News, and Commentary
You never know what you are going to get at these commissioners meetings, and this one had some surprises for sure. All three commissioners were in the hallowed chamber for the June 6, 2022 Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting: Chair Kevin Day and members Tom Flower and Bill Canda. The meeting started at 9 a.m.
The Commissioner items discussion was again dominated by Flower with a rambling dissertation on his dealings since the last meeting.
Public Comment was next. Incredibly, the Tourism Board honcho, Deb Adams, was baaaack and AGAIN attacked the county’s website in a somewhat “pushy” manner. (Folks, Adams knows there is a new website coming like in a week or so, so why is she again wasting everybody’s time criticizing something that is about to go bye bye? Well, duh. She is running as an unaffiliated against Canda this fall and is trying, fairly weakly, to get some public face time.) She started with asking why the county’s website does not have any fire ban information on it now. Day responds with there is no fire ban now and the information is on the Sheriff’s Office (SO) website as he is the Fire Marshall for the county. Adams actually asks how would the people know to go to the SO site? (If you have been in Happy Valley for any time, you quickly know the fact that the Sheriff is the Fire Marshall. Also, when there is a ban, the county’s IT guys put it on the county’s site. When there is no ban, nothing on the county’s site. Nice and simple for us deplorables.)
Day repeats what he said last week to Adams that the new website is being worked on and we want the fire ban status to be on the front page. IT guru Vernon Roth pipes up and says when we have a fire ban it goes on the front page and when there is nothing we take it down. Adams, maybe realizing that this “discussion” is a waste of time, to the muskies and the world at large, says “I am not whiiiiining as quoted in a recent article”. (Folks, that is NOT a typo. That is how it sounded. Accent unknown.) Adams continues on for a bit and Roth repeats that we have a new website coming out soon. Finally, it is over.
Braden Wilson, Finance chief is next. Out of the blue, Wilson says he has a statement from some Custer County employees about Mr. Wonderful, Tommy Flower. It is a written document that says the undersigned state that Flower has not turned the courthouse into a “hostile workplace” and he has not created a “hostile work environment” and is not improperly influencing the employees. He then reads off the names of 15 or 20 county employees who signed it. (It was just a few months ago that Flower was PUNISHED by Day and Canda in a big public meeting over the outrageous harassment of Planning and Zoning’s Jackie Hobby, and allegedly other employees. Flower had his county department responsibilities taken away and people were screaming for him to resign. Apparently, in Happy Valley, bad things just disappear.) Flower, of course, is in Flower Power Heaven and says “I appreciate that. I had communication with people on this”. (“Communication”? Hmmmmm.)
After the photo op, Wilson talks about the various employee committee’s he is setting up to make the county run better. There were some other county department head reports but no big items.
Day finally asks, are there any public comments. It is quiet for a bit, then County Attorney Clint Smith Zooms in from the world wide web.
Make sure you are seated before you read on because Smith just LOSES IT BIG TIME.
Smith starts with talking about the May 31st meeting where Day amended the agenda to add Bad Tommy’s (BT) Colorado Independent Ethics Commission (IEC) ruling (where he was found guilty of several, serious ethics violations) to New Business. Smith says “that has been troubling me since it happened”.
Then, incredibly, Smith says the IEC ruling was “NOT a BOCC matter to start with”. (What!!!) He says the BOCC does not have to recognize the ruling. (What!!!) Smith says it is “not their business”. (That is, the ruling.) (Folks, this is crazy talk. If it wasn’t “county business” Smith, why were you up in Denver on the county’s dime trying to defend Bad Tommy? For goodness sake, the county has a commissioner who was found guilty of serious ethical violations —which is rare for the IEC— and was actually fined. For the muskies NOT to talk about this or allow the citizens to talk to the muskies about it is just WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Smith didn’t like that all the people who spoke wanted Bad Tommy to resign. He thinks that the citizens addressing the BOCC with this issue was wrong! Earth to Smith: the muskies are elected officials. They are politicians. Us citizens have the RIGHT to confront bad behavior from them, PERIOD. TO THEIR FACES. Don’t try to censure us, Smith. It ain’t gonna happen.)
Smith continues and maybe we can see where all this hostility is coming from, folks. He starts talking about the actual ethics case, the complaint wording and the ruling wording. (Bottom line on the case: Smith got his rear end beat like real bad and he is now whining about it.) He complains that the complaint and the ruling had the word’s “pay raise” in it and that the actual issue was a bonus check for BT’s wife and the commission should have “amended” the complaint to replace “pay raise” with what the money was, a bonus check. And because of that, Smith, as you will see below, thinks he should have won. (If you read the actual ruling, it mentions “pay raise” early on then IT CLEARLY DEFINES WHAT THAT WAS AND IT WAS BONUS PAY. So, it was a very, very minor typo that Smith is trying to use to say he should have won the case. Pretty weak, Clint. Actually, pathetic.)
Smith says the ethics commission “was going down a rabbit hole”. (Those pesky wabbits!) He says he “found the whole IEC something of a farce. (Because the poor boy lost.) Then he actually says, and I kid you not, “I felt we won as there was no proof of what he was accused of. (Reality check here Smith: it was on the actual BOCC recording of the meeting and they played the recording at the hearing to the ethics hearing officers. Based on the recording there was no doubt at all in their minds that Flower was FLAT OUT GUILTY. PERIOD. Not even close, counselor.)
Smith then turns and attacks Day and Canda FOR ALLOWING THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTY TO COMPLAIN AT A BOCC MEETING ABOUT THE IEC RULING AGAINST ONE OF OUR COMMISSIONERS! He says “this shouldn’t have been allowed before the BOCC”. “It was public shaming.” (Wow, this is crazy talk.) “Everybody said the same thing over and over.” (What? We can’t individually complain, Smith?) “It was a political rally.” (No, it wasn’t Smith. It was outraged citizens of this county exercising their RIGHT to voice their concerns over local governing officials. You saying that we can’t do that? Are you one of Biden’s Thought Police now, Clint? Take the next flight back to earth, sir.) He continued with “I was upset at the way it was handled.” (Poor Thing.)
Day then speaks up and says he apologizes for putting the matter on the agenda. He says he put it on as there were a bunch of people there to speak. (Day did right. There was a crowd of people there to complain and so instead of them speaking in Public Comment he made an agenda item for them. What is wrong with that? It would have happened no matter what.)
Still in some “dark skies other place”, Smith ends with “a group came in and took over the BOCC meeting and essentially conducted a political rally”. (Folks, we have a problem here. When the County Attorney says the citizens can’t address government official’s wrongs in the only local public forum available to us, there is a PROBLEM. We can’t call out our elected officials when they do wrong, Clint? Muskies: this is outrageous, anti-free speech, anti-accountability and anti-transparency talk coming from the county attorney. Are you going to let the county attorney dictate who speaks and doesn’t speak at a BOCC meeting? And this is “political speech” –the most protected form of First Amendment speech. You gotta do something about this. This is Free Custer County and not Pueblo, Boulder or Moscow, muskies. This is unacceptable.)
Another chapter in the Happy Valley Soap Drama closes. It was a good’un.
The next could be a doozy. Stay tuned.
Tha, tha that’s all folks.
(Editor/GG: All italics are editorial comments. Somehow, some people didn’t realize that and there is nothing wrong with interjecting comment into news as long as it is clear that it is commentary. So there, libs. At least we do it openly, as opposed to the other local “publication”.)
