BOCC Feb. 2nd: “We Need to Fix This”,
Bridge Repair, STR Regulations,
Food Charity, VSO

by George Gramlich

The meeting started at 9 a.m. with a break for lunch.
All three commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda, and Board members Tom Flower and Kevin Day. County Attorney Clint Smith was also present.
All three commissioners did their “what did I do since the last meeting” recitations. No revelations there.
Day then brought up a good point. At the last meeting they approved a motion making masks optional in the county courthouse rather than “mandatory”. Day said they really meant all county buildings, but the resolution specifically said, by mistake, the courthouse. Day said “we need to fix this” so they put it on the agenda for the February 17 meeting in Wetmore.
Flower then brings up the subject of how items can be added to the BOCC’s meeting agendas. This starts a LONG, disjointed discussion. It appears it was never settled.
Staff Reports:
Landfill Report: Everything is
going good and that they took in $230,000 in 2020. The Unicorn Ranch is still doing steel and aluminum can recycling at the landfill. Flower then goes into the weeds on breaking down the components of the money haul and comparisons with prior years. High Country Recycling reported it is applying for a grant to expand cardboard recycling and expand into steel and aluminum cans. Landfill will be putting in a couple of new trenches for
the garbage and need to do it this year.
Road & Bridge: The state required us to fix some bad timber on a bridge on CR 395 in Wetmore which they did. They also got
another pickup truck which will allow the grader operators to leave the graders at the work area and drive back to the shop in the truck, thus saving a ton of time.
Human Services: 142 LEAP applications processed. They have a child welfare social worker opening and might have a qualified and trained applicant.
Veterans Service Office: (The VSO officer, John Carroll, who gave the report, announced he was leaving last week.) John
reported on his activities in
January. He is willing to spend a few days to help train the new VSO officer when they find one. It appears the office will be closed
until they find a replacement. Phone numbers to the state VSO and
other veteran aid organizations are on the front door. John’s last day was February 5th.
Planning & Zoning: Jackie Hobby, P&Z Director, stated that there were six new dwelling permits and eleven accessory structure permits issued in January (as compared to only two new dwelling permits last year). She also said that there were 78 new dwelling permits issued in 2021. Jackie noted that P&Z was having a problem in Adobe Creek with one landowner who built a 2,500 sq. ft. house with no permit and put in a septic without a county permit and the contractor who did the septic was not approved by Custer County. Jackie went on to talk about how low our septic and Special Use Permit (SUP) fees were compared to other counties.

Next up in the P&Z presentation was Vic Barnes, Chair of the Planning Commission. He presented the amended/revised Planning & Resolution changes the Planning Commission has been working on. The vast majority of this concerned regulating Short Term Rentals (STRs). This discussion goes on for a LONG time. Contributing to the LONG time was the fact that the commissioners had an older version of draft and Barnes had an updated one and page numbers didn’t match, causing much confusion and delay. But they got through it.
We won’t get into the weeds on the proposed STR and other changes but some of the highlights were: defining STRs as businesses, STR is not a Use by Right, STRs need a permit, the Planning Commission is proposing a much more stream lined permit procedure (as opposed to the laborious SUP process), a three-year deadline to finish a dwelling, a cap on the number of STRs in the county at 85, which can be changed, (currently about 70 STRs in the county), and finally, the commissioners will have a February 26 workshop on this. There was a tedious discussion on the positive and negative aspects of STRs between Canda and Flower which has been covered many times in the past. Day showed much courage in refraining from entering the endless, repetitive talk show.
Because of the two drafts at the meeting issue, there was, of course, a grade school discussion on how to label and date draft versions. This was painful.
Day brought up the point of taking one’s political signs down after the primary and then having to put them up again in the general election and this was a pain in the butt. The county’s sign ordinance says they have to take them down seven days (I think) after each election. They are going to further discuss this at the February 26 meeting.
The Flowers then gets all excited as the proposed P&Z Resolution draft has the reproduced image of some airport signed document and it is hard to read. He says this has to go since it is hard to read (but apparently, they all read it.) True to form, this causes a 20-minute harangue over whether to keep it in or not. Valium time.
New Business:
Canda starts NB with the proposed new Resolution 21-02, The Rights of Citizens. This is a document first proposed by a veteran at the last meeting that would restate Custer County’s stance on free speech, assembly, that all businesses in Custer are “essential”, and especially our position on unconstitutional or just wrong dictates from Denver. Attorney Smith wrote it based on the presentation of the veteran in the last meeting. Flower had a bunch of issues with the wording (some right, some wrong) but the most interesting part of the discussion was that Flowers continues to believe that there are “essential” businesses in Custer and a bunch not essential and that the non-essential can be treated differently than the “essential”, e.g.. in the case of a “pandemic” where “essentials” can stay open and the poor “non-essentials” can be shut down.
They have had this discussion many, many times before. Canda opposes this classification scheme as every business is essential to someone, like the owners and employees there. He also brought up again the arbitrary decisions on who is essential (e.g., pot stores are essential but churches are not). On and on. Flowers finally moves to talk about this more at the February 17 meeting (where they will, for the umpteenth time, repeat the same discussion.)
Citizen Tracy Ballard then spoke up about the citizen’s ability to communicate and participate in the BOCC meetings. She reviewed the early telephone- only meetings when the corona first appeared and the fact that the Zoom internet restrictions didn’t allow the right of assembly. There was again a long discussion on the word “assembly” with Flower insisting that a person watching the meetings with a computer at home satisfies “assembly.” Finally, County Clerk Kelley Camper reads the definition of “assembly” from the dictionary and it means to “physically get together.” Flower then went silent.

Tracy Ballard then gave a presentation on what My Neighbor’s Cupboard is doing in Custer County. She says they formed a Custer County “chapter” and she is currently the administrator. She said they run a tractor trailer- sized food distribution effort once a quarter in the parking lot of the school and that is very effective (everybody gets about 60 lbs. of food). She also said they seek to run a twice-a-week distribution effort out of the County Annex building which is also the VSO office. They also store canned food in the basement of the Annex. Her main point was with the current VSO officer leaving, they still want to use the Annex for food storage and distribution (which is Wednesday evening and Saturday mornings) until they find a building of their own (hopefully within six months). Flower is clearly against the idea. There is some talk of friction between the long- time Care and Share operation in town and My Neighbor’s Cupboard. They decide to put the proposal on the February 17 agenda.
Meeting adjourned.