FEBRUARY 3, 2026 — In Colorado, the Longmont City Council is scheduled to review the future of the city’s official flag during a study session this week, reports the Times-Call, evaluating a potential redesign of their long-standing symbol.
The discussion follows a January directive where officials requested a comprehensive history of the current banner alongside cost estimates for modernizing the city’s visual identity.
According to the Times-Call, the existing flag was adopted on April 1, 1975 and was the product of a 1974 contest sponsored by the Longmont Rotary Club, which sought a design characterized by distinction and simplicity.
The winning entry, submitted by former U.S. Army information officer Glenn R. Troester, features three parallel fields and geometric shapes intended to evoke the letter “L” for Longmont and a semicircle representing the “C” in Colorado.
Troester, who received a $100 savings bond for his work, had characterized the design as a “knock-off of the state flag” created to be “bare-bones” and inexpensive to manufacture using readily available red, white, and blue fabric.
Despite its utilitarian origins, the flag gained international exposure when Longmont native Vance Brand carried a version produced by a local 4-H club aboard the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint U.S.-Soviet space flight.
A second city flag accompanied Brand on a 1984 mission aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger and is held in the Longmont Museum’s archives as of 2024.
However, proponents of a change argue that the 51-year-old design has faded into obscurity. Local critics suggest that few residents are aware the city even possesses an official banner, noting that it has not been consistently flown at municipal buildings.
City staff have presented two primary paths for a potential redesign: a community-led contest mirroring the 1974 process, or a professional branding commission estimated to cost $5,000.
