Colorado Dream, Meet Colorado Invoice

I asked you Sheet Heads a simple question: have you given up on the Colorado dream?

And the replies came back like a weather report nobody wanted to hear. Not a bunch of “I’m mad because politics.” More like: “I’m tired. I’m priced out. I’m planning. I’m packing.”

That’s the thing people in Denver policy bubbles never quite grasp. When a state starts feeling like a hostile workplace, the working people do not write white papers. They write change-of-address forms.

In the first piece, I laid out the big picture. Colorado flipped to negative domestic migration. More outs than ins. That is not a talking point, it is a flare gun. You can argue about which policy did what, but when enough regular families all arrive at the same conclusion, that’s the market speaking. And it speaks fluent U-Haul.

What you sent back to me was the human version of the spreadsheet.

A longtime reader wrote: “After 50 years in this state, it is getting hard to stay here for all the reasons you share.” That line hit me. Fifty years. That’s not a hot take, that’s a life. And then the kicker: “If COGOP and conservatives don’t find a way to nominate good candidates and win some big elections; TX will look mighty good to us. Our kids moved there 5 yrs ago and love it.”

Read that again. This is not someone fantasizing about a beach. This is someone saying, “My children already left. The rope is fraying. If the politics don’t change, the geography will.”

And I know some of you are thinking, “Well, that’s just partisan griping.”
Except it isn’t.

Because right after that came a comment that made me laugh, then made me sad, then made me laugh again because sometimes gallows humor is the only kind that still works: “Scott, perhaps the best move is to works with all of the red rural counties and secede from Colorado.”Secede. Weld tried that once before and our voters said, “NO!” I voted against it, because I am a proud Coloradan. But what does that even mean anymore? That’s where we are. Not “let’s write our senator.” Not “let’s start a neighborhood watch.” It’s “maybe we should just detach ourselves from the mothership before the mothership makes us buy a permit to breathe.”

Then came the economic gut punch. “Hello Scott…yes we have been trying to sell a rental townhome (only 5 years old) for a year…yes that is right….a year with not one offer….(Milliken). We are also waiting for my husband to retire…2 more years and we are OUT OF COLORADO! We just cannot retire here and the Democrats have turned our state into California.”

Now pause. The narrative we get served is always “Colorado is booming, people are desperate to get in, it’s all sunshine and craft beer.” But real people in real places are telling you it’s not that simple. A five-year-old townhome sitting for a year with no offers is not “vibrant.” That’s the sound of a market getting weird. Not collapsing everywhere, not uniformly. Weird. Sticky. Uncertain. And uncertainty is poison for normal families trying to plan the last third of their lives.

Which brings me to the comment that should be bronze-plated and bolted to the front door of the Capitol:

“I never thought I would leave here, but I simply can’t take the high taxes, the pot smell that pervades everywhere, our ruined downtown Denver and my hometown of Ft. Collins which is now just Boulder Light, having to make a reservation to go to the mountains that I once loved so much, the names changed on said mountains, the rudeness of newcomers…”

That’s a novel. And it’s all grief.

You can feel it. She’s not describing a state. She’s describing a relationship that went bad. The kind where you keep saying, “This isn’t who you used to be,” and the other person just shrugs and asks if you’ve considered therapy.

And then she goes full Colorado, full horsewoman, full “don’t test me”:

“The bicyclist who slapped my horse on the rear on the trail who told me to ‘get this damned animal off of the BIKE trail’ (which it wasn’t…it was a TRAIL, and HORSES have the RIGHT OF WAY) and he’s just lucky my sweet little mare didn’t kick him square in the head. He’s also fortunate that I didn’t have a rope with me that day…”
Look, I’m not endorsing roping bicyclists. I’m just saying I understand the temptation. Because that moment is Colorado in miniature now. A place where the old rules, the basic courtesy, the unwritten agreement that we share space like adults, has been replaced by entitlement and attitude.

Then she drops what I call a “Colorado government easter egg,” the little surprise fee that pops out from behind a bush holding a clipboard:

“Do you know that when you register a horse trailer that in this state you pay an EMISSIONS tax on it? Yes, you do. (Or any trailer, for that matter.)”
An emissions tax. On a trailer.

That’s not stewardship. That’s bureaucracy doing cosplay as righteousness. Subsidies aren’t science, and fees aren’t morality. They’re just money leaving your pocket with better branding.

And don’t miss the roads piece. She bought a brand-new car and was replacing tires and brakes within a year and a half. Rims destroyed by holes on I-70. Six hundred bucks for a rim because the state that can find unlimited cash for the next “study on feelings” can’t keep the interstate from looking like a war zone.

Pave the roads before you sponsor another conference on the lived experience of potholes.

More replies echoed the same theme, just in quieter language. One couple in their 70s wrote that Colorado “is not what it once was.” The joy got replaced by “angry and aggressive people.” They don’t recognize the state anymore. That might be the most important line in all of this. Not “it costs too much.” Not “crime is up.” It’s the deeper thing: the feeling that your home has been overwritten.

And then the cold math: “We are on a fixed income… Our expenses are going up an average of 7% a year. The national average is around 2.7%.”

Now, I can’t verify anyone’s personal inflation tracking without digging into their receipts, and I’m not going to pretend I can. But I can tell you what matters: that’s how it feels to them. And when retirees feel like the state is squeezing them, they stop being sentimental. They start being practical. They start looking at Zillow in other states the way you look at a lifeboat.

They said something else that I’ve said for years, and it’s still undefeated:
“You can’t eat the mountains.”

Exactly. The scenery is not a retirement plan. You can’t pay your utility bill with a postcard of Longs Peak. When the gap between “beautiful” and “affordable” gets too wide, only the wealthy can stay for the views. Everybody else becomes a temporary resident in their own hometown, just waiting for the final push.

And that’s what your comments are, collectively. A list of final pushes.

Some of you are two years out. Some of you are waiting to sell. Some of you are waiting for a grandkid to graduate. Some of you are already halfway out the door emotionally, and you just need the logistics to catch up.

So, what does that tell me?

It tells me this isn’t just “outbound migration.” It’s a warning that Colorado is breaking the covenant it used to have with regular people. Work hard, play fair, and you can build something here. That was the deal. And a whole lot of you are saying the deal is gone.

Now here’s the part where I’m supposed to offer a tidy ending. “Keep hope alive.” “Colorado will bounce back.” Insert soft piano.

No.

Here’s what I’ll say instead: the Colorado dream isn’t dead, but it’s being held hostage by people who don’t live like you do and don’t care if you can afford to stay.
If you want the dream back, it’s not going to happen through slogans. It happens through basics. Build housing like you actually mean it. Stop stacking fees like Jenga.

Treat crime like crime. Fix infrastructure like adults. Quit turning every ordinary part of life into a regulated product with an application process and a surcharge.

And for my conservative friends, yes, I’m talking to you too. If we can’t nominate serious candidates who can win statewide, then we are going to keep watching the moving trucks roll out while we argue on Facebook about who’s “pure” enough.

Sheet Heads, I hear you. Loud and clear. You’re not just whining. You’re mourning something you loved. And you’re making plans because you have to.

Colorado is worth fighting for.

But a lot of you are done fighting.

And if the people running this state don’t start acting like they want families to stay, the next “Colorado dream” article I write is going to be an obituary.