“The satanist who plans on giving the invocation at Wednesday’s Grand Junction City Council meeting said he’s not looking to ‘make a mockery’ of the invocation and won’t be putting on a show,” reports The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “I’m not a theatrical person,” he said via phone. “I own no hooded robes and no small animals will be accompanying me.” The self-identifying satanist, who declined to give his name and said he fears retribution from the community, said he considers himself a private person who wouldn’t normally get up in front of a crowd and give a presentation. But he said he’s willing to do so at the council meeting to make a point — that the policy the city has is all-inclusive, and that means satanists, too, in accordance with the law.”

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“Longmont City Manager Harold Dominguez has not yet announced whether he’ll go along with a city staff recommendation to exterminate a small number of prairie dogs that have made a home on part of a former landfill east of the city,” reports The Longmont Times-Call. “Dan Wolford, Longmont’s land program administrator, said Dominguez has been out of town this past week, “but we expect that he will provide direction in the coming weeks” about what to do about the prairie dogs. The city staff had taken the position that the prairie dogs — which apparently migrated onto the city-owned property that’s a onetime landfill immediately south of the Longmont Police and Boulder County Sheriff’s Office’s firing range and training facility at 10916 Weld County Road 5 — should be exterminated, rather than relocated or trapped and donated as food for black-footed ferret or raptor-recovery programs.”

“For at least 369 Larimer County voters, even the potential for their personal information to be misused by the federal government was enough to compel them to withdraw their voter registrations,” reports The Coloradoan in Fort Collins. “And that’s concerning for groups working to increase the number of registered voters and who now may have their work cut out for them for the 2018 general election. Between June 29, the day after the state’s request for data, and July 19, the number of Larimer County voters who withdrew their registration totaled 369, according to Larimer County Clerk Angela Myers. According to state data, the day that saw the largest number of withdrawals in Larimer County was July 10, with 116 people who withdrew their voter registration.”

“Dropping into Steamboat Springs down Rabbit Ears Pass and spotting a spinning cloud in the Yampa Valley was the last thing Becky Plummer expected,” reports The Steamboat Pilot. “Plummer was traveling back home to Craig after a visit to Oklahoma’s tornado country when she spotted the cloud. Plummer took photos of it at 10:44 a.m. Wednesday. “My initial assessment is it is a funnel cloud,” said Andrew Lyons, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction. He noted that the difference between a funnel cloud and a tornado is that a tornado touches the ground.”

“Concerns about the source and intention of a state grant aimed at increasing tourism in the wake of the 2013 flood will come back before the Loveland City Council when the group meets on Tuesday,” reports The Loveland Reporter-Herald. “On July 5, councilors unanimously approved spending $150,000 from the city’s lodging tax funds to put on an event called “Winter Wonderlights,” which would occur during December at the Chapungu Sculpture Garden east of The Promenade Shops at Centerra. By making the appropriation, the city would be in line for a $100,000 refund from the state’s Tourism Marketing Grant fund aimed to help communities affected by the flood.”

“Motorists winding their way along the two-lane mountain road that leads to the historic mining communities of Cripple Creek and Victor pass by a clearing known as Gillette Flats,” reports The Gazette in Colorado Springs. “The old ghost town’s claim to fame occurred in 1895, when it was the site of the first and only bullfight held in Colorado – before an audience of 50,000. Today, the lush meadow filled with wildflowers and dotted by a few houses is well-known for an obscure watering hole by the roadside.”

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“Retail sales are up for the first half of this year, but not as much as city officials anticipated. Some business leaders say summer sales may make up for the slow start, but those numbers are not yet available,” reports The Durango Herald. “City records show a 1.7 percent increase in general city sales tax collections from December through May compared with the same period last year. But the city budgeted for a 3.7 percent increase in sales tax collections in 2017 compared with 2016. City Manager Ron LeBlanc said he asked department heads to be as fiscally conservative as possible given the slow growth. The city has not trimmed back on hiring or delayed construction projects as a result of the lower-than-expected sales tax collections, he said.”

“For many baby boomers — a generation exposed to the transitory zap of an annealing, collective spirit steeped in ’60s psychedelia — a reintroduction of wide-scale marijuana use in the modern age has struck a relatively familiar chord,” reports The Boulder Daily Camera. “So says Charlotte Peyton, vice president of business development at Pueblo-based Stratos, maker of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products, who along with a pair of doctors will hold a presentation about the benefits of contemporary cannabis use at Louisville’s Balfour Senior Living in August — the first in a string of talks addressing how marijuana can help those among Colorado’s 65-plus crowd. It comes as the plant’s stigma, one bound to it for decades when counterculture sensibilities dissipated after the ‘Summer of Love’ soured, has slowly lifted in the years since Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana.”

“No one really knows how many homes throughout Colorado are being used to grow weed, and not all of them suffer the extensive [mold] damage that the Lynns found,” reports The Denver Post. “But law enforcement authorities say they’re seeing more and more houses that have been left with thousands of dollars in damage from marijuana grow operations. Denver police Detective Brian Matos estimates that marijuana is grown in one of every 10 homes in the city — ‘everywhere from one plant to 1,000 plants.’ Colorado law bars growing marijuana outdoors, so even those growing a small number of plants legally must do so inside.”

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By Corey Hutchins, The Colorado Independent