WEEK OF MAY 29, 2025
VOLUME 24 | ISSUE 13
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Commissioners claim victory in lawsuit over meetings law Douglas County judge turns down request for preliminary injunction BY HALEY LENA HLENA@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
she faced while attempting to rebuild her identity and how mental health can impact the body’s physical ability to heal. Since the release of her first book, Simard has released two more: “Heal Forward: Transform Emotional Scars into Impact,” and “Unlikely Gifts Unwrapped: Unfiltered Reflections on Life After Breast Cancer,” which looks back at the decade of bizarre experiences one can have after treatment.
A Douglas County judge on May 20 denied a preliminary injunction request made by Rep. Robert Marshall, former Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas and Lone Tree resident Julie Gooden. District Court Judge Robert Lung found there were no violations of Colorado’s Open Meetings Law during the Douglas County Commissioners’ advanced planning meetings and elected officials luncheons. On April 22, Marshall, Thomas and Gooden filed a lawsuit against the Douglas County Commissioners claiming that the board had discussed public matters, like home rule, in a series of “behind closed doors” and “without public notice” meetings. Earlier this month, Lung heard testimony regarding the Open Meetings Law violation claims and requested that both parties submit a proposal. According to the ruling obtained by the Douglas County News-Press, the court had to determine, based on evidence, if the Open Meetings Law applies to advanced planning meetings. The ruling states: “While the court is unwilling to rule that a discussion about an election can never implicate a policymaking function, the court is satisfied that there was no evidence of any policy-making function at these advance planning meetings and therefore, on the evidence before the court, the Open Meetings Law did not apply to these meetings.” Lung also decided that the elected officials luncheons were not subject to the state’s Open Meetings Law. He noted that the March 25 adoption of the two resolutions concerning
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At the end of 2015, Diane Simard completed treatment for her non-aggressive form of cancer that behaved aggressively.
COURTESY OF DIANE SIMARD
Life after breast cancer, and lessons learned Highlands Ranch woman shares her story of survival BY HALEY LENA HLENA@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
For most of Diane Simard’s life, cancer was a topic that no one really spoke about. Simard, a Highlands Ranch resident, was a career woman. Her background in business
writing led her to become the senior vice president for investor and media relations at Bye Aerospace, an aerospace engineering company. But in February 2015, “this unexpected thing called breast cancer hit,” said Simard. As a way to deal with the unwanted emotions that a cancer diagnosis brings, Simard looked to what she knew: writing. Throughout her treatment, Simard sent email updates to her close ones, and she kept a jour-
VOICES: 10 | LIFE: 14 | CALENDAR: 17 | PUZZLES: 19
nal. Combining the details of her journal and the stories from her youth, Simard released a book in 2019 called, “The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer.” “I spent my whole career making other people look good … telling their stories, and this was the first chance I had to talk about myself and really learn more about who I am,” Simard said. She added that it’s not a “do this, don’t do that” type of book. Rather, it’s about how traumatizing cancer is, the struggles
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