Castle Rock in the Gloaming
Photo by Joe Delnero
Click to enlarge
What's happening in Golden today?
Events for Monday, Mar. 31st
- All day - CURRENT EXHIBITS AT THE MUSEUMS
- All day - Live Workouts with Community Center Pros
- All day - Golden History Tours
- 10:15-10:45AM - Let's Dance - Registration Required
- 12-12:30PM - Canceled: Mondays with the Mayor
- 1-2:30PM - CANCELED: Introduction to the Internet
- 5:30PM - Board Game & Euchre Night
- 5:30-7:30PM - The Fundamental Principles of Art
- 6-9PM - Teach Me to Play! Mondays
- 6:30PM - Movement Monday Running Club
For more information, click the item above or visit the Golden Today Calendar
Monthly Appeal
Images of March in Golden
Thank you to everyone who supported GoldenToday during March.
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Understanding the Budget #1 - Timing and Structure
By Loretta Huff
CITY of GOLDEN BUDGET
The City of Golden’s plans to spend $193,000,000 in 2025. (see p. 28). Few of us understand where that money comes from and where it goes. Loretta Huff joined the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee to learn. She has agreed to share what she has learned about Golden's budget in bite-sized pieces over a series of articles in GoldenToday. Here's our first lesson:
2025 BUDGET – Timing and Structure Overview
Each year, the City of Golden staff creates the draft annual operating and capital spending budget. It is presented to City Council in a document called the Budget Message for refinement during fourth quarter with approval each year in December.
The 2025 Budget Message includes a discussion of key items, the 2025 Operating Budget and the Ten-Year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). The detailed Budget and CIP pages generally include actual amounts for 2022 and 2023, budget and projected numbers for 2024, and proposed budget numbers for 2025 and 2026 to allow limited trend analysis.
The City’s Operating Budget consists of numerous separate funds. They range from a Water Fund to a Fossil Trace Fund to a Marijuana Tax Fund to a Cemetery Perpetual Care Fund. A full list of the funds and highlights about each will be covered in upcoming articles.
Anything not addressed by one of these specific funds is included in the General Fund revenues and expenditures. The annual budget for each fund identifies its revenue sources, its expenditure categories, and the actual and projected Fund Balance.
The CIP provides detail about specific capital projects that the City is planning to complete in the next 10 years.
What’s Blooming Along Golden’s Trails? Rocky Mountain Spring Beauty and Hemlock-leav’d Crane’s-bill
Figure 1. Left Top: Rocky Mountain Spring Beauty – Claytonia rosea Rydb. Left Bottom: Typical habitat of Rocky Mountain Spring Beauty. Right Top: Hemlock-leav’d Cranesbill -- Erodium cicutarium (L.) L'Her. Ex Aiton. Right Bottom: Typical habitat of Hemlock-leav’d Crane’s-bill.
By Tom Schweich
There are two pink-ish to lavender flowers in bloom along Golden’s trails now. One is native to Colorado and the other is a noxious weed. Both are pretty.
A very common early spring wildflower in Golden, Rocky Mountain Spring Beauty — Claytonia rosea Rydb. has been found in every Open Space except Schweich Hill. Its Colorado distribution is along the Front Range, up into the foothills, and along the south side of the San Juan Mountains.
While most species of Claytonia are found near water or in damp places, our plant can often be found on rather dry slopes, up to 7500 ft. in elevation.
Our plant was described by Per Axel Rydberg from a plant he collected in La Veta, Colorado, in 1900. Rydberg was primarily connected to the New York Botanical Garden, where he served as a curator. However, he conducted extensive botanical fieldwork throughout the Rocky Mountain region, supported in part by Colorado State University (then Colorado Agricultural College) in Fort Collins, publishing a Flora of the Rocky Mountains and Adjacent Plains in 1917.
The other plant, the non-native Hemlock-leav’d Crane’s-bill — Erodium cicutarium (L.) L'Her. Ex Aiton — is a very common weed. You may know it by other names, such as Red-Stem Stork's-Bill, filaree, or 11 other common names in English or six other common names in Spanish. However, Hemlock-leav’d Crane’s-bill was the common name given for the plant when it was described in 1789 by William Aiton of the Kew Gardens in London. Since it is rare for a plant to be given a common name when it is described, we should continue to use that name.
In Colorado, Hemlock-leav’d Crane’s-bill has been found mostly on the east and west slopes of the Rocky Mountains, though usually not on the eastern plains. Around Golden, it has been collected downtown, in the Survey Field, Dakota Ridge, Heritage Square, North and South Table Mountains, and Schweich Hill. It is a Colorado List C Noxious Weed meaning that it is already widespread, unlikely to ever be eliminated, and allowing counties to enforce control if it's beneficial to that county.
Learn about other Golden-area plants!
Golden History: You just had to be there.
The March 31, 1938 Colorado Transcript included a peculiar set of editorials. The editors seemed to have Prohibition on their minds, even though Prohibition had been repealed four years earlier.
A. COORS JR. wants Golden to be a model town, so does Jno. Q. Adams, Dr. M. F. Coolbaugh, Mayor Burt Jones, so does every business man on the avenue, property owner and all loyal citizens. Good roads, adequate water, attractive lawns, clean streets, restrained indulgence in the use of liquor, careful driving, empty jails, excellent schools, a definite program for boys and girls, are a few of the most important things that would make Golden an ideal community.
With Golden the home of Coors famous quality beer...it is especially important that Golden be a model town.
To prove to the world that a community may enjoy all of these privileges and that prohibition, with its bootleggers and racketeers, is not necessary, is the task to which not only the Golden Chamber of Commerce, but every citizen in the community- should dedicate himself.
For reasons that are no longer apparent to us, the Transcript was anxious that Golden, the home of Coors, should be extra-respectable and extra-careful not to abuse alcohol. Those seem like reasonable goals for any town.
The second editorial was downright strange:
A FEW HABITUAL DRUNKARDS ARE NECESSARY
It is important that every community have a few habitual drunkards. It was necessary during prohibition that these unfortunate individuals be kept more or less under cover. For this reason they were not seen by boys and girls. As a result, boys and girls took to drinking. There followed dissipation, automobile wrecks, crimes—reformatories and penitentiaries were filled, not with hardened criminals, but with young men and boys—who became an easy prey for bootleggers in pursuant of the excessive liquor profits made possible by the prohibition law, and because on the streets were no disgusting examples of habitual drunkenness to warn them of their danger.
Maybe they were just getting a head start on April Fool's Day?
Weather
Overnight: Areas of fog. Partly cloudy. Low around 34, with temperatures rising to around 36 overnight. West wind around 3 mph.
Monday: Areas of fog before 9am. Partly sunny, with a high near 60. South southwest wind 2 to 12 mph, with gusts as high as 17 mph.
Monday Night: A chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 38. West southwest wind 7 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 16 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Monday Night: Chance Light Rain, 38°F
Tuesday: Chance Light Rain then Light Snow Likely, 52°F
Tuesday Night: Chance Light Snow then Mostly Cloudy, 32°F
Wednesday: Partly Sunny then Chance Light Snow, 47°F
Wednesday Night: Chance Light Snow, 28°F
Thursday: Light Snow Likely, 42°F
Thursday Night: Chance Light Snow, 30°F
Friday: Rain And Snow Likely, 47°F
Friday Night: Rain And Snow Likely, 33°F
Saturday: Chance Light Snow, 42°F
Saturday Night: Chance Light Snow, 30°F
Sunday: Slight Chance Light Snow, 46°F
Supporters
Many thanks to the people and organizations who support What’s Happening in Golden? If you would like to support local news, please CLICK HERE!
Sponsors:
($100/month and up)
Buffalo Rose, Buglet Solar, Foothills Art Center, Golden City Brewery, Golden Cultural Alliance, Miners Alley Performing Arts Center, The Golden Mill, Golden Chamber of Commerce, Golden History Tours, Miners Saloon, Golden Hayride Outpost, Unite Fitness, Joy Brandt, Tom Reiley, and Michael Mason
Friends:
($50-99.99/month or $550/yr)
Tall Pines Painting, Baby Doe’s Clothing, Goozell Yogurt & Coffee Paul Haseman, Donna Anderson, Carol & Doug Harwood, Beth Bidwell, Stephanie Painter, Greg Poulos, Ann Norton & Jonathan Storer, Mary & Don Parker, Saré Merrigan, The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, and Vic DeMaria
Supporters:
($25-49.99/month or $250/yr)
Laura King and Scott Wilson, Bobby German and Alison McNally, Forrest Jones, Barry & Liz Bettis, Cheryl & Tom Schweich, Marjorie Sloan, Chris and Joyce Davell, Rick Flint, Forrest Jones, AC Development, Cynthia Merrill Tamny, Stephen Pero, Meg Van Ness & Steve Kalasz, Steve & Karla Schaefer, Bud Rockhill, Steve Enger, Kristie Brice & Mike Schwartz, The Golden Hotel, and Kurt & Janet Siegfried
Members:
($10-24.99/month or $110/yr)
Brad Miller & Julie Bartos, Holly Thomas, Jim and LouAnne Dale, Ann Pattison, Thomas Hoffman, Carol Abel, Brian Quarnstrom, Sandra Curran, Bobby German and Alison McNally, Kathy Smith, Karen Smith, Carlos & Nancy Bernal, Robert Storrs, Michele Sannes, Elaine Marolla, Dixie Termin & Ron Miller, E Tom Hughes, Crystal M Culbert, Patrick A. Madison, Alice Madison & Jim Kalivas, Deb Goeldner, Christopher Ball, 6th Chair Home Services, Dot & Eric Brownson, Rosemary Coffman, Emeline Paulson, Sandy Schneider, Mark and Cathy Pattridge, Cheryl G Leidich, Jen Rutter, Frani R Bickart, Jennings and Litz, Bill Sedgeley, Nancy Hughes, Justin L Wade, Kathi Eggers, Traci Case, Donna Owen, Leslie D Lutz, Karen Oxman, Catherine Skokan, Ross Fraser & KC Gilliland, Lynne Haigh, Elizabeth Hilliard, Frank Young & Terre Deegan-Young, Kathy Hirons & Jack Markin, Jess & Anthony Monasterio, Ella Lyons & Jeanne Fritch, Heather Duncan, Lee Ann & Pete Horneck, Carol Cameron, Cheryl Williamson, San Daugherty, Jim Garner, John and Carol McEncroe, the Golden Welcome Center, the Golden Transcript, Koshare Eagle, Ken and Colleen Krantz, Traci Neuman Lacey, Jo Barber, Jamie Cookinham, Kermit Shields, Meridee Cecil, Vicki Olson, Colleen & Michael Ramey, Nancy & Pete Torpey, Jax Baker, Simon Maybury, Rose McLaughlin, Cameron Chambers, Joyce Gravina, Patrick Klein, and Barb Robie
Followers:
($5-9.99/month)
Golden Community Garden, Lora Haimes, Mariane Erickson, J.J. Fraser, Mel Perkins, Bob Hamilton
