WESTERN SKIES - July 30, 2005

*** NEWSCAST ***

STEPHEN RAHER: For Western Skies, I'm Stephen Raher.

Last Monday, several hundred husbands, wives, and children of Army Soldiers gathered in a corrugated metal building at Fort Carson to welcome home their loved ones. Members of the Second Brigade Combat Team have been arriving at Fort Carson in shifts over the past several weeks.

While the Second Brigade is just one of many units fighting in Iraq, their situation is unique. The Soldiers arriving home last week were originally deployed to North Korea over a year ago, and were subsequently redeployed to Iraq in order to help maintain troop levels for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Making the situation even more complicated is the fact that the Second Brigade is currently in the process of moving its headquarters to Fort Carson, so families of the Soldiers arriving home were spread throughout the country.

Karen Dean is a military spouse and is working to coordinate family reunion activities for the Second Brigade Combat Team. She says the logistics for the current round of homecomings have been difficult, starting with the challenge of contacting family members.

KAREN DEAN: We had them spread, basically, all fifty states and several foreign countries. So to try to get communications established with them, let them know that the folks here at Fort Carson were here to answer questions, that was probably the most challenging to try to get that word out to let them know that we were here to help assist them.

RAHER: Dean also said that its not always possible to meet the Army's goal of notifying family members one week in advance of a homecoming. Sometimes, she said, a spouse will get only twenty four hours notice that their loved one is coming home.

On this particular night, family members started gathering far in advance of the midnight ceremony, so by the time the troops finally entered the building, the reception, complete with country music, was thunderous.

[sound of cheering and applause]

RAHER: After brief remarks by Fort Carson's deputy commanding general, and the singing of the Army song, the troops were dismissed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SOLDIER: Strike Force, dismissed! [more cheering]

RAHER: After several days of medical tests, debriefing, paperwork, and other activities, the Soldiers will have one month off to relax and spend time with their families. No word has yet been given as to when the Second Brigade Combat Team will go back to Iraq.

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RAHER: Federal District Court judge Richard Match delivered a setback to Springs peace protesters last week. The group Citizens for Peace in Space had sued the City of Colorado Springs, stemming from the 2003 meeting of NATO member nations at the Broadmoor Hotel. Six protesters had asked permission to enter the so-called "secure zone" surrounding the hotel and conduct a protest vigil. Springs Police denied the request and instructed the group to hold their vigil several blocks away. The six later sued the city for infringement of their First Amendment rights.

On Monday, Judge Match ruled for the city, saying the police had a legitimate interest in security during the NATO meeting. Barbara Huber was one of the plaintiffs in the case. She said her group would have had no problem complying with security procedures.

BARBARA HUBER: The thing was, we understood that there had to be some security. And we were willing to pass all their tests and go in at the designated check points.

RAHER: But Judge Match wrote that he didn't see how making the activists conduct their vigil outside the secure zone constituted a "significant impediment to their freedom of expression."

Huber says she's disappointed with the ruling, but more worried about what she sees as a pattern of domestic security and militarism.

HUBER: You know, given the conversations now about the Patriot Act, it's all of piece that we're abdicating our rights because of something that isn't even a war that's been declared. And a war that admittedly that can go on for years and years and years, and not just in Iraq but globally.

RAHER: The City of Colorado Springs has filed papers to recover four thousand six hundred dollars in litigation costs from the plaintiffs.

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ERIC WHITNEY: Across the state, local governments are putting together ballot questions for voters to consider this fall. The Pueblo Chieftain reports that state legislators Dorothy Butcher and Abel Tapia are asking both Pueblo city and county elected officials to avoid placing controversial questions before voters this fall in an effort to more easily pass state Referenda C and D.

According to the Chieftain, Pueblo City Council members didn't say whether Butcher and Tapia had any influence, but the council voted not to put any of three proposed measures that could jumpstart recycling in the city on the ballot this fall. And it looks like Pueblo County is leaning against asking voters to fund a new city-county public health building.

In Telluride, the issues are a little different. Voters may get the chance to all but decriminalize marijuana. Joan Zwisler of KSUT has that story.

JOAN ZWISLER: Telluride Town Clerk Mary Jo Schillachi says she has certified that a petition has enough signatures to get an initiative on the ballot this November. If approved, a proposed ordinance would direct Telluride law enforcement to make the investigation, arrest and prosecution of marijuana offenses their lowest priority. That is, as long as the drug is intended solely for personal use.

The initiative is sponsored by a group called Sensible Colorado, a group of attorneys and parents that joined together about a year and a half ago to work toward what they call a reasonable and humane drug policy in Colorado. Their website is SensibleColorado.org. The group has primarily been helping medical marijuana patients who have been arrested.

The initiative the group is sponsoring would allow someone aged twenty-one or
older to possess, out of public view, less than one ounce of marijuana in
Telluride.

The three members of the petitioners committee are Bob Dempsey, the
libertarian San Miguel county coroner, Martin Thomas, a local businessman and musician, and Ernest Eich, who heads the committee and owns an alternative energy business. Eich says the initiative is not about getting high.

ERNEST EICH: It's about the community's right to prioritize what their police are gonna do. And additionally, now that states like Colorado and others are starting to recognize medical uses for marijuana, it's important to find a way for those patients to get what a doctor has recommended for them, for them to be able to get that in a non-illegal sort of way as well.

ZWISLER: That means the creation of a system to license, tax and regulate
marijuana. Part of the proposed ordinance states that if Colorado legalizes pot, the Town of Telluride will support the creation of such a system as soon as possible. Sensible Colorado Executive Director Brian Vicente.

BRIAN VICENTE: Such regulation would help keep it out of the hands of children and really would prevent wasting millions and millions of tax dollars every year busting adults for personal possession.

ZWISLER: The Telluride Town Council will consider the proposed ordinance August second. And according to the Town Clerk, the Council must decide either to adopt the ordinance outright, or put it to voters in November. Brian Vicente says he does not expect the council to vote on it right away.

VICENTE: More likely it will be really a town meeting that we're expecting a number of citizens to come out and speak in favor of the initiative and ask the town council simply to place it on the November first ballot.

ZWISLER: If it passes, Vicente says he expects the initiative to be successful in Telluride, and he wants to use that success to propose the plan elsewhere.

I'm Joan Zwisler.