RBC | The Rio Blanco County Board of County Commissioners held its regular public meeting last week in Meeker. Commissioners Doug Overton and Callie Scritchfield attended, while Commissioner Jennifer O’Hearon was absent as she was in Washington, D.C., on county business meeting with senators.
The meeting opened with public comment from resident Bobby Gutierrez. He asked about moving the health service district board back to a seven-person board, which voters first approved in 2006.
“The resolution to change the will of the people by illegally as there is no Colorado revised statute allowing a board to go from seven members to five,” stated Gutierrez.
He cited an Aug. 19, 2021, resolution sent by Pioneers Medical Center with a letter to commissioners at the time.
“The commissioners never did discuss the resolution, nor did they put it on publicly; they didn’t discuss it publicly back in 2021. Nor did they put the resolution on the agenda to determine if it was a material modification of the district service plan from seven to five members. With no response from the commissioners after 45 days PMC attorney Christina Harney submitted the motion for the district court to accept the amendment to their bylaws reducing the number of board members from 7 to 5, explained Gutierrez.
He went on to explain that the motion was denied by the Judge Anne K. Norrdin on April 29, 2022.
“Yet PMC ignored the court order and amended their bylaws April 26, 2022, two weeks before an election with seven people on the ballot running for three seats. You as Rio Blanco County Commissioners have the authority to correct this immediately by appointing two members. We recently had an election and appointing the next two highest vote getters from the May 26 election to get us back to a seven person board like the voters of Rio Blanco County originally voted for,” stated Gutierrez.
He was the only person to speak during public comment. No online comments were received.
The board then approved its agenda after moving item 3n, a request from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, to the top of business items in order to hear from NRCS representative Todd Bolt, who joined remotely from Fort Collins.
Business item “n” concerned a request to Clint Evans of NRCS for federal assistance under the Flood Control Act of 1950 and the Agricultural Credit Act of 1978 to restore damage sustained in Rio Blanco County by the Lee and Elk RBX fires on Aug. 25.
Bolt, who oversees NRCS’s emergency watershed program statewide, explained the process.
“It is set up to relieve imminent hazards to life and property caused by a watershed impairment, and a watershed impairment is a fire and then we have flood. The watershed is impaired it cannot act the way it’s supposed to act.”
He described the sponsor process and responsibilities. “A sponsor has to request assistance from our agency. Our boss is Clint Evans, that’s why you referenced him, and you have to send in a request to him and say ‘Hey we need assistance under this program due to this fire and the flooding that we’re getting’ and you have to do that within 60 days and then we have some time to come in and help you out and assess the damages,” explained Bolt.
“NRCS in this program works through the sponsor to provide technical and financial assistance to address the issues that are occurring on private property and also any public infrastructure that might be impacted postfire,” Bolt stated.
Bolt said NRCS covers 75% of the cost while the sponsor provides 25%, preferably in cash, though in-kind services can be counted.
“The county’s budget right now is not in very good shape, if we decide that we want to pursue this, can we get the private land owners to kick in the 25% and is that an option,” questioned Overton.
Bolt replied that it was an option but difficult.
“Whenever there was a change order during construction, and all of a sudden there was an increase in cost the county had to go through this whole process to work with the land owner for the increase in cost for the additional 25 feet and it just turned into a nightmare from an administrative standpoint,” stated Bolt.
He advised against pursuing landowner contributions unless necessary.
After the NRCS discussion, commissioners considered item C: approving a resolution under CRS 31-1-902(51b) to increase the Eastern Rio Blanco County Health Service District board from five to seven members.
“I don’t know if that was ever legally a five-man board but that’s not our issue,” Overton said. The issue now is that they used a statute to go back to a seven-man board. The statute that they used to do that does not give us authority to appoint people. It does not give the hospital district the authority to appoint people. It has to go to an election.”
“The way that the hospital filed for this, there’s nothing we can do and there’s nothing the hospital can do. It has to go to a special election unless they file something different,” Overton said.
Near the end of the meeting, County Administrator Vicky Edwards provided an update on fire recovery. She said the state emergency management team has been working with the county on a potential FEMA public assistance declaration, which would cover infrastructure such as utilities, roads, bridges and the old Meeker landfill.
“There’s a lot of damage that has been done because of both fires and then the floods that came in the rapid flooding that we had right after that. They are helping us move through that,” stated Edwards.
She added the infrastructure damage was greater than expected.
