BOCC: Grant Money Drying Up,
Coroner Wants a Cooler,
Tourism Volunteer Director Now Wants Pay

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The April 17, 2025 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) regular meeting was held at the historic All Aboard Westcliffe meeting room and started at 9 a.m. All three Commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda and members Lucas Epp and Paul Vogelsong.
In Commissioner Items, Epp foreshadowed the coming dramatic drop in grant money coming to the County in announcing that the (total waste of money) courthouse sidewalk “improvement” project funding “may be pulled back” as the Colorado Democrats Colorado budget is ONE BILLION DOLLARS over budget and they are cutting a ton of things to save the money for their welfare state bribes.
Canda spoke about local realtor Bob Senderhauf’s effort to raise money to help Round Mountain Water & Sanitation District’s wastewater treatment project. Bob is opening donation accounts in both local banks and is encouraging various groups and entities to cough up some moolah to help out.
Interim County Attorney Dan Slater said he had settled two Planning & Zoning lawsuits against local property owners without going to court. There are still a bunch of lawsuits pending.
Epp talked about the new state Fire Resiliency Board and how each county, by law, is supposed to have a comprehensive plan in place this summer. This would affect home construction (it would be a form of building code for new home and business construction) and as we don’t have a building code in Happy Valley this will be a problem.
Elected Official Reports
First up was Custer County Sheriff Rich Smith. He had two main issues to bring to the Board. First, he is selling two Dodge Durango police vehicles and he figures he can get about $20k each at auction for them. However, the City of Walsenburg is starting up a brand new police department and they are desperate for vehicles and they offered $26k for each one. Rich wanted to know if he could sell them to Walsenburg without going through an auction. It was decided later in the meeting that County Attorney Slater would draw up a contract to sell the two vehicles to Walsenburg.
The second item concerned the new jail standards the libs in Denver are issuing which will dramatically drive up the cost to house inmates. Rich said this is going to raise our cost big time. He is also looking at a grant to get closed circuit security cameras installed at the courthouse.
The written Treasurer’s report was briefly reviewed. No biggies there.
Coroner Brad Baltzly gave his office’s report. Brad said he wants to get a 20-foot metal shipping container and put a cooling system in it to store the deceased when it is not possible to immediately bring the bodies to a funeral home or to an autopsy. He said it would take about $6k to do the job.
Other Reports
The Veteran’s Service Office report was given by the Director, Dominic Edginton. He said he had 47 scheduled visits last month and 32 walk ins. Plus he filed 19 new claims last month. Dominic noted that since he took over, he has filed 437 claims for our veterans and has gotten over $3 million in compensation for them. He said there are 581 Custer County veterans registered in the VA system, plus there are a bunch more not registered.
Bob Smith gave the Human Resources report. He said the RFP for county insurance is out and he is talking to five brokers about it. Also, there are three open county positions currently posted.
Finance Director Vernon Roth delivered the Finance report. Vernon said they are working on a bunch of procedures while he and Redlands Accounting continue to work on various issues like grant management and audit data. He stated that CORA open records requests consume too much of his time and he would like to see some changes there. County Attorney Slater is working on revising the County’s CORA policy. Epp noted that an RFP for a new County auditor is going out August 1st.
Epp then reviewed the Information Technology (IT) written report noting the IT employee John Mapes is doing a great job. Epp stated that they will be issuing an RFP for “contract services” to help in the IT Department. (IT is severely understaffed considering the amount of work in the county now.)
No big news in the written Human Services and Road & Bridge reports.
The Planning & Zoning Report was written. All types of permits are up dramatically from last year, showing good growth in the housing market. Total income for P&Z, YTD was $117k.
The written Landfill report noted that in the first quarter 4,816 cubic yards of trash was delivered to the landfill via waste collection companies and 2,837 bags of trash were brought to the landfill.
The Recycling written report stated that they made a total of 23 bales of all materials in March with 15 being just cardboard.
In New Business, our Tourism Board Director, Deb Adams, had a proposal for the BOCC. Adams first spent a fair amount of time reviewing the things she has done with the Tourism Board since she became the Director a few years ago. (She has done a good job.) (The Tourism Board Director and all the Board members are volunteers. It has always been that way.) Adams then segued into what she was really there for: she wants to get paid for the job now. Adams argued than since she puts a lot of time into the volunteer job that she should now get paid. She wants her new job to be called the “Destination Management Director” and she would become a county employee. (It sounded like it would initially be a part-time position but that was unclear. The issue of county benefits, insurance, retirement, were not discussed.) Canda said she needed to produce a job description, and this might be a new County “department”. Epp stated the job would have to be posted for competition. The discussion ended with agreement
that Adams will produce a job description and no decisions on actually doing this were made.
(Well, it is always the money. Remember Adams ran for County Commissioner a while back looking for that county job and was beaten badly by Canda. So, no county paycheck there. We don’t like this new paid position proposal for a variety of reasons. First, it is a volunteer position like the dozens of other volunteer boards in the county. Just because one is doing a good job in those positions doesn’t justify that position getting paid. It is a volunteer position for a reason. Second, this would set a bad precedent for other boards: If Adams can get paid why can’t I? Third, it is unnecessary. Things are going fine with the current setup. She has a whole board of people helping so no need to spend a ton of time personally. (Delegation is the word here.) It is her call on how much time she spends on the job. If it is too much for now, cut back and have others help you. Why do we now have to pay for it out of tax money? It is a VOLUNTEER position. She has plenty of resources available.
Fourth: The last thing the County needs now is to add more “optional” employees. The County is going to be in a ton of trouble in the near future as the fed and state grant money dries up (and these fund over half of the County’s budget). And we should be looking at downsizing County government, not growing it. Fifth: The three conservative, small government, Republican County Commissioners ran on being FISCAL CONSERVATIVES. Which means SMALLER GOVERNMENT, not growing it. Remember all governments tend to grow like a cancer eating up our tax money and sending us taxpayers to the poor house. Governments grow incrementally and then all of a sudden. Each new proposed job must be totally analyzed to see the impact on the county’s future financial liability. There is absolutely no need to create a new paid government job when it is currently being well handled on a volunteer basis. It is a total waste of money.
Commissioners: You were elected to be fiscal conservatives. And this is an easy one. Do what you were elected to do. NO GO on this. You should be REDUCING the County government’s financial footprint, NOT INCREASING it. And no offense against Adams looking for a county paycheck. I guess it is human nature, and the County is the biggest fat cat in Happy Valley. But Adams signed on knowing it was a volunteer job. No need to change that. There are plenty of true volunteers willing to fill that position.)