by George Gramlich, News and Commentary

The September 6, 2023 Custer County Board of County Commissioners meeting started at 1 p.m. in the their offices in the Annex Building. All three commissioners were there: Chair Kevin Day and members Bill Canda and Lucas Epp.
In Commissioners Items, Canda said a Cessna airplane crashed when landing at the SilverWest Airport due to high winds. There were no injuries but the front of the plane was heavily damaged.
Public Comments from the packed gallery continued to center around the County Manager (CM) debacle. Joy Anderson spoke saying that a group of local citizens are forming an “investigation committee” that will seek to determine what actually happened with Day’s County Manager rush job and they want to find the “facts”. She asked the commissioners to formally recognize the committee and asked them to ask the County Clerk to help them get all the “records”.
County Attorney Dan Slater then spoke and said the recordings from Executive Sessions (ES) is excluded from the Open Records Act but the commissioners can ok the release if they want to. Anderson said they specifically want the recording of the August 16th BOCC Executive Session. Slater then said he told the County Clerk not to release the recording but the BOCC can release it if they want to.
Citizen Len Arrigo then spoke about the many issues surrounding the creation of the CM and talked about having proper ‘internal controls”.
Matt Miles was next. He gave an impassioned speech on the commissioners “fiduciary duty” to the citizens and said since the whole affair is over with, the commissioners should release the ES’s recording. Miles said, “We want procedures put in place so this doesn’t happen again.”
James Gilbert, the chair of the Custer County Democrat Party, then demanded that the citizens committee “publish the names” of the committee members. He droned on for a bit and then segued into his usual act attacking Canda for mysterious infractions.
A lady then got up and read the names of the eight or so committee members and said they are looking for more. She said they want to be “bipartisan” and said she would like some other locals to be on it including James Gilbert, Jordy Hedberg, and even Deb Adams, the failed progressive candidate for county commissioner. (This shut Gilbert up.)
Citizen Bill Parker then talked about the issue of how did Braden Wilson get his termination/severance check just moments after the meeting ended when he was terminated.
Canda answered saying that normal county procedure is to pay terminated personnel immediately. He then went into the details of the payout noting that Wilson got two checks: one for his last days as Finance Director and one for the CM severance package payout. Canda said the total was $54,735 including vacation and sick time. (The severance package Wilson got was $45,000. For working five days. Remember Day put that in the CM contract over the objections of Canda and the citizens.) However, Wilson’s net was $30,451 after taxes, etc. (So Wilson destroyed his reputation for just $30k. Was is it worth it, dude?)
Local Jean Canterbury warned the commissioners that they should make their own decisions and don’t be run by the county attorney.
And that was it for the peasants.
Under New Business, the issue of having a separate Human Resources (HR) position instead of the present situation where the Finance Director is also the HR person was next. This triggered a big discussion with the general consensus that having a stand alone HR job was a good idea.
The commissioners agreed to have a workshop on it to iron out the details.
Next topic was discussion of the Public Information Office/Administrative Assistant job. The commissioners decided to talk about it in a workshop, September 13th
at 3 p.m.
The final Public Comments was next. Matt Miles spoke again concerning the improper use of ES’s stating, “The public’s business needs to be discussed in public according to Colorado law.” This triggered another big talk fest about ES’s with Slater again stating that, in general, the ES’s should remain secret. He reiterated that the “public body”, that is the BOCC, can release the recordings if they want to.
Canda then made a motion to release the recording of the August 16th BOCC ES (where the CM position was discussed). Day said he would prefer that they talk about it in the next meeting by adding an Agenda Item about it. Epp liked that this would give the citizens proper notice to attend if they wanted. There was no second to the motion so it died.
It will be on the agenda for next week’s BOCC on September 13th.
For some reason, the editor of the Tribune, Jordy Hedberg, called in, and out of nowhere accused Canda of being the one that cost the county in Hedberg’s totally bogus “first amendment” lawsuit against the county. Remember Hedberg sued the county and now he is blaming Canda, a defendant in the lawsuit, for Hedberg ripping the county off. Hedberg sounded a little “high strung” during his verbal assault.
The last speaker of the day was Jimmy “The Plumber” McMahon, He blasted Day for the whole CM mess and said the investigative committee will find out what really happened.
That was it. Another day in Happy Valley.