Kolomitz, who has worked on dozens of local election campaigns, says the Lone Tree election was one of the most emotional he's seen. "You're dealing with a small community where everybody knows each other, so it was neighbor versus neighbor. We probably spoke to three-quarters of the population."
Lone Tree's elected officials all backed the proposal, and Kolomitz says that helped convince voters to okay it. "The mayor and city council were very strong proponents of this, and that helped generate volunteers," he says.
Anthony Camera
Plans for 3,500 acres of Lone Tree's expansion could redefine Colorado's suburban march.
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However, Day sees the annexation campaign as the simple triumph of cash over common sense. He says he and his small group of volunteers were simply outgunned by a sophisticated public-relations outfit.
"The two main groups behind this were the developers and the real estate people," he says. "They put money and effort into this and got their constituencies out. I wish we'd had more money and the ability to hire somebody, like the developer did. Then we would have won, hands down."
Now Day is fighting the annexation in Douglas County District Court. He sued the City of Lone Tree last summer, alleging that the city council violated the town charter by approving emergency measures to annex the land before the election. Lone Tree officials say the ordinance they passed specified that the annexation was temporary pending voter approval, and they dismiss the lawsuit as nothing but sour grapes.
Bitterness over the election remains. Day openly accuses Lone Tree officials of running a crooked election. "I was a poll-watcher in 1964 in Chicago, and this approached that," he says. "In Chicago, I saw one person vote five times. In Lone Tree, I saw faces I've never seen before in my life, and I've been to almost every home in Lone Tree. There was a lot of fraud."
Lone Tree officials say the allegation of fraud is so preposterous it doesn't even merit a response. In public, those same officials say that the election is behind them and that they want to unite the community, but off the record, they still seethe over what they describe as Day's dirty campaign. They claim he even resorted to racist stereotyping to frighten voters.
"He said we wanted to build housing projects and bring in a 'bad element,'" says one official. "He told outright lies."
With the election over, Lone Tree's experiment is set to unfold along I-25. The entire buildout could take as long as thirty or forty years, and Coloradans will one day be able to pass judgment on whether or not the city's promise of a different kind of suburb came to fruition.
"I think Lone Tree is doing something on a scale unmatched in the state," says O'Boyle. "This may be the largest development in Colorado zoned for multi-use and designed for transit. People are ready to try something new."
