We’ll get to the health department transparency issue in a moment, as discussed by our Archuleta Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday.
But before discussing the need to avoid transparency, the three commissioners — Warren Brown, Ronnie Maez, and Veronica Medina — listened to County Manager Derek Woodman propose a $76,000 toilet at the site of the County’s largest undeveloped park, Cloman Park.
“We’ve talked quite a bit about doing this ‘vault’ toilet out at Cloman Park. The vault toilet is like the one you’d see at an unimproved campground, or remote areas where there are no utilities. We have no utilities out there. The closest water and sewer is probably out by JR’s, a quarter mile away?”
Unlike the Town fo Pagosa Springs which funds its Parks Maintenance Department to the tune of about $525,000 per year, Archuleta County does not have a ‘parks department’. But it has property labeled as ‘parks’.
We discussed the ‘Veterans Memorial Park’ yesterday, in Part One.
The undeveloped park known as Cloman Park is located at the end of Cloman Boulevard, near the airport, and near the Forest Health Products sawmill owned by local developer JR Ford with other partners.
In the map below, the County-owned parcels comprising Cloman Park is overlaid with green, and Forest Health Products is overlaid with orange.
The County airport is at the right. Cloman Industrial Park, which has struggled to attract industrial development for the past 20 years, can be seen at the lower left.
Forest Health Products was originally envisioned as a producer of local electricity, through the ‘gasification’ of wood chips. (You can see huge piles of wood chips in the map.) Unfortunately, the contract between La Plata Electric Association and Tri-State Generation and Transmission made the local generating plant problematic, so the sawmill now produces rough cut lumber for sale.
About a decade ago, a group of recreationalists approached the BOCC asking to create a disc golf course on the Cloman Park property. That golf course, which ranges across two of the County’s three parcels, is free to play. Here’s the map.
The wooded park now includes a parking lot, and is served by a porta-potty. (Golfers can also pee in the woods, I suppose, if they are so inclined.)
County Manager Woodman continued:
“So we are moving ahead with a double-vault toilet, that will replace the porta-potty that’s out there. We need to identify a specific location and figure that out. It came in at $76,000. I did send that figure to the Tourism Board with a request for ‘infrastructure funding’. That is one of their priorities that they have identified. This falls directly in line with their priorities, so I submitted the entire amount to the Tourism Board, and I believe they meet next week…”
The Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board recently surveyed its board members, and found that the board strongly dislikes the idea of spending any of their $1 million-plus annual budget on childcare initiatives, or housing for the tourism workforce… but presumably they’re happy to spend some of their funding on a $76,000 toilet in the middle of nowhere.
Commissioner Ronnie Maez asked it the staff could look into the cost of getting water and sewer to the Park. Commissioner Veronica Medina said she would like to see the County build ‘an event center’ on the property.
County Manager Woodman then moved on:
“Okay. To the topic of the public health advisory committee…”
That seven-member committee had is first meeting this past Monday. Over the next several months, they will be addressing a somewhat controversial issue: public health.
“…[County Attorney] Todd Weaver went over some of the legal components. The Sunshine Law. They are all open meetings. They will all be on Zoom…
“…Their next meeting is on the 27th of February…”
Ah, yes… Colorado’s Sunshine Law, initiated in 1972. To quote from the Colorado Revised Statutes, Title 24:
(b) All meetings of a quorum or three or more members of any local public body, whichever is fewer, at which any public business is discussed or at which any formal action may be taken are declared to be public meetings open to the public at all times.
Another element of government ‘sunshine’ is also found in CRS Title 24. The Colorado Open Records Act, more affectionately known as CORA. The Colorado Supreme Court summarized the law’s intent like this, in 1983:
A free self-governing people needs full information concerning the activities of its government, not only to shape its views of policy and to vote intelligently in elections, but also to compel the state, the agent of the people, to act responsibly and account for its actions.
You can download the full CORA law here.
Apparently, County Manager Derek Woodman and County Attorney don’t want the public to have access to the documents that are being shared, by the County staff, with the Transitional Health Department Advisory Committee.
Here’s Manager Woodman, explaining the situation to the BOCC on Tuesday, concerning public access to shared documents:
“And the other thing that [County Attorney Todd Weaver] laid out to [the committee] was, what is a ‘work product’. And he identified, you know, the Colorado Open Records Act, and out of that, the ‘work product’ was discussed extensively. And there is going to be so much information that is going to this committee, to either digest or to create… and a large percentage are going to be ideas. They’re not set in stone… even when they go to the commissioners as a recommendation… so all of the documents that are going to be created are going to be identified as ‘work product’, so it’s your decision whether you want the ‘work product’ released”…
CORA does indeed define “work products” as being exempt from open records requests. Elected officials need the freedom to consider rough drafts of policies and legislation, without worrying that the rough drafts will be handed out to the media and the general public. So here’s the pertinent definition:
(b) “Public records” does not include…
(II) Work product prepared for elected officials. However, elected officials may release, or authorize the release of, all or any part of work product prepared for them.
There’s more text in CRS Title 24 defining “work product”. But let’s stop for a minute and ask, what exactly do the County Attorney and County Manager think they need to hide from the public?
Do they think keeping documents secret will make the new health department less controversial?
And what do the commissioners think of this approach?