In This Issue
- General Meeting: Home Energy Efficiency & Electrification
- Holiday Gift Card Drive - Deadline Fast Approaching!
- Upcoming Team Meetings & Presentations
- Webinar: LWVUS Federal Judiciary Study Kickoff
- What's Your League Been Up To?
- Welcome, New Members!
- Take Action!
| | From Your Board of Directors | | A Quick Look Ahead: Planning for "Program Planning" | | Our bylaws require that we hold three general-membership meetings a year with prescribed agendas. One of them, Program Planning, is coming up in late January or early February. This is the meeting in which our members discuss how well our established positions suit our education and advocacy needs, recommend position updates or concurrences with other Leagues' positions, and select new issues for study toward establishing new positions.
In short, in Program Planning, we set our priorities and define a basic work plan for the coming year -- a plan that gets officially voted on at our Annual Meeting in May. | | | Whether or not it's your first Program Planning rodeo, you'll find some preparation is necessary. The planning committee will be drawing up a worksheet to help teams prepare for this crucial meeting, but you can get a head start by beginning to review positions relevant to teams you're on right now. For 2025, we'll be focusing on reviewing our State and Local positions. If you've never read the positions that guide the education and advocacy work of our issues teams, you will find them here: Member Resources - Positions for Action. The LWVLC positions are at the bottom of the page. Click on the button to review LWV-Colorado "Positions for Action." You will likely have questions and that's good! Write them down so we can discuss them. A little reading in advance will make completing the team worksheets a faster and more thorough process. Thank you!
Kathy Maher
LWVLC Vice President |  | The Case for Home Energy Efficiency and Electrification
Jim Greuel and Tony Mitchell, Citizens' Climate Education
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that the earth is warming, and that the primary cause is the burning of fossil fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas. What are concerned citizens to do? We can rail against fossil fuel companies, or we can do something more effective: we can buy less of their product.
The 2022 Larimer County Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory found that about 2/3 of our county planet-warming emissions come from energy use in buildings, with 42.3% from building electricity use, and 21% from natural gas space and water heating, as well as cooking. That suggests we can significantly reduce our emissions by doing three things: (1) clean up our electricity, (2) improve building efficiency, and (3) transition from natural gas equipment and appliances to electric ones - i.e., electrify.
Clean Up Our Electricity
In general, utility companies are making faster progress on the clean energy transition than other sectors. By 2030, Platte River Power Authority (PRPA), which provides power to Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, and Estes Park, expects that about 88% of its electricity will come from non-carbon sources. This alone will reduce emissions from building electricity use significantly. Homeowners can reduce their home's emissions from electricity use even further by investing in roof-top solar, and optionally, battery storage.
Improve Building Efficiency
The least expensive and most climate-friendly energy is the energy you don't use. A home energy assessment identifies opportunities to reduce your home's energy use with measures such as air sealing and additional insulation. This is a must first step in any home energy plan, and if you do only one thing, this is it.
Electrify
Electrification is a shift from fossil fuel-based heating to electricity-based heating. Gas and propane furnaces, water heaters, and dryers all have electric heat pump alternatives, and induction stoves are alternatives to gas and propane stoves.
At this point you may have loads of questions: How do I arrange for a home energy assessment? What is a heat pump, and will it keep me warm on the coldest Colorado days? What is a heat pump water heater? A heat pump dryer? An induction stove? Are there financial incentives for efficiency and Electrification? Will I save money through efficiency and Electrification? Is there consulting available for all of this?
For those answers and more, join us on Monday, November 18, for "The Case for Home Efficiency and Electrification: The Why, The What, and The How" at the Fort Collins Senior Center, Foxtail Rooms 1 and 2, 6:30 - 8:30 PM (the program starts at 7:00). Register here to reserve your seat.
| | Holiday Gift Cards
3 Ways to Deliver by Monday, Nov 18:
- Drop off at the Nov 18 General Meeting (check-in table);
- Drop off in basket by front door at Trish Warner's home (2944 Purgatory Creek Dr, Loveland);
- Call/text Trish to arrange pickup: 563.580.8491
Need more info?
Thanks for participating in this League project!
| | | Environmental Team (ET) Asks: What Is GIS?
We ask the next question, too: How can the data collected using the Geographic Information System be used to analyze information such as each of the oil drillings (Loveland) and conditions in our natural habitat (Fort Collins)?
All are invited for an introduction to this technological tool.
Zoom with us at our Wednesday, November 20, 10:00 Environmental Team Meeting, where Front Range Community College (FRCC) Geographic Information System (GIS) Professional Peter Price will show how he and his FRCC students gather local demographic data and translate it into projections for use in actions related to the effects of oil and gas wells.
| | South Larimer Discussion Group - Learn about the Loveland Climate Action Task Force
Wednesday, November 20
6:00-7:30 pm -- Zoom only
The LWVLC's Southern Larimer Discussion Group invites the public to join them in talking with Loveland Assistant City Manager Bret Stewart about the recently created Climate Action Task Force.
| | | Let's Talk About Digital Threats to Democracy
A highly recommended series of talks presented by LWV-Maine,
in partnership with LWV-Alaska and LWV-Colorado | | This month...
Professor Latanya Sweeney will offer her thoughts on:
How Technology Will Dictate Our Civic Future
Wednesday, November 20, 3:00 PM
Hosted on Zoom
Register Here to get the Zoom link for this important conversation. It couldn't be more timely. | | | Professor Latanya Sweeney is Professor of the Practice of Government and Technology at the Harvard Kennedy School and in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Editor-in-Chief of Technology Science, founder and director of both the Public Interest Tech Lab and of the Data Privacy Lab, former Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, Technology and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
Professor Sweeney has 3 patents, more than 100 academic publications, and her work is explicitly cited in two U.S. regulations, including the U.S. federal medical privacy regulation (known as HIPAA). She is a recipient of the prestigious Louis D. Brandeis Privacy Award, the American Psychiatric Association's Privacy Advocacy Award, an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and has testified before government bodies worldwide. She earned her PhD in computer science from MIT in 2001; the first black woman to do so.
| In recognition of Native American Heritage Month
LWV-Denver Presents
Rick Waters, Executive Director of the Denver Indian Center
Tuesday, November 19, 5:30-6:30 PM
Mr. Waters will discuss interesting issues related to the history of American Indian tribal people in Colorado, their contributions, and the history of relations and treaties with the U.S. Government that impacted their civil rights. While Leaguers might be aware of the infamous Sand Creek Massacre, there is much more information about Indian Boarding Schools, tribal people finally gaining the right to vote, the Indian Relocation Act, and current challenges facing Native Americans who live in both rural and urban Colorado.
| | LWVUS Federal Judiciary Study Kickoff Webinar
Wednesday, November 20
4:00 PM MST
At the LWV National Convention this past June, delegates voted to proceed with a study on the federal judiciary. The LWVUS Federal Judiciary Study Committee will be sharing information with Leagues on the study and how members can participate. The committee will be hosting a webinar on Wednesday, November 20, for League members to learn more about the study's scope and timeline.
| | | | What's Your League Been Up To? | Making Gun Safety Locks Available
The Health Care and Affordable Housing teams partnered with Mom's Demand Action, leveraging their Be SMART for Kids campaign to make gun safety locks available to residents of Neighbor-to-Neighbor housing. The Larimer County Sheriff's Office Auxiliary Unit provides free gun locks to promote responsible gun ownership. Be SMART for Kids works to prevent gun violence in homes and wants to help educate Colorado citizens around the secure storage law. This law requires homeowners/residents to keep firearms locked (separate from ammunition) in their homes to prevent unauthorized access from minors or others prohibited from firearm possession.
Our teams will continue to reach out to multi-family housing properties to invite them to provide the gun locks to residents.
| Observing COP29 with GIS
The Environmental Team (ET) and LWVCO are sponsoring an official observer at the United Nations COP29, which is underway now in Baku, Azerbaijan. Global leaders are there to take decisive climate actions, especially funding these actions. Our official UN observer is UC Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Associate Professor Rebecca Theobold. She will observe the Women and Gender Facilitative Committee, which includes addressing Environmental Justice for Indigenous Women. Professor Theobold will join us at a future ET meeting.
| Introducing Our New Members | | Deb French graduated from CSU and moved to Fort Collins, for the third and final time, in 2019 with her husband. She has over 35 years' experience in state public health, county and non-profit health and human services organizations working to improve the lives of others. She served on national, state, and local boards and committees to address such issues as injury prevention and hospital emergency preparedness.
Family and friends are an important part in her life and she cherishes the time she spends with her two daughters, seven grandchildren, and two step-children. She and her husband enjoy hiking and snowshoeing, spending time at their cabin in Estes Park, traveling, and hosting family and friends at their home.
Deb joined the League to "do what she can to get out the vote, preserve democracy and improve the future for our children and grandchildren." As a new member of LWVLC, she looks forward to learning about the issues and getting involved with various teams and activities.
| | | | Edith Matesic (Edie) lives in Timnath and has been a nurse for 40 years. She earned her BS in Nursing and master’s from the University of Illinois and worked in the Midwest in a variety of hospital areas including trauma. Edie became interested in Nursing Transformational Leadership and ethics, eventually earning a doctorate. She has been in the Chief Nurse role and higher education, fostering the perspective that nurses in all levels of the profession should consider themselves as leaders. After moving to Colorado, she conducted research at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Aurora and volunteers in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. When offered the opportunity to create one of the first Colorado accredited RN-to-BSN programs at Front Range Community College, she took on the challenge just as COVID appeared. The program became the first in Colorado to earn national accreditation.
| | | Edie has three sons, one of whom lives with his family in Switzerland. She has six grandchildren – four girls and two boys – all of whom are young and learning new languages. She's currently on the Board of Pathways Hospice and works with CASA of Larimer County to improve the lives of abused and neglected children.
As one may imagine, she is interested in the Health Care and Civil Liberties teams and particularly in Reproductive Freedom.
| We Also Welcome the Following New Members: | | Jasmine Leonard, Timnath
Elise Behunin, Fort Collins
Abigail Jordan, Fort Collins
| | | | LWVUS: "The President Must Immediately Publish the Equal Rights Amendment!"
Read the full statement of the LWVUS and take action here:
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