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Property Rights Violated? GJ Business Says City Crossed the Line
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Property Rights Violated? GJ Business Says City Crossed the Line

By Brandon Leuallen | The Business Times This article is a follow-up to “CDOT Sells Used Car Dealer a Lemon,” published June 4 in The Business Times. In that story, we reported about CDOT acquiring the GJ Auto Sales property through the threat of eminent domain for a planned mobility hub. This expanded report traces the project’s timeline, revealing a process — jointly coordinated by CDOT, the City of Grand Junction and Mesa County’s Regional Transportation Planning Office — that began before the property owners ever found out and ended only after the property owners accepted a final offer just before condemnation proceedings could begin. For 22 years, Mike and Amber Martinez had operated GJ Auto Sales from a downtown Grand Junction corner, building up their small family business ...
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State transportation project shutters 22-year-old Grand Junction auto sales business via eminent domain
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State transportation project shutters 22-year-old Grand Junction auto sales business via eminent domain

By Brandon Leuallen | The Business Times For 22 years, GJ Auto Sales was a fixture in the Grand Junction community, a family-run business operated by Amber Colunga Martinez and Mike Martinez. But now, the lot at 320 S. First St. will be transformed into a state-led mobility hub, part of Colorado’s climate-focused transportation plan. Selling the property to the state of Colorado, the City of Grand Junction and Mesa County due to impending eminent domain has left the couple without enough to financially open up again in a viable location. The Martinezes said they first learned of the Colorado Department of Transportation’s plans not through official communication, but by reading a story in The Daily Sentinel. “We found out about it through the Sentinel posting an article about i...
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The Business Times: Public trust demands Grand Junction councilman Jason Nguyen resign now
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The Business Times: Public trust demands Grand Junction councilman Jason Nguyen resign now

By The Business Times Staff This is the only statement which we can make related to a post from Jason in a private group on Facebook. There is no “context” to be parsed or question to be asked by what he meant with his post. What he thinks about a good percentage of the population of Grand Junction and how he views many businesses cannot be taken in error. The statement made by Jason Nguyen shows he despises and desires the economic ruination of many of the constituents he claims to represent. And if the members of the Grand Junction City Council, especially Jason’s two like-minded cohorts Anna Stout and Scott Beilfuss, don’t denounce his statement above and beyond the meaningless phrase “in the strongest possible terms” and call for his immediate resignation, then they should resign...
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District 51’s master plan delivers first wins with taxpayer-focused school upgrades
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District 51’s master plan delivers first wins with taxpayer-focused school upgrades

By Brandon Leuallen | The Business Times Mesa County Valley School District 51 continues to advance its 25-year Facility Master Plan, a comprehensive roadmap initiated in 2023 to address the district’s long-term infrastructure needs. At the Grand Junction Economic Summit on April 25, District 51 Superintendent Brian Hill discussed the district’s success in developing the facility master plan as a way to communicate with the community, provide updates on capital funding needs and establish a consistent approach to securing and responsibly utilizing funding for the projects. Origin of the 25-year plan In the summer of 2023, District 51 hired Hord Coplan Macht (HCM), an architectural and planning firm, to develop a long-range facility master plan. The decision was driven by the ne...
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Hall: A $250K farewell tour for Grand Junction city council’s ‘feckless foursome’
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Hall: A $250K farewell tour for Grand Junction city council’s ‘feckless foursome’

By Craig Hall, Publisher/Owner | Commentary, The Business Times Oops, they did it again. That’s right, after being rejected outright in the latest, ill-timed, usually-low-voter-turnout-to-benefit-progressives, springtime elections, our city council once again generously served up another slice of cake while completely ignoring the voice of the people who screamed loudly on April 8, “We don’t want your ideas, follies or leadership anymore!” I’d say they have deaf ears, but that would imply they are at least attempting to listen to the people. Instead, in their alternative Grand Junction universe our Feckless Foursome of “Abe the Sausage King of Grand Junction (and if you don’t get the joke, this column won’t hit your reality either) Herman,” “Anna the Stout, confident progressiv...
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Anderson: Education dollars should help all students perform, while lawmakers focus on funding gender ideology
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Anderson: Education dollars should help all students perform, while lawmakers focus on funding gender ideology

By Christy Anderson | Commentary, Business Times Let’s look at the facts. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2024, only 36 percent of Colorado’s fourth-graders read at a proficient level, and just 42 percent are proficient in math. These numbers should alarm every parent, educator, policymaker and taxpayer. Beneath the surface of annual graduation celebrations lies a troubling reality: Many students are not prepared for life after high school. Colleges are restructuring their curricula to accommodate lower proficiency levels, and remedial classes are becoming the norm, not the exception. As an educator with 25 years of experience in Mesa County Valley School District 51 and a Realtor who works closely with families across our community, I’ve seen firstha...
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How will marijuana revenue shortfalls affect District 51?
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How will marijuana revenue shortfalls affect District 51?

By The Business Times Amid reports that the city of Grand Junction’s marijuana revenue fell short of projections by $800,000 and that statewide marijuana revenue has declined by more than 41 percent since its peak in 2020-2021, The Business Times reached out to Melanie Trujillo, chief financial officer of Mesa County Valley School District 51, to understand how the shortfall might affect the district Trujillo said local marijuana-sales-tax revenue does not directly fund the district and addressed misconceptions about how much and how often marijuana revenue has been distributed to the district since legalization, despite public expectations. Since recreational marijuana was legalized, Trujillo noted funding from marijuana tax revenue has largely been supplemental, coming in the fo...
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This should be the easiest City Council vote you’ve ever cast
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This should be the easiest City Council vote you’ve ever cast

By The Business Times Staff | The Business Times As we see it, the coming Grand Junction City Council election on April 8, 2025, provides some simple choices. Although in our fair city two problems tend to arise when it comes to our spring, City Council elections. The first is always most glaring and in the past few elections has probably caused the citizens the most problems. And that’s most folks registered to vote simply don’t vote in City Council elections, which lately has ended with a bunch of “do-gooder” progressives getting elected to our City Council. And while you can’t readily identify them by the (D) that should follow their names on the ballot – as City Council elections are “nonpartisan,” the second problem – you can tell them by the company they keep. After the p...
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GJ City Council considers impact-fee consequences
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GJ City Council considers impact-fee consequences

By The Business Times The Grand Junction City Council convened March 5 to participate in a second reading of proposed impact-fee increases, a topic that has sparked significant debate among council members, city staff and community stakeholders. The meeting included public comments from a variety of  residents, city advisory board members and industry representatives. Community Development director Tamara Allen, provided an overview of the study and of some recently proposed concessions, including increasing the rollout timeline to three years and changing the calculations for transportation fees to represent the costs per mile prior to the new Transportation Engineering Design Standards completed in 2023. READ MORE AT THEBUSINESSTIMES.COM
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Young families left behind in Grand Valley’s housing construction
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Young families left behind in Grand Valley’s housing construction

By Brandon Leuallen | The Business Times Scarcity of affordable housing emerged as a key reason School District 51’s enrollment declined by 2,049 students in the past 5 years. The impact of that decline was center stage at two District 51 Board of Education meetings last week, during which the board voted unanimously to close three elementary schools at the end of the 2024-25 school year. District 51 demographer Shannon Bingham collected data that showed lack of affordable housing, especially starter homes, was one of the primary factors in an overall reduction of the Grand Valley’s school-age population. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE BUSINESS TIMES
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