Lakewood group files charter amendment to lock zoning protections beyond council reach

DENVER — The grassroots group that led the repeal of Lakewood’s zoning overhaul has filed paperwork for a far more durable measure, a citizens initiative to write new zoning safeguards directly into the city charter, organizer Karen Gordey said on The Kim Monson Show.

Gordey, who leads the Lakewood Citizens Alliance and owns Radiant Painting and Lighting, said the alliance filed the initiative with the Lakewood city clerk the day before the May 27 broadcast. The proposed amendment would add notification guardrails for large-scale legislative rezoning and protect single-family homes, and the group is gathering signatures by Aug. 1 to reach the November 2026 ballot, she said.

The filing builds on a decisive April vote. At an April 7, 2026 mail-ballot special election, Lakewood voters repealed the city’s roughly 400-page zoning rewrite, with about 62% backing repeal on the lead question, according to the Lakewood city clerk’s final official canvass. On Question 1, 22,310 voters opposed the ordinance and 13,357 supported it, out of 35,760 ballots cast. The repealed code, approved by the City Council in October 2025, would have allowed more duplexes, triplexes and other multi-unit housing in suburban neighborhoods by eliminating single-family-only residential areas, the Colorado Sun reported.

Why the charter route matters

Gordey said the alliance chose a charter amendment because it cannot be reversed by the council alone. A typical citizens initiative, once approved, becomes an ordinance, and in Lakewood the council can wait six months and then amend or repeal it, she said.

“Once we get the signatures and it goes to the voters and it passes, it becomes part of the city charter, and that cannot be changed without a vote of the people,” Gordey said on the show.

The proposed amendment would put permanent guardrails around what Gordey called legislative rezoning, large-scale changes that under current rules carry no requirement that the city notify residents. The repealed 2025 code was adopted that way, she said.

A model from Littleton

Gordey said the alliance studied Rooted in Littleton, whose charter amendment Littleton voters approved in November 2025. That measure, Ballot Question 3A, passed with about 55% of the vote and removed the council’s ability to change the single-family zoning code without voter approval, the Colorado Sun reported. The Lakewood vote marked the second time in roughly five months that metro Denver voters rejected efforts to allow more housing types in predominantly single-family neighborhoods, Colorado Politics reported.

The two paths diverged early, Gordey said. Littleton’s council paused its rezoning for six months, letting an already-organized Rooted in Littleton begin gathering signatures right away. Lakewood’s council declined to pause, she said, so the alliance had to win a referendum to repeal the code first before pursuing the charter amendment.

Waiting out the legislature

Gordey said the group deliberately held its petition until the state legislative session ended, citing a pattern of lawmakers changing the rules mid-effort. She said the legislature altered a law last year that put Rooted in Littleton’s charter language at legal risk after the group filed, and changed the fee-in-lieu process after a separate Lakewood group, Save Belmar Park, began gathering signatures on an approved petition. More recently, Gordey said, lawmakers changed the law in the final week of the session in a way that could invalidate a pending measure, Initiative 175, even if it qualifies.

“We wanted to wait until the legislative session was over before starting our petitions,” Gordey said. “And so yesterday we submitted those.”

Nonpartisan by design

Gordey said the Lakewood Citizens Alliance is nonpartisan, with Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated residents working together, and that the group tested its language with both far-right and far-left residents before filing to confirm broad consensus. Gordey described the alliance’s goal as “transparency before transformation,” meaning the city should be required to notify residents before any major rezoning. The full language of the proposed amendment had not yet been made public at the time of the broadcast; Gordey said it would be posted on the alliance’s website within days, once the city completes its review.

Gordey said the group needs signatures by Aug. 1 to leave room for a protest period and for final language to reach Jefferson County by early September. Miniature town halls are planned over the next month or two, she said.