BOCC: State Highway Funding Cut, New
Vehicles for the SO,
County Work Week Brought Up

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The July 7, 2025 (Correction/July 16)  Custer County Board of County Commissioners meeting started at 9 a.m. in the meeting room at All Aboard Westcliffe. All three Commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda and members Lucas Epp and Paul Vogelsong.
Before Commissioner Items, Canda talked about how this meeting and once a month going forward will be staff and elected officials reports where all those reporting are encouraged to attend so everybody would know the various statuses and issues from the individual departments. He also mentioned that he wanted to start discussions on returning to a five-day work week for the County.
In Commissioner Items, Epp said all the big money allocated to the improvements on Highways 69 and 96 have been cut by the state. He said it doesn’t look good in the future as the state is cancelling
projects due to budget shortfalls. He is also looking at the County’s vehicle fleet as there are a lot of vehicles not being used.
In Elected Officials report, Sheriff Rich Smith was first in line with the Sheriff’s Office report. Smith started his report noting the Sheriff’s Office (SO) doubled the amount of traffic stops and tickets written since last year. (Good news!. Main Street looks like Daytona Raceway sometimes.)
After the Texas flood disaster, Smith said a Deputy will review safety with all our local camps. He asked everybody to sign up
for “Everbridge”, the County’s emergency alert system.
Smith said since the armed confrontation in front of the Sentinel during the Sentinel’s Flag Day celebration, he will be having an
all-day seminar on safety for all security members of our local churches.
With regard to the SO’s patrol vehicle fleet, Smith said his goal
is to get rid of all vehicles with mileage over 100k due to maintenance issues with vehicles with that much mileage. He said that he has a total of seven new vehicles coming in with four or them being paid for by a small group of local citizens. (Wow. Thank you.) With regards to the big trial coming up for the alleged triple murder, Smith noted that the new District Attorney, Jeff Lindsey, was doing a great job and that the DA’s Office is running much better that before.
The County’s Treasurer, Virginia Trujillo, was the next presenter. She made an alarming statement that the Polis regime is considering eliminating the Senior Citizen Homestead Property Exemption savings in our annual property taxes! She said it might happen next year. (Nice. Punishing our senior citizens to spend the money on the welfare state.)
Our County Assessor, JD Heinrick was next. He commented that his new Assessor system is going real well. He said that the state has/will be raising residential tax rates for homeowners. The money would go to local schools. (Polis is punishing landowners so the state can reduce its funding to schools.)
Dominic Edginton gave the Custer County Veteran Services Office report. He said the VAG grant he gets has been cut in half ($30 to $15k). Good news is that the Custer County American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars both got $60k grants from the VA. Dominic noted that 40% of the vets he sees are from Fremont County. He signed in 111 new grant applications in June.
The Human Resource Department’s report was delivered by its Director, Bob Smith. He has been reviewing the staffing levels of all the departments in the County to see where they stand. There have been four applications for the vacant Planning & Zoning Department Director’s position. The switch over from the in-house processing of the court’s Useful Public Service workload to a private administrator is looking good.
Vernon Roth gave the Finance Department’s report. The regular county audit process is doing good. He is getting a bunch of RFP answers for hiring an outside consultant, on a regular basis, to assist our Information Technology (IT) Department.
IT’s report was given by John Mapes (Many of the presenters at the meeting gave John glowing reports on his assistance to them.) John said he is continuing to look at switching the County’s phone system to VOIP instead of the Centurylink service currently used.
Planning & Zoning was next. They did 19 septic inspections in June. They are continuing to work on the Golden Arrow subdivision (off of Oak Creek Grade) where there are a bunch of non-permitted occupations (three squatters) taking place. (P&Z said they need a Deputy when they go there.) The squatters were given 30 days to vacate.
No big news at the SilverWest Airport. They are getting ready for the big air show. Their new website (which was done with help from the Tourism Bureau whom they gave thanks to) is up and running and being well received.
The Landfill reported their first half of year gross revenue was $153k. They had to put out a fire on one of the trash truckers that dump there. (Probably a lithium battery.)
Recycling reported a big uptick in volume. Year-to-date gross sales were $15k and they made 150 bales during that time.
In Public Comments, a County employee zoomed in and complained that Canda’s mention of looking at going back to a five-day work week was done without any County employee input. “No transparency” was mentioned. Canda responded that he brought up the subject just to get the discussion going.

The next meeting is July 23.