sleepystork.com

Denver just poured $60 million and four years of construction into a gleaming makeover of its Central Library, funded largely by the 2017 Elevate Denver bond. City leaders cut the ribbon last November, calling it a “world-class downtown living room.” The building is a 21st-century public space built for all.

But eight months later, that living room still pulls the shades every Friday.

Starting July 6, the city’s flagship library will operate Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will remain completely closed on Fridays. Evening hours? Still none. That leaves the public with just 44 hours of access per week — far fewer than what’s typical in similarly sized U.S. cities.

Denver residents have paid not once, but twice for better access. The 2017 bond covered the renovation. Then, in 2022, voters approved Referred Question 2I, a property-tax increase pitched specifically as the key to expanding library hours — especially on nights and weekends.

Despite that promise, Central continues to close before dinner every day and remains dark on a weekday that working families, students, and unhoused residents rely on for internet access, research help, and basic community services.

Other cities don’t treat their central libraries like optional luxuries. Seattle’s Central Library is open seven days a week, including evenings. So is Minneapolis. Austin and Kansas City also offer full-week service, with multiple nights open past 6 p.m. These peer cities provide between 58 and 65 hours of weekly public access at their main branches. Denver offers just 44.

What makes that shortfall even harder to understand is the budget behind it. Denver Public Library’s annual operating budget now stands at $95 million — nearly identical to Seattle’s. The City of Denver’s general fund will grow to $1.76 billion in 2025. And yet, no new full-time library positions have been added.

Insiders estimate that keeping Central open on Fridays and adding just two evenings per week would cost around $1 million a year — roughly 1% of the dedicated mill levy voters approved in 2022. The money exists. What’s missing is the will to spend it where it was promised.

The library may cite staffing shortages or safety concerns near Civic Center Park. But other cities face the same pressures — and still prioritize keeping their civic institutions open when people need them most.

City leaders like to call the Central Library a model of 21st-century public space — a cornerstone of civic life. But a public institution that closes every Friday and never stays open past dinner doesn’t anchor anything. It isolates. What Denver needs isn’t more ribbon-cuttings — it needs consistent, reliable access to the spaces people rely on most.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about logistics. It’s about broken promises. The 2017 bond was marketed as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to modernize core public infrastructure. The 2022 tax was sold as a way to restore library hours and reestablish libraries as true community anchors.

Yet today Denver’s Central Library — the city’s busiest branch, housing vital archives, youth programs, and the system’s largest meeting spaces — keeps fewer hours than many neighborhood branches right here in Denver and lags well behind the main libraries of comparable cities.

The renovation is finished. The collection is stocked. The staff is ready. All that stands between Denver residents and the full use of their library is City Hall’s willingness to turn the key. Until it does, the Central Library will remain Denver’s costliest “Closed” sign — $60 million spent to tell taxpayers, “Come back some other time.”

William Porter is a longtime Denver resident and public-affairs professional who has spent more than a decade working in and alongside local government in Colorado. 

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The heart of Wyoming pumps 1,500 gallons of healing water per minute from the world’s largest single mineral hot spring, making it an unrivalled place of healing and peaceful encounter over countless generations.

As Indigenous Peoples we have always connected to the power of these healing waters, that we hold sacred, with pools documented long before contact.

In the Shoshone language, they are called: bah guewana, smoking waters; in the Arapaho language: xonou’o, where the healing water turns into air, unifying with the ecosystem; and in the Cheyenne language: tsexhoeomotometo mahpe, where the breath of life comes out of the water.

In a reckless move risking local, regional and statewide economic and legal certainty, the state has been asserting unilateral decision-making power regarding the Hot Springs State Park in Thermopolis, trying to build on the illegal attempts of dispossession of our peoples, while currently pushing for major changes to the park.

We fear these plans will turn our sacred springs into a playground for the rich, inaccessible to the many tribal members who hold these waters sacred.

As Indigenous Peoples we are afraid this will result in the desecration and further commercialization of our sacred Hot Springs. All this has been and continues to be done without the consent of our peoples and revenue-sharing, both required to recognize us as decision-makers, including regarding current attempts to hand over facilities to an out-of-state operator and large infrastructure investments that stand to change our sacred Hot Springs forever.

As Indigenous Peoples we have to be recognized as decision makers regarding these sacred hot springs to protect them for all future generations and to ensure free access for our people to enable healing from intergenerational effects of genocide, which is more important now than ever.

Both massacres of Native Americans and policies, such as the federal boarding school system that forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families, meet the international definition of genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The intergenerational healing provided by our sacred hot springs has to be recognized. Our Arapaho and Cheyenne ancestors went directly there to heal after the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, all the way through our homelands, from South Eastern Colorado, along the Eastern frontal range of the Rocky Mountains, to the heart of Wyoming, all promised in the Treaties of Fort Laramie.

These sacred hot springs were included in the original Wind River Reservation, created long before the state of Wyoming, and today it sits at its center as the sole reservation in the state. The inclusion of the hot springs in the original reservation constitutes evidence of the importance of these healing waters to us, with Owl Creek marking the boundary to the North.

The old town of Thermopolis was located 10 miles away, outside the original reservation. Wyoming History has documented that the darkest times that followed — with disease decimating our populations by more than half and hunger reigning because the buffalo had been eradicated — settlers started to push into the reservation, especially the hot springs area.

The pressure on our tribes was tremendous; we were within 2 years of running out of rations, when the federal government sent their negotiator James McLaughlin to try to force the surrender of the hot springs for an offer of initially $50,000 and then $60,000 and rations. According to Geoffrey O’Gara’s book “What You See in Clear Water,”  another Indian agent called the offer “abundantly low for the finest hot spring on Earth.”

In light of the duress our tribes were under any agreement in itself is on questionable legal ground; what makes it even more legally questionable is that the vast majority of the payments were never made, meaning that the transfer has never been properly effected.

Even then, if anything, the relationship has been between the federal government and our sovereign tribes around the sacred hot springs, putting them in the same category as Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Access to these and all other national parks is free for all tribal members and the same should be implemented for this park and all pools in it as places of intergenerational healing.

It makes it even more questionable how the state of Wyoming ever imposed itself on the area, not just the one square mile that they claim as Hot Springs State Park, but the 10 miles by 10 miles that they illegally claim as removed from the reservation, which covers the current town of Thermopolis and beyond.

It is imperative for the state to recognize our peoples and tribes as decision-makers regarding these sacred hot springs and lands. There are an increasing number of examples of co-management of parks with Indigenous Peoples, which the Hot Springs State Park is a prime candidate for to implement joint decision making, one of the longest standing examples being Gwaii Haanas National Park which is co-managed with the Haida People and has now been extended to the whole island chain.

What the state otherwise risks is great economic and legal uncertainty for the local community and the whole state. To put the value of the land into context, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon in late December 2024 approved the sale of one square mile of undeveloped land to the federal government so it could be added to the Grand Teton National Park, for $100 million. We are talking about 100 square miles of developed land and the finest hot springs on Earth and outstanding liabilities for 130 years.

In addition to the failure to recognize our larger proprietary interests, this does not meet the standards of consultation with tribes necessary under U.S. law, and the requirement of free prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples under international law, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that the United States have committed to implementing.

As Indigenous Peoples we not only have the strongest connection to these sacred waters and lands, we also hold the most long-term knowledge that is key to ensuring their protection and sustainable use; of central importance has to be unlimited free access to these sacred waters for our Peoples to support the healing from intergenerational effects of genocide.

William C’Hair is a Northern Arapaho leader and knowledge keeper. Wes Martel is an Eastern Shoshone leader and knowledge keeper, and Phillip Whiteman Jr. is a Northern Cheyenne traditional chief and knowledge keeper.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The headlines are loud again, full of warnings about economic slowdown, falling business confidence, housing anxiety, tariff threats and more. It’s no surprise that many in Colorado are feeling jittery — tempted to make significant changes to their investments and business plans.

But the wiser move right now may be to pause. Not freeze. Not panic. Just … pause.

After weeks of examining economic reports, reviewing business filings, and speaking with executives, economists and residents across the state, a clear picture has emerged: The dominant narrative of decline, pessimism and retreat doesn’t align with what’s actually happening on the ground.

This is a moment where noise is drowning out signals, and people’s instinct to avoid risk often kicks in before we’ve had a chance to consider the facts.

Yes, confidence among Colorado business leaders has dropped. According to an index from the University of Colorado Boulder, it’s now at its third-lowest point in over two decades. But confidence is not a measure of economic reality — it’s a feeling, and feelings are not facts. Ask someone how they feel about the economy, and you’re just as likely to hear their views on the political climate.

Surveys may register anxiety, but actual behavior, of both consumers and businesses, suggests a more measured outlook.

Spending remains resilient. In the first quarter of 2025, credit card usage in Colorado rose 9.4% from a year earlier, ranking the state 16th nationwide, according to the Federal Reserve. Household finances are solid, too. Mortgage payments as a share of income are near record lows, thanks largely to widespread refinancing during the pandemic. And in the Denver metro area, home sellers received at least 99% of their listing prices in the first four months of the year, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors.

Consumers, in short, have a cushion. They also have options.

The same is true for businesses. Across sectors, companies have slimmed down, increased efficiency and developed operational models with built-in flexibility. These are not firms bracing for collapse; they are lean, adaptable and capable of making strategic shifts without panic.

This brings us to a practical but often overlooked principle: don’t confuse activity with progress. In an uncertain economy, the urge to do something can be misleading. Movement for its own sake doesn’t always lead in the right direction.

The better approach is balanced and deliberate. Don’t overreact, and don’t underreact. Don’t chase headlines or pivot every time the narrative shifts. Instead, focus on the fundamentals of your business, your household and your local economy.

Context matters. This is not 2008. It’s not even 2020. Over the past 20 years, the U.S. has endured only two major recessions with deep, lasting effects. Most other downturns have been noisy but ultimately fleeting.

Today’s conditions, while uneasy, remain fundamentally sound. Colorado banks are well-capitalized. Credit quality is high. Liquidity is strong. Businesses that qualified for loans a year ago still can, and banks — facing a lull in big-ticket deals like mergers, expansions and large-scale hiring — are often competing more aggressively for new lending opportunities.

That’s not instability. That’s discipline.

Even amid caution, optimism persists. In the first quarter of this year, new business filings in Colorado surged. People exit businesses for all sorts of reasons, but they start them for only one: They believe there’s a future worth building.

So why all the gloom? Part of it is psychological. Colorado has spent much of the past two decades as a top-performing state, leading in job growth, population gains and innovation. That high-flyer status shaped expectations.

Now the pace has slowed. Denver continues to grow, but not as rapidly. The wave of young professionals has eased, replaced in part by older adults relocating to be near children and grandchildren. It’s a different type of growth — quieter and less headline-friendly.

To some, that shift may feel like a letdown. In reality, it’s a necessary recalibration.

There’s a silver lining, especially in housing. Years of intense demand led to a boom in multifamily construction. That supply has now overtaken demand, bringing down rents across the Denver metro area. According to CBRE, average rents fell 4.1% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2025. That may be unwelcome news for some developers, but it’s an essential correction for a city where affordability had become a major barrier.

If you’re a business owner, this is the time to stay grounded. Let strategy be your compass. Adjust your tactics when needed, but don’t abandon the fundamentals. If you decide to pull back, do it based on the data that directly impacts your operation, and not just what’s being said in the broader conversation.

If you’re a resident, particularly one concerned about jobs or housing, take a wider view. Colorado’s economic strengths — its skilled workforce, its well-managed banks and its enduring culture of entrepreneurship — remain intact.

The real danger isn’t recession — it’s overreaction. It’s mistaking a slowdown for a freefall, and fear for fact. Colorado’s economy may not be sprinting anymore. But it’s still moving, still breathing, still building what’s next.

Joe Nimmons is the Colorado region president of Huntington Bank. Ian Wyatt is the director of economics at Huntington Bank.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Do not despair about Rep. Ron Weinberg’s gross behavior, but rejoice that brave women came forward to share their experiences and quickly shut down his political advancement.

Do I know for certain that Heather Booth, an elected school board member from Elizabeth, and Jacqueline Anderson, the former vice chair of the Mesa County Republican Party are telling the truth in their letter recounting Weinberg’s inappropriate remarks? No, but if #MeToo taught us anything, it’s that the cost of speaking up in politics is high, and remaining silent is rewarded. These brave women appear to have no motive other than to do the right thing by coming forward. Also, others witnessed the remarks.

Weinberg has denied that he made sexual remarks to the women and has hired an attorney.

However, he also quickly stepped down from his bid for a leadership position for Colorado House Republicans. This is progress, even though House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese did not use her position of influence to pressure him to drop his bid.

The #MeToo movement hit Colorado’s state Capitol hard in 2017, culminating in the unprecedented ouster of one lawmaker – Rep. Steve Lebsock – who was accused of making unwanted sexual advances to interns and another lawmaker. However, few people remember that two other lawmakers faced a reckoning for their bad behavior and that one of them remained in office and served out his term as if nothing had happened. Rumors about the other lawmaker’s bad behavior swirled, but nothing else came to the surface.

At the time, I wrote a column describing working at the Capitol as a “gauntlet of sexual harassment:” unwanted advances, alcohol-fueled inappropriate remarks, and just plain old sexism. The worst part was the complete lack of accountability for elected officials. There was no human resources department to consider a complaint, and while accountable to the public, politicians seemed secure in their knowledge that no one would dare to speak out.

But that has changed.

The Colorado General Assembly now has a robust process for considering complaints. In the wake of the Lebsock saga, lawmakers created “workplace expectations” to give employers and employees at the Capitol standards. The House and Senate ethics committees have investigated everything from lawmakers driving drunk or appearing at events intoxicated to a senator’s mistreatment of her staff and subsequent creation of a fake letter of support.

There are holes in the safety net. The ethics committee doesn’t have purview over the complaints about Weinberg – the events happened before the man was elected to the Colorado House to represent District 51 in Larimer County.

Despite those holes, accountability continues to come for Colorado lawmakers who behave badly. Yes, voters always have elections to hold elected officials responsible for their choices, but voters can’t exercise that power if they aren’t informed. Formal investigations help empower people.

No one is circling the wagons to defend Weinberg, or sitting idly by hoping the allegations are forgotten.

The process is not perfect. Bad behavior will continue.

But women and men now know they don’t have to tolerate obscenity. The women who spoke up have their own power in this state, and I applaud them for using their positions to ensure other women don’t suffer the nonsense Weinberg spewed their way.

Megan Schrader is the opinion editor of The Denver Post.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Updated July 9, 2025 at 11:14 a.m. Due to an editor’s error, this column was updated to reflect the fact that the House ethics policy does apply to journalists and lobbyists. The column was also updated to show that Pugliese did not pressure Weinberg to drop his bid for a leadership role. 

Communications experts suggest that the best way to get a conversation going with someone you disagree with is to ask them to talk about themselves. Unfortunately, I have found that asking “What the heck is wrong with you??!?” is really not a good way to start a productive conversation. But I am not ready to abandon it entirely.

My most recent voicing of that question was in response to last week’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., had canceled its subscriptions to the 3,000 or so scientific journals published by Springer Nature. According to Andrew Nixon, the HHS spokesperson, “All contracts with Springer Nature are terminated or no longer active. Precious taxpayer dollars should be (sic) not be used on unused subscriptions to junk science.”

As a former editor at Nature Publishing, I would quibble with Nixon’s misinformed assessment of the quality of science published in the peer-reviewed Nature journals, and the central importance of most of those publications for overall scientific knowledge and progress. I suspect his real objection to the Nature titles (or the objection of his boss, whom he is obviously parroting) is not that the published science is junk, but rather that it contradicts the pseudoscientific brain-worm droppings of the HHS secretary and those around him. In that context, “What the heck is wrong with you?” seems like an eminently reasonable thing to ask.

To be fair, there is a lamentable increase in the number of scientific papers being published that can only be described as, well, “junk science.” This contamination of the literature includes an alarming proliferation of outright fraudulent publications in an expanding avalanche of new digital-only “science journals.” The primary reason for this rapid growth is the unrelenting pressure on scientists to publish often and in as good a journal as possible to earn tenure, hire post-docs and techs, keep grant money coming in, and maybe even found a biotech pipe-dream company. Publication count and quality have pushed aside virtually all other metrics of scientific worth in many places.

Sadly and predictably, despite ongoing efforts to stop it, publication quality has suffered as the quantity has increased. About two million papers across all science publishing history were indexed in the main publication databases in 2016. Five years later, three million papers have appeared, despite a drop in the number of new PhD students and researchers. Fewer scientists are writing and/or reviewing far more papers than ever before: an unsustainable situation. As a result, the quality of peer review — the primary guardian of scientific quality — suffers, which in turn leads to crappy papers and the not-entirely inaccurate statements like those of HHS’s Nixon. 

It is also true that the leading global scientific publishers are for-profit companies that generally achieve large annual profit margins, most of that coming from the strained budgets of academic and corporate libraries. By “bundling” a bunch of less worthy journals with their flagship titles, they can command eye-popping prices for subscription access. There is a fundamental tension between the goals of publishing meaningful science and publishing to promote shareholders, a tension that can be used by opponents like RFK to raise questions about the whole enterprise. 

But to focus solely on the negatives of what is an overwhelmingly positive aspect of the scientific enterprise is exactly what the Trump administration wants. They are proficient at ferreting out the less-desirable facets of many of our institutions and programs and turning them into the defining features for public consumption. Although I can’t entirely dismiss HHS’s formal claims about junk science, I can insist that over-emphasizing the extent of those claims is only distracting from the much larger overall good provided by scientific publishing. 

Being constantly on defense over trumped-up negatives, whether on this topic or on immigration, gender identity, health care, etc., is exhausting. It is also demoralizing to see most of our elected representatives mired down themselves in defensive, almost apologetic crouches rather than pushing back — hard. Maybe we can start changing the current “on-our-heels” dynamic by going on the offense, including asking publicly and loudly where appropriate, “What the heck is wrong with you?” 

Fintan Steele is an ex-Benedictine monk and priest with a Ph.D. in biology/genetics. He spent most of his life in science communications, including scientific publishing and, most recently, for biopharma and academic centers. He and his husband live in Hygiene. Email: fsteele1@me.com.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.