Colorado
Civil Discourse in Action: DU’s Colorado Project Addresses Sustainable Economic Growth | University of Denver
The Colorado Project seeks to reduce polarization, strengthen democracy and find solutions to the tough issues facing Colorado by harnessing the power of civil discourse. This year-old initiative is housed in the Douglas and Mary Scrivner Institute of Public Policy at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. In early March, the Project released a report proposing a strategy for sustainable and inclusive economic growth in Colorado, addressing topics like water, energy, jobs and housing.
Starting in July 2023, the Project’s 33 members met eight times, virtually and in small groups, to develop recommendations for an economy that lifts all boats when the Colorado economy grows.
“On the surface, our economy looks good but historically our economic growth hasn’t benefitted every segment of the population the same, particularly people of color and people living in poverty,” says Rebecca Montgomery. She is the former director of democracy and civil discourse initiatives within Scrivner and was the staff facilitator for the Project. “Rural communities haven’t recovered since the recession of 2008. Up until now, leaders have worked on these issues in silos but there is potential for political alignment we are not seeing if we can break out of these silos.”
Landon Mascareñaz believes the group succeeded in doing that. He was a committee member and has been brought on as a constultant to replace Montgomery, who has since left the Project. He currently serves as the chair, State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education and is the co-founder of The Open Systems Institute. The civil discourse process used by the Project left him enthusiastic about the Project’s potential and results.
“I had a really incredible experience,” he says. “I loved the partnership, the facilitation and really great ways we could take the content and move it to the next level.”
The group’s members were selected to ensure diverse viewpoints were represented through geography and backgrounds: industry, business, non-profits, rural, urban, racial, water, energy, workforce, housing, land use and others. Only a couple held elected office.
While civil discourse was the rule of the day, the conversations weren’t easy. The group adopted four rules to keep talks civil:
1. assume positive intent
2. come to every meeting and engage meaningfully
3. keep all conversations confidential
4. base all your contributions in facts, research or practical experience
“We held each other to these values on those constructs we made at the beginning,” says Lisandra Gonzales, one of three co-chairs and chief executive officer of Rocky Mountain Partnership.
These points kept discussions on track, especially when talks became tough, as they did the first day. Ideas about equity and inclusion provided a tall first hurdle.
“How do you deal with racial issues in parts of the state where race is not a prominent issue?” says Steve ErkenBrack, co-chair and chief executive officer of the Buell Foundation. “That was very tense for a bit but we worked through that because we realized it’s all about inclusion. Parts of rural Colorado also feel they have not always been included.”
Gonzales says that talk revealed something else. Definitions are shaped by people’s personal experiences, giving language shades of meaning beyond the dictionary. In the end, she says people generally agreed on what something meant but used different words to describe it.
“Even if you hear something that is off-putting,” ErkenBrack says, “rather than react immediately, make sure the person is really saying that. We all have biases. These biases we all bring to the human experience are not inherently negative, but you have to face them and recognize them in yourself. We ended up with a candid process and there was a unanimity of where we wanted to get.”
Questions were not left to fester unresolved. “If something felt off, we connected to make sure we had real conversations,” Gonzales says. “We didn’t lose anyone for the sake of not having those accountability conversations.”
The issues often emerged from smaller working groups, were introduced to the larger group, discussed, sent back, reworked, reintroduced and accepted, or not, usually by consensus.
“Can you live with this in the end? That’s where we had the ultimate buy-in,” Gonzales says. “Are you comfortable with your name being associated with this? That is the question we were asking.”
ErkenBrack says that the diversity of the group was its strength, especially as the participants came to realize all the issues were interrelated. Water affects business which affects housing, education, land use, etc. Any single issue brought up others, and the commitment from the group was to create a plan that would benefit the entire state, not just part of it.
“You wind up realizing whatever your own background and expertise is, you have to access other expertise,” ErkenBrack says. “You realize the importance of listening to other people’s expertise.”
Gonzales says the group spent a lot of time “sitting in the dialogue” and listening before decisions were made. “What was most inspiring about this process and gives me the most hope, even for the country,” she says, “by bringing together this vast array of people, what we all committed to was the end result. We were respectful of other opinions.”
“You can’t assemble people from all these diverse backgrounds and expect everybody to think like you,” says ErkenBrack. “We live in an environment of policy that is increasingly contentious and emotional. Bringing together several dozen leaders from different fields and reaching a result and consensus document inspired us to take this back to our day jobs and communities – listening to make progress.”
“We built relationships across ideas and differences. That was so powerful,” Mascareñaz says.
The focus now is on getting the report into the hands of thought leaders. Eventually, a new group will be convened for the Colorado Project to tackle a new topic, yet to be identified, certain to be tough, but the discourse civil.
To improve food access and build a healthier community, Boulder County, Colo. Public Health’s Healthy Eating, Active Living (HEAL) team collaborated with the city of Boulder on its comprehensive plan. The HEAL team analyzed best practices in nutritious food access and sustainable agriculture in comparable communities across the nation to help inform its recommendations for city planning, according to Amelia Hulbert, Boulder County Public Health’s Healthy Eating, Active Living (HEAL) lead.
“A comprehensive plan is visionary, it’s long range,” Hulbert said. “It should not just be a document that fits on the shelf and doesn’t get used, so when you have the opportunity to either create something new or update it, how do you make sure it [outlines] goals and policies that are going to support the work that you know needs to happen?
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Boulder County’s “Improving Food Access and Health for Boulder Residents Through Municipal Comprehensive Planning” initiative was the 2025 NACo Achievement Award “Best in Category” winner in Planning.
“We wanted a place to specifically call out public health priorities, so when it came time to talk about allocating funding or anything like that, we can point to it and say, ‘As a county, we said that food access is important. We said that air quality monitoring is important.’”
When starting the process of creating the city’s comprehensive plan, City of Boulder staff reached out to the state health department looking for subject matter expertise on food access, which is how the HEAL team got involved, Hulbert said.
“I think there’s this through line of ‘planners are planners, and they’re usually not subject matter experts,’” Hulbert said. “And so, when they seek out subject matter expertise, how can we make sure those connections can easily be made to people in their own community who are going to not only know the content, but know the issues? I think it’s a cool process, and others could totally do the same thing.”
The HEAL team analyzed comprehensive plans from a dozen municipalities like Boulder, including Ann Arbor, Mich.; Asheville, N.C.; Burlington, Vt. and Provo, Utah. Factors considered when choosing the municipalities included population size, economic and demographic makeup and communities with a mix of urban, suburban and unincorporated rural land, according to Hulbert.
Olivia Ott, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Public Health Associate working with the HEAL team, identified 34 model policies from the plans and categorized them into five themes to compare against the City of Boulder’s existing plan: healthy food access, sustainability, built environment, equity/culture and local agriculture.
“We’re usually looking to a couple key cities across the nation that we would consider cutting edge and innovative,” Hulbert said. “So, we just applied that methodology to something very specific, of digging into, ‘How are their plans structured? What are they saying?’ And then thinking about, ‘Does it make sense for our community?’ And then [assessing] ‘What are other things that are really specific to our community?’”
Factoring in the identified best practices, Ott scored the city’s plan into three categories: “Present” in Boulder’s current plan, “Somewhat Present” and “Absent.”
“That kind of grading system actually worked really well, and it really resonated with the planning team,” Hulbert said. “You could tell that they were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re doing really well here.’ And then, it was really specific, of ‘Hey, other people are talking about this one thing, and you all aren’t.’ I think it was just put in a way that they could really absorb.”
The HEAL team’s research and recommendations were presented to the Boulder and Broomfield County’s Food Security Network (BBFSN), a community group made up of people with lived experience of food insecurity and organizations that serve food insecure individuals, that were providing input on the city’s comprehensive plan. The HEAL team’s findings helped inform the BBFSN’s recommendations to the planning department.
While the HEAL team had the expertise and staffing to do the research, it was “critically important” to then integrate community engagement with the BBFSN into the work, Hulbert noted. Final recommendations for the city plan from the BBFSN address food access through six different categories: transportation, land use, housing, climate, economic development and food systems.
“We did what was within our wheelhouse, and then we knew that there was another group who has a totally different wheelhouse, so it was how could we then pass off what we’ve done and have them take it a step further?” Hulbert said. “Because I think what they brought is more of that lived experience community storytelling. Olivia can say, ‘It’s important to emphasize culturally relevant foods.’ And then there’s likely a community member that can actually give real voice to that and why that matters.”
Colorado
Families, care providers navigate cuts to Colorado’s Community Connector program | Rocky Mountain PBS
“Typically, between me and my husband, there are no breaks. We have to constantly ask each other to change him and feed him and shower him. I always worry about the future if Elli has to leave and not get help anymore,” said Dina Katan, Batikha’s mother. “The free time is good for my mental health. For me, when Elli comes here and helps, I have time to do things that usually I am not able to do.”
Other parents are concerned that the reduction in hours will make it harder to find care providers. Becky Houle of Greeley is the mother of Hadley, a 13-year-old diagnosed with Angelman syndrome, a rare neurogenetic disorder that causes significant developmental delays and little to no speech.
Hadley used to qualify for 10 Community Connector hours a week and is now down to five, Houle said. With those hours, she previously played unified basketball, went to the park and interacted with others and participated in running errands with her caretaker.
“I worry that the person that provides some of that caregiving role for her won’t be able to commit with such few hours,” Houle said. “I like Hadley to have interactions without us being there, so she can feel like a teenager.”
Tom Dermody, chief budget and policy analyst for Colorado’s JBC, said spending on Community Connector services has risen substantially over the past six fiscal years.
Dermody said that as the program, which started in 2014, has become more popular, costs have ballooned. He said participation in the Community Connector service has increased by 510% since fiscal year 2018-2019, and that annual spending has risen from about $5 million in fiscal year 2018–2019 to more than $66 million in fiscal year 2025–2026.
To cut costs, the JBC not only capped annual hours for the service, but also revised the rules to narrow what qualifies as Community Connector hours. Jane said this makes it harder to consistently reach the five-hour weekly allotment.
“When these changes were made, I did our usual Community Connect on Sunday. After I worked my shift, I noticed that I couldn’t clock in or out because my shift was removed from the app,” Jane said.
After sending an email to her employer, her agency told her that what she did — taking her Batikha to a gas station and showing him how to ask an associate how to find a product — does not qualify under the new Community Connector rules.
Under the updated rules, Community Connector hours must be tied to activities in the community that align with a person’s care plan and build skills or participation, such as volunteering, attending enrichment classes or going to the library alongside peers without disabilities.
The state has excluded simple supervision, passive outings and activities typically considered a parent’s responsibility from qualifying for Community Connector hours. Providers must now clearly document how each hour supports a specific goal.
“It’s unfair that they cut those hours for these kids and they are very strict about how we use those hours,” Katan said. “The new requirements are very specific and not inclusive of high needs kids like Taym.”
Batikha requires full support whenever he goes out, Jane said, and the stricter requirements make it harder to plan weekly community trips.
“He needs hygiene changes. He needs to be fed every two hours. And he can’t be fed anywhere. I want to give him privacy for his feeding,” Jane said.
She now plans to split her five Community Connector hours over the course of a week instead of providing them all on Sundays, as she previously did.
“I care about him and I love my clients so much, so I’m definitely going to stay,” Jane said. “His parents need the time to be able to watch a movie and not worry about if their son is okay.”
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