Level 3 Communications is cutting about 700 jobs as the Broomfield-based Internet operator tries to trim costs and reach profitability for the first time in its 15 years as a publicly traded company. The reductions will include about 150 positions in Colorado, where Level 3 employs 2,700 people. The company employs 10,600 worldwide. The Denver Post reports the company cut about 400 jobs last year during its merger with Global Crossing.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Judge Orders Mental Health Records of James Holmes Released to Prosecutors
The judge in the Colorado theater shootings case says a mental hospital and a university must turn over their mental health records on James Holmes on Sept. 30. Holmes is accused of killing 12 and injuring 70 last July. He faces charges of murder and attempted murder. The records are from the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo and the University of Colorado, Denver. Holmes was a grad student at the university and saw a psychiatrist there before the shootings. He was ordered to undergo a sanity evaluation at the mental health institute after pleading insanity.
Review Recommends Changes in Parolee Alerts
An outside review says the Colorado's prison system doesn't have clear guidelines for how officers should respond when electronic alarms indicate a parolee is breaking the rules. The review was launched by the murder of the state's prisons director and another person, apparently by a parolee who cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet but wasn't pursued for days. The National Institute of Corrections review recommended clarifying electronic monitoring rules, improve training, develop better plans for individual inmates and transfer inmates less often, among other changes. New prisons director Rick Raemisch says the recommendations are being implemented. The prison systems already put in a place a requirement that authorities respond more quickly to alarms indicating a monitoring bracelet was tampered with.
Polls Open for Colorado's First Ever Recall of a State Representative
Vote centers opened in Pueblo today for Colorado's first-ever recall election for a state lawmaker is under way. Democratic Sen. Angela Giron is being recalled because she supported a gun control package this year that gun-right advocates say goes too far. Democratic Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs is also being recalled, though polling locations in his district haven't opened yet. The Sept. 10 recalls have been mired in legal confusion ever since gun-rights activist turned in petitions to force the lawmakers to a recall vote.
67.7 percent of RE-1 Valley '11 grads in college
The Department of Higher Education, led by Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia, earlier this week released new reports showing the outcomes of Colorado's public high school graduates.
This DHE information-sharing project, called District at a Glance, links data from the Colorado Department of Education with data from the DHE and the National Student Clearinghouse to report on the progress of students as they move through Colorado's public schools and into colleges and universities.
The report provides information on college enrollment, first year college progress, concurrent enrollment and remedial education. Indicators are broken down by school district and, in a searchable database, by high school.
Two-page reports highlighting Colorado's high school class of 2011, by school district, are being mailed to K-12 school district superintendents this week and the reports are posted on the DHE website as well. The website also includes data from the prior two years, dating back to 2009.
RE-1 Valley School District Superintendent Dr. Jan DeLay said these reports show the good work that both Sterling and Caliche High School are doing.
According to the report, the average grade point average of RE-1's class of 2011 for the first year of college was 2.97, slightly higher than the state average of 2.67. It also shows that 67.7 percent of students enrolled in college, compared to 57.4 percent at the state level, and 35.6 percent of RE-1 students needed remediation, slightly lower than the 39.2 percent at the state level.
Of the students RE-1 has enrolled in college, 64 percent are enrolled in an in-state two-year institution, 19 percent in an in-state four-year institution, 12 percent in an out-of-state four-year institution and 5 percent in an out-of-state two-year institution.
Additionally, the report shows that 47.7 percent of the district's free and reduced lunch students are enrolled in college, compared to 41.9 percent at the state level.
DeLay pointed out that RE-1's statistics were significantly better than those of some online schools, such as Vilas Schools. The data shows the average grade point average for Vilas students was 2.06, only 20.8 percent of students are enrolled in college 55.6 percent of students needed remediation when they entered college.
Branson Reorganized School District No. 82, another online school, faired somewhat better than Vilas. The average grade point average for Branson students was 2.53, 40 percent of students are enrolled in college and 46.7 percent required remediation.
Data for other local school districts is also available.
Students in the Buffalo RE-4J School District, in Merino, had an average grade point average of 2.8, 80 percent of students are enrolled in college and 40 percent required remediation.
The limited data available for Frenchman RE-3 School District, in Fleming, shows 78.6 percent of students are enrolled in college.
There is no data available for Plateau RE-5 School District, in Peetz.
DeLay said she will be sharing this information with building administration, so that they can use it to make improvements.
This DHE information-sharing project, called District at a Glance, links data from the Colorado Department of Education with data from the DHE and the National Student Clearinghouse to report on the progress of students as they move through Colorado's public schools and into colleges and universities.
The report provides information on college enrollment, first year college progress, concurrent enrollment and remedial education. Indicators are broken down by school district and, in a searchable database, by high school.
Two-page reports highlighting Colorado's high school class of 2011, by school district, are being mailed to K-12 school district superintendents this week and the reports are posted on the DHE website as well. The website also includes data from the prior two years, dating back to 2009.
RE-1 Valley School District Superintendent Dr. Jan DeLay said these reports show the good work that both Sterling and Caliche High School are doing.
According to the report, the average grade point average of RE-1's class of 2011 for the first year of college was 2.97, slightly higher than the state average of 2.67. It also shows that 67.7 percent of students enrolled in college, compared to 57.4 percent at the state level, and 35.6 percent of RE-1 students needed remediation, slightly lower than the 39.2 percent at the state level.
Of the students RE-1 has enrolled in college, 64 percent are enrolled in an in-state two-year institution, 19 percent in an in-state four-year institution, 12 percent in an out-of-state four-year institution and 5 percent in an out-of-state two-year institution.
Additionally, the report shows that 47.7 percent of the district's free and reduced lunch students are enrolled in college, compared to 41.9 percent at the state level.
DeLay pointed out that RE-1's statistics were significantly better than those of some online schools, such as Vilas Schools. The data shows the average grade point average for Vilas students was 2.06, only 20.8 percent of students are enrolled in college 55.6 percent of students needed remediation when they entered college.
Branson Reorganized School District No. 82, another online school, faired somewhat better than Vilas. The average grade point average for Branson students was 2.53, 40 percent of students are enrolled in college and 46.7 percent required remediation.
Data for other local school districts is also available.
Students in the Buffalo RE-4J School District, in Merino, had an average grade point average of 2.8, 80 percent of students are enrolled in college and 40 percent required remediation.
The limited data available for Frenchman RE-3 School District, in Fleming, shows 78.6 percent of students are enrolled in college.
There is no data available for Plateau RE-5 School District, in Peetz.
DeLay said she will be sharing this information with building administration, so that they can use it to make improvements.
FM council hears plan for determining "admin support" lines
The Fort Morgan City Council now has answers to the long-standing question of how to determine the administrative support budget line items in the Fort Morgan city budget.
"We can easily explain why we did it now," Fort Morgan City Manager Jeff Wells told the council at the Aug. 20 regular meeting.
As part of their 2014 budget planning, several of the veteran council members pointed to this as one of the big frustrations when working on the coming year's budget, and similar concerns had been aired in previous years' budget planning sessions.
The last couple years, the best answer they had gotten was that there was a formula in a spreadsheet, and the numbers were determined by that formula.
But there was not a set policy for how that formula had come to be or what it represented, which meant that the council members didn't really understand why the dollars were moving around to different places.
The administrative support allocation is meant to be a bit of a budget pass through, moving money from one place to another to cover work done across departments or by shared staff.
The lack of an explainable set policy for budgeting this allocation was something the city's auditor recommended changing for the future during his presentation of the 2012 audit.
So City Treasurer Jeanne Kinney and Wells spent time figuring out a "rational basis" for figuring out the administrative support allocations.
"Figuring out how to do allocations is really challenging, and it's really fun," Kinney said, showing her usual excitment about all things dealing with numbers. "We looked at a lot of different ways to do this."
Some of the things they took into account were the revenues different departments create, costs they incur, their ability to bear expenses and debt obligations, she said.
One of the key questions Kinney wound up looking to answer when figuring the allocations was "what areas use up the resources of those staff?"
Kinney said she went through each fund and figured out which funds were impacted by others and assigned values for that impact.
Those values were then turned into percentages, which allowed for a better way to show how the amounts of money were determined for the various departments' admin support allocations.
While the new, explainable system means some departments will see changes in the admin support allocation, others will stay close to the same.
For example, the General Fund will see the admin support allocation drop to $312,771 from $366,684, but the Electric Fund will only drop by $639.
Most of the other departments will see increases of several thousand dollars in admin support allocations.
"We wanted to have some way to approximate somewhat what it was before, but still have a rational basis," Kinney said. "This isn't by any means cast in concrete... but for next year, what we're hoping to do is go to using the new method."
While the city could have gone with much more complicated ways of determining the allocation, Wells said he thought what Kinney came up with made sense and was simpler, which the auditor had recommended.
"By doing it in this more simplistic way... now there's some sort of rational basis," Wells said.
The council seemed happy to finally have an explanation for how the numbers came to be plunked into the budget.
"So it's not shocking differences, but you can explain how we got to those numbers," Councilwoman Lisa Northrup said. "To me, that was the big thing."
"We can easily explain why we did it now," Fort Morgan City Manager Jeff Wells told the council at the Aug. 20 regular meeting.
As part of their 2014 budget planning, several of the veteran council members pointed to this as one of the big frustrations when working on the coming year's budget, and similar concerns had been aired in previous years' budget planning sessions.
The last couple years, the best answer they had gotten was that there was a formula in a spreadsheet, and the numbers were determined by that formula.
But there was not a set policy for how that formula had come to be or what it represented, which meant that the council members didn't really understand why the dollars were moving around to different places.
The administrative support allocation is meant to be a bit of a budget pass through, moving money from one place to another to cover work done across departments or by shared staff.
The lack of an explainable set policy for budgeting this allocation was something the city's auditor recommended changing for the future during his presentation of the 2012 audit.
So City Treasurer Jeanne Kinney and Wells spent time figuring out a "rational basis" for figuring out the administrative support allocations.
"Figuring out how to do allocations is really challenging, and it's really fun," Kinney said, showing her usual excitment about all things dealing with numbers. "We looked at a lot of different ways to do this."
Some of the things they took into account were the revenues different departments create, costs they incur, their ability to bear expenses and debt obligations, she said.
One of the key questions Kinney wound up looking to answer when figuring the allocations was "what areas use up the resources of those staff?"
Kinney said she went through each fund and figured out which funds were impacted by others and assigned values for that impact.
Those values were then turned into percentages, which allowed for a better way to show how the amounts of money were determined for the various departments' admin support allocations.
While the new, explainable system means some departments will see changes in the admin support allocation, others will stay close to the same.
For example, the General Fund will see the admin support allocation drop to $312,771 from $366,684, but the Electric Fund will only drop by $639.
Most of the other departments will see increases of several thousand dollars in admin support allocations.
"We wanted to have some way to approximate somewhat what it was before, but still have a rational basis," Kinney said. "This isn't by any means cast in concrete... but for next year, what we're hoping to do is go to using the new method."
While the city could have gone with much more complicated ways of determining the allocation, Wells said he thought what Kinney came up with made sense and was simpler, which the auditor had recommended.
"By doing it in this more simplistic way... now there's some sort of rational basis," Wells said.
The council seemed happy to finally have an explanation for how the numbers came to be plunked into the budget.
"So it's not shocking differences, but you can explain how we got to those numbers," Councilwoman Lisa Northrup said. "To me, that was the big thing."
Leprino Foods consolidating operations
Denver-based Leprino Foods Co. is consolidating its string cheese operations in Colorado, a move that includes the closure of its Ravenna, Neb. facility in early November, the company announced.
Much of the consolidation will occur at the Leprino facility in Ft. Morgan.
Leprino said the decision to close the Ravenna facility was necessary, driven by technological advances at other facilities, the changing milk supply situation in the region and "Leprino Food's continuing commitment to meet its customers' requirements."
"We are working closely with our employees and their community during this transition," said Robert Schwartz Sr., vice president of Human Resources.
"Leprino Foods is offering employees at the Ravenna plant severance pay, health care benefit continuation assistance, potential opportunities at other Leprino locations with relocation assistance, and a retention bonus program to those employees who stay with us through the plant closing date," Schwartz said in a statement.
Mike Reidy, Sr. Vice President Corporate Affairs, said that the company is committed to plant upgrades and expansions and that the company is utilizing "the technological advances and capacity increases at other Leprino facilities, specifically at Ft. Morgan."
"Production and supply to our customers will be the top priority - our customers will continue to seamlessly receive their orders without interruption from our Ft. Morgan, Tracy, Calif., and Remus, Mich. facilities," said Reidy.
Much of the consolidation will occur at the Leprino facility in Ft. Morgan.
Leprino said the decision to close the Ravenna facility was necessary, driven by technological advances at other facilities, the changing milk supply situation in the region and "Leprino Food's continuing commitment to meet its customers' requirements."
"We are working closely with our employees and their community during this transition," said Robert Schwartz Sr., vice president of Human Resources.
"Leprino Foods is offering employees at the Ravenna plant severance pay, health care benefit continuation assistance, potential opportunities at other Leprino locations with relocation assistance, and a retention bonus program to those employees who stay with us through the plant closing date," Schwartz said in a statement.
Mike Reidy, Sr. Vice President Corporate Affairs, said that the company is committed to plant upgrades and expansions and that the company is utilizing "the technological advances and capacity increases at other Leprino facilities, specifically at Ft. Morgan."
"Production and supply to our customers will be the top priority - our customers will continue to seamlessly receive their orders without interruption from our Ft. Morgan, Tracy, Calif., and Remus, Mich. facilities," said Reidy.
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