A friend told me that something’s amiss in Memorial Park beside Prospect Lake — that it’s fenced off and they’re building something. They didn’t sell that land off already, did they?
— Jennifer

ANSWER: We received your question one day after the city property tax increase was defeated and, no, the city council hadn’t sold off the park land for condos.

The construction fences go around a universally accessible playground announced in 2007 by The Swing High Project and the nonprofit Shane’s Inspiration, in conjunction with the Parks and Recreation Department.
It will be the only one of its kind in our area and will have ramps for those in wheelchairs; harnessed seating; sensory games for those with visual or hearing impairments; a rubberized surface for  wheelchairs, walkers or crutches; and elevated sand tables.

Inmates at the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center have sent letters and dropped by the newspaper or called after release to collect the $30 or $50 or $100 they had been told by other inmates the newspaper would pay them for their CJC wristbands because “you’re writing a story. How much will you pay, and who do we check with when we get out?” wrote Inmate No. ……..

ANSWER: Don’t grab the bus to The Gazette when you get out because, oops, it just isn’t true.
Various versions of this urban legend have been floating around for years.

An inmate sent us his commissary receipt for peanut butter crackers, salsa and chocolate chip cookies saying he was told  we were investigating the tax he was charged for food. Another said The Gazette wanted to investigate because people have to pay when they are booked into jail.

We checked with The Gazette’s Public Safety Editor Joel Millman, and none of these stories are being written. And The Gazette isn’t paying for any of these things.

Sheriff’s Department Spokesman Lt. Lori Sevene debunked the wristband rumor saying, “we take their bands as part of their outprocessing. If they don’t want to give them up, they really don’t want to leave.” As a safety precaution they also don’t release inmates in their readily identifiable prison jumpsuits.

About the booking charge, Sevene said everyone who is sent to the CJC is charged a “housing fee” of $30 “to offset some of the cost of their housing.”

Inmates complained that they aren’t allowed to call The Gazette to report these things. In fact, they can only make collect calls, which The Gazette refuses.

They aren’t allowed to read The Gazette, inmates complained. Sevene explained that all local newspapers, including The Gazette, are barred from the CJC “as a safety issue. There are too many high profile cases here locally, and it was causing too many fights. We also took their (criminal) charges off the Web site because they were being assaulted because of the charges against them.” They can watch televison, she said, and read The Denver Post, if they want, which has less local news.

So, inmates, there you have it. But since you can’t read the paper, maybe someone from the CJC or Sheriff Terry Maketa’s office will pass the info along so you won’t mistakenly think you’re going to get that $30 or $50 or $100.

On a recent walk past the Dominic T. “Nick” Venetucci statue adjacent to the Pioneers Museum I counted 26 pumpkins. Are these started from seed or plants? Who plants them and when? And what happens to the mature pumpkins?

– Chris J. Hermes

ANSWER: Oh, Great Pumpkin, is it you?

Not quite. The pumpkin seeds, usually a couple of packages, are planted around mid-May and the city waters them. They’re usually small to medium pumpkins, just like those the “Pumpkin Man” planted for the kids from this area to pick.

The pumpkin fairy is Beth Ortiz, manager of Downtown Business Improvement District, who said the district agreed to do this when area residents, many of them school kids, raised the money for the sculpture after Venetucci’s death in 2004.

Who harvests the pumpkins? Well, if Ortiz is quick enough, she does it herself. Sometimes, just like this year, she goes over to pick some pumpkins  before they’re too big and they’ve already gone home with someone else.

Ortiz will finish the pumpkin season by cutting down the vines.

It was amazing Oct. 26 when a large number of Army helicopters flew in formation over the city. What was happening?

—Amy

 ANSWER: They had just returned from training in Fort Irwin, Calif. It was a squadron of 16 AH-64D Apache helicopters heading home to Fort Carson.

Just south of the Woodmen/I-25 interchange, near the overhead electronic sign near Zio’s restaurant, all three lanes of southbound I-25 jog about 5-6 feet to the left. The diversion widens the right breakdown lane and nearly eliminates the left breakdown lane. There are no obvious visible reasons why the lanes need to make this unusual excursion, and I think it presents a traffic hazard. Drivers cruising down the interstate are expecting the road to continue in the usual straightforward manner.

— Bob Bean

Colorado Department of Transportation spokesman Bob Wilson explained, “The City maintains that overhead sign and the highway lights. Instead of having to close a lane every time they do operations work, there is that jog which allows space for city crews to park their vehicles when they have to work on the sign or the lights.

“This will all go away when I-25 becomes four lanes in the future.”

__

Send questions to linda.navarro@ gazette.com with “Column Question” in the subject line; mail to “Did You Ever Wonder?,” P.O. Box 1779, Colorado Springs 80901; blog at gazette.com, Life. Queries must be signed. No personal replies.

Every time I pass by Fillmore and Templeton Gap, I can’t help but miss Applejuice, the donkey. Can you tell me how is he is doing in his home in Fountain?
— Susan Broz

He’s “doing great and is just being him,” said Dwane Baker, a family friend who gave Applejuice a home on 5 acres when his owner went into a nursing home in January.
 Applejuice is on 5 acres and has companions in with him, a mule and a horse and soon there will be a female. That’s good news for regular T-Gap passersby who remember his girlfriend, Twinkle Star who died several years ago, leaving Applejuice to just hang his head.
Baker said Applejuice still sets off a good donkey bray when he sees someone coming to visit. And he still loves his carrots and apples, just like the ones people would slip through the fence to him.
The donkey’s old barn had been painted with special sayings for 40 years and now Applejuice’s old home has one final, poignant sign painted on the east side of the barn.
It’s a farewell to his owners Dessie Taylor, who died Sept. 1, and her sweetheart, C. Robert “C. Bob” Taylor who died in 1996. They had been married 56 years and there is a tip of the hat to them: “Happy Trails, Dessie and C. Bob.”
 No word on what will happen to the property, which is owned by their grownup children.

1. Is there a reason that there’s no left turn lane from southbound Marksheffel onto eastbound Colorado Tech Drive?  The speed limit on Marksheffel at that point is 45 mph, just dropping from 55, so traffic is moving at a good clip.
— Doug Brickett
2. In the east/west turn lanes at the intersection of Constitution and Marksheffel huge holes were dug and giant steel boxes were placed underground. What are those boxes for?
— Anne
These are just two of a number of questions sent in about Marksheffel Road, so we’ll handle them altogether.
County Public Information Officer Dave Rose said there will be a lot of  work along Marksheffel now and in the near future, influenced by several major projects. The intersections will be reevaluated and changes coordinated with all the other work.
To the north, the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority will be widening Marksheffel to four lanes. An agreement just reached by El Paso County, Constitution Heights Metropolitan District and the Central Marksheffel Metropolitan District allows for the completion of the next four-lane section from Constitution Avenue north to the PPRTA project.
Now, about those big holes and metal boxes in the east-west turn lanes at Constitution. They are huge metal “sleeves” for the Southern Delivery System regional water delivery project, Rose said. SDS is a Colorado Springs Utilities project, and you’ll see more of those sleeves north-south along the Marksheffel corridor as the pipeline is constructed over the next year.

Here’s something I’ve wondered about, and you won’t have to go too far to get an answer!  Several times over the last year I’ve noticed on the weather page of The Gazette that the low temperature for a Colorado city has been lower than the low temperature listed for “nationwide.” Since I haven’t heard anything about Colorado seceding from the union, I was wondering how this happened?
— Brad 


Answer: It was an oops-we-goofed by the service that compiles our weather page, and they were apologetic.
The company, Weather Central, uses national extremes calculated by the National Weather Service.
Weather Central puts together a subset of extremes for Colorado cities.
Pat Weeden of Weather Central said the two sets of figures are coming from two “computer routines,” and his company “is supposed to be doing a third routine that will flag this, but some Colorado extremes  apparently slipped through.”
He said he’ll hang a “big red flag” for the editors.
Colorado, Weeden assured our readers, has, indeed, rejoined the union.

A couple of friends and I have been walking around Prospect Lake for a while and there has been discussion as to how far one lap around the lake is.  One friend says 1.25 miles and another says 1.50 miles.  Could you clear this up for us?
— Marcia

ANSWER: The city’s Parks and Recreation Department officially goes with your friend’s 1.25 miles measurement.
The department has also mapped out a 5K, 2.2 mile perimeter path around the whole park, all 196.1 acres.
For a map go to the department’s site at springsgov.com

I understand that when a person dies at home, the coroner picks up that person’s meds/prescriptions and takes them away. Any truth to this statement?
— Jim Sutherland

It’s true and it’s a legal issue.
 Coroner’s investigator Dawn Miller explained that if the medication were left in the home, the person or persons still residing there would illegally be in possession of drugs/medications belonging to another person. It is against the law to possess another person’s meds.
“We inventory all of them and destroy them properly. We’ve covered all the grounds, the legality and properly disposing of the medications,” Miller said.
So, you see, it also stops people from damaging the environment and water supply by improperly flushing the drugs down the toilet or crushing them up and washing them down the drain or dumping them in the trash.

OCT. 24 UPDATE:

More about meds that don’t belong to you
Last Saturday we answered a question about why the coroner’s office removes medications when a person dies at home. It’s a legal issue, they said, because people can’t be in possession of drugs that don’t belong to them. And, their office disposes of the drugs properly.
My goodness did we get e-mails. Seems most folks had no idea what to do with expired or unused drugs and those belonging to someone else.
Terry asked, “What about when someone dies away from home. How do surviving family members know about this?”
Linda said when her father died, the nursing home “returned all his medications to me.” Where can she take them?
Unfortunately there are not many options. The only constant is El Paso County Recycling, but call for “acceptance criteria:” 520-7878, 3255 Akers Drive (out near Marksheffel).
Also: many pharmacies offer “bring in your old prescriptions” several times a year. Also check with your pharmacy and/or your doctor’s office to see if they dispose of unused medications.
The no-nos are: don’t flush them down the toilet or crush them and wash them down the drain. This could cause wastewater problems and water problems downstream. Don’t throw them in the trash where animals or kids could get them and where they’ll end up in a landfill, also causing potential future environmental problems.
If we hear of any other drug recycling sources, we’ll let you know.