The trailers cannot be destroyed, according to Starr, because they are
property. “We need to find somebody to move those trailers, who is willing hold them … to put them out there for 30 days,” Starr said…
— from the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN, August 30
At yesterday’s Tuesday morning work session, September 11, Commissioners Ronnie Maez and Michael Whiting sat around the table, discussing the Warren Goodman situation with interim County Administrator Greg Schulte and County Attorney Todd Starr.
In Part One, I mentioned the numerous complaints made against Mr. Goodman by nearby Aspen Springs neighbors — and also mentioned that the County government had reportedly confiscated 13 dogs from Mr. Goodman’s property. I understand some animal cruelty charges may have been filed in that case.
But the issue on my mind this morning has to do with a local government confiscating and destroying someone’s home.
We’re listening here to interim County Administrator Greg Schulte:
“I think I may have mentioned — myself and the Public Works staff went out to [Warren Goodman’s property] last week to do an inspection about the extent of things, and to let the Public Works people assess what kind of effort it would be, and do we have the bandwidth to do that.”
“To do that” means, presumably, to clean up the property at 187 Bill’s Place. Here’s a Google image showing the property on the east side of the gravel road known as ‘Bill’s Place’…
The property appears to include a larger mobile home, and several smaller trailers or RVs. It also appears to include a ceremonial circle, of some kind.
Someone’s home. Or the home of a number of people. Perhaps a place where ceremony and worship takes place.
Mr. Schulte continued:
“We probably do have the bandwidth. We probably need to rent some equipment, but we’d essentially have to stop work on [all other Public Works projects.] So that may be a cost benefit [to consider.]
“Today, I’m going out again with… I was able to get a hold of a particular contractor to go out there and assess that. So we could get a price from that person, to see what it’s going to cost us, from a cost standpoint. That way, we’ll have the ability to think about, ‘Okay, are we going to be willing to sacrifice probably close to two weeks of work on [road maintenance,] to get that done [by County employees] as opposed to hiring someone.”
It’s difficult to put a price on deferred road maintenance, I suppose. The County has an enormous backlog of deferred maintenance, relative to not only the community’s roads but also to County facilities. We can’t even properly reckon how large than backlog is.
Would it really make any noticable difference to anyone, if the Roads Department spent two week (or more) removing trailers and trash from 187 Bill’s Place? We don’t yet know what ‘a particular contractor’ might charge to do the work.
Mr. Schulte continued: “We also went down to the County landfill [located about 8 miles south of downtown Pagosa Springs] because one of the the things that’s a pretty major factor…
“Funny. It’s the details that kill you, right?
“So, there are trailers on the property, as we talked about at the last meeting. We’re going to take those down to the landfill. so we don’t have to move them twice. We’re going to pick them up and move them. And if we think they are really in sad shape, that’s where they are going to end up anyway.
“We do believe we have a place, down at the landfill, so we can actually store these. Because the assertion was that, once we take them, the owner has to have the ability to redeem them within thirty days… or whatever it is. So we have to put them somewhere, so they’re not in the way of the [clean-up] going on.
“We figured it would take two days, maybe three, just to transport the trailers.”
I admit I’ve not been following the saga of Mr. Goodman terribly closely, in terms of what, exactly, the County government feels it ought to do to resolve the disputes between Mr. Goodman and his neighbors, and to address claims of “unsanitary conditions.”
One of Mr. Goodman’s neighbors, meanwhile, appears to have been much more diligent than I’ve been, in researching the complicated legal process the County government is currently involved in.
Aspen Springs resident Christa Laos met with County Commissioners Ronnie Maez and Michael Whiting on August 21, to discuss the Goodman issue. Also participating in that meeting were interim County Administrator Greg Schulte and County Attorney Todd Starr.
Ms. Laos began by thanking Mr. Starr for meeting with her a month earlier, and sharing his “time and knowledge” with her. At that meeting, she said, Mr. Starr had clarified that the County “cannot evict, but has an administrative search warrant to assess and look around” the Goodman property.
Ms. Laos: “And then there will be another warrant to clean up [the property.] I’m not quite sure where [the process] is right now, because I haven’t kept up. But after the clean-up, there will be a lien on the property. And if I understand correctly, there is a possibility of asbestos, which raises the price immensely.”
Mr. Starr: “Which in turn, raises the lien.”
I believe I’ve heard an estimate of perhaps $40,000 as the possible cost, for the County government to ‘clean up’ Mr. Goodman’s property.
Ms. Laos: “You know, for a piece of land that’s worth [perhaps] $10,000, it’s alarming to consider a lien that could be exponentially much larger.
“And then the County would probably be keeping the land? And I see that as more expense to the taxpayers, than [taking alternative approaches to the problem.]
“So what my investigations have brought to my attention is that we’re in dire need of a transfer station, and that primarily, it’s a problem of trash collection in living out there. I think it would be more cost effective, for our taxpayers in the long run, to see it as a ‘trash collection’ problem — instead of viewing each problem individually, and keep putting liens on properties.”
Ms. Laos suggested that the problems at 187 Bill’s Place are partly the result of Mr. Goodman having no money. And Mr. Goodman is not the only Aspen Springs resident who lives what his neighbors might call “a poverty lifestyle.”
Is Ms. Laos suggesting a more cost effective solution to the supposedly unsanitary conditions on Mr. Goodman’s property?
Or is the problem much deeper than just uncollected trash?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.