BOCC: A County Wide Nuisance Law? Really!
Who/What Is Really the Nuisance Here?
The People or The Government?

An open letter;

To Commissioners Tom Flower, Bill Canda:
The county “nuisance” law recently proposed by the BOCC WILL start the slippery slope towards “Boulderizing” Custer County. This is dangerous ground.
I, and many, many others have seen it before.
It starts with litter, then it’s noise, then it’s noise from guns, then it’s Conex containers, then its dogs, then it’s your porch light, then it’s your cow manure, then it’s the paint on your house or barn, then it’s the old jeep in your yard, then its a broken down tractor, then its YOUR XXXX behavior annoying a California transplant. The bottom line is: THEN THEY COME FOR YOU.
The Second Amendment implications of a nuisance regulation alone are enough to stop considering this infringement on our God given, natural rights. Your new, ex-San Francisco neighbor hates the 2nd Amendment. You legally shoot on your property. The neighbor complains that the noise is a NUISANCE and THEN THEY COME FOR YOU.
“Nuisance” definitions are subjective, and very often arbitrary. They empower governments to restrain behavior that a FEW individuals (here, apparently, the three Custer County Commissioners) deem inappropriate. Or just one Code Enforcement Officer (CEO). Can you see the damage a left-wing, green freak CEO could wreck on people he doesn’t like?
We have plenty of laws already on the books to handle serious problems in the county. They just need to be enforced.
And, just because you have a few people causing problems, that is no excuse to excessively regulate and punish the entire county. That was the rationale that the prior “progressive” BOCC used to try to pass an insane Building Code and worse than that, the Dark Skies Luddite nonsense. And because of their freedom hating behavior, we the people said bye-bye to them.
Please, if Commissioner Jay “The Yellow Rose of Texas” Printz wants a nuisance law , you know one thing, it’s about CONTROL over the common people by the enlightened ones and taxing and spending more of OUR money. Printz’s ideal government model is a combination Austin, Texas and Peking, China, where the peasants are ruled and the elite have their own laws (eg: How’s that Texas registered Prius running, Tex?). Everything Printz has proposed or endorsed has been detrimental to our freedom in Custer County. And this is another one. This proposed ordinance could be worse than Dark Skies or the Building code re restrictions on our personal liberties and property rights. THIS IS, IN FACT, A DE FACTO PARTIAL BUILDING CODE ORDINANCE (and possibly, in the future, a Dark Skies law) that was recently vehemently rejected by the vast majority of the citizens of Custer County. And if copied on the Huerfano County nuisance regulations (which was mentioned in the BOCC meeting), then it will include monetary and
CRIMINAL PENALTIES.
Please, not here in our still free county.
It is against all that the Wild West represents – individual responsibility and personal freedom. We can take care of our own land and buildings. We don’t need any CEO snooping around our properties because our new next-door neighbor, Lilly the lib from Los Angelos, CA, doesn’t like my dog barking at the wind, or God forbid, one does some target practicing with a semi-automatic, centerfire, rifle. And she lives a quarter mile away. Can you imagine if an evil COW makes a deposit in her driveway. Life imprisonment for the rancher.
This will NOT play well with the voters in this county. The county has gotten along fine for a 100 years without one. Just because a few people are misbehaving is NO REASON to impose UNNECESSARY and financially burdensome regulations on the whole county.
Freedom is precious. We have the federal government, and the State of Colorado regulating, harassing, taxing, and persecuting us in thousands of ways.
Tom, Bill: Do not add to that burden, sirs. You guys are good, conservative Commissioners. Don’t get sucked down that lib whirlpool of control, laws and regulations.
This whole proposal begs the question: Who really is the nuisance here? The people who the government wants to “control” because we are doing things a handful of officials or people don’t like, or THE GOVERNMENT ITSELF? Here, we clearly see the government IS THE NUISANCE. The government is immorally intruding into our personal and property rights based on elitist, “we know best”, “the peasants must be controlled” big government ideology that we in Custer County have repeatedly rejected in public forums AND AT THE BALLOT BOX. Custer County’s citizens want less taxes, less government and less regulation. That is what we voted for in the last Commissioner election. Maybe we need THE PEOPLE’S NUISANCE LAW. With penalties.
Keep Custer County Free for our Freedom loving
citizens.
George Gramlich
Managing Editor,
The Sangre de Cristo
Sentinel, Westcliffe, CO

The idea of a nuisance law came up in two consecutive BOCC meetings in December. Here is the Sentinel report on December 4.