Category Archives: BOCC

2025, BOCC

Sept 10 BOCC: Unfunded Mandates, Courthouse,  Kid Stats

 

BOCC:  Unfunded Mandates, Courthouse,  Kid Stats

September 10, 2025

by Sentinel Staff

This paragraph is for those who remember and prefer the Reader’s Digest version of the story.  Data was presented to substantiate that the county needs cheaper housing, more childcare, and a new court building. The committees attached to these efforts asked for permission to apply for grants to help pay for it.  Our school test scores are not good, however, we have the highest graduation rate in the state. SAR is getting training money and we have a landfill compactor for sale. The Commissioners voted to join other counties in standing their ground behind Colorado statute on unfunded state mandates. The End.

For those who prefer Long-Form, please keep reading. In their opening statements, Commissioners Vogelsong and Epp mentioned attending the Work Force Housing committee meeting. The group is getting closer and closer to solutions and options, and things are going very well. No specifics were given. Continue reading Sept 10 BOCC: Unfunded Mandates, Courthouse,  Kid Stats →

2025, BOCC

BOCC: IT Outsourced, Unfunded Mandates

BOCC: IT Outsourced,
Unfunded Mandates

BOCC Meeting Report
– August 27, 2025

by Michael Foster

The most recent, regularly scheduled Board of County Commissioners’ (BOCC) Meeting was held at All Aboard Westcliffe on Wednesday, August 27th at 9 a.m. Chaired by Commissioner Bill Canda, all three commissioners were present, as well as Sheriff Rich Smith, a handful of citizens, and other staff members from various county departments. The agenda presented held a variety of issues to be addressed, with several votes taking place during the meeting. Continue reading BOCC: IT Outsourced, Unfunded Mandates →

2025, BOCC, Uncategorized

June 25 BOCC: County Phone System to be Replaced

BOCC: County Phone System
to be Replaced, New Recording Fee Schedule, Little Lots to Be Sold

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The June 25, 2025 Custer County Board of County Commissioners regular meeting started at 9 a.m. at the All Aboard Westcliffe meeting room. All three Commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda and members Lucas Epp and Paul Vogelsong.
In Commissioner Items, Lucas said he was looking over responses to RFP on IT Services. He wants a workshop on it. Canda has been working the Fremont VSO and Custer County’s VSO to coordinate services and will be having a meeting soon. He is also arranging to have Upper Ark Water Conservation give a presentation here on their plans.
In New Business Accounts Payable was first. The total two week amount of $125k was ok’d.
Next up was the VSO report. Canda reviewed the report. It was approved.
The next topic was the Rusk Conservation Easement Letter of Support. This concerns the land around the old Beckwith ranch which the owners want to conserve. The letter just supports the effort. It was approved.
Next was a request for proposals for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Vernon Roth, Finance Director the county needs to consolidate all of our phone systems into a “cohesive ball” which would save the county several thousand dollars a month. This would also enable different departments to forward calls to other departments. Vernon noted that the new VoIP system would “ customizable “.Our current set up (with Century Link) is costing $5k to 7k per month. In terms of reliability, the new system would depend on internet connectivity.
County Clerk and Recorder, Kelley Camper, was up next: She said the new Recording Fee Schedule is starting in July. She needed the Commissioners to approve Resolution 25-31 to approve adopting the fees. The new flat fee for all recordings is $43.
Four Golden Arrow Valley subdivision lots the county owns was the next subject. (These are off of Oak Creek Grade just after the pavement ends. This area was originally intended to be an RV park and was cut up into tiny 50 x 100 lots.) A citizen wants to buy the four that the county owns. After a discussion, it was decided to put them out for bid at $2k a lot.
The last item was the West Custer County Library District’s request to approve a new Trustee member: Laurie Yarger. This was approved.

2025, BOCC

May 5 BOCC: Possible IT Outsourcing, CTSI Loss Report

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The May 5, 2025 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting was held at the airport and started at 9:03 a.m. All three Commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda (via Zoom) and Lucas Epp and Paul Vogelsong.
In Commissioner Items, Canda stated the new aviation fuel tank’s concrete approach apron was poured. Canda then noted that he had talked to Round Mountain Water about whether they can accept donations that are tax deductible and revealed that they could. (In a previous BOCC, Canda had stated that they could not.) Round Mountain is setting up accounts in our two local banks for donations to help with the construction of the new waste treatment facility. He also said that the Town of Westcliffe has approved a $10k donation for the project.
In New Business, the first item was a presentation by the Custer County Backpack project. Deborah Bell gave the talk. She said the effort was started in 2016 and last year they delivered 162 backpacks to our school kids (which was 54% of the school population). After filling each backpack for the specific grade, the cost per pack runs from around $40 to $100. They are looking for donations. Epp made a motion for the county to donate $500. After a bit, this was passed.
Next Item was the Beckwith Ranch’s application for a beer permit for their June 12 Annual Round Up event. This was approved.
Epp was next with a proposal to change the quarterly budget review meetings to workshops (instead of a special BOCC meeting). This would give the Commissioners the option of having no public comment. (This was probably the reason. The public has the regular meetings to comment.) This was approved.
The next Item was a proposal to send out a Request for Proposal to various companies that provide in-house Information Technology (IT) support. Epp led this. Basically, instead of hiring one or more full-time County IT employees, the Commissioners want to know if these companies can do it cheaper (and maybe better). This discussion went on for a bit. They are looking at a contract for a price of around $150k. They voted to proceed with this effort.
Lastly, the County’s insurance company, CTSI, had their loss expert there to give the annual review of the County’s loss experience. The analyst had delivered the report to the Commissioners prior to the meeting. The big item was the large loss amount increase last year, the majority of which was from an excessive force on a minor incident a few years ago. (This was under the prior Sheriff’s term.) The case was finally settled last year with a settlement of around $800k. The analyst stated that the County’s “employment conditions” lawsuits were set-tled for around $300k. In our Workmen’s Compensation arena, most of the claims were from the Sheriff’s Office due to their physical training (including use of force training) courses and the regular course of business in arrests, etc. The analysts stated that there was a “rather high” number of claims from the SO the last two years.
This of course sent the Commissioners, especially Epp, into waves of lamentations about how they must manage the claims better and that the County must do a better job of training, etc.
On and on. In the end, no real plan was proposed.
At the end of the meeting, Epp announced that the BOCC meetings would be held on Wednesdays going forward starting May 28th.

2025, BOCC, Uncategorized

April 24 BOCC:Tons of Policies, Silver Cliff Gets Some Free Land, RMWSD Donation Confusion

BOCC: Tons of Policies, Silver Cliff Gets Some Free Land, Round
Mountain Donation Confusion

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The April 24, 2025 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) regular meeting was held at the 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.
Not too much in Commissioner Items. Epp said the ARPA and LATCF yearly grant fund reports were done and submitted. Canda said the Commissioners had a “good” meeting with our local dems. (The local Polis, Biden, AOC, Pelosi loving Custer County democrat party asked our Commissioners to show up at a “round table” so they could question them about what is going to happen to Happy Valley when the fed and state grant money disappears, and the children will be starving.)
In New Business, Accounts Payable was up first. Epp gave the run down. (Epp does good with this. He reviews, during his presentation, all AP items over $5k. Very informative. Of note, interim County Attorney Dan Slater got a $6.8k check and they finally paid for the infamous Rolls Royce level chipper with a $98k check.) The total AP for the last two weeks was $372k.
Next was a proposal to approve a proclamation for Family Crisis Services to proclaim April Sexual Assault Awareness month. Family Crisis Services does a lot of good stuff including safe houses for abuse victims, therapy and counseling. Last year they served 274 clients. The proclamation was approved.
The Mayor of the Town of Silver Cliff, Buck Wenzel was next at the royal table. He said the County and Silver Cliff had an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) regarding a piece of land the county owns but Silver Cliff uses and maintains. It has signs on it and it is a trail head. Buck wanted the BOCC to deed the piece over to Silver Cliff to make things simpler. This was approved.
Human Services was next with nine policies that the state requires and the County hadn’t adopted them. This was supposed to have been done in 2022 but it wasn’t. The Commissioners approved all the policies.
Next up was Human Resources Director, Bob Smith, with the newly revised Records Retention Policy for the County. Bob has sent it around to the various department heads for review and made some changes based on that input. The Commissioners approved it.
The final New Business Agenda Item was about setting up a procedure so people could donate money to help the Round Mountain Water and Sanitation District pay for the construction of their new waste treatment system. (Remember the County donated $40k recently.) Canda led the discussion. He wanted to set up an account item at the Treasurer’s Office to take the donations which would allow the donations to be tax deductible. It was asked why can’t Round Mountain do it and Canda said that under their statutory regulations, they were not allowed to do that. County Attorney Slater said that was wrong and Round Mountain, like a bunch of other local entities, by statute can accept donations and have them be tax deductible. This went on for a bit. Finally, Canda said he would go over and talk to Round Mountain to find out one way or the other.
No fireworks. Of note, however, Chair Canda is letting people, one person in particular, interrupt the Commissioners discussion of items instead of waiting for the Public Comment interlude at the end of each Commissioner discussion. Very disruptive and rude.

2025, BOCC, Uncategorized

April 17 BOCC: Grant Money, Coroner wants a Cooler, Tourism Director Wants Pay

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.)

2025, BOCC, Uncategorized

BOCC April 10- County Records Retention Policy Proposal, Citizen Wants State to Audit County

BOCC: County Records Retention
Policy Proposal, Citizen Wants
State to Audit County

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The April 10, 2025 Custer County Board of County Commissioners regular meeting was held at the Wetmore Community Center and started at 9 a.m. All three mighty Commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda and members Lucas Epp and Paul Vogelsong.
In Commissioner Items, Epp said he attended a Upper Arkansas Area Council of Governments (UAACOG) meeting the day before. The UAACOG board appointed a new Executive Director, Dave Paul. Continue reading BOCC April 10- County Records Retention Policy Proposal, Citizen Wants State to Audit County →

2025, BOCC, Uncategorized

BOCC: Big AP Amount, Annual Clean Up Day, STR Moratorium

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The March 27, 2025 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) regular meeting started at 9 a.m. at the All Aboard Westcliffe meeting room. All three Commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda and members Lucas Epp and Paul Vogelsong.
In Commissioner Items, Epp said he attended a Colorado Wildfire Fire Protection Plan meeting where the attendees reviewed maps and zones in Custer County. County Interim Attorney Dan Slater said another ex county employee is suing the County. He doesn’t think this lawsuit “has a lot of merit”.
In New Business, Accounts Payable was first up. Epp led the discussion noting that this AP (which covers just the first two weeks of March) was high due to a lot of normal, annual expenses that come in around this time. Epp reviewed all the expense items greater than $5k. The total of $567k was approved.
Next was the announcement that the annual Towns of Westcliffe and Silver Cliff Clean Up day will be May 10th. Residents of the two towns can put out items on the curb to be taken away. No batteries, tires or household trash. No appliances that use freon. All county residents can bring their electronic items
to the Dome in Silver Cliff to
be recycled.
Eight County Resolutions were next. These supplemental resolutions were to approve money to pay for expenses that were above the budgeted amounts. The Commissioners
Health Insurance got $13.6k. The VSO got $6k for training. The VSO got another $20.8k for the new assistant. Road & Bridge received $66k for the newly acquired used roller/compactor. $49.5k was allocated for the infamous chipper.
The County Clerk got $69k for recording services and the airport was on the receiving end of $125k for improvements to the
fuel system there.
The last Agenda Item was a Resolution for a Moratorium on
new Short Term Rental applications and permits. This would last until December 31, 2026. Planning & Zoning needs time to adjust the regulations based on issues that came up in the last few years plus new state laws are coming down. (A new state regulation will control the size of the STR septics and will use the number of beds, instead of bedrooms, as the measurement tool.) The Resolution was approved.
And that was it.

2025, BOCC, Uncategorized

March 20 BOCC: Some Fatal Fire Facts, P&Z Stats, Sludge/Fertilizer Comments

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The March 20, 2025 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) regular meeting was held at the 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 all three Commissioners reported attending several meetings. Canda noted that he is setting up a town hall meeting with the Upper Arkansas Water people to discuss Upper Ark’s plans for our county (including raising the water lever at Lake DeWeese). Continue reading March 20 BOCC: Some Fatal Fire Facts, P&Z Stats, Sludge/Fertilizer Comments →

2025, BOCC, Uncategorized

Liberty Rocks Special: LIBERTY ROCKS SPECIAL: Three Commissioners Q&A Courthouse Land Purchase Details, Illegals, County Attorney Issue

LIBERTY ROCKS SPECIAL:

Three Commissioners Q&A
Courthouse Land Purchase Details,
Illegals, County Attorney Issue

Fred Hernandez,
News and Commentary
The February 18 Liberty Rocks at Tony’s Mountain Pizza was called to order by Chairperson Ann Barthrop shortly after six to a fully packed room in the tavern area.  It was to be a special session with all three Custer County Commissioners in attendance; a rare occurrence not experienced in a long time, if ever there even was one.  After the usual opening procedures, including the Pledge of Allegiance and the invocation by Dr. Ann Willson, The Chair, unexpectedly, called the first speaker;  local real estate realtor, Bob Senderhauf.  This session of Liberty Rocks then became a two-part event not only featuring the Q&A with the commissioners but also, a presentation by Mr. Senderhauf. Continue reading Liberty Rocks Special: LIBERTY ROCKS SPECIAL: Three Commissioners Q&A Courthouse Land Purchase Details, Illegals, County Attorney Issue →