Anyone who has read this column over the years knows that I am constantly hammering away at the local govern­ments to find ways to invest public money where it has the greatest return on that investment. That place should be obvious as it generates anywhere from 50% to 75% (depending on how you calculate it) of the tax revenues for the 10 taxing entities that serve most of Custer County, the businesses of this county. And the best return on investment is within the city limits of both Westcliffe and Silver Cliff.

Well, Commissioner Lucas Epp just helped make one of the best investments in the town’s history by working with Round Mountain Water and Sanitation District (RMWSD) to donate $40,000 from the county’s contingency fund to bridge the financial gap to remove the sludge from the RMWSD’s ponds and ship it to eastern Colorado. The cost of this significant investment was only $40,000, but it marked a substantial change in attitude from past Commis­sioners toward what takes place within the towns.

For more reasons than I have time to get into in this column, there is an overspecialization in local govern­ments, which means these taxing organizations often never talk or work with each other on matters that impact the whole region. Specialization brings efficiency to the jobs that each government does, but that efficiency comes at the cost of government effectiveness in making long-term investments in the community. In the past, RMWSD had come to the Board of County Commissioners and town governments to ask for financial assistance and help with the failing wastewater infrastructure in the RMWSD region. While most of the boards listened, at the end of the day, the leaders at the time simply shrugged their shoulders and said, “That is not our problem; that is your problem.”

But if the sewage does not get treated, the economic engine that powers this little community stalls, and that is exactly what happened in 2023. That year, RMWSD had no choice but to stop any new building within the town limits as the wastewater treatment systems were overwhelmed and risked having a blowout on the land north of town.

This action meant that during the largest building boom in the history of the Valley since the Silver Rush 130 years ago, new houses or businesses could not be built on the ample vacant land within the town limits.

Much of this inability to build is what allowed home prices for those in the working classes to soar at a time when businesses were in desperate need of workers. The lesson was that if the county and towns want to stay solvent in the long run, they need to find ways to create a list of priorities that all governments have an interest in keeping operational.

Perhaps it is because Commissioner Epp’s wife runs and operates two Main Street businesses, that he has taken a particular interest in working with businesses in the towns. In the situation with the sludge, he was one of the few leaders who would talk and listen to just about every party and person that had a stake in the situation. It was also Commissioner Epp who worked with RMWSD to see how much money they might need and bring that discussion to the attention of the other two commissioners.

What I liked about the debate over RMWSD’s sludge was that it was one of the few times that all parties were able to voice their positions on the matter, often very loudly, but the discussion stayed open enough that the truth was able to show itself through the rigorous debate. What quickly became clear was that there was too much uncer­tainty over the level of pollution in the sludge to place it so close to the main waterway in the Valley. Because of the rigor of the debate, it forced all parties to break out the pencils and calculate exactly how much it would cost to properly dispose of the sludge. At first, the estimates were a million dollars, but after discussion, it turns out that the cost was actually $340,000.

I give a lot of credit to Schneider and Epp, who both worked through an extremely difficult situation to find a solution that mitigated the risk of dumping sludge near a creek and to make sure that the new wastewater plant construction was not delayed this summer. This success required a lot of emotional control, critical thinking, a ton of phone calls, and the clarity of mind to work towards solutions rather than focus on finger-pointing.

Bravo to (almost) all involved; it is one of the first times I have seen good debate lead to good decision-making in this Valley.

A sidebar comment on Commissioner Canda

With all of that said, there was one person who repeat­edly almost blew up the process of debate on more than one occasion, and that was Commissioner Bill Canda. Commissioner Canda is the Chair of the Board of County Commissioners, and in all reality, he should have been a force towards working for a solution. Instead, he used his position to almost blow up any deal repeatedly by spending hours talking in circles about the situation and repeatedly entering lies into the conversation. For example, he stated without any proof that Grape Creek was already polluted with forever chemicals, so why did it matter if the sludge was spread near the creek? In another instance, he stated that the sludge was just fertilizers and that the county and government had no authority to stop the spreading of sludge, which was another falsehood.

In two of the meetings, he spent at least half an hour explaining why rumors were bad and how his experience in the military, plus his great decision-making ability, was unique and could help solve the problem. The irony, of course, is that Canda, in statements he made, was one of the biggest sources of misinformation that took a lot of time to untangle, and he told them with no supporting evidence.

Instead of just helping RMWSD in the meeting last week to donate, he called almost every specialized district in the community to attend the meeting and share the cost with the county. He made these calls on his own, and it caused a huge amount of confusion on what exactly he was asking from the other governments, an answer that he did not really know himself, and seemed to make up on the spot, of $15,000.

Lastly, he started to attack Main Street businesses for not attending the meeting because “they had a stake in this issue as well, and I am disappointed they are not here.” He does not seem to understand that the businesses on Main Street are the biggest taxpayers and are busy running their businesses on a Wednesday.

Fortunately, Commissioner Epp, in a few calm words, was able to redirect the discussion to the matter at hand and finalize the deal to ship the sludge out of the Valley.

– Opinion by Publisher Jordan Hedberg