BOCC: Good News of 2025 County Budget, New SO
Vehicles, More OEM/Mitigation Drama

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary

The December 12, 2024 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) regular meeting started at around 9 a.m. at their regally appointed throne room (the “Annex”) across from the courthouse. All three mighty commissioners were present: Bill Canda, Lucas Epp and Kevin Day.
In Commissioner Items, Epp noted at the CCI conference he attended last week, our lib Governor, Polis, focused his speech on the Denver to Fort Collins wasteland and ignored the rest of the state. Canda said that the county airport MIGHT be able to get a decommissioned Apache helicopter and also a Blackhawk for display purposes only.
In New Business, the commissioners ok’d last month’s Accounts
Payable amount of $218,655.
Custer County Sheriff Rich Smith was up next looking for approval of the SO’s purchase of new vehicles for 2025. SO Chief of Staff (part time), Micheal DeLaurentis, led the discussion. The SO wants all their new vehicles to be V6’s to maximize gas mileage. They proposed that the SO sell six used vehicles they own to get the money to finance four new ones. They proposed the new Dodge Ram which has a V6. (Epp stated that he has a problematic Dodge remarking that “Dodge sucks”. Fair enough.) This went on for a bit discussing the finance situation and the possibility that the county would be hiring a consulting company to handle all of the county’s vehicle purchases/leases. Finally, it was decided that they would have a workshop on this as it might take some time to figure things out.
Custer County SO Undersheriff Susan Barnes then took over with a request for the SO to buy a locally sourced 2016 Jeep Cherokee for $16k. It only has 40k miles on it and was serviced at Westcliffe
Petroleum. The SO has $14k in the “inmate fund” which is found money as we got rid of our jail. The commissioners gave their blessing to buy the Jeep.
(Editor/GG: We reached out to Custer County Sheriff Rich Smith about the SO vehicle situation and he graciously sent us a brief email explaining the basics of it. See it at the end of this article.)

Next was a discussion about implementing the SO’s new proposed Automated Traffic Enforcement System. (This is the handheld radar speed control unit that can transmit the vehicle’s plate number and speed to a system that would generate a speeding ticket and mail it to the speeder.) Epp talked about various issues with payments, the Finance Department, the Treasurer’s Office, sign costs and other items. Epp stated, “We don’t know the true cost of the system.” Canda noted that the commissioners still had
to decide on the cost of the tickets. Epp said that there were other companies that do this, and he would like “another bid”. In the end, nothing concrete was decided.
Our Office of Emergency Management (OEM) Director, Robyn Knappe, was next with another grant proposal concerning OEM’s Fire Mitigation Project. Knappe said there is a grant available (up to $50k) to spend on mitigation personnel, planning or equipment. Knappe wants to apply for $27.8k to hire a part time person “to help with the mitigation program and to work with neighborhoods to build interest in mitigation programs”. (Not a really good job description for a job paid for by us taxpayers, commissioners???)
This got Epp riled up a bit. He said we have contractors and citizens “out there that do this for a living. We don’t want the county to hurt our contractors.” Then Epp hit on what he sees (and Canda discussed later) is wrong with current OEM mitigation effort was that OEM has no real current overall fire mitigation plan. No overall, county-wide strategy. He also asked what about also mitigating the county’s land instead of just private land. He said this overall plan needs to be “formalized” and that “we need the big picture”. Epp continued saying “What is our big plan” What are we going to do in the coming years? We need a long-term plan, corridor by corridor. Our last plan was 2007”.
Knappe danced around the fact that there is no current, updated plan and that she will “work” on the plan. Canda also didn’t like the fact that there is no overall strategy.

(Folks, Epp is totally correct on this. There is only so much money available for mitigation (and a LOT of that will be drying up in a year with the new Trump admin and the Colorado budget deficits) and we should not just be using it in dribs and drabs, here and there all over the county. It should be spent where it is needed most (possibly the Rosita area) where the county OVERALL would get the best return on the money. (That is called a cost/benefit analysis which we seem to not do here with our tax money. It should be done for ALL county expenditures, but especially here.) Mitigating one private property here and one there is a waste of money. Establishing fire blocking “corridors” in our high risk/high benefit areas would possibly seem to be maybe the best way to spend our LIMITED funds. Before we spend another nickel, the mitigation plan must be finished and done with the cooperation of Wet Mountain Fire and the SO. We need a STRATEGY for the county as a whole and we do not have that now. This is OUR tax money and we need it spent RIGHT. We need the BEST payback for every tax dollar we spend. Amusing Government Psy/Ops Propaganda Side Note: Knappe mentioned that a government statistic re mitigation is that for every tax dollar spent we get back three in benefits. (Really?) Another government employee, on Zoom, said that the real figure is that we get Six dollars back in benefits for every tax dollar spent on mitigation. (Really, really??) Folks, first of all, these statistics are from the government, and you know what that means. Probably totally bogus. For the government to tell us working people that the more tax money spent the better off we are, is pretty offensive to most of us. It is why the country is literally bankrupt.)

This went on and on. In the end, Epp and Day voted to have Knappe apply for the $27.8K grant to hire a part time person to do mitigation related work (which was never really properly defined.) Canda voted no. On the plus side, due to Epp and Canda, the BOCC and OEM will be having a mitigation workshop on December 17 to further examine what to do going forward.
Landfill reported that they hired Frontier Fence to put up a fence to block wind driven landfill material. It will cost $19.5k.

The three commissioners all voted to join the Fremont County driven lawsuit against our former 11th Judicial District District Attorney, Linda Stanley, for allegedly using 11th Judicial District money to defend herself in her disbarment drama. They want the approximate $110k back.

Next was the resolution to approve the county’s 2025 budget. Vernon Roth, our IT guy who is doubling essentially as the Finance Director until we somehow magically find one, led the discussion. (We said it before and we will say it again, God Bless Vernon Roth.) Vernon said that the county was under budget for 2024, which is a good thing. He went into detail on the various funds, revenues and expenses. And basically, after a ton of moving stuff around, he, with the help of Epp and the various departments, have come up with a balanced budget for 2025. The really good news is that despite previous statements that Road & Bridge and the Sheriff’s Office’s budget would be cut by $100’s of thousand of dollars, this did not happen! They were basically fully funded. So good work there. Vernon concluded with the statement, we are, “starting the year off in a better place than we have been for a while”. (The county’s budget for 2025 is $11.1 Million. About what it has been the last few years. You can go to the county’s website and see the whole thing in detail. Some fairly interesting data there.)
And that was it. Another joyous day in Happy Valley.

(Editor/GG: Below is an email from Custer County Sheriff Rich Smith on some details of the SO’s proposed vehicle acquisition proposal. And thanks to the Sheriff for responding to our
request.)

From Sheriff Smith:
At this commissioner meeting we proposed absorbing a new budget cut of $160,000 from previous years and continuing the budget cut of $300,000 from 2024 for a combined savings to taxpayers of $460,000 in 2025. The $300,000 annual savings comes from savings generated by outsourcing the jail operations.
For the past four years the BOCC has allocated approx $160,000 each year [Editor/GG: For new vehicle purchases.] This was used to buy two new 4×4 police vehicles outright and add lights, siren, light controller, push bumper, console, and decals. Roughly $80,000 per vehicle on average.
For 2025 the Sheriff’s Office proposed selling five used vehicles, our oldest, to cover the one year costs of financing four new pickups and one new prisoner van (all would be V6 motors). The Sheriff’s Office plans on selling surplus equipment in 2025 to generate enough to pay the financing for the vehicles in the year 2026. We feel we could continue each year until the vehicles are paid off. We currently keep a police vehicle for about 12 years before disposing of them. We hope to lower the number of years they are kept in service to cut down on the costs of maintaining old
vehicles while using them at high speeds and over rough terrain.
Finally, we secured donated equipment from one of the largest police agencies in the state of exterior lightbars, control boxes, siren, and radar units. We also got eight brand new push bumper sets for free for an additional savings of about $48,000 for the 4 pickups and $6,000 for the prison van. We are ending our nine-year agreement with a Denver based upfitter and hiring a local mechanic to install the equipment for cheaper and with a much faster turn around.
We had enough money left over in our 2024 budget this year to buy a used Jeep Cherokee with very low miles. The jeep will go to admin and a police Durango will move from admin to patrol. We were one vehicle short for a new deputy that graduated from the police academy in Pueblo last week bringing us back to full staffing. This vehicle will be ready for service by the time he completes his field officer training.)