Commerce City in the News

At its June 2nd meeting, City Council took up one of the most pressing issues facing our community, addressing a problem so egregious, that it is keeping citizens awake at night, making Commerce City virtually unlivable, and stopping growth and progress in its tracks.

Was this issue crime? Homelessness? Deteriorating infrastructure?

No, it was gas stations.

Yes, the principal issue taken up by Council was not what to do about the crime rate or the homeless problem (which two citizens during public comment showed up in person, pleading the council to do something about), or anything so trivial as that – but a proposal by Council Member Chacon to draft an ordinance imposing a moratorium on gas stations and convenience stores.

Faithful readers of Eye may recall the post we did resurfacing the video that Adams County School District 14 board member Lucy Molina took of herself having a meltdown over Commerce City council member Craig Kim’s attendance at an Adams 14 public meeting on April 16.

Well, that story has just gotten both weirder and worse.

By way of background, the whole thing started when Kim publicly raised objections to the district’s hiring of Tiffany Narcisse as the new Adams 14 Junior High School Principal. In an email to the Board, which he later made public in the interests of transparency, Kim raised reasonable concerns related to Ms. Narcisse’s previous job as a school administrator in Fairfax County, VA. Specifically, those concerns focused on a serious lapse of judgment over her reaction to the death of a student at the school, for which she was forced to apologize following an outcry from parents; as well as a damning financial audit of the school while she was principal.

There is a school of thought – a rather commonly held one, we would think – that holds if you steal something from someone, then you – not the person from whom you stole it – should be held accountable.

That is apparently not a universally held principle by some elected to represent Commerce City residents and businesses.

At a study session last week, City Council discussed a proposed ordinance to ban shopping carts from city parks and other public spaces; generally, shopping carts that were stolen from local grocery stores and used by homeless folks as mobile storage. Those caught with a shopping cart in such a place would receive a citation. This would in fact be a broadening of a current ordinance that prohibits shopping carts from being removed from the premise that owns them, enforceable by fining – the business from which the cart was removed.

Now the good news is that the cooler heads charged with enforcing this law report that no businesses have actually been fined for this.