BOCC: What?
Flower Says Public Comments at the Meetings a “privilege, not a right”!!!
County Nurse: “I wish I had more power to shut down more.”
Note to Nurse: One Confirmed Case in the Whole County.
We Can Take Care of Ourselves Just Fine.

Board of County
Commissioners (BOCC)
—March 31, 2020
WESTCLIFFE, Colo.
by Jackie (Muddy) Bubis
The meeting started with the Pledge of Allegiance and roll call. Present in the room were Chairman Flower, Commissioner Canda, Commissioner Printz, Attorney Smith and Clerk Camper. Those were the people allowed in the room.
Mr. Flower began the meeting by stating that he’d measured and that only those five people could be allowed in the room to keep
social distancing guidelines. Elisa Livengood and Meredith Nichols, as well as Admin Assistant Cara Evans were present via phone.
The Board removed the KZ request and the letter to Widefield/Fountain from the agenda.
Commissioner Items
Mr. Printz expressed his appreciation for Public Health Nurse Elisa Livengood for taking an abundance of caution at this time. He has spoken with Senator Gardner’s assistant Kathy Garcia a number of times to make sure that Custer County gets its share of test kits, etc. He was promised that we wouldn’t be left out.
Mr. Canda welcomed Robert Hill as our new Undersheriff. He attended the Action 22 meeting via teleconference. He expressed that we need to keep the heat on for test kits, especially the new
5 minute kits. Along with the other Action 22 counties, he would like to find ways to save the citizens money during this time. He too, is very proud of Elisa Livengood (County Health) and Meredith Nichols (OEM); “they are doing great work.”

Mr. Flower has attended a number of teleconference meetings. He just came out of quarantine yesterday. He directed Ms. Livengood and Ms. Nichols to not respond to criticism on Facebook, that it’s “ridiculous to try to win an argument on Facebook.” He showed off new emergency preparedness booklets that are now available from the Public Health Office. They are also available for download on the County Covid-19 page.

Attorney Items
Mr. Smith finished the employment contract for the Sheriff.
Because it costs around $15K to train a new deputy, new hires will be required to work for the county for three years after training or pay back some of those costs.
Mr. Smith has worked with Livengood/Nichols on various legal issues. He also will present a draft MOU between the county and the CCEDC later in the agenda.

New Business:
The Board approved the vouchers and signed checks for the month of March. The question arose about the $7,000 payment (2nd of 3) to the Carmel Group who is working on the broadband project. Mr. Canda presented the contract with Carmel to clear up any confusion.
Sheriff Byerly stopped by, carefully standing just outside the doorway, and introduced Undersheriff Hill to the commissioners, attorney and clerk.
After much discussion, the Board decided that Mr. Flower had signed the Emergency Disaster Declaration and that they didn’t need to ratify the copy that Mr. Canda signed in Mr. Flower’s absence.
The Board, Ms. Livengood and Ms. Nichols discussed the Governor’s latest Stay-at-Home orders. Ms. Livengood is adding to that order by only allowing curbside delivery of food and making sure people are not waiting inside restaurants to pick up food. Other orders she’s considering: calculating retail square footage and giving stores a hard number of customers they can have in the store at one time. She stated that “we’re putting restaurants out of business but people are standing shoulder to shoulder in the grocery store. She also mentioned the difficulty with “fallout and enforcement.”
During this discussion it was decided that the courthouse would remain closed to the public until Monday, May 4th. The few
“essential” personnel that are working are continuing to help the county residents do business via phone and mail. Mr. Printz expressed that he felt comfortable simply letting Ms. Livengood make these decisions on the commissioner’s behalf. Mr. Canda felt that was too much burden for them and disagreed. Mr. Flower stated that Ms. Livengood, by statute, has control over any building or any people in her jurisdiction. Mr. Canda suggested that other counties are doing business with citizens on an appointment basis.
Ms. Livengood rejected that idea. Clerk Camper stated that, until the state makes changes, she has to do marriage licenses by appointment. Mr. Flower asked if we could suspend issuing marriage licenses. The answer was no.
When all was said and done, the courthouse will remain closed to the public until May 4th. They are “open for business” in a limited way via phone and mail. Ms. Nichols’ recent press release (available on the county website) listed all the department phone numbers.
The Board made the IT/GIS  Assistant position full time effective immediately.
Moving the OEM Office from the SAR building to the Public Health Agency building became a prolonged discussion. The reason seemed to be that the move would give SAR the use of that office and that the OEM and Public
Health Nurse worked closely together and this move would make things more efficient. Mr. Canda was concerned about the size of the Public Health office. Mr. Printz received several texts from citizens wanting to comment on the item, however, Mr. Flower stated that the Board is not obligated to take input from the citizens and that citizen comments in a BOCC meeting were a privilege, not a right. Ms. Nichols asked why it would be up to the public whether she moved her office.
Ms. Livengood stated that the move “affects our work, not the public,” then backed up a bit and said that the public should be able to voice their opinions. In the end, the Board allowed the move. (Editor//llv: So, if either the Public Health Nurse or the Head of OEM become ill with the virus while working together, what sort of problems will this create for the county?)
The Board approved Ed Stefanich replacing Mike Carter on the
Attainable House Board and updated the board document. They ratified the letter of commitment for the .gov domain name contract. The new county domain name will be custercounty-co.gov. The cost will be $400 annually.
The Board discussed having a meeting, including an executive session, with the two mayors and the Carmel Group for a property strategy for the greater broadband/tower projects. They will try to have it at the Westcliffe Town Hall in order to maintain social distancing. Mr. Smith will write up a document to move this forward. Note: any property strategy is considered proprietary and is allowable in executive session.
The Board agreed to pay two invoices from Armstrong Associates. One of them goes back a year. It is unclear if this $18,850 will be reimbursed by Aught-Six who is concerned about the downturn in the economy due to the closing of businesses.
The Board considered a draft MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the CCEDC (Custer County Economic Development Corporation). The upshot of the agreement is that the county has the final word on spending of grant money. (Note: there was more to it than this, but the microphones of 2/3 of the commissioners were not working well enough to hear the discussion.)
Mr. Smith will update the document and present it again at the April 7th meeting.  [Call this number to participate in that meeting]
The furloughed county employees will be invited to volunteer in community projects while they are not working.
The Board ratified the new library board member Terry Matthews.
One of the IT personnel was present to fix the microphone issue during the meeting, which helped the streaming tremendously, despite violation of social distancing to make it work.

The Road & Bridge Department has been deemed not critical infrastructure by County Health Nurse Elisa Livengood, “in an abundance of caution.” Road Boss Gary Hyde agreed and was reported to have stated that all the county roads are in good shape at this point. (See photo.) The official order will come down later today or tomorrow, “The county Road and Bridge is closed with the exception of an event that requires their attention.” Livengood went on to say that “the more things we can shut down, the better. I wish I had more power to shut down more.” Mr. Flower asked her, “Are you prepared to shut down a business that continues to disregard the six-foot rule and the 50% manpower rules?” She answered “Yes,” and stated she is working on one right now. She did not further elaborate except to say that she wasn’t going out doing inspections but only following up on complaints. Mr. Flower stated that “We expect them to follow the law. As commissioners we must do things to protect our citizens, whether they like it or not.” (Editor//llv: There have been no laws created by the governor or by our commissioners or our county health nurse concerning COVID-19. These, at best, are edicts.)

The Board agreed that there need be no further action on the county’s part with regards to the lawsuit against the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District and the blue-line expansion.
Mr. Flower brought up a discussion of the format for the next meeting. Because staff reports are not needed, it will be one meeting next week instead of two. The meeting will be held as this one was – with only five people in the room. Because the building is closed to the public, the public (including the press) will not be allowed in or even to sit in the hallway. Closed to the public means closed to the public. The Board will direct IT manager Vernon Roth to come up with a teleconference solution so that citizens can call in to comment/ask questions. That information will be forthcoming for the meeting on April 7th.  (The county announced April 2, that community members could call in and listen during this upcoming meeting. (1-503-300-6854 The access code is: 698535) The meeting adjourned at 12:41 p.m. and the chairman cautioned his fellow commissioners to not continue discussion because streaming was still going.
(Editor/GG: Some bad things coming out of our county government, folks, like “control, control, control”. Note that this is Custer County, Colorado and not the sheep capital of the world, San Francisco.
First, Tom Flower should know better. Stating that the PEOPLE cannot comment at the BOCC meetings if the Commissioners decide so, stating the PEOPLE’s comments are a “privilege, not a right” brings back the two year reign of left wing control freak terror when the BOCC was comprised of the politburo loving, beyond RINO trio that lied thier way to get elected. Those control freaks did everything they could to limit the public’s input at the BOCC meetings. It was a disgrace. Note Commissioners, that was one of the reasons that they got recalled. Tom, you know better. Any leader that does not listen to his advisors (here the PEOPLE), is not a good leader. More public input the better.
Secondly, I know what Polis has decreed. But does it make sense to implement draconian, job and family killing policies in an extremely rural, mountain, lightly populated community when there is not one confirmed case in the county? The County Nurse actually said, “I wish I had more power to shut down more” Joe Stalin anybody. Are we little dictators following the big tyrant’s orders from Denver?  Can we, perhaps, be a little creative and apply a COMMON SENSE approach to safety here in CC? For example, most of the restaurants have enough room to safely sit people with a large buffer between them. Or people can wait inside and pick up the takeout orders if there is enough space. Note to Nurse: When the county employees are told to go home, THEY GET PAID. When the peasants are told they cannot work, WE DON’T GET PAID and we lose our houses, our apartments, and we can’t feed our families. (Maybe we should invert that statement.) Are we being forced to beg government to house and feed us? Sheep anyone?
And shutting down Road & Bridge is just plain autocratic and quick frankly, a complete abuse of power. Springtime is when R&B catches up on the winter issues and they haven’t done it yet. They are understaffed to start with so this will cause MOST of the residents who don’t live in the two towns paved la-la land to abuse their vehicles to get to work or shop. The grader and water truck guys are alone all day and don’t interact with anybody. Good grief, why can’t they work! Roads are an ESSENTIAL government service. This is Custer County government officials, not Denver: treat us as citizens, not sheep. The potential economic and family damage due to a long-term absence of work and income will last a much longer time than this ChiCom virus. Let’s balance the interests at stake here. )

As we were going to press, April 1, 2020,  the County Health Nurse announced one confirmed case of COVID-19.

On April 2, 2020, a second case was confirmed.