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Articles from the 'How Things Get Done In Niwot' series


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  • How Does Niwot Work? - Part 21

    Bruce Warren|Jul 28, 2021

    "Sheriff Joe" has a very different connotation in these parts than in Arizona. Joe Pelle has served as Boulder County Sheriff for over 18 years and is in what appears to be his final term, which expires in 2022. Pelle is a former Niwot resident, and his wife Stephanie Pelle worked in the Niwot Post Office for many years. As a result, many Niwot residents are on a first-name basis with the sheriff, which is comforting considering that the Boulder County Sheriff's Department is the law enforcement...

  • How Does Niwot Work - Part 20

    Bruce Warren|Jul 21, 2021

    Water goes down the drain. In Niwot’s early days, homes had a septic system with a leach field to collect wastewater. While these systems worked well, they could lead to contamination of groundwater and drinking water. Boulder County began requiring permits for septic systems and gradually imposed stricter regulations on wastewater systems, such as increased lot size requirements. As Niwot developed from a small unincorporated townsite surrounded by farmland and farm houses, into a community with subdivisions to serve the growing population, t...

  • How Does Niwot Work? - Part 19

    Bruce Warren|Jul 14, 2021

    Early farmers in the Niwot area relied upon wells and cisterns for a domestic water supply, as did the residents of Old Town Niwot. In 1960, as Colorado's population began to increase, they looked for a better system to supply potable water to the area. Because Niwot was unincorporated, there was no municipal water system, so farmers and residents formed the Left Hand Domestic Water Users Association, an unincorporated association and sought a $1.25 million loan from the FHA to finance the...

  • How Does Niwot Work? – Part 15

    Bruce Warren|Jun 16, 2021

    Softball was not added as a high school sport for girls in the St. Vrain Valley School District until after the 1991-1992 school year. Although the Boulder Valley School District had added a girls softball program at the high school level in the late 1980s, it took an effort by area high school girls and volunteer coaches to convince the St Vrain Valley School District that there was sufficient interest to add softball to the sports available for girls in the district. In the fall of 1991, teams were formed at Niwot, Longmont, Skyline and...

  • How Does Niwot Work - Part 14

    Bruce Warren|Jun 9, 2021

    Niwot High School Boosters, Inc., is a non-profit parent organization that supports all activities at Niwot High School, from cross-country to chess club, from marching band to musicals. Although booster clubs were historically organized to support high school athletic teams, Niwot High School Boosters, Inc., has been active in supporting all student extracurricular activities. You will often see parents and students from an unrelated activity selling concessions at a football or basketball...

  • How does Niwot work? - Part 12

    Bruce Warren|May 26, 2021

    Niwot is an affluent community, and it's also a generous community. And if you're looking to make a bigger impact with a few dollars, Left Hand Giving Circle may be right for you. In 2016, Niwot resident Virginia Dutkin was working at the Longmont Community Foundation (LCF) while finishing up her coursework to get her master's degree in Nonprofit Management at CU Denver. She was first introduced to the idea of 'giving circles' from her work at LCF. Giving circles are philanthropic groups where m...

  • How Does Niwot Work – Niwot Community Band

    Bruce Warren|May 19, 2021

    "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy.....Born on the 4th of July" The line from "Yankee Doodle Dandy" fits the Niwot Community Semi-Marching Free Grange Band, which first performed on July 4, 2005, as part of the bandstand dedication ceremony in Whistle Stop Park. "The Niwot Business Association built a bandstand in the park reminiscent of the bandstand that stood for many years on the corner of 2nd Avenue and Murray Street," Biff Warren, one of the founding band members said. "We had everything ready...

  • How does Niwot work? - Part 10

    Bruce Warren|May 12, 2021

    Eli Buzas brought the idea of forming an education foundation to Niwot High School from Florida when he moved to Colorado in 1991. Buzas, who died earlier this year of COVID-19 complications, envisioned a foundation that did more than provide scholarships to students. Other school foundations in the school district raised money for scholarships, but Buzas had in mind a foundation that could fund current projects as well as develop a long-range funding program. Through his leadership while workin...

  • How does Niwot Work?

    Bruce Warren|May 5, 2021

    The Niwot Business Association, known informally as the NBA, is the organization that gets most things done in Niwot's business district. While the Niwot Community Association (NCA) addresses matters of community-wide interest, the NBA has taken the lead on business-related matters. The two organizations often work together on projects of mutual interest, such as the Veteran's Banner Project last fall. But the NBA, whose 150-plus dues-paying members often live in NIwot as well as work there, is...

  • How does Niwot work? - Part 8

    Bruce Warren|Apr 28, 2021

    Women's International Niwot Club, or WINC, as it has come to be known, has been active in the Niwot community for 11 years, though it was officially incorporated in 2015 by founder and current president Deborah Read Fowler. Fowler, a local realtor originally from England, first brought a chapter of the Daughters of the British Empire to town, but after several years of seeing most of the money raised by the non-profit group go to out-of-state causes, Fowler decided to form a more locally-focused...

  • How does Niwot work? – Part 7

    Bruce Warren|Apr 21, 2021

    Left Hand Grange No. 9 is the oldest institution in Niwot, and the oldest active Grange in Colorado, organized Dec. 20, 1873 and chartered in 1874, before Colorado was even a state..Since then the Grange has evolved from an agrarian organization serving a largely agriculture-based community, to a town center which continues to support the semi-rural character of the community and the values that have sustained the organization for over a century. The Grange building at the southwest corner of Se...

  • How does Niwot work? - Part 6

    Bruce Warren|Apr 14, 2021

    The Rotary Club of Niwot is currently the only nationally chartered service club meeting in Niwot. While the Niwot area has in the past had Optimists,Lions, Jaycees and Kiwanis clubs, the local rotary club now serves the community in a variety of ways, with a focus on education. “We just celebrated our 12th anniversary,” Doug Montgomery said of the organization which was formed in 2008. “It’s alive, it’s active, it’s growing.” Montgomery served as president of the Niwot club until July of 2020, and will become president of the affiliated ch...

  • How does Niwot work? - Part 5

    Bruce Warren|Apr 7, 2021

    Pat Murphy is known for many things in Niwot, including organizing the annual Easter egg hunt and the Great Pumpkin Party, both of which have been curtailed or modified by the pandemic. But one activity the long-time Niwot resident and realtor has maintained through thick and thin – providing cookies and other goodies in care packages to U.S. troops far from home, through the efforts of the Niwot Patriotic Cookie Moms, or the "cookie momsters" as they have recently come to be known. Murphy s...

  • How Does Niwot Work - Part 4

    Bruce Warren|Mar 31, 2021

    The Niwot Cultural Arts Association, often referred to as the NCAA, has nothing to do with March Madness, or intercollegiate sports. In Niwot, the NCAA has everything to do with charitable activities involving arts and culture. The NCAA was formed in January 2009 by Tim Wise, Mike Anfinson and Biff Warren at the urging of the Niwot Business Association. The NBA, through Wise's efforts as head of the Historic Projects Committee, had worked with Bank of the West to establish Whistle Stop Park on...

  • How things get done in Niwot – Part 3

    Bruce Warren|Mar 24, 2021

    The Niwot Future League, or NFL as it is commonly referred to, is another one of Niwot’s accidentally sports-themed acronym groups. With the Niwot Business Association (NBA) and the Niwot Cultural Arts Association (NCAA) widely known in Niwot, the NFL is probably the least-known group in Niwot. That’s because it is actually just a committee of the NBA, formed at the request of the Niwot Local Improvement District (LID) several years ago when the LID agreed to fund the NBA’s request for a part-time contractor to serve as Niwot’s Economi...

  • How things get done in Niwot – Part 2

    Bruce Warren|Mar 10, 2021

    The plat of Niwot was filed in the Boulder County records on March 30, 1875 by Porter Hinman and Ambrose Murray, laying out streets, alleys and lots on both sides of the railroad tracks, but Niwot was never officially incorporated as a town under state law. As a result, Niwot does not have a mayor or city council, and is governed by the Boulder County Commissioners. All of the buildings west of the railroad tracks are long gone, moved or demolished when the Diagonal Highway was built beginning...

  • How things get done in Niwot

    Bruce Warren|Mar 3, 2021

    Thirty years ago Niwot's 2nd Avenue was a mess whenever it rained or snowed. No curb and gutter, no streetlights, and nowhere for moisture to drain. As an unincorporated community, the downtown business district had no tax revenue or funding mechanism for basic infrastructure projects. In the early 1990s a small group of local commercial property owners approached Boulder County officials seeking a solution. Anne Dyni, who with her husband Jack owned the former blacksmith building (now occupied...