Saturday’s Lynyrd Skynyrd concert at the Ford Amphitheater was the most strongly upwind evening in three years of records, and it drew the largest response the resident-run noise map has ever logged on a night the wind was blowing the other way. It was also the second show running that the Independent’s own sound forecast […]
Author Archives: Michael Christensen
Michael Christensen is the editor of The Monument Independent. He holds a BA in history and an MS in statistics, and has spent 30 years in marketing — the last 15 focused on digital marketing, data analytics, research, and artificial intelligence. In his professional work he is Director of Marketing Operations, Marketing Analytics, and AI Initiatives.
For the past ten years he has worked in educational research, land use assessment, and local government research — the three subjects that account for much of what this paper covers. The statistics training informs how the Independent handles numbers: test scores, campaign finance filings, and public-meeting vote records are traced to primary documents, and the method is published alongside the findings.
He is a married father of four school-age children. He coaches youth soccer, hikes in the Colorado mountains, fly fishes, and reads historical non-fiction and, less defensibly, books about data analysis strategy.
Posted inLocal News
The County’s Zoning Rewrite Comes to the Woodmoor Barn Monday
El Paso County brings its draft Land Development Code to the Woodmoor Barn on Monday, September 21. Comments on the 516-page draft close October 16.
Posted inLocal News
Gleneagle Removes All Five Directors and Seats Its Challengers
Gleneagle’s owners removed all five directors of their civic association on September 15 and elected the five challengers who had campaigned for the recall. Five days on, neither the association nor the group that won has published an account of the result, and no certified tally has been released. The question this newspaper asked three […]
Posted inLocal News
A Yes Vote with a Warning: The Needles Rezoning Goes to Commissioners
The Planning Commission backed smaller lots off Highway 83, 6-3. One of the six asked where it stops.
Posted inGovernment
Colorado Springs Will Decide Project Taurus a Week After Its Election
Colorado Springs postponed Project Taurus to April 13, 2027, a week after its election. The approval rests on which of two old approvals counts as the original.
Posted inEvents News
Tri-Lakes Halloween Headquarters: Trunk-or-Treats, Oktoberfests and Pumpkin Patches, Mapped
Monument Halloween events, Palmer Lake trunk-or-treats, Oktoberfests and pumpkin patches across the Tri-Lakes, mapped and listed by day, and free for any host to add.
Posted inGovernment
Vertex Consulting Files Its Rezonings With the Department It Came From
Craig Dossey ran El Paso County’s planning department and Nina Ruiz was his planning manager. Their firm has eight rezoning files open at the county, two of them before the Board on September 24.
Posted inLocal News
Gleneagle’s Proxy Form Names a Director Facing Removal
Correction, September 15, 2026: An earlier version of this article said that Ray Micklewright had not replied to questions from The Independent. He replied at 6:55 p.m. on September 13, some six hours after publication and well inside the deadline The Independent had set. His reply was not seen before the article was updated later […]
Posted inSchools
The State Released Its Preliminary Framework Scoring. Where D38 Earned Its Points.
Colorado’s 2026 preliminary school and district performance ratings, decomposed: how Lewis-Palmer 38 earned 73.2 percent of its points, by grade band and subject, with every local school and The Classical Academy.
Posted inLocal News
A Robotics Room in Monument Became a Community Workshop in Palmer Lake
Monumental Impact began in 2020 because a home-based business could not host a high-school intern properly. Six years on it runs a workshop at 866 Highway 105 in Palmer Lake with a computer-controlled router, a ninety-watt laser and a rack of 3D printers, open on a monthly membership to teenagers through retirees. It marked its […]