BOCC: Day Brings the Deep State
to Happy Valley,
Public Health Director Resigns

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
Man, when a local politician around here goes bad, they usually go real bad. And we have had a TON of experience with that here in Happy Valley over the last eight years or so. Sadly, Commissioner Kevin Day is following the same “bad” script as some of our ex Commissioners have done. It is sad, we had high hopes for Day. See below for the details.
The June 12, 2024 Custer County Board of County Commissioners regular Wednesday meeting started at 9 a.m. All three Commissioners were present: Bill Canda, Lucas Epp and Kevin Day. It was held in their throne room in the building across from the courthouse.
In Commissioner Items, Epp noted that the work needed for the auditors to do our annual audit report was going well and they hope to file the report by July 31st.
Then it was Day’s turn. (A month or so ago, Day had announced that HE was going to have another workshop on “election integrity”. The first one, sponsored by Canda, focused on election fraud and issues with the popular election vote tabulator, the Dominion machine. It was well done with a variety of national and state experts on the issue speaking in person or via Zoom. This apparently didn’t sit well with Day as shortly after that event he announced he was going to have another one, but this one would be on how honest, accurate, and infallible our election system is. Does this sound like a Democrat? Is Day representing the people or the government?) Now Day announces that his Deep State Show will be held and that he has true experts scheduled that will convince us peasants that there is nothing going wrong behind the curtain.
Day proudly stated that the two featured speakers at his Deep State Show will be, and I kid you not, a spokesperson from the outrageous-
ly left wing, radicalized Colorado
Secretary of State’s office and the head of the Colorado County Clerk’s Association. (Day has officially invited the most politically radical SOS in the country to come to Custer County, home of the Free, to attempt to indoctrinate us with their extreme liberal agenda. You could not have picked a more biased and inflammatory group to come here and spew their leftist rhetoric. What will be next, Day? “The Socialist Party of America? Homeland Security Terrorism? Jena Griswold, Colorado’s SOS is as far left as it gets and she has turned our SOS into a hyper-aggressive liberal propaganda machine with a penchant for legal action against conservative people and groups. She, and the whole Colorado SOS are a disgrace. And guess what the Colorado County Clerk’s Association position might be on fraud and election integrity in Colorado? They are the county level Deep State and have stated that there is no fraud in our elections and that the Dominion computer tabulator is faultless,. Day is asking the folks who count the votes to say the obvious: no problems here in Colorado. Yea….)

Day stated that this “Deep State Show” will be held that very next Monday, June 17th, at the same place the original event was held, Lange Hall. Start time is 5:30 p.m. He said only written questions
will be allowed thus eliminating any real questioning or debating of the issues.
(Why did Day schedule it to happen in just a few days after he announced it instead of waiting a few weeks so folks could hear about it? By announcing the event at the Wednesday BOCC neither paper will have it published so most citizens won’t know it was happening. Was this intentional? Weird. We know one thing, however, we know there will be a lot of people there who know what is really going on.) Day said it will be broadcast via Zoom.
(Day has gone full lib. Inviting these two severely biased organizations to come to conservative Happy Valley and give us the lib government hocum on election integrity is an insult to (most) of our citizens. In fact, it is a parody of good government. Day has abandoned the Republican Party and people who got him elected and now is simply a shill for the Deep State, liberal oppression and tyranny. It took less than three years in power to blow his cover. His pathetic attempt to stay in power by switching to Unaffiliated so he could run again, is an insult to the people who got him there. His cozying up to the libs at the BOCC’s is so obvious it is ridiculous. And don’t forget, he almost destroyed our county government with his insane push to establish a County Manager Czar to rule over us peasants. Day has gone from being a representative of the people to a shill for government power, growth and control. Remember this in November, citizens.)
After the Deep State Show bombshell, Staff Reports were next. First up was Finance. Our consultant helping with the audit issues and the general mess of Finance, Lisa Hammen of Redland’s Consulting gave a brief report stating that things were going well and that the auditors should have all the missing lease info for the report. Vernon Roth, our IT guy, (who has been helping with the Finance Department issues for some time and has done an outstanding job) then spoke. Vernon said the work with the auditors has been “intense”. He also said that he has created a Budget Review checklist for the county’s departments and entities to help them in next year’s budget process. Vernon is also working on developing a list of “best practices” for the county which should be very helpful. Epp finished the Finance Report stating that the BOCC must get more involved in “ratifying” certain actions like donations, contracts and leases.

Road & Bridge was next. The issues re Copper Gulch Road will finally be addressed. (R&B has been super busy with other projects.) Around 4.5 miles of it will also have mag chloride.

OEM then reported the usual: grants, grants, grants, grants and more grants.

Dorothy Carsten, head of Planning & Zoning then gave her report. She said that, overall, construction was down considerably from last year. She noted that septic and dwelling permits were down about 30% from last year and P&Z revenue was $127k lower than last year.
Our Veterans Service Office honcho, Dominic Edginton, then gave his report. He said he had 56 scheduled appointments last month and whole bunch of walk ins. Dominic said he is close to getting an old Air Force plane for Memorial Park in Silver Cliff. He also said a large Veterans Assistance Grant he has applied for is approved but he has not been officially notified yet. (Dominic is getting things done here big time. The guy is a VSO machine. We are blessed to have him here for our veterans.)
Robert Smith was next with the Human Resources report. He said starting July 1st, the minimum wage for certain exempt employees will be going up. He then talked about a Colorado law regarding county employees’ ability to unionize. This caused a bit of a discussion with regards to it applying to Custer County. County Attorney Dan Slater later in the meeting said it did not, as we are too small. Smith then said he got the resolution from Logan County on their opting out of the new anti self-defense law, SB 14-131, that the libs in Denver passed this year and Polis of course signed that disallows weapons in county buildings. (Fremont County also just opted out of it. The Sentinel has been pushing the BOCC to also opt out, so we are not defenseless sheep in our own county buildings. (Epp just emailed the Sentinel (June 17) saying the subject will be on the June 17 BOCC agenda. Expect the screaming Karens to be out in force…)
Smith stated that the county has only received one new applicant for the Finance Director’s job. After some discussion, it was agreed to keep the posting open till the end of July. Smith said due to the history of the county’s HR, a lot of the functions had become decentralized, and that individual departments and offices were doing HR stuff that he should be doing. He is working on correcting that.
New Business was next and HR Robert Smith was up again. Smith said that there are issues with what employees actually have saved up with vacation and sick leave with people saying they have this much and the CIC system saying they have a different number. He said the total county liability for saved up time is $716,000! After a lot of discussion, County Clerk Kelley Camper said the county’s computer system that tracks earned leave is horrible and that she, and other department heads, keep track of it separately.
In Public Comments, Bill Christie was back with an update on his payroll drama with Finance. (Christie was the county’s interim OEM manager for three months last year and his paycheck got messed up by Finance. He made a big deal out of it at last week’s BOCC, instead of quietly going to Finance for answers.) Christie goes full drama queen again at this meeting saying that somebody left a message on his phone a couple of days after last week’s meeting saying that if he goes through with the CORA request for information about the payroll issue, that he will be “sorry”. Christie said the caller ended the message with the “F bomb”. Because of this call, Christie said he was dropping the CORA request as he is “too old to tolerate the county’s lunatic fringe”. (Why ANYBODY would care anything about Christie’s minor payroll issue is mystifying. This sounds a little hokey.) Christie finished with HR is working on his problem.
Day then invoked an Executive Session regarding a personnel issue with the Public Health Department. This took about two hours. The Commissioners, Attorney Slater, Public Health Director Cliff Brown, HR Robert Smith and Sheriff Smith were in that meeting.
The BOCC ends the Executive Session and then immediately goes back into another one regarding a personnel matter with Public Health. HR Director Smith is in this one too.
Finally, it ends and no announcements are made.
And that was that.
But not quite. We learn later that our Public Health Director, Cliff Brown had resigned his position during or after that meeting. According to some citizens familiar with the Public Health Department, there have been some alleged issues with Brown’s management “style”. This apparently had gotten to the point where Brown felt he should resign. (We are going to miss him. He did a great job and we will be hard pressed to find a replacement with his knowledge, common sense and experience.)

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To watch the Election Integrity Workshop Part II with Deep State)
see HERE.  Crane gets pretty “spicy” with our citizens and they get a little “spicy” back.  He’s the last speaker of the night. (Leaving our website)
To watch a rebuttal on the Joe Oltmann Show see Here. (Leaving our website)