The Temperature | Year of the E-Bike finishes big

When you are 8 years old and the are digging at your kneecaps and you’re standing at the bus stop in the middle of the woods a half-mile from home at 25 below zero, not sure if you’ve missed the bus or which mean face Wendy Tysver will give you when you walk in late to class, the idea of good things happening in adult life seems very, very unlikely. So I wouldn’t have believed you back then if you’d told me someday the world would spend an entire week talking about and . Miracles, and a new appreciation for blueberry frosted, do happen.

And the stopped their losing streak at . Things seem too good right now. No doubt something horrible will happen, like Lululemon bringing back the Toughskins.

In the meantime, let’s just bless the sweet New Year vibes and start with some good news. Colorado enthusiasm for e-bikes rolls on Portion of low-income e-bike vouchers actually cashed Colorado going cuckoo for sped through the end of the year and into the New Year, as state officials pointed to some remarkable results for 2023 vouchers and towns like prepared for new voucher launches. Colorado’s $9 million voucher giveaway had surprisingly high redemption rates, meaning the people who got lucky in the lottery actually bought bikes and used the instant rebates of $500 or $1,100.

While officials expected a 65% redemption rate based on the experiences of other states and cities, Coloradans cashed the vouchers at 87% rates, and 92% for the $1,100 low income voucher. Officials were also pleased at , with 90% of rebate recipients reporting low income and 20% coming from rural areas, a higher ratio than the state’s 14% rural population. Ten days before the end of the year, Colorado had distributed 4,520 rebates in 54 counties (out of 64 total), for a bottom line of $5.

4 million in aid. Local communities have been rolling out their own e-bike vouchers, sometimes paid for by a separate state grant program. Manitou Springs is offering 100 first-come vouchers starting today, with $700 vouchers for 70 low-income residents and $500 vouchers for 30 moderate-income residents.

(Most programs define low-income as 80% or less of the area median income. ) has also given away thousands of e-bike vouchers, and after periodic sellouts for its every-other-month 2023 voucher releases, the program will return in 2024. State officials don’t want people shut out from rebates to despair for 2024, so they are putting 400 people who applied but missed out onto a special .

As unredeemed vouchers expire, those wait-listed folks will be first in line for the second chance. Otherwise, Colorado’s program is on pause for now, as officials wait to see how many more outstanding vouchers are used and what’s left of the original $9 million fund. The energy office said it would take $1.

8 million from the local government e-bike funds to open up another round of statewide applications in February. But wait, there’s more, e-bike boosters say. Even if you get shut out of all state and local rebates, a new e-bike tax credit kicks in April 1.

Any resident buying an e-bike will get $450 in tax credits as a point-of-sale price cut, as long as they buy a qualified model from an approved retailer. No more 10-cent plastic fees, because no more plastic bags The last of the and will be trickling from Colorado retail outlets in coming days. But don’t let the sight of fresh groceries in a crackling new plastic bag fool you: You can no longer pay your 10-cent guilty fee and use the bags at a major store.

They are now banned across the state. Styrofoam or polystyrene clamshells, too. There’s a new recycling and reuse sheriff in town, as of Jan.

1. Colorado tried to cushion the blow for 2023 by allowing plastic bags for the full year, but demanding retailers charge the 10-cent fee. Enough is enough, the original law said — 2024 is time for real change.

Retailers can still put your items in new paper bags, but those will usually come with a 10-cent fee, indefinitely. The goal is still to push consumers toward remembering their reusable containers. Some takeout restaurants are starting to move to washable and reusable plastic containers, .

Look for that trend to continue. CoPIRG hailed the as one of a number of promising environmental and consumer laws taking effect in 2024. The Colorado consumer advocacy group said, “Coloradans went through every day before the pandemic.

” And if you want to learn more about why so many are eager to get plastic bags out of the whole waste/reuse system, and learn from our answer pages. We here at The Temperature have a New Year’s resolution to do better on batteries. Why the state didn’t block the UCHealth-Parkview merger “It’s about aiming for a certain geographic footprint for the system overall.

” — Health care analyst Allan Baumgarten As , ’s merger with in Pueblo, finalized last month, helps cement the former’s dominant position in the Colorado hospital market. UCHealth now has a significant presence in every large city along the Front Range, something no other hospital system in the state can boast. As health care analyst explained in today’s story, this gives UCHealth massive bargaining power when it comes to negotiations with insurers and other payers.

“It’s about aiming for a certain geographic footprint for the system overall in terms of being a must-have hospital to payers who are working with employers in that part of the state,” Baumgarten said. Already, UCHealth was neck-and-neck with as the largest hospital system in the Denver metro area in terms of net patient revenue. When looking statewide, no other system comes close — in filed with the , UCHealth reported nearly $7 billion in operating revenue and more than $800 million in profit for the fiscal year that ended in June 2023.

And that was before the Parkview merger, which should add more than $500 million to UCHealth’s operating revenue total. (It may not add to the profit figure right away, though, as Parkview . ) So, given this dominant position — and given research — why did Colorado Attorney General give his OK to the merger? Because Colorado law really doesn’t give him authority to determine whether a merger will hurt competition or consumers.

As , Colorado’s limits the AG’s analysis to only two questions: Whether the merger “will result in a material change in the charitable purposes to which the assets of the hospital have been dedicated,” and whether the merger “will result in a termination of the Attorney General’s jurisdiction over those assets. ” In this merger, the answer to both is an obvious no. UCHealth and Parkview are nonprofits set up to act as hospitals.

That won’t change after the merger. As UCHealth president and CEO said at a ceremony in Pueblo last month to mark the merger: “We’ve always had one priority and that’s to take care of patients. You should all take great comfort in that cultural alignment we’ve had, and we are unwavering to that.

” In terms of the second question, both systems are based in Colorado, so their assets will remain under the AG’s jurisdiction post-merger. The law does allow the AG to assess whether a merger will result in “reductions in the availability and accessibility of health care services in the communities served by the hospital. ” But that requirement is fairly easily satisfied by, you know, not making massive changes to the hospital being acquired.

In his analysis, Weiser found that UCHealth had agreed to safeguards that would ensure Parkview “will at a minimum effectively operate post-transaction as it has pre-transaction. ” For instance, UCHealth has pledged to make an effort to expand services offered at Parkview, and has also agreed to discontinue or reduce lines of service only after consulting with Parkview’s board, which will be made up mostly of people from Pueblo and will continue to have a say over day-to-day operations of the hospital. Most of the public comment the AG’s office received was in support of the merger, with many hoping that a merger with UCHealth would help maintain Parkview’s presence in the community by preventing it from going broke.

“These safeguards will preserve the core elements of (Parkview’s) charitable purposes within the UCHealth system,” Weiser concluded, “and ensure there will be no material reduction in the availability or accessibility of health care services as a result of the transaction. ” So now comes the part where they have to make good on these promises. We had some fun skiing over the school-holiday weeks, but then we weren’t trying for fresh, deep powder in the farthest back bowls, either.

Those who were have so far been disappointed in Colorado. And Colorado River water watchers can’t be pleased, either. The daily-updated snowpack monitors in the state’s most important river basins are lagging far behind the 30-year average, and there are no fresh storm dumps in sight for the next few days.

That 55% in the Rio Grande Basin has ominous implications for efforts by farmers and conservators in the San Luis Valley to recharge depleted aquifers and sort out a saner agricultural future. Thanks for starting your New Year with us, and send us your ideas for climate and health issues you’d like to see explained in 2024. We’ll do our best.

Life’s a challenge, but winning is always a possibility; as the Detroit Pistons would say, that’s why they play the games. Side note: If the 3-30 Pistons win out, they’ll finish 52–30 and be sitting sweet for the playoffs. Think about it.

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