Letter to Constituents by Dave Donelson Concerning Karman Line Annexation
June 4, 2025
The following letter was received by a constituent of Dave Donelson, Councilman District 1, and is published with the permission of both Dave Donelson and his constituent.
John,
Thank you for your voicemail. My wife and I received one of the “Vote yes on Issue 1” mailers a few days ago. It was full of misinformation and lies.
Issue 1 will ask you if you want to annex into Colorado Springs, approximately 1,900 acres (3 square miles) of land that is 3 miles east of Colorado Springs. For me, that fails the first test for an annexation: Is it a LOGICAL extension of our current city boundary? Something 3 miles away isn’t a LOGICAL extension.
Here is the exact language you will see on the ballot:
“Shall the voters approve Ordinance 25-16, concerning annexing that area known as Karman Line Addition No. 6 consisting of 1,876.24 acres located northwest of the Bradley Road and Curtis Road intersection into the City of Colorado Springs?”
If you don’t want the annexation vote “AGAINST THE ORDINANCE” on your ballot.
The developer (ONE La Plata) who on the “Vote Yes on Issue 1” card claims that Democrats are trying to take over the city by building apartment buildings, is actually the same one planning to build the skyscraper downtown (I voted against that)! Democrats really have nothing to do with this. That is a total distraction.
The Karman Line annexation will come within ¼ mile of the Schriever perimeter. Schriever was built far from the city on purpose. City level development so close to their perimeter creates risks for the work that is done at Schriever. This development is not supporting the military – it is threatening it.
The developer that owns the land (ONE La Plata) wants to have it annexed into the city, but knows that annexing land 3 miles away doesn’t make sense to voters so they are spinning it as a fight against a different developer – Norwood. According to them, if we vote to annex their land (Karman Line) into the city we will be fighting the other developer. It is a clever spin but I disagree with it.
We have a lot of land already inside our current city boundaries that is yet to be developed – that is what the Eastern Wastewater Expansion is going to allow. The houses in Karman Line will start in the mid 400s and the average will be in the mid 500s and up. That is not housing that young military folks can afford (and I used to be one)!
Our Police and Fire response times are slow now and this won’t help. We will be adding more roads for maintenance when we really can’t afford the maintenance on the ones we have. We do not have enough water now to build out our city in our current city boundaries. Adding this annexation will only make that worse.
However, the investors in Karman Line will make a lot of money if it is annexed into the city.
I have voted NO on this three times on Council – and I will vote NO one more time on this ballot.
Let me know if you have other questions and feel free to share this.
Here is something with some pros and cons: https://www.cpr.org/2025/05/23/colorado-springs-special-election-june-17-karman-line-addition/
I hope that helps,
Dave