COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – Paramedics working for the Colorado Springs Fire Department will soon be carrying whole blood to perform blood transfusions where they’re so necessary: out in the field!

This is thanks to a new partnership with UCHealth.

“Hemorrhagic shock — bleeding to death — is the leading cause of death for people age 45 and under, and we know that upward of 40% of these patients could survive with immediate blood transfusion in the field,” says Dr. Matt Angelidis, CSFD’s co-chief medical director and an emergency medicine physician at UCHealth. “First responders bringing blood to the scene of an injury will save lives.”

The program is the first of its kind in the state of Colorado and is expected to roll out in May. Watch the video above for more details!

This news comes to you from the Southern Colorado Business Forum & Digest, a Business & Economic Development publication of Colorado Media Group. Send your news to editor@coloradomediagroup.com. Plus a link to subscribe: Click here to subscribe to SCBFD.

Copyright 2024 KKTV. All rights reserved.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – Due to the high demand, local fitness centers are now adding more pickleball courts during April’s National Pickleball Month.

11 News spoke with Life Time in Briargate, who in just a few days, will be doubling their pickleball courts from 4 to 8. According to Sports & Fitness Industry Association, for the third year in a row, pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America, growing over 223% in three years.

“A couple years back when we had COVID, people were looking for something to do, kill some time, you’re at least 7 feet away from one kitchen to the other, and you can play indoors. This rapid expansion, we’ve needed more courts,” said Life Time Pickleball Pro Mike McGregor. “If laughing and having fun counts for being healthy, then this is a great sport to play.”

Pickleball is a combination of a variety of different racket sports, including racket ball, ping pong, tennis and badminton, but is played on a smaller scale with quicker rallies. Last year, the Association of Pickleball Professionals found that nearly 50 million adult Americans – nearly 19% of the total adult population – had played pickleball in the past year.

“We always recommend a dynamic warmup. It’s an athletic sport, it’s legs dominant, so to avoid any injuries, we want to warm up the legs, get going, good footwear, eye protection, hydration,” said McGregor. “Because it is a lot of moving and kind of stepping and changing directions and things, you need to be a bit of an athlete so at each level of development, your coordination, your balance, eye-hand reflexes, all those things come into play.”

While pickleball reportedly started as 55+ sport, Life Time in Colorado Springs is seeing kids as young as 5, and adults up to 95-years-old playing, calling it an intergenerational sport, where grandparents can play their grandkids.

“Whether or not you know the rules, somebody is there kind of helping you, guiding you through your initial experiences and then fun thing is it’s easy to learn, but hard to master. So, you can get going right away, have a lot of fun and just keep challenging yourself and growing the sport,” said McGregor.

Copyright 2024 KKTV. All rights reserved.

State lawmakers will take up an 83-page property tax relief bill with just two weeks left in the legislative session.

The bill comes after four months of hearings by a bipartisan Commission on Property Tax, which was created by the legislature and charged with crafting long-term relief for homeowners while protecting services for local governments.

“We got feedback from county commissioners, local elected officials, everyday citizens,” says Democratic State Sen. Chris Hansen, who chaired the commission and is the lead sponsor of the bill.

It would allow residents to exempt 10% of their home’s value — up to $75,000 — from taxation.

Hansen says that adds up to significant relief, “It equates to nearly $800 mission in additional tax relief.”

He says it’s the equivalent of lowering the state assessment rate to 6.35%. But critics say, if the rate was actually lowered, it couldn’t be raised without voter approval.

They say the bill allows lawmakers to adjust the tax relief at any time.

“The legislature is still playing games with this and this is why I think ultimately, we’re still going to have to go to the ballot to provide real property tax relief,” says Michael Fields with Advance Colorado.

The conservative group is pushing ballot measures to cut the residential assessment rate to near-2022 levels and then cap future revenue growth at 4% year over year while protecting education funding.

“If the state can backfill, then we think they should. Backfill any local districts that need to see that backfill,” says Fields. “Six hundred bills come up a year. They’re putting more and more money into things that aren’t local services.”

Fields says 39 other states already have property tax caps. But Hansen points to California as an example of why they’re a bad idea: “The commission put in a lot of hard work and we’ve come up with, I think, a much more balanced approach, and the commission voted almost unanimously to say ‘no’ to hard caps.”

The bill would also protect education funding while partially backfilling special districts like fire and ambulance. Local governments would also receive some backfill but only for three years. The money would come from the state education fund, state reserve, general fund and TABOR — or Taxpayer Bill of Rights — surplus.

The bill doesn’t specify how much of the backfill will come from TABOR refunds, but that could be a sticking point.

The measure also allows homeowners to defer any growth in their property taxes until they sell their homes and lowers the commercial assessment rate to 25.5% over five years.