement that will bring the health insurer into northern Colorado for the first time and provide a stable flow of patients for Banner’s facilities.

Source: North Colorado Medical Center website, Poudre Valley Health System website, Tribune archives

« The Tribune

« A5

Banner, PVHS each point the finger at the other « Road Ahead From A1

cians,” he said. “What I was changing was the management structure.”

Of course, each side blames the other for perpetuating the arms race of technology and infrastructure. For example, Stacey points to a piece of cancer-fighting technology that debuted in Fort Collins and eight months later came to Loveland.

“It’s not in our nature to add things just to add things,” Stacey said.

Sutton counters that patients in each community should have access to the best technology. The plans for the new air ambulance service, he said, represent true duplication of services that raise costs.

‘Mirror images’ No one factor explains how North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley and Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins — which share origins as public hospitals at the center of their respective communities — became bulwarks of growing hospital systems in a region wide conflict.

Jon Sewell came to NCMC in 1999 and left Greeley in 2005 after a turbulent stint as CEO that saw the origins of the competition.

“When I left, NCMC and Poudre Valley Hospital were essentially mirror images of each other,” he said. “They had about the same number of admits, heart surgeries, cardiovascular procedures, emergency room births, and the cost structure was nearly identical. They were two of the lowest-cost institutions in the state. They were both very well run.”

Poudre Valley Hospital relied principally on the larger population of Fort Collins to fill its beds and meet its financial obligations, while NCMC reached beyond the smaller and less affluent population of Greeley to find patients.

“Through its air ambulance system and historical outreach efforts, Greeley used to pull a lot more patients in from the eastern part of the state and Nebraska and Kansas and Wyoming,” Sewell said.

There is no consensus about why PVHS moved southeast from its comfortable Fort Collins home and into territory that had traditionally been NCMC’s purview. Some connected with NCMC, like current CEO Rick Sutton, see it as nothing short of a calculated move to drive Banner Health out of Weld County. Others see the relationship between the two systems in less confrontational terms. Both systems, they contend, have simply responded to the needs of their patients.

“I think folks really try and paint a much grander or larger picture of a battle between two entities. While obviously the markets historically have been single-hospital markets, both in Greeley and Fort Collins, the market changed.

It’s not necessarily because of Banner or because of PVHS, I think it’s because of the way in which the world has turned,” said Poudre Valley Health System board chairman Chris Osborn. “We’re just very fortunate to have great players.”

Even to Sewell, who saw it develop firsthand, the origins of the conflict aren’t entirely clear. Certainly, he said, the competition heated up in the mid2000s when PVHS built and opened Medical Center of the Rockies as part of the Centerra development in Loveland, located between Banner’s McKee Medical Center and NCMC, but that may not have been the beginning. It may have started with PVHS CEO Rulon Stacey, who came to the system in 1996 with what Sewell called an aggressive vision.

Or it may have begun in Windsor.

“I think it started when we announced plans to build a clinic in Windsor,” Sewell said. “I think that may have been viewed, initially, by Rulon as a shot across the bow because he immediately began planning to build something across the street.”

For his part, Stacey said he has no grandiose expansionary vision. He said members of the board of NCMC Inc. — the organization that owns the Greeley hospital — first approached the PVHS board around the turn of the century.

They wanted to talk about working together to build a hospital at the intersection of Interstate 25 and U.S. 34. The negotiations turned political, and then personal, before collapsing, he said.

“At the time we were having those conversations, there was discussion that if we did something as a collective and Rulon Stacey was a part of that, it would appear as though somehow Poudre Valley Health System was taking over, and we were trying to drive the process. That certainly wasn’t our intent,” Stacey said.

Still, with Poudre Valley Hospital nearly full, the system needed another hospital to meet growing demand in the region, Stacey said. Ultimately, PVHS built Medical Center of the Rockies in collaboration with Regional West Medical Center in Scottsbluff, Neb. Stacey said the partnership has worked as MCR beat expectations and became profitable in its first year and is widely recognized for its clinical excellence.

Though not everyone involved agrees that the two hospital systems are vying for market dominance, since the opening of MCR in 2007, PVHS has steadily expanded its reach into Weld. In 2008, it opened a wellness and fitness center in Windsor. Two years later, it joined forces with one of the oldest and largest physician groups in Weld, Greeley Medical Clinic. Last year, it announced plans to build an emergency department and surgery center in west Greeley as part of the Greeley Medical Clinic operation.

The moves left Banner and NCMC largely on the defensive, at least in the early years.

“We never envisioned, or never developed, strategies — and to my understanding Loveland didn’t either — that were designed to go up into the Fort Collins market and try and pull patients out of there,” Sewell said. “Most of our concern in Weld was just how to deal with the indigent care population.

That was a distraction for us.”

‘That’s a very fragile system’

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com

The Northern Colorado Med Evac helicopter takes off from on top of North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley last week. The Med Evac helicopter makes about 850 flights per year.

JOSHUA POLSON/jpolson@greeleytribune.com

Windsor couple Shane and Jamie Hyndman sit with their newborn, Blake, in the Women’s Postpartum Recovery Unit on Thursday afternoon at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins. Poudre Valley Hospital offers private recovery rooms in addition to its state-of-the-art birthing center.

‘It sounds complicated’ Before last year, Pat Graham never had to consider where she would turn for health care.

“This is the first time I’ve been sort of forced to think about what else are we going to do here,” the 68-year-old Greeley resident said. “Before, I’ve just really considered the hospital. It’s centrally located. It has so many other good aspects to it to brag about.”

Graham, who has already had one joint replacement surgery at NCMC, said she will soon have to have another one. While she will have it at NCMC because she likes her doctor, she won’t be able to use the hospital’s Transitional Care Unit to help her rehabilitate.

NCMC closed the unit, along with the Center for Acute In-patient Rehabilitation, in September, citing fewer patients and anticipated reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Without the intensive therapy and round-the-clock medical supervision offered at the Transitional Care Unit, Graham isn’t sure what she’ll do when she has her next joint replacement. She could sign on for a stay in a nursing home, which she doesn’t want to do. Or she could take a trip in an ambulance to a Loveland rehabilitation center — she doesn’t remember the name of the place, but she doesn’t think it’s affiliated with Banner.

“That sounds like a long ride, and it sounds complicated,” she said.

Masoud Shirazi is a principal of Greeley-based Shirazi Benefits, 1770 25th Ave. Suite 302, which specializes in selling group employee benefits, with most of its clients in Colorado. He said confusion among patients is an unfortunate sign of the times in northern Colorado, along with increased costs.

“I think competition, as long as it is clean and beneficial to the public, it’s good,” he said. “All of us, we compete every day, no matter what business we are in. At the same time, when it gets to health care, sometimes, maybe, we are overlapping, especially in this small area.”

The complexities of competition among hospital systems are neither new nor unique to northern Colorado.

Alwyn Cassil is the director of public affairs for the Washington-based Center for Studying Health System Change. The organization has studied 12 markets across the country, such as Phoenix, since the 1990s.

When the center first began studying the markets, hospitals competed to be included in managed care networks.

Managed care marked an early effort in

the health care industry to reduce costs by focusing on efficiency within tightly controlled networks. Hospitals competed for patients on a wholesale basis, working to convince managed care networks that they could keep costs low, she said.

As patients tired of the restrictions associated with HMOs, the dynamics of hospital competition changed rapidly. Hospitals began to adopt a retail strategy, using amenities and technology to compete for patients — and their doctors — directly.

“There’s an old saying: Hospitals don’t admit patients, physicians do,” she said. “Winning the hearts and minds of physicians is very important to hospitals and their ability to keep their beds full.”

In addition to acquiring physicians, the past decade also saw a tremendous boom around the country in hospital construction.

“There are concerns that if a community overbuilds that it will lead to supplyinduced demand,” she said. “Ultimately somebody has to pay for all that stuff that gets built or gets bought or gets used.”

Cassil said not all the spending is bad. Longevity and quality of life have improved dramatically.

“Some of that spending buys us things that we want, but I think that there is little dispute that some of that spending is unnecessary and doesn’t get us anything,” she said. “The problem is teasing out which is what.”

In northern Colorado, Shirazi said the competition between the two systems has given the region excess capacity and duplication of services. As an example, several years ago, NCMC installed one of the region’s first MRIs. “That MRI was supposed to be basically to take care of all the patients in Fort Collins, Cheyenne, Wyo., and eastern Colorado,” he said. “As they started putting their MRI here, pretty soon Fort Collins got their own MRI, McKee got their own MRI, Cheyenne got their own MRI. You figure right now, in Greeley, Colo., we have about five different MRIs. Do we need that many MRIs?”

‘The era of innovation’ Both hospital systems, and health care providers across the country, face significant change in the future, driven largely by federal health care reform and the demand from insurance companies that providers work to reduce the cost of care. In the 1990s, managed care sought to reduce costs by restricting care, which raised concerns among patients that they wouldn’t get the care they needed.

“We are probably on the cusp of moving back toward some middle ground where there is serious discussion going on about how can we change how we pay for care to get more of the results that we want? Which is people getting the right care in the right place at the right time,” said Cassil of the Center for Studying Health System Change.

Officials from PVHS and Banner generally agree that both systems in northern Colorado offer high-quality care. They also agree that the changes in health care will require greater efficiency and coordination, but they disagree about the ramifications of those changes.

Dr. John Hensing, Banner’s chief medical officer in Phoenix, said Banner has looked to increased use of technology, standardized practices and better leadership to improve patient care while reducing waste and duplication. He said Banner’s exclusive agreement with Kaiser Permanente — a health insurer with a national reputation for controlling costs — offers a vivid example of the future of health care.

“The use of technology, the sharing of information, the coordination of the delivery network, all under the Kaiser product, that’s exactly what we’re trying to create,” he said. “That is where we think we can result in appropriate cost savings for the purchasers of health care.

As far as what the patients should see, what you should see as a patient, you should still have access to the physician of your choice and be able to access health services from North Colorado Medical Center, right there in the community.”

Banner CEO Peter Fine said the agreement with Kaiser represents an important step in the competition with PVHS. The agreement will bring Fort Collins patients into the Banner hospitals in northern Colorado in a cost-competitive way.

While Fine wouldn’t discuss Banner’s plans to confront PVHS in a detailed way, he said in the cost-conscious health care future, more construction doesn’t necessarily make sense. He pointed to PVHS as an example.

“Everybody has to think appropriately about how they invest their capital, and to do it foolishly in a duplicative way, sometimes, is not the right thing,” he said. “Even today I would say the capital expenditures that they have made don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to me from a community perspective. All it’s done is increase the cost of health care in that marketplace.”

Sutton, at NCMC, agreed. He said the key to success lies in working closely with physicians to create an efficient, effective continuum of care that reduces waste, such as unnecessary tests, and mistakes, like when a patient returns to the hospital within 30 days of being released. In and near Colorado, that will unfold in a banana-shaped piece of land stretching from Loveland to Greeley, Brush and Sterling and Nebraska, the traditional market in the state for Banner, he said.

Regardless of how the federal health care reform mandate works its way through the courts, some changes are a virtual certainty, Sutton said.

“We know that we’ll be caring for more people, and we’ll probably be getting less dollars,” he said. “We do know that we’re going to have to figure out a way to do things differently. In Banner, we call it the era of innovation.”

Stacey, too, said the evolving health care realities will require greater efficiency, something he said PVHS is wellpositioned to deliver. He said efficiency and scale have driven a number of PVHS decisions, such as the alignment with Greeley Medical Clinic. In the future, he said, as fewer patients receive costly care in hospitals, the hospital systems will have to cast their nets wider for more patients.

“Health care reform is driving organizations to broaden the scope of service they provide,” he said. “We believe to be successful in the future an organization is going to have to cover a larger geographic base.”

Some of that growth requires bricks and mortar, he said. The recently announced west Greeley emergency department comes as a result of PVHS’ affiliation with Greeley Medical Clinic.

Doctors there said the community had an unmet need.

“That is an organization, as I’ve come to know them, that is driven by the care that they provide to their patients,” Stacey said of Greeley Medical Clinic. He also pointed out that with the affiliation PVHS is committed to serving all of Weld, as the largest local provider of care.

In addition to its moves in Weld, PVHS has aligned itself with University of Colorado Hospital in Denver, and that pair plans to run Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, creating a large network along Interstate 25.

“I think that scale, going forward, matters,” PVHS board chairman Osborn said. “There’s no question that the current policy of health care reform dictates that.”

‘Anybody can request a helicopter’ Inside North Colorado Medical Center, in a narrow room illuminated largely by the glow of computer monitors, NCMC’s Med Evac helicopter is tracked on a wall monitor. The map, in the blue, green and beige hues familiar to anyone who regularly finds directions on the Internet, shows all of northern Colorado, parts of Wyoming and Nebraska.

“It’s a Google Map, so I can zoom in or out as far as I need to,” said Leiton Powell, the supervisor of NCMC’s transfer center, which monitors the helicopter and admits patients.

Powell uses the map, a radio and a satellite phone when the chopper is too far away to communicate on the UHF frequency to coordinate its activities with other air ambulances in the area. He works with helicopters in Denver, Wyoming and NCMC’s other chopper in Erie to provide emergency response anywhere the Med Evac and its crew of a three — a pilot, paramedic and flight nurse — are needed.

“Anybody can request a helicopter,” Powell said. “That’s been the policy of North Colorado Med Evac for many, many years.”

This March, the helicopter will have company. PVHS will launch its own air ambulance service in a move CEO Stacey admitted duplicates NCMC’s. But, he said, quality comes first.

“For 15 years we had thought about starting a helicopter service, but we thought that to do so would be duplicative,” he said. “The clinical program of the helicopter service was so outstanding that it just didn’t make sense to do that.

When North Colorado Medical Center, for reasons only they could answer, elected to fire all of their emergency physicians, we became more interested in continuing that level of care.”

That reasoning drew a wry smile from NCMC CEO Sutton when he heard about it.

“That had nothing to do with the helicopter,” he said. “Nice try on his part.”

Sutton said the helicopter operates through a contract with Dallas-based Med-Trans, which takes patients to whichever hospital they request. He said half the emergency department physicians, which operated on a contract basis with NCMC, stayed at the hospital when the emergency department was reorganized and a contract was signed with a new group.

“Clinically, we had some great physi-

Neither Banner nor NCMC Inc. officials like to talk openly about it, but as the competition evolves, there is a chance NCMC could lose.

“That’s a very fragile system. I don’t think that the philanthropy will ever suffer because that community has a long history of doing that. I still relate stories to friends of mine about the Monfort Children’s Clinic and what an amazing example that is of how generous the Greeley community is in looking after its residents,” former CEO Sewell said. “But they need those insured patients. They need those procedures that actually pay well to fund that indigent care model.

That is squarely what Rulon is going after.”

The west Greeley emergency department will likely grow, Sewell said, and offer more services, pulling more patients from NCMC. He said PVHS may be emulating a model he understands Banner has used in Arizona.

“They build the complex emergency room and other facilities. The next logical step in that is to move on to actually building a hospital,” he said.

Eventually, the cumulative effect of the competition with PVHS could drain NCMC’s traditional strength, Sewell said.

“I don’t know what the financial viability of the institution is anymore,” he said. “I believe it’s been very well run, and they continue to see a positive bottom line, but obviously if a hospital starts to lose its highest-margin patients, it has to downscale, and it becomes less of a presence in the community.”

If PVHS were to become the dominant player in the market, it could concentrate many of the higher-tier services at Medical Center of the Rockies, leaving to NCMC emergency care — largely for uninsured or under-insured patients — births and a few less-lucrative services, Sewell said.

“I am assuming, I don’t know this, that Banner has strategies in place to ensure that they have sufficient medical staff and patient-service products that would keep that from happening.”

Ken Schultz is the NCMC Inc. board executive. He spent 10 years as a board member.

“We don’t intend to lose the competition,” he said. “It’s unfortunate sometimes that it is the way it is. We are, in fact, charitable organizations. Sometimes it almost takes on a for-profit life of its own.

We try to keep in mind that we are a charity organization, but we also have to run this organization very effectively and very efficiently.”

While Banner has battled an image among some in Greeley as an outsider that takes more from the community than it gives, Sewell said that’s wrong.

“There was this perception in the community that they were carpetbaggers, that they were taking money out of the community. Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “They invested huge amounts of money in that community.”

Sutton said Greeley residents can be confident that NCMC will do more than just survive.

“Greeley needs to be proud of who we are,” he said. “I don’t view us as second to anyone. If you want the honest truth, I view us as the leader here.”

»»Growing population, growing competition In northern Colorado as in much of the rest of the country, population growth has played a key role in shaping competition among hospitals.

During the first decade of the 2000s, Weld and Larimer counties grew at faster rates than the state as a whole. But Weld County — and principally Greeley — far outpaced even Larimer, state demographer Elizabeth Garner said.

Weld County — with more available land to accommodate growth, grew by 71,000 people, about 40 percent, between 2000 and 2010; 14,700 — or 20 percent — of that total came from growth in Greeley. Evans grew by about 8,000, as did Firestone in

southern Weld, while Erie grew by about 7,000, Garner said.

In Larimer County, growth was slower, more in line with the state’s overall growth trend. Larimer grew by 19 percent, about 48,000 people. The state as a whole grew by 17 percent.

Projections show that between 2010 and 2014, population in the north Front Range is expected to grow by about 1.8 percent a year, slightly ahead of the state as a whole, at 1.5 percent a year. Weld is forecast to grow at about 2.2 percent a year while Larimer is forecast to grow at 1.5 percent a year, she said.

»»How they compare »»North Colorado Medical Center » Employees: 2,150 » Patient beds: 276 » Occupancy rate: 57.34 percent* » Physicians on medical staff: 400 » Babies delivered: 1,990 * NOTE: Because the occupancy rate does not take into account out-patient services — a growing trend in health care — the Colorado Hospital Association advises against using the rate to compare hospitals to each other. The number is from 2010.

Selected payer information (2010 numbers, the most recent full year available)

» Colorado Indigent Care Program: $52.3 million, which represents 13.8 percent of net operating revenue » Charity care: $71.6 million, 18.9 percent » Bad debt: $29 million, 7.7 percent

Payer mix (2010 numbers) » Medicare: 40.7 percent » Medicaid: 11.8 percent » Managed care: 25.6 percent » Commercial insurance: 7.3 percent » Self-pay: 14.6 percent Sources: Colorado Hospital Association, NCMC

»»Poudre Valley Hospital » Employees: 2,633 » Beds: 238 » Occupancy: 73.21 percent* » Physicians on medical staff: 556 » Babies delivered: 2,449 *NOTE: Because the occupancy rate does not take into account out-patient services — a growing trend in health care — the Colorado Hospital Association advises against using the rate to compare hospital to each other. The number is form 2010.

Selected payer information (2010 numbers, the most recent full year available)

» Colorado Indigent Care Program: $39.9 million, which represents 10 percent of operating revenue » Charity care: $6.2 million, 2 percent » Bad debt: $8.1 million, 2 percent

Payer mix » Medicare: 40 percent » Insurance and managed care: 38 percent » Medicaid: 10 percent » CICP: 6 percent » Charity care: 1 percent Sources: Colorado Hospital Association, Poudre Valley Health System

»»Medical Center of the Rockies » Employees: 1,222 » Beds: 136 » Occupancy: 52.85 percent* » Physicians on medical staff: 454 » Babies delivered: 497 *NOTE: Because the occupancy rate does not take into account out-patient services — a growing trend in health care — the Colorado Hospital Association advises against using the rate to compare hospital to each other. The number is form 2010.

Selected payer information (2010 numbers, the most recent available) » Colorado Indigent Care Program:

$23.7 million, which represents 10 percent of operating revenue » Charity care: $3.1 million, 1 percent » Bad debt: $5.9 million, 3 percent

Payer mix » Medicare: 50 percent » Insurance and managed care: 35 percent » Medicaid: 4 percent » Indigent care program: 6 percent » Charity: 1 percent Sources: Colorado Hospital Association, Poudre Valley Health System

»»McKee Medical Center » Employees: 834 » Beds: 105 » Occupancy: 44.93 percent* » Physicians on staff: 284 » Babies delivered: 868 *NOTE: Because the occupancy rate does not take into account out-patient services — a growing trend in health care — the Colorado Hospital Association advises against using the rate to compare hospital to each other. The number is from 2010

Selected payer information (2010 numbers, the most recent full year available)

» Colorado Indigent Care Program: $16.7 million, which represents 10.9 percent of net operating revenue » Charity care: $21.7 million, 14.2 percent » Bad debt: $6.8 million, 4.5 percent

Payer mix » Medicare: 45.1 percent » Medicaid: 8.6 percent » Managed care: 28.8 percent » Commercial insurance: 7.3 percent » Self-pay 10.2 percent Sources: Colorado Hospital Association, McKee Medical Center

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A6 »

«SundayVoices

Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012 » The Tribune

Theresa Myers, section editor « (970) 352-0211, ext. 11252 « tmyers@greeleytribune.com

Tribune opinion

Competition brings choice, challenges Patients must educate themselves about medical service options

I

n a free market, competition is considered good.

But when that competition is between health care providers, challenges can arise.

What some see as a battle between Poudre Valley Health System, based in Fort Collins, and Banner Health — the Phoenix-based system that operates North Colorado Medical Center and McKee Medical Center in Loveland — has escalated over the last year. PVHS is building its first permanent facility in Greeley — a standalone emergency department — while NCMC is partnering with Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest health insurers and service

providers in the nation.

Ultimately, what concerns us is what this competition means for patients. For non-medical professionals, evaluating medical services can be confusing. It puts more responsibility on the patient, who now must educate himself on what services are available where and how much that service may cost.

We also wonder about unnecessary duplication of services. In a race to attract patients, both hospitals have worked to secure state-ofthe-art technology, which is expensive. Diagnostic tools such as MRIs are now located within close proximity. Soon, both Medical Center of the Rockies and NCMC will have

Question of the week Last week’s question and results Is corporal punishment an appropriate form of discipline in public schools?

» Yes, it should be used.

» No, physical

punishment should never be used on children.

» Possibly, if parents give permission for it to be used.

» Maybe, but only if

the situation warrants it.

» Let each school

decide if it should be used or not.

Total votes: 593

36.93% 219 votes

33.73% 200 votes

17.37% 103 votes

9.27 % 55 votes

2.7% 16 votes

emergency helicopters. We wonder how much these helicopters will be utilized.

In the end, patients pay for this expensive technology, helicopters and hospitals.

Higher medical costs are a reality and may force patients to shop around for the best price for services.

There is also a small chance that competition among hospitals won’t necessarily result in better care for patients.

For example, hospitals often have specialties. NCMC has a state-of-the-art burn unit, which provides an expensive and successful treatment for serious burn patients.

With the emphasis on competition rather than cooperation, if PVHS has a severe burn patient, will that patient be transferred to its competitor for treatment?

And visa-versa. If PVHS offers a specialty treatment

that would benefit a patient, would NCMC be willing to transfer that patient to its competitor? Not all patients will be aware which facility offers the best treatment for their particular medical issue.

The days of hospitals being run by philanthropic and religious organizations is basically over. Hospitals are corporations now, and even though they are nonprofit, the bottom line is ultimately what will keep them in business. This also creates a reality of having to be concerned with things like payer mix, making sure enough insured and private-pay patients are available to offset care given to indigent patients.

What the competition does is force patients to be advocates for their own medical care. Patients need to be willing to ask important questions to get the best care

possible: What facility offers this service? How much will it cost at both facilities? What is the patient outcome at this hospital for my diagnosis? Do I want to wait two hours in this emergency department, or drive miles to be treated faster at another one? Does my doctor have privileges at this hospital? Would I rather travel for care, or have a procedure closer to home? Will my insurance cover me at a different facility? Will I be able to get after-care, such as rehabilitation or therapy?

Will this competition eventually result in the best care for patients? That’s a question that only time will answer.

Ultimately, we hope both hospitals will keep their focus on providing the best care for their patients at the best price and be willing to cooperate when that is in the best interest for those they serve.

The drawing board

This week’s question What percentage tax is appropriate for millionaires?

» 5 percent » 15 percent » 30 percent » 50 percent » 75 percent » They shouldn't be taxed at all.

Note

Our question of the week is a sounding board, not a scientific survey. The results of this survey are evidence only of what some readers think. With that spirit in mind, we hope you participate in our dialogue about important topics of the day.

To participate Go to www.greeleytribune.com, where your vote will be tallied. You also can write a letter 300 words or fewer and send it to letters@greeleytribune.com or The Tribune, P.O. Box 1690, Greeley, CO 80632.

The results will be published on next Sunday’s Voices page.

Poudre Valley Health System

Banner Health

Poudre Valley Health System offers a broad expanse of high-quality health care services for residents of Greeley and Weld County. This is something that we pride ourselves upon. I promise we will continue to always put you and your health first.

Two years ago, Greeley Medical Clinic, the city’s largest multi-specialty physician group that has served community resiRulon dents since 1933, joined Poudre Valley Health Sys- Stacey tem as a way to continue Guest to provide a full comple- columnist ment of comprehensive, compassionate quality health care services for Greeley and surrounding areas.

Peakview Medical Center and Greeley Oncology are among the many services offered under the GMC umbrella.

The history that led to GMC becoming part of PVHS is an interesting story that reflects what has happened in the Greeley medical scene during the last few years. Learn more about this history by reading my blog: visionary.pvhs.org.

As part of our commitment to Greeley and Weld County, we intend to make it convenient for you to receive high-quality health care near your home.

We are building an emergency and sameday surgery center in North Gate Village at 71st Avenue and 10th Street. This is a highgrowth area where medical services are needed for easy access for nearby residents.

The center will open in early summer.

Our Aspen Club operates in Greeley to serve residents of 50 years or older.

The Aspen Club offers health education, screenings, hospital discounts and social opportunities. These services are provided for free or at low costs.

At the other end of life’s spectrum, the PVHS Healthy Kids Club works directly with young children and teens — as well as their parents and local schools — to

People in northern Colorado are fortunate to receive care from Banner Health and Poudre Valley Health System, which have been recognized as being among the top 15 health systems in the nation for clinical care by Thomson Reuters in its annual rating of health systems.

Banner Health operates four hospitals in northern Colorado, including North Colorado Medical Center that serves patients in Greeley, throughout Weld County and Peter beyond. NCMC has also been Fine Guest recognized by the HealthGrades rating service as being columnist a Distinguished Hospital, an award that recognizes a hospital for being in the top 5 percent of hospitals in the nation for overall clinical excellence.

This nationally recognized medical excellence serves as a strong foundation to ensure continued high quality care for northern Colorado residents well into the future. It is also important to note that the ability of NCMC to be on the leading edge of innovative trends in health care also ensures a future of excellent patient care.

Nationally, health care is moving to deliver a highly coordinated patient care experience within a spectrum of providers and payers.

We believe that there is ample evidence that this approach will improve the quality of care and perhaps even reduce the cost of that care.

At NCMC and Banner — affiliated physician offices, a cornerstone of this highly coordinated care is the enabling technology of an enhanced medical records system (EMR) that provides real-time patient information to physicians and other clinicians at the point of patient care. This is of tremendous value to the physicians because they are able to make the most informed and best possible decisions on behalf of their patients. People in Greeley and Weld County can be proud of NCMC because it is amongst 4.4 percent of American hospitals that are this far along in the implementation and usage of its EMR.

System committed to Technology improves serving community efficiency, patient care provide year-round health and fitness activities and programs.

If you live in or near Windsor, you have easy access to Windsor Medical Clinic and Poudre Valley Medical Fitness, a state-of-the-art center for people in training, rehabilitating from an injury or illness, or just wanting to become healthier.

PVHS will start an air ambulance service in March for the emergency transporting of patients. Our service will be more focused on serving patients in such high altitudes as Rocky Mountain National Park.

This helicopter service might not be a direct benefit to you within Greeley and Weld County, but it could be a life-saver if you need it while visiting the mountains or elsewhere. We are also pursuing ways to solve other health challenges in Greeley and Weld County.

PVHS recently donated $100,000 to the Weld Food Bank so the organization could purchase a refrigerated truck that allows the food bank to reach more hungry families. Good nutrition is a paramount factor in maintaining good health.

We recently launched Peak Health Solutions to help small businesses in Weld and Larimer counties offer affordable options for health insurance coverage for their employees and families. This addresses a major problem faced by most local small businesses: The lack of adequate health insurance for employees.

Finally — and this is a huge benefit for all of northern Colorado — PVHS is partnering with the nation’s No. 1 ranked academic medical center — the University of Colorado Hospital — to create a new health system that will provide unmatched care in the Rocky Mountain west. The new nonprofit organization will be Colorado’s largest locally-owned health system.

PVHS is committed to Greeley and Weld County. We’re here to keep you healthy and we are here to stay.

Rulon Stacey is president and CEO of Poudre Valley Health System.

This same EMR system at NCMC and throughout Banner is being used in novel ways to address specific challenges. A few years ago physicians, rightfully, became concerned about the high exposure to radiation due to numerous CT scans many patients may receive in a short period of time. When NCMC physicians prescribe a CT scan for one of their patients, they receive an alert if the patient has already received three CT scans within a 90-day period. This alert allows a physician to re-evaluate the need for an additional CT scan. Since its implementation at NCMC in August 2011, this alert has helped to significantly reduce radiation exposure by CT scans, as well as medical costs.

This enabling technology also is a critical factor for our physicians in significantly reducing mortality of sepsis, a potentially life-threatening infection and our nation’s No. 11 killer according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sepsis patients in hospitals typically experience a mortality rate of 25 percent or more, depending on its severity. Using the EMR system’s unique alert system, as well as its ability to provide evidenced-based treatment protocols that are effective against this disease, we measured a sepsis mortality rate at Banner last year of just 8 percent.

Another outstanding example of Banner’s drive to increase health care quality and reduce its costs through highly coordinated patient care is our recently announced partnership with Kaiser Permanente. Combining these assets plus the exclusive provider arrangement between Kaiser Permanente and Banner Health ensures a highly coordinated patient experience for Kaiser Permanente members who come to NCMC for their care.

Health care in our nation is in a period of transformation. Because Banner Health’s hospitals and physician clinics throughout northern Colorado are on the leading edge of this transformation, the future for quality health care in this region looks bright.

Peter S. Fine, FACHE, is the president and chief executive officer of Banner Health.

«Letters to the editor are limited to 300 words. Full name, address and phone number are required. Email to letters@greeleytribune.com or send to The Tribune, P.O. Box 1690, Greeley, CO 80632.

PRAYER BREAKFAST SPEAKERS: KEEPING FAITH AT THE WORKPLACE IMPORTANT. A3

TODAY IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO GO TO THE

HOME & GARDEN SHOW The show is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today at the Island Grove Events Center and Exhibition Hall.

A2: See what Saturday's show had to offer.

SUNDAY Serving Greeley and Weld County greeleytribune.com

FEB. 26, 2012

GREELEY, COLORADO $1.50 VOL. 141 NO. 106

THE ROAD AHEAD: PART 11, DAY ONE | A TRIBUNE SPECIAL PROJECT

A JOINT VENTURE

With sights set on a more vibrant community, DEBATE Greeley and the University of Northern Colorado team up to revitalize the University District.

GREAT

C1: Windsor's Hexcel Corp. sits at the center of a $2 billion tax break indecision.

RIGHT ON

TARGET D1: Tribune photographer Joshua Polson takes aim with the Greeley Archers as they practice for a tournament at their indoor facility.

WHAT'S

NEXT?

Monday: Monfort Elementary students get pumped up for the upcoming standardized tests.

THERE ARE

JOSHUA POLSON/jpolson@greeleytribune.com

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN COLORADO President Kay Norton, right, and her husband, Mayor Tom Norton, stand

36

together Friday afternoon on the balcony of the Panorama Room at the University Center on the UNC campus. The Nortons have been supporting the development and revitalization of the University District to help blend the college and Greeley communities in addition to helping the economy within the district.

JOB ADS IN TODAY'S CLASSIFIEDS SECTION.

BY SHERRIE PEIF

SPEIF@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

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F

ifty years ago, the south edge of Greeley — where 11th Avenue borders with Evans — was the place to be.

A park, a grocery store, a hardware store and a barbershop were all within safe walking distance for small children. Doctors, lawyers and professors with Colorado State College — now the University of Northern Colorado — were pining for homes in the Hillside and Farr neighborhoods, where life was a little slice of heaven.

“One of the most interesting mornings was when we woke up to mooing sounds,” said Mary Seager Adams, who grew up in the area. “Dad had to go outside in his pajamas and herd the cows back where they belonged.”

Adams was one of about a dozen longtime residents of the Hillside and Farr subdivisions who spoke at a public meeting last week about what the area was like 30, 40, 50 years ago.

42 pages, 5 sections

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“We were at the end of the world there,” said JoAnn Sansom, who has lived in the area for 55 years. “There was nothing west of us.”

In fact, the only things west were farmland and mountains.

During the past five decades, however, residential properties in Hillside and Farr deteriorated.

Greeley followed the advice of its namesake and moved west — way west. Many of the houses around UNC are now rentals that neighbors say are run down, and the professionals who were once prolific in the area now live 100 blocks away, near the Windsor exit where everything is new. Even worse, many UNC students hit the road on the weekends, spending their time and dollars elsewhere.

While residents fled the area, city hall and UNC largely kept their attention turned inward. But now, with the Greeley mayor and UNC president married to each other, the city and university are talking to each other and working to revive the area that could be-

» About the series This is the 11th installment in The Road Ahead, a series of stories that explores the power of plans to shape Greeley.

To see previous stories in the series — covering Greeley’s past, immigration, the Stampede, U.S. 85, recreation, water, education, agriculture and “the smell of money” — go to www. greeleytribune.com/roadahead.

Today, The Tribune looks at the combined efforts of Greeley and UNC to bring success to the University District. Monday’s story looks at what the students of UNC want out of the University District and the city.

come the focal point of Greeley’s future.

«

CONTINUED A4: Road Ahead

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A4 »

The Road Ahead

SUNDAY, FEB. 26, 2012

« THE TRIBUNE

« A5

‘The university’s identity is intimately connected with the city’s’

Part of the shared vision for the University District lies in the area’s history, said Becky Safarik, Greeley’s Community Development director.

The people, the places and the stories of past residents will help those involved in the initiative develop a sense of the district’s character, she said, and build on its past strengths.

Safarik said she would ultimately like to see the oral histories from all six University District neighborhoods preserved in a CD or perhaps small booklets.

Hazel Kaiser told of the private swimming pool that took root near her home nearly six decades ago during the Hillside and Farr oral history session last week.

She remembered a time before the pool was constructed, when her kids played in a puddle of mud after building excavation had just begun.

“Here goes those little kids, traipsing across,” she said, muddy clothes in hand. Back then, she said, “we all knew where our kids were — at the pool, at the park, or in somebody’s backyard.”

Everyone in the room laughed at how in the 1960s, the $100 residents paid for the season membership meant you were “rich,” while just last year, that same pool and that same membership had increased by only $20.

More sessions for the five neighborhoods are scheduled for this spring and summer. » Arlington: March 15, Bonell Good Samaritan Community, 708 22nd St. » Monroe/Union Colony: April 19, location TBD. » Glenmere: May 17, location TBD. » Cranford: June 21, location TBD. » Alles Acres: Aug. 2, location TBD. To share historic stories about the neighborhood surrounding the university, call Deb DeBoutez in the Neighborhood Resource Office at (970) 336-4167.

— Staff reports

UNC: part of Greeley’s DNA since 1889 Without a plan to make the University District a sought-out destination, many say the area from U.S. 34 on the south to 13th Street on the north and 23rd Avenue on the west to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks on the east will continue to decline and the university will retain its image of a “suitcase” college, where students go home for the weekend.

“That perpetuated inferiority complex Greeley has, has kind of replicated at UNC,” Kay said. “We’ve spent too much time talking about what we’re not, when we should be celebrating what we are. By thinking back to our roots — when I found out the details of how UNC started and how people raised money for the land and building when the state Legislature reneged — the people of Greeley stepped up; there is much, much to celebrate.”

People stepping up to make something happen, is what the University District is all about, Kay said.

“We are aware of the role the university can play in the economic development of the city,” Kay said. “But it is not a university project.

And it is not a city project,

The Creative District is the combination of the university and downtown districts.

FOR MORE: To see maps of the individual neighborhoods in the University District, go to www.greeleytribune.com/roadahead and click on this article.

8th Street

The bigger picture Surrounded by every color of stained glass cut into images of Christianity and Iroquois Indians, watercolors of mountain views and wildflowers, Francis Denning sat on the first floor of his home, flipping through a photo album and recounting every piece of art he’s ever worked on.

“This one here is based

KEY

Lincoln Park

University District downtown district

13th Street

MONROE/ UNION COLONY

15th Street

Heath Middle School

North Colorado Medical Center

Greeley Ice Haus

Weld County Courthouse

10th Street

8th Avenue

— KAY NORTON, University of Northern Colorado president

Greeley Central High School 16th Street

CRANFORD University of Northern Colorado Central Campus

6th Avenue

10th Avenue

Glenmere Park

11th Avenue

GLENMERE

14th Avenue

17th Street

Jackson Field

20th Street University Center ir R oa d

University of Northern Colorado West Campus

ARLINGTON 22nd Street

Re se rvo

either.”

Just because the Nortons share the same last name, however, shouldn’t give residents the assumption they are leading the initiative, Tom said.

“The fact that we’re married is an additive to getting things done,” he said.

“It’s not what we spend all of our spare time talking about. ... You get stuff done by people wanting to do it, is how I see it.”

In fact, most of the work on the University District is done on a volunteer basis, said Becky Safarik, Greeley’s Community Development director.

“Everyone has chipped in what they are good at,” Safarik said.

The initiative has drawn on the experience of community leaders. An attorney, a teacher, a business leader, a professor and a principal all sit on five committees that address their priorities for the area — neighborhood livability, a vibrant economy, engaging destinations, growth through education and neighborhood design.

Safarik co-chairs the project with Chuck Leonhardt, UNC’s vice president for university relations.

“It’s all about making this area the kind of location you really want to be a part of,” Leonhardt said.

“The university’s identity is intimately connected with the city’s.”

A successful university attracts more students, and a thriving city engages those students so they want to stay here on the weekend and spend their money here, Leonhardt said.

For the city, UNC is a rallying point and an anchor, said Sarah MacQuiddy, president of the Greeley Chamber of Commerce.

While Greeley residents are more likely to think of their agricultural roots when asked what characterizes the city, nonresidents overwhelmingly think of UNC, according to results from a community survey reported to the Greeley City Council last month.

“When you have fourand two-year institutions in a community, that speaks volumes,” MacQuiddy said.

And enticing consumer activity in the University District could easily draw more businesses to the downtown area.

“I think it’s a huge untapped market,” MacQuiddy said of the college students living in Greeley.

There are nearly 200 businesses within the borders of the University District. But just 10 blocks north, downtown also has plenty of consumer opportunities, many of which have risen up in the past few years.

In January, Greeley City Council members recognized the strength of the area, approving the establishment of the Creative District — a combination of the University and downtown development districts. The new district, which is home to most of Greeley’s cultural offerings, galleries and performing arts venues, will serve as a bridge linking the campus to downtown.

3rd Street

d

» Oral histories

“If people don’t take care of their neighborhood, who’s going to do it for you?” asked Richard Johnson, another longtime resident at last week’s meeting.

Thirty years ago, Johnson worked to get the city to put in street lights, speed bumps and stop signs around his home near Farr Park. But the fading of the once lively and popular area has spurred dozens of residents, like Johnson, to come together to revitalize six neighborhoods near UNC and make them, once again, the place to be.

It’s a partnership between the city and the university that some say wouldn’t be possible without the unique connection between Kay and Tom Norton.

For years, the city and the university took each other for granted, said UNC President Kay Norton.

“The university never had a hostile relationship with the city,” she said, “but more of benign neglect.”

Then, several years after Norton took over as president, her husband, Tom Norton, was elected mayor, and the relationship between the two entities took on a new look.

“I had a long-term understanding of not just the history of Greeley, but the culture of personality,” Kay said. “And not just to Greeley but to the university, as well. We made the connection.”

Dick Monfort, chairman of the UNC Board of Trustees, agreed with Kay, but said she worked to develop a relationship with the city before Tom was elected mayor. “She was president without Tom as mayor a lot longer,” said Monfort, who has been on the board for 14 years.

“She always worked to have a good relationship with the city, but I don’t think the city has been as open to work with us as she has been with them. That is what has changed. I think Tom understands how important UNC is to Greeley.

UNC needs Greeley, but Greeley needs UNC. I don’t think mayors in the past have been as open to UNC as Tom has.”

With the Nortons’ help, the University District initiative was born two years ago, and the neighborhoods and businesses of Hillside/Farr, Alles Acres, Arlington, Glenmere, Cranford and Monroe have become the rallying points for restoration.

“

» Creative District

a Railro

» The vision Much of the University District exists only in the imaginations of those working on it.

Greeley City Councilwoman Donna Sapienza, who represents residents living in that area, said community meetings on the district, which have seen as many as 80 people in the past year, are largely positive discussions centered on what residents would like to see develop in the area.

Sapienza said she wants to see a continued effort on the part of university students to get involved in their community, through programs such as Bears P.A.Y. Forward, in which students clear the district of trash and debris.

Becky Safarik, Community Development director, said she envisions a bustling business area surrounding the 16th Street corridor shops, where restaurants such as Chipotle and Aspen Leaf have shot up in recent years.

She pulled out a preliminary sketch of the area, which incorporates Ditch No. 3 as a sort of focal point, an “outdoor extension of the building space,” Safarik said. She said she envisions a pedestrian corridor, artist lofts and shops, parking and maybe a porch in the area. “I feel like a kid at show-andtell,” Safarik said, rolling out the map.

The Meeker Home Museum, 1324 9th Ave., will also get a makeover. Preliminary plans to expand the outdoor area, providing a parklike space with gardens and motifs that follow the seven guiding principles of Nathan Meeker, Safarik said.

Ed Rogers, chairman of the Greeley Art Commission, said he, too, sees the ditch as one of the area’s central gathering points. He said he would like to see kinetic art representing the flow of the water up to UNC as part of a larger effort by the commission to include art that portrays water, which plays a crucial role in Greeley’s past and present economy and culture.

Colette Pitcher with Showcase Art Center said she envisions an industrial, bohemian artists’ hub stretching from UNC east across the railroad tracks.

Originally, Pitcher said she didn’t think her shop would end up on 8th Avenue.

“I was looking on the other side of the tracks,” she said, which is conducive to the artist lifestyle with plenty of creative room in abandoned industrial buildings and affordable living throughout the city.

— Analisa Romano

‘Benign neglect’

From the ground up, it’s people coming together to make good things happen.

Ultimately, what it becomes is going to be up to the people.”

Pacific Union

In recent years, more University of Northern Colorado alumni have chosen to stay in Greeley and invest in their own business ideas, further intertwining the fabric of university and city life.

Many have established businesses that fit directly with what the city hopes to create in the Creative District, with food, drinks and entertainment attracting more students downtown than before.

Some recent additions that can be attributed to UNC graduates: » Brandon Jansson: The Jager, 822 9th St., and Crvsh Room, 915 16th St. » Pablo Perez: The Jager and Crvsh Room » Nate Giska: Blacklist Board Shop, 919 16th St., and Crvsh Room » Ryan Gentry: Penalty Box, 822 9th St., and Sky Nightclub/Tavola, 801 9th St. » Jim Sereff: Warm Hugs Mixes & Gifts, 916 9th Ave. » Greg Farnsworth: Patrick’s Irish Pub, 901 8th Ave. » Tim Preston: The Clay Center of Northern Colorado, 1024 6th Ave. — Analisa Romano

« ROAD AHEAD From A1

23rd Avenue

» A generation of entrepreneurs

Arlington Apartments

ALLES ACRES 25th Street

Jackson Elementary

HILLSIDE/FARR

FRANCIS DENNING PAINTS SECTIONS of a large stained-glass window he and his wife, Nellie, have been working on throughout the month at the

U.S. 34

Dragon’s Cache, 1109 7th St. in Greeley. Denning is a retired University of Northern Colorado professor who started the glass shop in 1980. He now works with his wife restoring, repairing and designing stained-glass pieces.

» More on the University District For more information on the University District initiative, visit www.unco.edu/universitydistrict or call Deb DeBoutez with the Neighborhood Resource Office at (970) 336-4167.

FOR THE TRIBUNE/University of Northern Colorado Archives

THIS IS THE FUTURE home of the University Center in the early 1960s overlooking the only two struc-

tures nearby — two farm houses. The picture was taken from the southwest corner of 11th Avenue and 22nd Street looking at the back side of the University Center.

JOSHUA POLSON/jpolson@greeleytribune.com

LOLA BUEL STANDS IN front of her home off

of 14th Avenue Court in Greeley on Thursday morning. Buel’s neighborhood has seen many changes in the 55 years she has lived there. More recently, renters and a large number of college students have moved into the area as the University of Northern Colorado grows.

on ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,’ ” he said, pointing to an abstract photo in an album labeled “secular.”

Denning, a former anthropology professor for UNC, said business this winter at the Dragon’s Cache, his home and art business at 1109 7th St., was one of his best seasons yet. But like many shops downtown, he said he’d love to see more students from the university venture his way.

“I’m well aware that the university community is like a separate entity,” Denning said.

But that “separate” mentality — one Denning said was more severe when he was teaching — is changing.

Denning embodies the character of the newly established Creative District, which incorporates the cultures of the university and a budding appreciation for the arts in the city.

The Greeley Art Commission, a group appointed by the city council to handle the Sculpture on Loan program and the city’s One Percent for Art program, tries to add at least one new piece of

artwork around the city every year, said commission chairman Ed Rogers.

Some of the city’s artwork, such as the mural of Albert Einstein on the wall of a 9th Avenue repair shop, painted by Armando Silva, is contributed by UNC graduates.

The Creative District borders north to south from 3rd Street to U.S. 34 and east to west from the Union Pacific Railroad to 23rd Avenue, creating a desired cultural hub, Safarik said.

“I see downtown as the central business district,” she said, hosting the city’s government buildings, Lincoln Park and other gathering places.

But travel south to 13th Street, where the districts overlap, and UNC, historic houses and pedestrian sidewalks, along with North Colorado Medical Center, “add the next layer of our lives,” Safarik said.

“When you put them together, you see a much bigger picture,” she said.

Investing in the future Both the city and the university hope to improve

economic activity through the initiative.

Downtown, the city could benefit from more traffic and revenue for its business owners, while the university hopes more opportunities for its students eventually will mean higher enrollment.

On the city side, businesses are being encouraged to host more activities such as First Fridays, a tradition started by the Greeley Area Arts Alliance, which features downtown artists opening their galleries the first Friday night of every month and live music.

Colette Pitcher, owner of Showcase Art Center, 1335 8th Ave., used to frame pictures for friends from the basement of an apartment building. Now, she said she’s seeing the payoff from the event, which has grown in popularity.

“It’s been a vision forever,” she said. “Things are starting to change.”

The university is focusing on getting its students involved with things such as Bears P.A.Y. Forward, which stands for parks, alleys and yards. Last fall, more than 200 students helped a church congregation pull weeds and clean up trash from the area.

“We want to provide them with the best education we can, but a part of that is a connection with the community,” Leonhardt said. “If we don’t have a connection with the community, we won’t have an engaged education for our students.”

In addition, Operation

Bear Aware was developed — by a student — to bring students and businesses together.

Students take photos of themselves in any Greeley business that displays Bear Aware window stickers and leave their email address for prize drawings while businesses put in a $50 cash or in-kind gift as one of those prizes.

“It’s all part of ‘what do we do to make students more connected?’ ” Leonhardt said. “Businesses,

community service and after-school programs for K-12 students. Making that full cycle and loop is a very important part of UNC’s role. We are providing the impetus for all players.”

While the city doesn’t provide any direct funding for the University District, it can set the stage for redevelopment through building standards and incentives to attract private investment, Tom Norton said.

“The general appearance

makes a big difference,” he said.

Things like the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which is used to beautify foreclosed houses, and providing potential businesses with demographic information are city resources that fit well into the initiative’s agenda, Safarik said. Some things, such as signs directing Greeley’s visitors to downtown and UNC, are already part of the city’s development efforts, she said.

Greeley city limits

Farr Park

JOSHUA POLSON/jpolson@greeleytribune.com

But much of the movement is to inspire private business owners to invest in beautification efforts on their own.

“There’s no new budget line-item for this,” Safarik said. “But if this means a lot to us, what will happen is people will bring things from all over and help take it to the next level.”

Likewise, the University District helps UNC officials prioritize their efforts, such as where to recommend student housing and where they should help in the community.

“We have all these competing demands for us to participate in,” Kay Norton said. “We needed a way to sort them out, this gives us a footprint around an area that we can say, ‘This is our neighborhood.’ We never had the Ivory Tower with a moat, but we also never cared about where we lived.

“This is staking our claim. These are our neighbors and we care about our neighbors. If there are projects the university can do, they are going to be done close to home first.”

‘Create and stay’ Sometimes, all it takes is one trip to a new part of the city to realize what you’ve been missing, said Brandon Gossard, a plan-

ner with Greeley’s Community Development department. Gossard was once a UNC intern. Now, he’s working on the University District initiative.

“I didn’t even know it existed until I came down here to work,” Gossard said of downtown Greeley. “You get trapped in your own little bubble.”

When he was a student, Gossard said the likes of Patrick’s Irish Pub, the Penalty Box, Tavola and the Crvsh Room — all bars and restaurants founded by UNC alumni — didn’t even exist downtown.

The choice of those graduates to stay and invest in their community is a good sign, said Bruce Biggi, Greeley’s economic development director.

Places rich in culture attract creative minds, he said. And creative minds make for a healthier economy.

“We are moving from an industrial to an information age, and that age is dependent on forward thinking,” Biggi said.

Small businesses are good, he said, but the real economic development success stories come from companies that grow from five employees to those that interact on a national scale.

Agriculture will always have a place in Greeley’s

economy, but Biggi said a diverse economy is a stronger one.

With encouragement from both the city and UNC, more students are being urged to follow through with their good ideas. UNC’s Monfort College of Business has hosted an entrepreneurial challenge for the past three years, identifying promising students and their ideas. And a new program hosted by UNC professor David Thomas offers business incubators, with knowledge of the industry and resources to realize virtual business dreams.

“We’d like to think that some at the university will build an identity to the community and will perhaps create a business, and more importantly, create and stay,” Biggi said.

There is still much work to be done, but those who dream of creating a vibrant University District say it will start with these strands: Students stepping off campus to join the community, residents and businesses giving them reasons to do so, and leaders of the city and university working together.

Woven together, they form the fabric of the district’s character. Someday, they hope, this patchwork quilt could be a work of art.

“From the ground up, it’s people coming together to make good things happen,” Kay Norton said. “Ultimately, what it becomes is going to be up to the people.”

WARNING: This is not your average health fair!

Bring the entire family to this day of fun!

Time: 9:00a.m.-1:00p.m. ’s

ily

m Fa

Location:Greeley Family FunPlex: 1501 65th Avenue, Greeley, CO Admission Fee: FREE Web: www.bannerhealth.com/NCMCspirit

Saturday, March 3, 2012 www.bannerhealth.com/NCMCspirit Bring your friends and family to dance, learn simple ways to stay healthy, enjoy music, and participate in health screenings.

More Information: Join us and meet physicians and UNC athletes, play “Minute To Win It” games, learn about health screenings, dance, move and enjoy performances.

Weld County Ambulance and other emergency services will be there to answer your questions.

Enjoy tasty samples from District 6.

TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE TRIBUNE, CALL 970.352.8089 |

196 MERCHANDISE ADS IN TODAY’S TRIBUNE

Serving Greeley and Weld County greeleytribune.com

MONDAY FEB. 27, 2012

GREELEY, COLORADO 75 CENTS VOL. 141 NO. 107

» Check out the full

list of winners from the Oscars on A9

‘The Artist’ deemed the winner THE ROAD AHEAD: PART 11, DAY TWO | A TRIBUNE SPECIAL PROJECT

‘A COMMUNITY FEEL’ UNC students voice their opinions of what it’ll take to make them stay in Greeley

JOHN BRADY GUYETTE

Former financial adviser reports to jail, posts bail 71-year-old facing nine counts of fraud

By Sharon Dunn sdunn@greeleytribune.com

A

JOSHUA POLSON/jpolson@greeleytribune.com

TONY PINEDO OF THE band Rambler’s Guild fixes his guitar during a break while University of Northern Colorado student

Christie Lind and husband Eric Lind watch and enjoy their drinks at The Library Oxygen Bar & Liquid Lounge off of 17th Street in Greeley Saturday night. Christie is enrolled at UNC student, while her husband and Pinedo are both alumni.

W

BY SHERRIE PEIF

SPEIF@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

AND ANALISA ROMANO

AROMANO@GREELEYTRIBUNE.COM

hether they are from Loveland or Larkspur, many of the students at the University of Northern Colorado all see Greeley in the same light.

“It needs a community feel,” said Kacie Thomas, 19, from Castle Rock. “People go to Fort Collins for things we don’t have.”

Thomas’ comments are nothing new. For decades, UNC has been known as a “suitcase” college — a college where resident students leave town on the weekends.

“There is some evidence that is an overstated fact,” UNC President Kay Norton said. “But there is no question that a lot of our students don’t always stay on campus. There is always going to be some going home, and it tends to taper off as students get older.”

» About the series This is the 11th installment in The Road Ahead, a series of stories that explores the power of plans to shape Greeley.

To see previous stories in the series — covering Greeley’s past, immigration, the Stampede, U.S. 85, recreation, water, education, agriculture and “the smell of money” — go to www.greeleytribune.com/roadahead.

Today, The Tribune looks at what the students of UNC want out of the University District and the city.

«

CONTINUED A4: Road Ahead

former Greeley financial adviser accused of losing several million of Greeley residents’ money in a securities scheme faces nine counts of securities fraud and turned himself in Saturday.

John Brady Guyette, 71, was processed through the Weld County Jail Saturday morning.

The state Department of Regulatory Agencies has charged him with one count of secu- Guyette rity fraud-deceit and eight counts of security fraudmaking an untrue statement.

A warrant was issued for his arrest on Friday, and he turned himself into the Weld County Jail, said Cmdr. Margie Martinez, spokeswoman for the Weld County Sheriff ’s Office.

“He walked into the lobby with his bondsman, was processed through the jail and immediately

«

CONTINUED A7: Guyette

« WHAT’S

NEWS B4-B9: A8: A7: A2: A7: A9: B1-B10: B10:

TCAP TESTS AT MONFORT ELEMENTARY

Students get pumped for tests at pep rally Greeley West cheerleaders, UNC football players join in on the fun

By Bridgett Weaver gtreporters@greeleytribune.com

Monfort Elementary’s teachers wore crazy hats and played blowup guitars as they led their kids through the Greeley West High

School cheerleaders’ tunnel into the gym.

The cheerleaders slapped the kids’ hands while they waited for the rest of the students to arrive.

The purpose of the assembly was to get kids ready for next

ALL it!

eet e ms… m o c kri

S V Y TRUCK ST RICA’S BE o

d DARE fTRO c E!r e

COMPA

week’s Transitional Colorado Assessment Program, or TCAP, tests.

The TCAP is Colorado’s new standardized testing program and will take place throughout the state during the next few weeks.

The tests start this week with the third-grade reading section.

Third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students across the state will take the tests March 13-23.

FINANCING FOR

Classifieds Comics Games Lottery Movie listings Obituaries Sports TV grid

20 pages, 2 sections What’s coming

CRAZY ABOUT BUFFALO MEAT

Tuesday’s Tribune.

Previously known as the CSAP, the Colorado Student Assessment WEATHER WEATHER program, TCAP was renamed this TODAY Developing year because the state is making Developing the transition to new state clouds, stan-windy clouds, windy dards, said Monfort Elementary High 48 Low 27 High 48 Low 27 Principal Sue Ann Highland.

WEATHER, XX B10: Weather Cheerleaders and the Dixieland Pep Band from Greeley

«

«

CONTINUED A6: TCAP tests

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A4 »

MONDAY, FEB. 27, 2012 » THE TRIBUNE

Hours of operation often a sticking point for students, retailers » What UNC students had to say WHAT WOULD MAKE YOU STAY IN GREELEY?

“The demographics here are so different from what I’m used to, so I do want to stay here for a few years and teach.”

— Alex Monroe, 19, Larkspur, Elementary Education.

Sciences.

“There are no big tourist attractions.

It’s not quite close enough to the mountains for me, and there are no lakes.”

— Cody Riley, 19, Windsor, Biological

“They could add something fun and exciting to make it more urban and not so rural.”

— Parker Redford, 18, Conifer, Theater Studies.

“If they added Seattle to Greeley, I would stay. It’s a fine enough town, and I like how small it is. It’s just not where I want to be.”

— Rose Neel, 21, Breckenridge, Marketing.

“They need to emphasize that they’re making an effort to move away from agriculture toward modernizing.”

— Erika Caton, 21, Golden, Nursing and Dietatics.

“A professional theater. The school is great. There just aren’t a lot of opportunities beyond that. I know a lot of people have a negative stigma about Greeley, and they think there’s nothing to do here, but I just won’t stay because there’s nothing here professionally for me.”

— Josh Dasher, 21, Pueblo, Theater.

WOULD YOU GO DOWNTOWN MORE IF THE STORES WERE OPEN LATER?

“Yes, because we’re always looking for something to do. If they played to the college students and when they are able to go out, they would probably see more business.”

— Alex Monroe, 19, Larkspur, Elementary Education.

“To make me stay? They would have to create a safer environment.

Stronger law enforcement could change the violent image.”

— Yolanda Brown, 32, DeLeon Springs, Fla., Nutrition.

“If they stayed open later I’d probably check it out. I really don’t even know what they have besides the restaurants.”

— Carolina Haigh, 19, Centennial, Communications.

WHERE DO YOU SEE GREELEY IN 20 YEARS?

“I don’t really know what it would be like to live here outside of being a college student. It doesn’t offer as much as Denver, Boulder or Fort Collins, so I will leave.”

— Carolina Haigh, 19, Centennial, Communications.

“It’s moving up slowly to reach where some higher income towns are. It’s definitely expanding. Without UNC, Greeley wouldn’t go anywhere.”

— Eric Bart, 22, Parker, History.

“Make it more like a Fort Collins or Denver. It needs a better housing market, better or more bars and shopping, and it especially needs to be safer.”

— Erika Caton, 21, Golden, Nursing and Dietatics.

“It’s expanding a lot. It’s becoming more well known so students are putting it at the top of their lists to come here.”

— Parker Redford, 18, Conifer, Theater Studies

WHAT CAN GREELEY DO TO MAKE IT MORE APPEALING?

“Larger attractions like a zoo or an aquarium.

Source: Bridgett Weaver

Highly acclaimed musical won Tony Awards, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards.

February 29th and March 1-3, 2012 at 7:30 pm Langworthy Theatre

« ROAD AHEAD From A1 The University District — a joint effort by UNC and the city of Greeley to revitalize the area around the campus — was created largely to change that mentality. Keeping students in town helps local businesses and boosts the local economy, the initiative’s leaders say, which in turn could improve the city’s image and increase student enrollment at UNC — and so the cycle goes.

Chuck Leonhardt, who is co-chairman of the University District initiative, said the university’s location in the region is always going to result in students going elsewhere for the weekend.

“It is a benefit to the kids on the Front Range that they have that opportunity,” Leonhardt said. “But we are not a commuter university; we are a residential university.”

But there is a lot of work to do, and those involved with the University District haven’t even begun asking students what will keep them here.

Leonhardt said studies say students want more connection to Greeley, but students say they want more opportunities from Greeley.

“We’re always looking for something to do,” said Alex Monroe, an elementary education major from Larkspur, about frequenting downtown businesses. “If they played to the college students and when they are able to go out, they would probably see more business.”

In fact, hours of operation are often an issue for municipalities that partner with colleges and universities, said Kim Griffo, executive director the International Town

ANN VARGAS/For The Tribune

ERIC LANGDON, LEFT FRONT, sits with

friends Emily Kinnison, left back, Kristin Morrow, right front, and Bayle Brown at Roma’s Saturday night. and Gown Association.

“You have to have hours that serve that student market,” Griffo said. Staying open later — until 9 or 10 p.m. — will create a world of difference, she said.

But bringing students downtown and to other shops within the University District can’t be a responsibility placed solely on the heads of business owners, said Kimberly Bode, manager of Woody’s News Stand, 942 9th Ave. “I’ve tried to stay open later,” Bode said, but the extra expense of staffing the store longer was not paying off.

“We should not always have to be the ones with the brains behind it,” she said.

Bode said Greeley’s Downtown Development Authority has done well with creating and promoting events and letting her know how she can participate. Events by far bring the most business, she said.

Sarah MacQuiddy, president of the Greeley Chamber of Commerce, said she thinks the downtown area would do well to add more retail shops that are attractive to the student market. But before any-

one makes any final moves, she said those with the University District should take the questions to the students.

In addition, MacQuiddy said, there should be “better communication with students about what’s going on.” While things have improved with Operation Bear Aware, she said there are still communication vehicles on campus, such as the student paper, that could be helpful.

Griffo said the University District should consider new technologies, such as smartphone apps that would communicate business deals and city events.

Regardless of how it’s done, Leonhardt said making those connections is what the University District initiative is all about.

“If we don’t have an connection with the community, we won’t have an engaged education for our students,” Leonhardt said. “And in order for that to happen, the students have to feel comfortable within the city. Our students go away with an opinion on what’s going on here.

And the university’s identity is ultimately connected with the city’s.”

Featuring the UNC Wind Ensemble under the direction of Ken Singleton

Tickets @ 970-351-2200 or www.arts.unco.edu

Chamber News Greeley

9 0 2 7 t h A v e n u e G r e e l e y, C O

80631 • 352-3566

Legislative Mid-Term Event scheduled for March 9 The Northern Colorado legislative Alliance presents an update on the 2012 legislative session on Friday, March 9 from 3:30 – 5:30 p.m. at the Best Western Crossroads Inn. This event provides an overview of business-related bills and their progress through the Colorado House and Senate, as well as what’s in store for the remainder of the session. Our regional representatives and senators have been invited to share their perspectives on actions at the State Capitol, as well.

In addition to hearing important updates, attendees will have the opportunity to network and socialize with elected officials and other regional business people.

Make your reservation today at www.greeleychamber.com

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ALL PRICES AND PAYMENTS PLUS TAX AND DEALER HANDLING $489. 0% FOR 60 MONTHS ON APPROVED CREDIT. BE SURE TO OBEY ALL TRAFFIC RULES AND MAINTAIN AWARENESS OF ROAD AND TRAFFIC CONDITIONS. TOYOTA DOES NOT APPROVE THE USE OF PORTABLE HANDHELD DEVICES WHILE DRIVING. ALL THE AIRBAG SYSTEMS ARE SUPPLEMENTAL RESTRAINTSYSTEM. TRAILER SWAY CONTROLD IS AN ELECTRONIC SYSTEM DESIGNED TO HLEP THE DRIVER MAINTAIN VEHICLE CONTROL UNDER ADVERSE CONDITIONS. For more information, visit Kelley Blue Book’s kbb.com. Kelley Blue Book is aregistered trademark of Kelley Blue Book Co., Inc. Government 5-Star Safety Ratings are part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA's) New Car Assessment Program (www.safercar.gov). Based on manufacturer's sales data as of December 2011.END 2/29/12