Dental Implants Near Commerce City, CO

Commerce City residents and animal advocates are standing up in support of banning retail stores from selling dogs and cats in the Colorado town in an effort to curb the practice of commercial breeding, or puppy mills and cat mills.

"Your ordinance recognizes the inhumane conditions the puppy parents live in, and many issues such as disease and the results of indiscriminate breeding by commercial breeders," said one Commerce City resident before city council members during Monday night's council meeting.

City council leaders voted 7-2 on the second reading to approve an ordinance that would prevent people or retail stores in the city from selling cats or dogs unless a lawfully operated commercial kennel, hobby breeder, animal care facility, animal rescue organization, or animal shelter.

"This really supports the community," said Lauren Rombach.

Rombach is a state volunteer for Bailing out Benji, an organization that's been working across the country to stop the pipeline of puppy mill breeders, by preventing retail stores from selling dogs in the first place.

"Because our shelters and rescues are overwhelmed right now with adoptable dogs. We don't need to be mass-producing dogs and having people think that they're buying them from reputable breeders when they're actually buying from puppy mills," she said.

According to advocates against puppy mills, stores that sell pets are prime locations for puppy mill breeders to work with in order to sell their animals.

While Commerce City does not have any existing stores that take part in this kind of sales, Rombach says this ordinance serves as a preventative measure as more and more states continue to ban these sales outright.

"We're seeing stores be shut down across the nation, which makes the people that run puppy mills and some of the chains that run the stores more desperate to find new outlets," said Pam Dickerson, President of the Colorado Citizens for Canine Welfare.

"There are bad owners of any business, of any operation," said Dustin Hayworth.

Hayworth owns Pet City in Colorado Springs, a business that sells animals. However, he says they only get their pets from USDA-licensed commercial breeders and not puppy mills.

"We worked strongly with Colorado Springs city council, with a couple of council people to really dig into how we're doing our business and where our puppies are coming from to give them confidence that we are not the bad guys. We are part of the solution to make sure that the quality of animals at the breeding facilities, as well as the puppies coming into this town, are the best they can be," said Hayworth.

With Commerce City now marking the 20th city in the state to ban dog and cat sales, and Westminster also considering a similar ordinance, Hayworth worries this could set a bad precedent for more cities to put stores like his out of business.

"It's not going to help any of Colorado consumers. They're going to continue to look for their pets," said Hayworth. "They're going to continue and have to go to more unregulated sources to get their animals through the internet, more scams, more unhealthy dogs coming into the state because there's not a regulated chain of custody of those animals coming in."

Retail pet sales are currently banned in eight states, including most recently in New York. Colorado does not have a state ban.

Gabriela Vidal

Gabriela Vidal is a reporter for CBS News Colorado. Read her latest reports or check out her bio and send her an email.

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Delivery workers are in high demand during the holidays, but the story is different at UPS, which recently told state officials that hundreds of layoffs are coming at the beginning of next year.

DENVER — Delivery workers are usually in high demand when the holidays roll around, but the story is different at UPS, which recently told state officials that hundreds of layoffs are coming at the beginning of next year.

In a letter signed Thursday of last week, a human resources employee for UPS told the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE) and Commerce City Mayor Steve Douglas that “due to changing business realities in our network,” the company was moving to lay off more than 400 workers at the facility located at 5190 Ivy St., effective Jan. 15, 2025.

The layoffs come as the company works to add more automation equipment to the location, which is expected to save $3 billion in costs by 2028, according to our partners at The Denver Post.

In all, 404 employees will be laid off, including 401 on the package processing side as well as 3 revenue recovery employees, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter, or WARN, for short. The letter was obtained by Denver7 Monday and requires businesses provide employees with a 60-day notice in case of mass layoffs.

The layoffs will affect both union and non-union employees, according to the letter. Union employees with seniority at the company represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local No. 455 will have bumping rights, meaning they’ll be able to apply to other positions within the company, according to the UPS human resources employee.

Permanent layoffs at Boeing

UPS wasn’t the only company to announce layoffs last week. On Friday, the aerospace company Boeing told state officials in a WARN letter they would be permanently laying off approximately 63 employees in Colorado effective Jan. 17, 2025.

Locations impacted by these layoffs, for which there are no bumping rights, include a location at 55 Inverness Dr. E in Englewood; Stapleton Intl, 8250 Smith Rd. in Denver; 4440 Discoverer Ave. at the Schriver Space Force Base in El Paso County; 440 Wooten Rd. in Colorado Springs; 5555 Tech Center in Colorado Springs; 720 Irwin Ave at the Schriver Space Force Base; and 9970 Federal Dr. in Colorado Springs.

Boeing has struggled in recent years with ongoing aircraft safety problems, which have damaged its reputation and caused headaches for its customers like Southwest Airlines, who recently blamed the company for layoffs. The Boeing Spaceliner had to return without its crew after suffering problems, leaving them behind on the International Space Station, the Denver Post reports.

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