BOCC: Concerned Citizens Group
Reveal Their Findings  On County Manager Debacle and the Audit

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary

The October 18, 2023 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting took place at the Wetmore Com-munity Center and started at 9:02 a.m. All three commissioners were in attendance: Chair Kevin Day and members Bill Canda and Lucas Epp.

In Commissioner Items, Canda has been working with TV station KRDO about our two broken translators. Canda said KRDO engineers are working on a plan. The translators will cost the county $13k each.

Day’s three-minute comment limitation rule then came up. Canda brought it up saying that the speakers were often cut off before they fully delivered their points. He said, “I want to understand the comments fully.” Day said he unilaterally established the rule as “meetings were getting out of hand” and “If you can’t speak your piece in three minutes you should trim it down.” Day then said, “ I won’t support that.” (i.e., getting rid of the three-minute limitation.)Epp then piped up, “Three minutes is not a lot of time to get a thought across.” Epp then made the suggestion that the commissioners do away with the Public Comment item right after Commissioner Items and only have general Public Comment at the end of the meeting. Canda and Day both liked that idea. After a few more comments, it was informally agreed that the three-minute  limitation would be dropped. 

Day then talked about the workshop they had on the Public Information Officer, Human Resources and Administrative Assistant job position openings. He said, “They did not come to a resolution on that.” (That is, the job descriptions. Note that the Administrative Assistant job has been open for a long time with no real action by the commissioners. The bulk of that work is being done by the Custer County Clerk Kelley Camper and it is a burden.) They decided to talk about it in the next meeting.

After a couple of minor items, it was Planning & Zonings Director Dorothy Carsten’s turn. She wants to buy a software service that monitors Short Term Rental (STR) advertising sites and reports back to the county all the sites that are renting in our county. Carsten said she doesn’t have the time to check all the rental sites for illegal STR’s. The package costs $3k per year. She has the money in her budget. Epp then spoke up basically saying he doesn’t like it as it is too “oppressive.” (Like spying on our citizens.) Epp noted maybe we should buy it for only one year. Canda wasn’t to hot on the idea either.

During Public Comment on the issue, various citizens spoke up against it. Joy Anderson said, “This is overreach and intrusive. The numbers are too small. We don’t need another layer of bureaucracy.” Matt Miles noted that, “local people will report it” meaning the neighbors on an illegal STR would let P&Z know about it.
He finished with, “We don’t need the overreach.” Mrs. Anderson then said this would be “another layer of government looking over our shoulder.” Epp responded with, “This could harass the people who have gotten the STR’s.” Charley Ellison spoke up and said there was a service you can buy for $20 per month that covers the top two or three STR online rental sites that do about 80% of the STR rental business. The commissioners finally vote on it: Day wants it but Canda and Epp vote “nay” so it is a dead dawg.

Finally, the big Agenda Item came up: The Findings of the Concerned Citizens Group. The Presentation Posters are HERE:
Presentation for 101823 Board 1 

Presentation for 101823 Board 2

Presentation for 101823 Board 3

First up from the group was local Len Arrigo. He then rehashed the County Manager fiasco starting with the infamous August 16, 2023 BOCC secret Executive Session when, then Finance Director Braden Wilson, used an improper ES session excuse, a “personnel matter” as a vehicle to illegally push the creation of the CM position and giving him that position without anybody competing against him. Arrigo slammed Day for violating the statute that regales the forming and hiring of a county executive position when Day rushed the whole thing through. Arrigo also slammed the county for having essentially no Out of Cycle check procedures which allowed Wilson to walk away with a $50k plus check with NO commissioner okaying it.

Arrigo then turned to the failed County Yearly Audit that was presented to the commissioners a few weeks ago. (At the last minute before it had to be filed with the state.) Note that Arrigo is a very experienced and highly qualified Certified Public Accountant. For the first time in recent memory, the county actually had a “Qualified Item” from the audit. Qualified Items are bad and will cause the state to take a hard look at the audit. And these must be fixed. Our Qualified Item was the county’s failure to have proper documentation on all the items that the various departments lease.

Arrigo went on saying that there were also nine “findings” (i.e., bad things) in the audit and seven of them have been found in the last two years and five have been around for three years and Finance has not fixed them. Arrigo said Wilson was hired as Finance Director in April of 2021 and he didn’t fix them in his two years and “when he left all these findings were outstanding.” Arrigo then addressed Day with, “Kevin, you were his contact point. You never reviewed these findings with Wilson. You didn’t supervise him.” Arrigo then noted that Wilson, “did not successfully implement the new (accounting) system.”

Arrigo then reviewed the findings and it was ugly: balances between funds not cleared and no procedures in place, no internal controls in many places, no procedures for our Out of Cycle checks, payroll records not reconciled to the general ledger, salaries and benefits not consistently posted to the general ledger, incorrect fuel sale margins, expenditures not reported consistently, grant records not maintained properly, and others.

Arrigo then faced Day and said, “How can you promote Braden and say he did his job? He should have done this (i.e., correct those findings) as Director of Finance. What is your plan to correct these? They should have been corrected two years ago for seven of them.” He continued  saying, “How could you possibly make this guy our County Manager if he couldn’t do these simple things?”

Joy Anderson then joined the fray. She knocked Day over and over again over the CM debacle. She quoted from the ES where Wilson was recommending himself for the job. She said an MBA is required for the job and Wilson didn’t have it. She then passed around copies of Wilson’s resume noting it was, at best, lackluster.

Nadine Peterson then continued the assault on Day. She said Day, in essence, had pre-selected Wilson in that ES which was wrong. She mocked Wilson’s college degree, a BS in Hospitality Management, noting that the degree’s focus is on culinary arts, tourism, event planning and tourist advertising and it is a joke for a CM position. She said the CM position requires a BS in Accounting/MBA as a minimum and Wilson didn’t have it. Mrs. Peterson also said that the negative findings in the audits actually increased during Wilson’s tenure as Finance Director.

Mrs. Anderson then returned criticizing the CM position for such a small county saying it “separates the citizens” from the commissioners and a CM is an unelected position so the citizens have no power over it. She said she and Arrigo  met with Day last week and he didn’t want the Concerned Citizens to reveal their findings in a BOCC meeting. On and on.

She finished with, “Flower and Day colluded to put Braden Wilson in as County Manager.”

Matt Miles was next in the arena. He knocked Wilson for hiring an investigation company to look at some complaints that came from Sheriff’s Office employees (reportedly, it cost around $10k) and nobody has seen the report. Miles asked Day if he ok’d that and Day said yes. Canda said he did not know about it! Miles said, “Braden Wilson has no qualifications to run this county and you were not supervising him properly.” Miles then handed out copies of the Colorado Open Records Act pertaining to creating a CM position and hiring for it. He said Day did not follow the law in the CM deal, did not form the required Search Committee and violated a whole bunch of other requirements.

Miles then brought up the ex P&Z’s Director, Jackie Hobby’s, civil rights lawsuit against the county and said when Wilson learned of the problem he tried to cover it up. Miles then returned to the CM position saying Day didn’t follow the law as he “rushed” it through due to the recall of ex-commissioner Flower. Miles then handed out another copy of a section of the Colorado Open Records Act, read a bit, and concluded that since Day and Flower did not follow the law, the CM contract they signed with Wilson was void thus no valid contract. This went on for a while.

Citizen Bill Parker was then up. He said he was just, “speaking for himself” and said, addressing Day, “I believe you are an honest man” but “this process was so flawed it is hard to say where to start.” Parker told Day, “You are wrong on this one.” Parker said he doesn’t understand why Day doesn’t admit he made a mistake and apologize to the people, “You still stand here today and say you did the right thing.”

Epp then commented that, “We need to get these findings corrected” and that the current Finance Director is talking to the Auditor and also to Arrigo. Epp said we might need to hire an accountant from the auditor company to help us out.

James “Dr. Doom” Gilbert, the head of Custer County’s Democrat party, then, somewhat indignantly and angrily, (which is normal mode for Doomy) said that this was a “complete and vicious attack on individuals.” (Facts hurt libs feelings. Poor Doomy.) Gilbert said the presentations look like “Perry Mason” and he was “embarrassed.”  He then just literally rattled on a bit before shutting himself down.

And what would a BOCC love fest be without our county’s very own “Screaming Karen” calling in  to vent like a four-year-old who had his ice-cream taken away. Yes, the editor to the Tribune, Jordy “Red Bug” Hedberg graced the audience with another infantile tantrum defending his homie Wilson. Here are some of the rage tidbits: You scapegoated Braden Wilson because you read George Gramlich. You should be ashamed. Every single one of you should have your head bow downed in shame. Dragging this man through the mud is a shame. (Yup, the usual unhinged stuff. Yes, Red Bug is a paid subscriber to the Sentinel as he wants to know the facts occasionally. In fact, a while back at a BOCC meeting, Red Bug actually said he just read the Sentinel and now he knows what is going on! Good Red Bug!)

(So, bottom line, the Concerned Citizens, in a factual and methodical way, destroyed Day’s attempt to illegally create a CM position and hire an insider. It was brutal. But it is what it is. They also showed that Wilson, during his term as Finance Director, completely failed in correcting the multiple audit findings and botched the Jackie Hobby case. They also showed that Wilson was completely unqualified for the CM position, starting with the simple fact he didn’t even have an accounting/MBA degree. The presentation was well laid out and backed by facts. It is now up to the commissioners to get their act together, fix these accounting issues, hire an outside company to come in here and write policies and procedures for every department, AND TO START PAYING ATTENTION TO THE JOB YOU WERE HIRED TO DO AND THAT IS RUN THIS COUNTY.)

Stay tuned for the next episode of “Happy Valley” as the plot thickens….

The Concerned Citizens’ Presentation Posters containing  their outline are on page 23 of this issue.