Local News

A Chatfield State Park ranger who rescued a fisherman who fell through the ice in early February says the incident calls to mind the precautions necessary for recreation on frozen water.

Michael Judd, the ranger, said in a statement that the fisherman had walked about 50 yards out onto the ice at Chatfield Reservoir, but the surface was unstable due to recent warm temperatures. The angler, who has not been identified, was not wearing a life jacket or any other personal flotation device, and was fishing alone.

Jefferson County employs more than 2,000 people, but many of them hardly know one another.

In an effort to change that — and to let employees meet newly elected Commissioner Faye Griffin and newly appointed Treasurer Tim Kauffman — the county commissioners hosted a party in their office Feb. 12.

"We're all a team," Becky Baker, a 13-year veteran of the county building department, said while holding a cup of punch and cruising the commissioners' fifth-floor digs at the Taj Mahal. "This kind of reinforces that. That's the good of it."

An umbrella group for area homeowner associations peppered Jeffco Commissioner Kathy Hartman with questions for an hour on Feb. 4 about everything from property assessments to the county's ability to respond to zoning violations.

Hartman, who spoke at the Council of Homeowner Organizations for a Planned Environment, took most questions in stride, and she deferred on some issues to Tim Carl, Jeffco's director of development and transportation, who also attended the meeting.

Property assessments

Crime has been steadily declining in South Jefferson County over the last few years, and that trend largely continued in the second half of 2008.

Both serious and less-serious categories of crime have decreased in South Jeffco since 2004, when there were 4,475 “part 1,” or serious, crimes reported. That same year there were 7,437 less-serious, or “part 2,” crimes. In 2008, those numbers had fallen to 3,317 and 5,708, respectively.