by Reggie Foster
October 8, 2025
BOCC Mtg. Report
Commissioner Epp spent a day with the CCI legislative group which is made up of many county commissioners. Their discussion this past week centered around items that will impact counties in 2026. Continue reading Oct 8 BOCC: DOLA Childcare Grant Strategies and SO Vehicles
by Michael Foster
The September 17th Board of County Commissioners meeting was held at All Aboard Westcliffe. Canda and Vogelsong were in person while Epp attended via Zoom. Vogelsong highlighted attending a meeting about fire mitigation and the importance of home defense zones for protecting your property. Epp discussed finishing up the audit with Sam DaNardo. Epp and county Finance Director Vernon Roth are working through filing the final paperwork online with the IRS but the system is problematic, freezing up and/or kicking them off. They are continuing to move the issues up the chain for assistance and to hopefully get everything done online. Epp suggests also sending the report via certified mail for proof of submission.
Canda reported that the Airport Board is working to get the survey completed using a surveyor and that they are finishing up within budget. Canda met with Mesa County Commissioners on an initiative to ban pornography for children under 18. There are several steps to the initiative since the county is going to work to ban it. How do you enforce it? How do you prevent it from getting into school and municipal buildings? The technology does exist to block this type of content and hold the provider accountable. Mesa County is on board to champion and implement this bipartisan issue.
Attorney Dan Slater had nothing to cover outside of the agenda. He will be online for an Executive Session for legal advice regarding pending employment litigation. Continue reading Sept 17 BOCC: DHS – upcoming work Req., A holdup on Visionary Broadband’s New Tower
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
BOCC: 11th Dist. DA Lindsey Briefing, Marketplace Grant, Lodging Tax Increase Discussion
by Sentinel Staff
The July 23, 2025 Custer County Board of County Commissioners meeting started at 9 a.m. in the meeting room at All Aboard Westcliffe. All three Commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda and members Lucas Epp and Paul Vogelsong.
Under Commissioner Items, Vogelsong and Epp both commended the Fair Board , Extension Office, 4-H Coordinator. and FFA leader for their work on the County Fair. Sales were over $300K this year and 60% were over prime, which is unheard of, said Epp.
Canda said the current chip seal project went well. The new roller popped off during the project. It is however under warranty. More 30mph signs are going to be put up. Continue reading BOCC: July 23 11 Dist. DA Briefing, Marketplace Grant, Lodge Tax Increase
by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The July 9, 2025/ Custer County Board of County Commissioners regular weekly meeting was held at the All Aboard Westcliffe meeting room and started at 9 a.m. All three County Commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda and members Lucas Epp and Paul Vogelsong.
In Commissioner Items Epp had a finance briefing with the department heads. This meeting will be quarterly going forward. He also attended several agricultural meetings re the potential grant for a dedicated ag market. Epp stated that he had talked to our tourism people and lodging across the state is down. (Hence our Lodging Tax revenue is lower.) Canda opined about whether the County should raise its Lodging Tax.
First up in New Business was Wet Mountain Fire District’s request for a setback variance for a new fuel tank they want to put in. This went on for a bit on exactly how to do it procedurally. Eventually it was decided that they needed a survey done to confirm the property lines and they can go forward and ask for a variance via Planning & Zoning.
Next up was the Rotary Club with a request for an alcohol sales permit for their upcoming soiree Rocking the Ranch Weekend at the Beckwith Ranch, Saturday, August 2nd. This was ok’d.
Bob Smith, our Human Resources Director was the next supplicant concerning a potential “ Useful Public Services Contract”, the County’s program that monitors the public service sentences given by our courts. The current 11th Judicial District Clerk Justine Wilson currently handles that as a part time job being paid $9k a year by the County. She is retiring so the County needs a replacement. It turns out the County only receives around $2k from the people fulfilling these public service sentences. It was brought up that all the surrounding counties use a company called “Intervention” to do this on a per county contract basis. Bob has been in contact with these people and will be meeting them the next day to get pricing, etc.
Road & Bridge’s request concerning getting a used road chip sealer was next. They had sold their old one to a local contractor and now want to buy it back and get it refurbished by a company in Idaho. It will cost about $15k to buy it back and around $40k to $45k to have it rebuilt.
(A new machine costs over $1 million.) The Commissioners asked R&B to get firm numbers from the rebuild company.
Terry Skaggs, a resident of the Mountain Springs Country Estate subdivision off of Oak Creek Grade was next requesting the County assume maintenance of their two roads which total about 2.2 miles. Terry had the subdivision map which showed that the subdivision had deeded those roads to the County when it was originally set up. The County has never maintained the roads. After a big discussion, it was decided that Terry would review the road with Road & Bridge and then the County could make a decision.
In Additional Items, Epp said the County is maintaining roads it shouldn’t be and that has to be reviewed.
And that was that.
by George Gramlich, News and Commentary
The June 11, 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, Epp said two IT vendors made a site visit to our IT Department concerning providing contract IT services to us (especially in the cyber security arena). Epp said a couple of more vendors were interested. He was hoping they could get one signed by August 1st.
Canda said he visited a Colorado State Agency when he was up north at a big meeting and asked them to delete us (somehow) from the infamous Fed Sanctuary List.
In New Business, Accounts Payable was up first. Epp read off the items over $5k (which is very helpful). The total two-week amount was $210. It passed.
The Commissioners then approved a contract with an insurance broker, Acrisure, for them to find us some insurance companies to replace our current vendor, CTSI.
Custer County Clerk Kelley Camper then asked the Commissioners to approve the payment to a firm she hired to do the election ballot printing, mailing, etc. This was ok’d.
The Office of Emergency Management’s Director, Robyn Knappe, was next with a proposal to spend around $3,500 total to purchase an 8×10 wooden shed so she could store some of OEM’s stuff. (This was a lot better than her prior proposal a year or so ago where she wanted to build a whole building for her office and staff and to house her OEM stuff.) This caused a discussion about location, timing, was a concrete pad needed. Near the end of the talk fest, a citizen emailed in and said for the same amount of money you can get a big, metal Conex box that is secure and lockable. This amazed the Commissioners (none of them thought about that) and they finally voted to have Knappe explore this more logical solution.
Next was a request from Custer County’s Workforce Housing Committee for a Letter of Support regarding pursuing a path to build affordable housing on the 12 lots in Silver Cliff that the BOCC donated a while back. It seems nobody or no local organization actually wants to “own” the lots, build on them and run the operation. Apparently, there is a new non-profit, the Custer County Community Development Corporation that might be able to do it. However, it is new, has no people and needs to get going. Somehow this requires $100k to do and the Committee wants permission to ask for that moolah from the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA). The DOLA grants requires a 20% match ($20k) from us. It looked like Westcliffe and Silver Cliff will both chip in $5k each so the County would need to cough up $10k. The Commissioners ok’d it.
Next was a discussion item about raising the County’s Lodging Tax. (It is currently at 2% but Colorado has just given local governments the okay to rape and pillage tourists throughout the state by allowing the local government entities to up it to a max of 6%.) To do this however, the County’s citizens must ok it in a ballot initiative. (We are currently getting about $90k from our 2% tax.)
Canda opens the discussion with the mandatory question, “Will this hurt our tourism?”. This of course caused the pro tax folks in the audience to bombard the Commissioners with how high other towns, cities and counties’ Lodging Tax rates are, trying to convince our supposedly small government, low tax, conservative Republican Commissioners that raising the price of staying in Happy Valley will have no effect on people coming here. (Only one person actually said it may affect it some, or a lot of tourists come here because it is cheaper than other places. Also, the comments noted that the various jurisdictions use other fees, etc. to raise the effective Lodging Tax rate with some as high as 16%.)
The person who raised the affordability issue was none other than our Director of Tourism, Deb Adams. She said if we raise it too much it will hurt us. Adams said our Lodging Tax receipts for last year were down $10k from the year before. She stated that “doubling it” to 4% “might not hurt us too much”. (Hey Republican Commissioners, if you do this you are raising taxes. NO real need for more money was made during the discussion. Going forward, we need SMALLER government not bigger. You are setting us up for a catastrophe when the well goes dry. We need Custer County to be a place where regular people can visit.)
No decisions were made.
(All taxes should be a ballot item.)
Next was a Personnel Matter concerning our Planning & Zoning Director Dorothy Carsten. (You recall that just a week or two ago Vogelsong made a motion to fire Carsten because he alleged she violated the County’s firearm carry rule where she supposedly open carried a pistol at a septic installation. After a huge discussion at the meeting, Vogelsong voted against his own proposal and with Epp’s also “Nay” Carsten didn’t get fired. Now, we are up for round two.)
Canda opened the discussion with blah, blah, blah about how the BOCC manages the County workforce. County Attorney Slater then said that Carsten chose to have the discussion in public rather than in Executive Session, and since she did that, she is waving a lot of confidentiality.
Vogelsong then said, “that after receiving additional information on concealed carry”, “ I carefully reviewed everything” and that “on county property, on duty or off duty” weapons must be concealed. He then made the motion to fire Carsten.
Carsten, who was in the audience then made a statement, “I don’t feel comfortable. I fear for my life and the safety of my family. That is all I have to say.” Audience member, local democrat bigwig, and a motor mouth commentator at virtually every BOCC meeting, James (Dr. Doom) Gilbert then couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Vogelsong. Gilbert told Vogelsong that a local newspaper (of course it was the Sentinel and we are SOOOOO joyed that Gilbert enjoys our coverage) said that Vogelsong “caved” (regarding his prior vote on not firing Carsten) and this current action, “sounds like a political hatchet job” (which is a precious comment coming from a democrat). Vogelsong, to his credit, came back strong saying that the paper said he “folded”. (Actually we made a little funny out of Vogelsong’s name by referring to him as “Vogelfold” after his no vote.) Vogelsong rebutted Gilbert saying, “At that time I did not have enough information. I was informed” that Carsten was open carrying at the County’s impound compound, “plus other times”. He again mentioned that the County Handbook says, on or off duty”.
The three Commissioners then all voted
to terminate Carsten.
In Public Comment, Gilbert, now unchained, went on a dribbling harangue about Custer County helping the feds arrest illegal aliens. (The usual lib stuff. I think our local libs are scared of losing cheap, slave labor.)
In perhaps the most enlightening exchange of the day, the County Clerk then asked the Commissioners, “Any employees that open carries can be fired” implying that a County employee, off duty, going about their business around town, can
be fired for open carrying? (Remember our Colorado Constitution explicitly allows open carry, the 2nd Amendment might have something to say about that, plus the Commissioners have declared that Custer County is a 2nd Amendment county.)
Vogelsong replies, “Yes”.
Kelley responded, “So you might as well fire half the staff”. (Go Kelley!!!).
No response from our 2nd Amendment Commissioners. (Maybe they should take a serious look at what the Employee Handbook says and FIX IT.)
(Kelley is the Sentinel’s Happy Valley Elected Official of the Week. Congrats Kelley.)
(NOTE: We got the actual Employee Handbook wording for the firearms policy. It applies only to County property. So if you are off duty AND not on county property, you can open carry.)
And that be it. Wait ‘til next week, folks.
by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The June 19,2025 Custer County Board of County Commissioners regular meeting started at 9 a.m. and was held 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, Vogelsong said that all three Commissioners had attended the most recent Liberty Rocks get together at Tony’s Pizza where they discussed Custer County and the flap about CC being a sanctuary county for illegal aliens or not. Vogelsong noted that CC is NOT a sanctuary county.
Canda stated that the new Courtroom project committee will start work next month. (Colorado is trying to force CC and various other small counties to build new courthouses because the current ones are in violation of the state’s crazy requirements. Folks, we are talking a cost exceeding 15 MILLION DOLLARS to build their Taj Mahal. (And since we are going to have to borrow a ton of money to do it, a TRUE payback cost of maybe $30 MILLION. For one courthouse. Liberal insanity.)
Elected Officials Reports were first.
First up was Custer County Sheriff Rich Smith. Sheriff Smith noted that the new avjet fuel tank at the airport was being used by multiple rescue helicopters which helped them avoid a long trip back to their bases to refuel. He said he had met with Family Crisis Services on finding a “safe place” locally for domestic violence victims to stay rather than going all the way down the hill to Cañon City.
Sheriff Smith then talked about last Saturday when there were two “First Amendment Events”. (One being a U.S. Flag Day Celebration in front of the Sentinel where local patriots waved American Flags for two hours to celebrate Flag Day. The other being the lib, nationwide protest rallies against President Trump. These were labeled “No Kings” day. One was held in Westcliffe at the west end of Main Street (at the ‘Bluffs) at 10 a.m. That group then marched east of Main Street on the sidewalks to school and then marched back. You can read about that in last week’s Sentinel 06/20/2025.)
Sheriff Smith stated that before the No Kings rally started, he went down to the ‘Bluffs to meet with the “march organizer”, one “Dr. James Gilbert” to discuss security and walking protocols.
[Interesting. So, James (Dr.Doom) Gilbert, a local democrat big wig was the local “march organizer”. So Gilbert (and maybe other local libs) are responsible (or at least partly responsible) for bringing in all those out of towners who jammed the sidewalks up and down Main Street screaming crazy chants and displaying 4th grade cardboard signs with crayon sayings scribbled on them. All to protest a duly elected U.S. President. (You didn’t see conservatives do that after Biden sort of got elected.) So, let’s look at what happened during their Main Street “march”. Main Street Westcliffe is the tourist center of the county. The street is lined with all kinds of shops, restaurants, bars, art galleries, etc. They depend on street traffic for sales. Saturday is the biggest revenue day of the week for them. It is June. A big tourist month. The weather was perfect that day. Tons of tourists coming to town including many Colorado day trippers. They come driving onto Main Street to park, walk and shop and what do they see? A long column of angry, freaky looking people, yelling and chanting, with crazy signs, jamming the sidewalk. What does a tourist do? Get out of there as fast as humanly possible. Never to come back. Our merchants take a BEATING. Westcliffe’s reputation as a nice, quiet spot to spend a day is shattered. The delusional local and out of town demonstrators think they are making a difference, and they are. Every time they do this, more people come to oppose them and their efforts as they disrupt our economic lifeline: tourism. Their myopic, self-absorbed view of themselves as being at the front of the lib effort to get rid of Trump (and democracy) means that they have NO concerns about how their behavior affects others. Especially economically. You want a rally. Fine. Have it at the ‘Bluffs but don’t march up and down Main Street, jamming the sidewalk, scaring off our merchants’ clientele and hurting our community. A lot of these merchants are barely hanging on and the loss of big Saturday revenue intake is devastating. But libs don’t care about others. It is all about themselves. Hey Gilbert! Grow up. This ain’t the sixties again. Have a little consideration for our community and our merchants. It is beyond a waste of time for left wing freaks to shuffle up and down Main Street in Happy Valley. The locals dislike it and every time you do it — you LOSE support.]
Sheriff Smith then (adroitly) mentioned the local lefty who “pulled a gun on several people” at the Sentinel’s Flag Day celebration. Smith said they “caught him out of town” and it was up to the District Attorney now. (Read about that horror show in last week’s Sentinel.)
Custer County Treasurer, Virginia Trujillo, was next. No surprises. The County’s ending bank balance in April was $11,250,000.
Brad Baltzly, our County Coroner, was the next speaker. Brad said they had only one death lately but since it was a younger person he is having an autopsy done.
County Clerk Kelley Camper, then gave her report. Kelley said the Clerk’s Office collected about $248k in fees in May. The County gets to keep about half of that.
The Veterans Service Office Report was next. Director Dominic Edginton delivers it. He said he expected another million dollars in compensation by the end of May from the VA for our veterans via the VA claims he has made. Dominic noted that 228 vets have received new compensation since he came on board. There are 581 veterans “on paper” in Custer County. He is also helping a lot of vets from Fremont County as their VSO Office there is way below par and the vets aren’t getting the help they need.
Bob Smith, our Director of Human Resources, gave his department report. Bob said they had completed the County insurance policy review. Also, our Worker’s Compensation broker was selected and he is getting quotes.
Vernon Roth, Finance Director, was next up. Vernon said he has four proposals from IT companies for contract services for his department (a lot of that is cyber security). Vernon said he is looking hard at the county’s Century Link landlines as it is costing us around $7k a month for them and a bunch of lines are not even being used.
The Information Technology report was given by its Director, John Mapes. He has been super busy with the landline audit, VOIP research, the SO’s IT issues and various internet outages.
No surprises in the Human Services report. EBT outlay for May was $128k. Total Child Support case load is 72.
Road & Bridge reported that their diesel tank dispenser is leaking and four test holes for contamination must be drilled which will cost up to $10k. The cost to fix the new fuel system could be around $20k.
Epp gave the Recycling Report. YTD, 120 bales of various materials have been produced.
Robyn Knappe gave the OEM report. She said the wildfire mitigation program is doing good with 13 neighborhood ambassadors. They have had three chipping “events”.
Our County Kids Council had good news. They are working with Family Crisis Services to find a local place for domestic violence victims. Last week’s Family Day had close to 400 attendees. It was noted that all of Kids Council budget comes from the state and things are looking a little shaky down the road with funding. Interestingly, it was stated that there are 900 kids under the age of 19 in the county and that Custer County had the second highest child growth in the state between 2019 and 2023.
The Public Health report stated that the most recent case of measles in Colorado was in Boulder County and that if you want to get vaccinated against the measles go see them. There are concerns about future revenue stream income as the fed flow is drying up. Their staff has been reduced by 40%.
And that was that.
by George Gramlich, News and Commentary
The May 28, 2025 regular meeting of the Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) started at 9 a.m. at the All Aboard Westcliffe Meeting Room in downtown Westcliffe. All three Commissioners were present: Chair Bill Canda and members Lucas Epp and Paul Vogelsong.
In Commissioner Items, of note was Canda talking about donations to several county offices/departments the highlight being five used police car donated to the Sheriff’s Office. Canda, again, asked the audience to refrain from asking questions during Public Comments and to only make comments. (The constant questions from the audience, the vast majority of which are totally a waste of time and only come from one or two people, were slowing down the meetings a lot and getting the Agenda Items off of the subject. Even with that admonition, the main person who constantly asked questions kept doing it during the meeting and Canda let him do it. Please make it stop….)
In New Business, the first Item was Accounts Payable. The two-week total was $191k and it was ok’d.
Next was a request for applying for a “Rebate Grant” from the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) by the Recycling crew. It was ok’d.
The proposed Weed Management Plan and Implementation Plan was presented for approval by Vogelsong. Apparently, the money to fund this statutory required effort is drying up as Epp said we had better plan for funding in 2026. The plan passed.
Bob Smith from Human Resources then gave an update on the quest to replace CTSI as the County’s insurer. Smith said there were two insurance areas: medical (including eye and dental) and Worker’s Compensation. (Also, liability which CTSI has and the Commissioners have not been too happy about how CTSI has been handling some claims). Smith interviewed several insurance brokers to search for the insurance and recommended two:
Acrisure for medical and Network Insurance Services for Workman’s Comp (WC). The Commissioners agreed with his selection.
Next up was a Personnel Matter concerning Planning & Zoning’s Director, Dorothy Carsten. (Last week, at the BOCC meeting, the Commissioners went into Executive Session (ES) and after that passed a motion putting Carsten on paid administrative until this meeting. Carsten had a choice on how to run this issue at this meeting: she could ask for it to be handled in private in an ES or have it discussed openly in the BOCC meeting. She chose the latter.) County Attorney Dan Slater reviewed the issue and warned Carsten she was waiving her right to confidentiality regarding her personal information. Carsten agreed to that.
Human Resources Director Bob Smith was up first to state the allegations of misconduct. Smith said there were two (although he alluded to other “performance issues” about Carsten): The first issue was that Carsten violated the County Employee Handbook rule about being absent from work for three days or more without notifying her supervisor (who is Vogelsong). The second is that Carsten was open carrying a handgun at two instances when she was doing inspections in the field. The Handbook says employees can carry a handgun but it must be concealed at all times. Smith said it was also an assumption that an employee who conceals carry has a valid concealed carry permit…..
See the 06/06/2025 issue
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.
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.)
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.
