Latest headlines | CU Buffs kick off 2024 football season tonight

It's a big day for college football. So many teams are playing their first game of the year today and of course, that includes the Cu Buffs Coach Prime looking to improve on the team's four and eight season last year. Thanks so much for watching nine news at noon. I'm Anusha Roy, the Buffs host the North Dakota State Bison tonight. That is at six o'clock, North Dakota State may not be an F BS team like Colorado, but they are known to be tough and have won several national titles. So going into today, coach Sanders has yet to announce the team captains, not the dogs. I give out the dogs uh, week of the game. I identify those guys. See the thing about it. You know, you have some guys that you, you, they've shown you what they could do but not out there. I gotta see it out there. So a lot of the dogs probably would come from last year's team. Not, not newcomer, newcomers gotta earn that. Today will be one of the busiest days on the road in Boulder. As nine news reporter Brianna Fernandez tells us there's a lot that people need to know whether they're going to the game or not. Of course, this game landed on a work week on a Thursday. We know that game is starting tonight at six. So of course, if you're leaving, work, getting home, leaving Boulder, you are bound to get stuck in traffic, especially right here at this intersection where I'm currently standing at Colorado Avenue and 28. The good news is that the Boulder Police Department tells me that they have been planning for this. So let's kind of break down what roads you should be avoiding. Boulder police say 28 in Colorado, you'll see six officers before and after the game helping with congestion, then three officers placed out Folsom and Arapaho and then Broadway Street will also see a lot of backups, a good alternate route for you today, Foothills Parkway. We have a command post with cameras where we have one person just watching that to kind of give us a heads up on when the traffic is busy and backing up in other areas so that we can address it. So we we actually do a lot of work to prepare for this and have several different plans that we can use and then switch for those attending. The game gates will open at four. There will be no lockers available for rental. So make sure you do have a clear bag to get inside of the stadium. The East campus lot will be an option for parking. We know once that law is full, you're going to have a couple of options. Shuttle buses are going to be an option around the city and also parking around the city. So if you do come to Boulder or you're leaving Boulder, Boulder police says just be patient for now. I'm here in Boulder Brianna Fernandez for nine years. It was also a big morning in Broncos country. The team broke ground on the new $175 million practice facility and headquarters. This is gonna be an expansion of the current one and then built on the team's Dove Valley property. You can tell by the price tag, it's not gonna be a small project either. The plan calls for a 205,000 square foot facility facility behind me yesterday in one of the most successful eras of any NFL franchise highlighted by three Super Bowl wins. Today we break ground on a new headquarters here at Broncos Park powered by Common Spirit. I believe this new facility like the one we opened 34 years ago will mark the beginning of the next great chapter in Broncos history. That facility should be in time done in time for the 2026 season. Want to give you a live look outside right now and it is an absolutely gorgeous day. We actually cooled down a little bit today. Dare I say, feeling a tinge like fall at least relative to the nineties that we've been dealing with. We've got Keeley Chalmers here with us and Keely are folks gonna be lucky for the game tonight. Is the weather gonna hold out? I'll tell you what it's gonna be football weather. It's perfect. A little bit cooler temperatures topping out in the eighties. We do have a slight chance up there in Boulder, especially along the foothills of getting a quick and gusty storm, uh, and a brief downpour this evening. But for the most part, the weather is looking a fantastic and no nineties in the forecast for the Boulder area today and out there right now, really just a few clouds. We're still getting a little bit of that mid to upper level moisture flowing into our area and that is what coupled with the daytime heating, uh fire up some of those uh quick moving thunderstorms, current temperatures out there in the seventies and eighties right now across the plains. We're looking at sixties and seventies up there in the high country as for any type of precipitation out there right now, really just across the plains again, we're starting to see that dissipate and move off to the east where we're seeing that stronger uh weather system up there to the northeast of us. So for the metro area today, we're looking partly cloudy climbing up to only about eight, four degrees. So not quite the 92 that we got to yesterday. We're looking mainly seventies and eighties across the plain. So your weather headlines cooler. Today, we do have some isolated showers and storms in the forecast. Just a couple, one or two out there and we are looking dry and warm for your Labor Day. We'll talk more about that coming up in your full forecast in just a bit. All right, thanks so much for that. Kayla, the Colorado legislature special session is now wrapping up senators took a final vote then passed the property tax bill this morning yesterday, the house passed that bill which is aiming to reduce increases in property taxes but not severely impacting funding for schools and local governments. The governor just tweeted in the last half hour that he will sign that bill into law once two steep conservative tax measures are removed from the November ballot. The deadline to do that is September 6th. The school board at Adams 12 5 star schools voted to put a bond and mill levy measure on the ballot in November. The district is asking for an $830 million bond to expand career and technical education programs along with building security and H VAC upgrades. They also want a $34.5 million mill levy override that would raise property taxes about $240 a year for a $500,000 home. A new snapshot of how kids are doing in Colorado has some surprising data. It shows a drop in birth rates and the number of people that are moving into the state, it went from 61.6 births per 1000 women a decade ago, down to 51.9 births in 2022 and after a decade of positive net migration. So that essentially means more people moving into the state than moving out that actually started to slow down after COVID fell by more than a half between 2019 and 2022. We talked to an economics professor from MS U Denver about the long term economic impact. When you combine all those factors, you have lower econ economic growth, less development. Um you you have a lower a smaller tax base, right? The professor also said housing and child care costs here could influence people's decisions to move, especially if the cost of a home pushes you further away from the city and then you end up spending more time commuting. It has been a long time coming. But finally today, some of the construction and congestion of the 16th Street Mall is going away. Three blocks between Lerer and Wazi are now back open. There was a celebration for the reopening this morning. The construction has been ongoing since spring of 2022 to address deteriorating in infrastructure and improve safety and mobility. The full project is expected to be done in the fall of 2025. Some new amenities could be coming to the Gaylord Rockies Resort near Dia. The hotel has submitted plans to the city of Aurora for a proposed room and water park expansion. Our partners at the Denver Business Journal is reporting the plan would add 450 rooms to the hotel and a 47,000 square foot addition to its water park.