Another $50K
Down the Drain in
Nanny State Happy Valley

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The October 9, 2024 Custer County Board of County Commissioners special meeting was held in the Search & Rescue building and started at 9 a.m. All three Commissioners were present: Bill Canda, Lucas Epp and Kevin “Turncoat” Day.
The meeting was a rush job as the Office of Emergency Management Director, Robyn Knappe, had a grant deadline to meet which required the Commissioners to make a financial decision regarding it. The deadline for responding for the state grant was the next day. Why Knappe waited so long is unknown.
The proposed grant was from Colorado’s Forest and Management Grant program. Some background first: Knappe has been trying to get local landowners to mitigate their properties through various means. This year she had a program that trained eight local people on how to run a chainsaw and do mitigation work including trimming trees and cutting them down. Knappe was here to ask for money to aid the citizen run mitigation efforts.
At this meeting, Knappe said she wanted to “grow the mitigation program” and “provide additional services”. She said there were six HOA/neighborhoods on board with the program.
Knappe then got to the issue of the day noting that the few civilians who were mitigating had to rent a chipper machine (where you feed cut branches into it and it cuts them into chips) and that was costing them money. And it was an inconvenience as they had to rent the machine in Cañon City and drive it up and back. She mentioned that the daily cost was around $500 and somehow this was too much for these poor large landowners.

Knappe proposed that the county buy these landowners a very expensive, industrial grade chipper which costs around $100,000! The county would own and maintain it and the landowners would simply borrow the machine from the county to use for free. The county would have to chip in $50,000 of our own tax money for the chipper and the grant would cover the other $50k.
(Notes from the Taxpaying Peasants: First, these landowners are not poor. Why should the rest of us taxpayers subsidize mitigating THEIR properties. They knew what they had when they bought it. Why do we, the taxpayers, have to subsidize improvements to their property? What happened to the idea that people are responsible for their own affairs and not big gov? Second: Where will this stop? $50,000 is a LOT of money for most of us. Giving that to a few, yes, privileged landowners, smells like nanny state spending. I need a bulldozer to make some fire breaks on my land and the cost to rent a decent dozer is like $10k a day. I think the county should buy one so I can improve my land using county money. Everybody could use new Stihl weed whackers to mitigate brush, we should get them free too. Third: The company that rents out the chipper in Cañon City has one because people want to rent one. The BOCC just took a good revenue stream away from this business and maybe now they can’t afford to rent it out anymore. The BOCC just hurt this private enterprise for the benefit of a few, select property owners. How is this a “pro business” effort? Plus, there are multiple mitigation companies locally that have chippers and you have hurt them, too.
Where are you going to draw the line Commissioners? We are a small county with very limited revenue. There are other areas where this money could be spent much more effectively without hurting local businesses and benefiting a small number of not poor landowners. $50,000 is a LOT of money to us peasants, Commissioners. Why isn’t it to you? Welcome, fellow peasants, to the new Happy Valley Nanny State. Grants are like heroin to some of our local officials elected, hired or appointed. )
During the discussion, in a rare moment of clarity, Day actually made a good point (for a change) and asked Knappe about liability in using the machine. (Folks, these things are super dangerous. We had one on our ranch back east and you have to have your act together to run a big one.) Knappe talked about “training” and somehow this satisfied the Commissioners. (WRONG! The County will be lending an extremely dangerous machine to civilians with little or no professional training on it and you can guarantee that we will be sued for big money someday. Not a smart move, Commissioners.)
At the end of the meeting, our three, supposedly fiscally conservative Commissioners, voted to spend $50,000 to buy a few landowners a dangerous machine to improve THEIR properties. Nice. Where is my bulldozer, boys?