Serving Lakewood, Wheat Ridge and beyond
WEEK OF JUNE 26, 2025
VOLUME 41 | ISSUE 47
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County proposes new short-term rental regulations Changes would ease process, lower fees for operators BY JANE REUTER JANE@COTLN.ORG
able in high schools. But shortly after the committee’s decision, all librarians with the title in their collections received a district directive to remove it entirely, citing an undisclosed decision by a “district leadership team.” “We were told it was not appropriate for any Jeffco school, which directly contradicted the committee’s recommendation,” LoSasso said. “The rationale given referenced the district’s tragic history with Columbine, which made no sense to me given the book’s premise.” LoSasso said the book is a science fiction story in which a powerful alien becomes a junior high school teacher and challenges his students to assassinate him before he destroys the Earth. Tara Degelmann, Jeffco’s Library Services Coordinator, in an email to the board, said the book was removed districtwide because it depicts students attacking and attempting to kill a teacher, which she described as fundamentally inappropriate for a school library collection, regardless of the book’s fictional and fantastical framing.
Jefferson County estimates that its unincorporated areas include more than 700 short-term rentals, fewer than 50 of which have the needed permits to legally operate. It’s a compliance rate so out of whack that county officials don’t blame property owners, but their own regulations. This year, they’re trying to fix that. “If you’ve got a regulation in place that has a complicated rate of 5% or under, I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s a problem of compliance,” said Russell Clark, Jefferson County planning supervisor. “There’s probably a problem with the regulations as well.” Clark said that’s in part because Jefferson County adopted its regulations on short-term rentals early, when they weren’t a permitted use and before their popularity became widespread. “We were probably one of the earlier counties to have rules on short-term rentals, when the only way you could do it was to rezone your property,” he said. “There was never a thought then that people down in the plains and suburban areas would have short-term rentals. But clearly if you see a map of where they’re advertised in Jefferson County, you see a large number on the plains.” With an aim toward making compliance easier, faster and less expensive for short-term rental owners, the county is proposing a new set of regulations. It recently issued a draft of them, and wants the public’s feedback. The proposed regulations would remove the requirement for a public hearing before obtaining new and renewal STR permits and eliminate limitations on lot size and zone districts, replacing them with clear, objective criteria for administrative approvals. It would also lower the fee schedule to reflect the reduced demand on staff time. The proposed regulations would also allow STRs in Accessory Dwelling Units, Duplexes, and Townhomes and define two types of STRs: Primary Residence STR and Investment Property STR, with specific caps and separation requirements.
SEE CENSORSHIP, P7
SEE PROPOSAL, P2
Mandalay Middle School librarian Tiffany LoSasso addresses the Jefferson County Board of Education on May 29, 2025. JEFFERSON COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Librarians claim policy rollback opened doorWESTMINSTER to censorship
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Policy rollback and opaque decisions spur Jeffco librarians to seek clarity BY SUZIE GLASSMAN SUZIE@COTLN.ORG
On May 29, Tiffany LoSasso stood before the Jefferson County school board flanked by fellow Digital Teacher Librarians from across the district. The Mandalay Middle School librarian delivered a carefully sourced, deeply personal plea: restore transparency and professional oversight to how Jeffco handles school library books. “We implore you to make these changes as soon as possible,” LoSasso said, referencing the recent passage of Senate Bill 25-063, which requires Colorado school districts to adopt clear procedures for the acquisition, removal and review of library materials by Sept. 1. LoSasso, who testified in favor of the bill before the Colorado Senate Education Committee in February earlier this year, said she now feels misled. “I told lawmakers that Jeffco already had strong, protective policies in place,” she said. “But I didn’t know they had been removed. I felt betrayed.” Jeffco once had such a policy, LoSasso explained. Known as IJL, it required the
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formation of trained review committees and offered clear protection for DTLs and the materials they managed. But in June 2023, during a period without a district-level library coordinator, IJL was repealed and replaced with a more generic policy, IJ. The new version contains just one sentence referencing library materials: “The teacher librarian, along with district personnel, have shared authority for selecting and eliminating library materials.” LoSasso and other librarians said they were never informed of the change, and only discovered it recently when their decisions were overruled without explanation. “We didn’t know the change had been made. We didn’t know that we had lost so much,” LoSasso said.
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VOICES: 8 | PUZZLES: 10
Book removal raises questions
The turning point came in January 2024, when they were asked to remove a popular manga series, Assassination Classroom. Manga is a style of Japanese comics and graphic novels. A district book review committee, following Jeffco’s existing procedures, determined the series should only be avail-
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