Live, unofficial results for the El Paso County Board of Commissioners primary — Districts 1 and 5, updated through the night.
Author Archives: Michael Christensen
Posted inGovernment
The Final Countdown: Who Is Funding El Paso County’s Next Commissioners
Before El Paso County’s June 30 primary: which commissioner candidates are funded by developers versus individual donors, by district — and how to vote.
Posted inGovernment
Choose Wisely
Buc-ee’s lost a public vote in Palmer Lake, then bought the land anyway and turned to El Paso County — where a citizen never gets to vote, where the Board of County Commissioners has denied just two of 476 land-use decisions since 2018 — neither a housing or commercial development — and where the company is now trying to avoid even that board. An examination of eight years of votes, two decades of campaign money, and the small circle of people who keep electing one another.
Posted inLocal News
Buc-ee’s Tries the Back Door
A travel-center giant that much of the Tri-Lakes has opposed—and that would sit about two miles from the new Greenland wildlife crossing—is asking a single county official to wave it through, by ruling that a 74,000-square-foot plaza is just a “convenience store.”
Posted inOpinion
Why an Independent Paper, in a Town That Left the Parties
Half of Monument’s registered voters now belong to no party. The case for an independent, issue-based local paper.
Posted inGovernment
Monument Town Survey: What the Words Are Worth
The Monument use tax on the November ballot: the town’s own survey shows the 1.5% road-tax measure can fail or pass depending on the wording.
Posted inGovernment
Monument Town Council Meeting: June 15, 2026
Council leans against data centers and steers a 1.5% road-tax measure toward the November ballot.
Posted inLocal News
At Highway 83 and Walker Road, a Setback for Density
El Paso County’s planning commission has voted 6-1 to recommend rejecting two rezonings that would allow apartments beside Monument Academy and the rural Walden neighborhood. The county commissioners will have the last word on July 23rd. For the better part of four hours on June 18th, the El Paso County Planning Commission listened to residents […]
Posted inSchools
Right-Sizing the Rolls: D38’s 2026-27 Budget Braces for a Smaller District
Lewis-Palmer School District 38 will hold a public hearing and vote on June 22 on a $53.3m general-fund budget that trims about 35 jobs to absorb a $1.7m fall in state funding. The cause is not scandal but arithmetic — fewer children, flat per-pupil dollars and a reserve that has halved in two years.
Posted inGovernment
Permission Granted: A County Board That Has Never Said No
Since 2021 the El Paso County commissioners have approved every land-use application they have voted on. Follow the money, and the pattern looks less like coincidence.