Board of County Commissioners Regular and Meetings - Special Meeting

Welcome everyone to the Lake County Board of County Commissioner's regular meeting, August 18th, 2026 at 11 a.m. Please turn off your cell phones and we will start with a Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Shall we approve the agenda?

Oh yeah, I'm going to approve the agenda.

I will second that. Who will vote?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Next up is community information items. Does anyone want to talk about the willow fire update and the burned area emergency response team?

I took some notes on that this morning. I can update. We had a meeting with the U.S. Forest Service going over the bear or burned area emergency response. situation out there. This is a US Forest Service-led meeting to inform about topics such as soil burn severity, geological hazards, erosion and flooding, hazard trees, and non-native species, with the goal of reducing risk and aiding in natural recovery. The, you know, overall gist of things was that There are elevated risks. The situation up there, it's still a situation. Things are still happening up there. It just looks a lot different than actual flames. But it's still very much an active scene. There are some good takeaways and some not awesome news. The combined hazard ratings, which Basically, are all the different categories kind of put into one overall picture remain moderate across most of the burn area with some lower combined hazard ratings down in the lower areas. Values that are still at risk include things such as roads, infrastructure, aquatic habitat and watersheds. Some of the positives to take away is that it seemed like from what I was gathering looking at some of these maps and charts was that there was low soil burn intensity across much of the fire area. Some of it was moderate, but the low soil burn intensity could mean that it will recover a little bit faster. But these elevated risks that we're seeing up there from things like post increased flows, post burn debris flow models, things of that nature, those can last for a few years after this fire. So we will continue to work with our local US Forest Service team to update and stay informed. And if anyone wants to reach out with any questions, please feel free to do so. On August 13th, we were awarded a $300,000 grant by the Colorado circular communities. to go towards improvements at the landfill. These will go towards projects such as a scale to weigh trash loads, a forklift, and additional storage to increase recycling capacity. Ultimately, this is step one as we continue to pursue major landfill improvements. It is my understanding that the county had assistance from C4 on this grant, so we want to say thanks to them. And that's good news for landfill improvements. Excellent.

Excellent updates. Thank you. You're welcome. I have no community information items, so we'll move on to a reminder that all regular meeting and work sessions are recorded and available on the Lake County Government YouTube channel. They're transcribed and indexed as well. The recordings can be watched at a time that's best for you. Subscribe and stay informed on county decisions. Next up is public comment. It's available for residents wishing to speak on an agenda item or another issue not on the agenda. To make a public comment, residents may request to speak by raising your hand in person, using the raise hand feature in Zoom, and sending a message in chat. The chair will call on the public in order. Comment is limited to three minutes. not including board questions. Action, if required, will be assigned to county staff. The chair may also ask the public comment on specific agenda items be held for later in the meeting. In certain instances, public comment will not be accepted, such as on public hearing items noted on the agenda. Is there anyone online who would like to make a public comment? OK. Anyone in? Oh, Tracy?

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Thank you. I would just like to brag on my staff for a couple minutes, if I may. Sure. Once a year, the Department of Revenue comes up and audits our office on multiple lists of things. And this year, we received an exceptional rating. And if I could just read a couple of sentences from their summary. The Lake County Motor Vehicle Office achieved a final score of 26 on the 27 point inventory scoring matrix, placing the office at the highest level of the exceeds expectations category and only one point from a perfect audit. The Lake County Motor Vehicle Office is well positioned to continue building upon its current success while maintaining the high standards observed throughout the audit. So I'm just so proud of our staff, especially my chief deputy, Cindy, and our manager, Andrea, Andy, our tech, and Elizabeth, and Vera, and Jordan, who are very supportive to the rest of the office.

Thank you. Congratulations. That's awesome.

It seems like everything is going well over there.

Yeah, I think so.

We appreciate the continued cooperation between us and you. And hopefully that goes into the future.

I do, too. Okay.

Anybody in the room? Public comment? Please state your name for the record. Bill Perkins. Go ahead. You've got three minutes.

So about a week ago I contacted Howard Kitts, who actually still answers his landline. and he put me on the agenda for last night's Minimal Belt community meeting. So my colleague, Julie Weed, and I came and presented two gifts, essentially, that we're trying to offer the community. One is our first new Nordic Trail in 35 years. The other is the newly reborn Leadville Nordic Organization offering to ease our way into taking over the grooming and running that program on enthusiast's donations, of which there's currently $130,000 sitting, going unused. So I also suggested that we divide and conquer, where the Mini-Belt Committee has based a lot of its focus on the rolling museum interpretive tour on the trail. And so, I feel they can cover that, we can cover the grooming, performing the task at twice the frequency of the paid contractor at less than a quarter of the cost, and not require taxpayer dollars anymore. So one of the reasons to divide and conquer is because the Mineral Belt has a growing list of needs. This wouldn't have happened on my watch, but this has sat in one of the kiosks for nine months this way, and most of those posters installed last fall are in the same condition. So how it fits this group has to work that out for me. Because this was someone's money wasted. And it's embarrassing. So leave it there. I'll leave this with you guys. So I just hope to meet with the commissioners, because some of what we discussed last night was really not the domain or jurisdiction of the Mineral Valve Committee. And Julie has crafted a very professional business plan to relaunch the once abandoned Redville Nordic. So we're already a nonprofit in good standing, and we'll take the next steps. EIN 501c3. We will commit in writing to what we promised to do. And as the wheelers take good care of the trails they're in charge of, the pride, the passion, and the love

Thanks, Bill.

Thank you. Anybody else online or in the room like to make a public comment? That concludes the public comment portion of this meeting. We will now move on to our regular agenda. The first and only agenda item is discussion and consideration of Florida County Commissioners Strategic priorities, this will be led by Candace Brimes, our County Manager.

So we met at the end of June and you guys had a few changes you wanted to make. Those changes have been implemented. We had intended to come back at the beginning of July and adopt those and then we had the will of fire response for about a month and so now that we've come back at the beginning of August and kind of made it on the other side of that response, just getting this back in front of you for, like, official acceptance.

Next one. Yeah. I had one question is, you know, like, As we progress through, you know, checking boxes off on this or find things that need adjusting, we will be able to like make minor changes to this as it lives. Like it's going to be like a living and breathing thing as we adjust moving forward.

I think in the plan, if I remember correctly, it says we'll look at progress quarterly. I would imagine that this is a 26, 27 plan. It's kind of setting your budget. uh along these priorities so i would say towards the end of 27 you would want to say what have we gotten done do we want to change anything do we want to add anything i would think that you wouldn't be changing it every quarter or you're really never going to accomplish the plan because you're building your budget based off of these priorities for you know through 27 then i would think at the end of 27 that last quarterly review you know, not the very end of the year, but you know, as you're starting to look at the 28 budget, which we start mid-year, that's when we'd want to have any conversations of, you know, I'm changing anything, does anything feel like it doesn't align any longer? And then start to have those conversations ahead of, you know, your next building of the budget. So that's really the goals that these are the priorities that staff is aware of as they start to build their budget, or if they have to make a cut to a budget, This is the lens through which we do that.

Okay.

Do you want to make a motion?

I will make a motion to approve the document known as the BOCC Strategic Priorities.

Second it.

Two vote.

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you, Candace. Let's move on to county attorney updates. Mr. Hobbs.

Starting out, I don't have a pleasant update. Zoe Bergstrom filed suit against the county yesterday, as we all anticipated was going to happen. That has been Referred to defense counsel. We have a preliminary meeting set with them on tomorrow actually We have really good attorneys. We were able to provide some input I was able to provide some input from the list of defense counsel and they went with who I recommended they go with so I was pretty happy about that so we're in good hands in terms of that These cases, I would expect it to be no less than a year, probably about two years. We're going to be dealing with this in some shape or form. It doesn't mean we're going to be working on it every month, but there'll be periods of ebbs and flows during the course of litigation. The first thing we'll have to do is file an answer. Once we get served, it's usually about 30 days after service. And then we'll get a discovery. I imagine there's going to be depositions and things that normally happen during the course of discovery. So that's just an update on that. It was filed in federal court. The other update I have is, some of you may know this already, but we're going to be moving out my office. Chris became the county court judge. She wanted to keep that office, and it sort of created a conflict of interest with me in there. So, Candace and I are looking for space.

We need so much space.

I'm sure there's a closet somewhere. That has two closets, actually.

Josh and I have a table in the center of our house. Yeah, that's nice. We're married right now.

We'll find a spot.

That's okay, I'm not picky, so yeah.

Okay, well thanks for that. So this case could last up to two years, assuming that CT and

Yeah, it all depends. They're going to do the financial analysis that I told you they were going to do. They're going to ask their defense counsel to take an independent look at it and sort of give them an estimate of what they think the value of the case is, what the chances are of success, and all that stuff that will go into the algorithm of how much It's a business decision as insurance companies get involved regardless of, you know, the merits. It's business.

Well, hopefully we can stand up for ourselves and hopefully they stand up for us.

I've definitely been making it as clear as possible that they should fight this case. always hired as a plaintiff's law firm out of Denver and uh you know if they just roll over they're you know they're a large plaintiff's firm and surely end up with more cases from other counties if they don't stand up on this one okay we'll hope for that can I ask Matt do you mind just talking through a little bit about the history of the office I've had some questions from constituents about

why we use, like, why we sublease with our former attorney. Can you just talk through the history of the office a little bit to where we are now?

Yeah, from what I know. Yeah.

I know we're all new.

Don't worry. Well, my understanding was Chris was, had that office for a while, was the county attorney, and then, you know, as a private attorney, she was the county attorney. And then at some point, I don't know when that occurred. I think it was like four, maybe five years ago. She became full-time county attorney and kept her private practice open and kept that office with her private practice. So the county has subleased that office from Chris for years now, which is what I inherited. The terms of our sublease agreement allowed either party to terminate it within 60 days' notice. That's what happened when she became the county judge. As a part-time county judge, you can still keep a private practice, which many county judges do in these small rural areas. That's apparently what Chris did. that space from Chris's firm.

Thanks. And can you talk a little bit about the conflict? What is the conflict of interest between a county attorney and the county?

Well, we have several land use cases in County Court right now, so we will be appearing in front of her and obviously sharing office space and appearing in front of her is, you know, if not a direct conflict, certainly a serious appearance of the conflict of interest, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you, good questions. Okay, all set? Yep. Next is County Manager updates.

All right, so we've got a couple of different items. So the first one is from Tourism and Economic Development. The Tourism and Economic Development Department has been working with the community to help with some recovery efforts. after the month of July was canceled. It was pretty dead in town that weekend. And a lot of businesses really, really, you know, that is one of their biggest earning holidays and months of the year. So the staff has been coordinating with community partners to come up with some sort of Independence Day celebration. So they did 12K in local business meal vouchers. And even though it was a quieter weekend than we had hoped for, we were still able to focus on doing a few events that provided economic boost. The Leadville Twin Lakes, or Visit Leadville and Twin Lakes, have made a Willow Fire video and has been really pushing that out to kind of garner some interesting people coming out and supporting, especially our local businesses after. the impact of the fire. Adam and his team have been monitoring visitation lodging tax collections. We've been using some of our sales and tax information totals as well as some of his placer AI data to look at the difference in sales tax for our community and communities around us by month. Um, part of that is, you know, for us to know the economic impact, but also as we work with, um, our state partners, um, there may be some other relief options, especially if we can show that, you know, tourism has dropped and revenue subsequently, um, have dropped for all of the mountain communities around us. We are not the only person experiencing that, but our drop in July that first week in August is pretty significant compared to other communities. So we've all seen a drop, but ours is significantly more. And that sort of data is really important as we start to talk with SBDC and other economic development groups at the state to see what support will be available to our businesses. Destination Stewardship has still been working on messaging to emphasize responsible recreation, visitor education, and community stewardship while promoting Lethal Undermined Lakes as a year-round destination. Economic Impact Analysis, this is what I was just speaking about as they've been compiling economic and employment data to quantify the potential impacts of the Willow Fire. the economic development and strategy implementation by the staff. They continue to advance the implementation of priorities identified through a community project and our county's economic development work plan to emphasize business retention and expansion, industry diversification, entrepreneurship, workforce development, and strengthening collaboration among partner organizations. So Adam and his team have been very busy. We know that, you know, kind of getting through the response phase, the biggest thing, you know, we're focused on is the recovery efforts. And recovery efforts for our community in particular, you know, not a lot of structures were lost, but the economic impact and the downstream impact of, you know, loss of revenue for businesses coming out of a hard winter into now what's been a challenging summer and then going into the next winter, which, you know, winter aren't typically our highest. those impacts on jobs are going to be seen, but really for the next year. And just trying to ensure that whatever standpoint we can help helping businesses be able to make it until next summer when they can have increased revenues. Public health, all of us, DHS, public health, OEM, county insurance office, Library, everyone has been engaged in their response to the Will of Fire. DHS and public health in particular are part of ESF 6 and 8, and those are really getting those cards out to people when they were evacuated so they could get back into their homes. And then they also manned the evacuation centers and helped stand those up, which we had one stood up in. in the community, and then as evacuations expanded, had to set two up in other communities, so that was quite a lift. We brought on some PRN nurses to help with emergency response, daily operations, and seasonal vaccine clinics. PRN just means they're on call when we need additional help, so we're not spending money on a full-time staff member when we can have certified nurses that are PRM that we can call in. They've done a lot of work on blood-blood education outreach. Eugene, our environmental health specialist, is going to be departing and gave us very advanced notice. So we were able to have time to have a work plan to bring on a new environmental health specialist and have some training. So that That individual will be starting this month, and Eugene's last day will be in September, so we'll have a little crossover so we're not starting from scratch. We've successfully closed out all of the CDPHE grants that ended with the state fiscal year, so the state fiscal year is a little bit different than the county fiscal year. They end in June, begin in July, so there's a little bit of closing out grants mid-year, mid our budget year. that Public Health has to do. Senior Center has started the Meals on Wheels for Pets. The Senior Center is partnering with Planned Parenthood to establish a Meals on Wheels program for pets. This will assist local seniors who may be struggling to afford food for their pets by providing monthly pet food for dogs and cats. Defensive driving timeline was in August. All Senior Center drivers, along with one volunteer, successfully completed that defensive driving course, which is important because they're driving our seniors around. The Senior Center is also moving forward with the development of a new health and wellness program made possible through a $5,000 grant from the Little Trail 100 Legacy Foundation. PubWorks mainly has worked on the Willow Fire for the month of July. setting up and manning road closures. So those road closures had to be manned 24-7 and they helped with that alongside Sheriff Heast's team, which saved us having to pay for outside. We did have some outside help from other sheriff's departments, which can get very expensive. And at the point where we were gonna be charged for that additional help, we tried to utilize our own staff first. They helped with evacuations of large animals and humans. They had to pause their paving during July. Mainly, we couldn't crush the road base and get the group that we've been getting road base from could not work out where they normally were because of being evacuated. And as soon as we could, and then that evacuation to get them back in there, we did. And so now we've got... and then we start with our paving this week. So with that kind of list of the paving roads there for you. The landfill, as Andy Lee mentioned, we worked on see-through grants with the state, which were awarded, which is awesome. It's really pretty pivotal for us as a county. We are one of the only, we are the only, excuse me, landfill in the state that doesn't have a scale. Not having that scale takes us out of the running for new grant funding and state funding that will be available for landfills. And so this is kind of the first step to having the data that we need, being able to weigh appropriately to become actually eligible for a lot of that funding that's coming up. CSU Extension. Um, we really owe them a debt of gratitude. Their one employee, Diana, manned the large animal shelter for the duration of the fire. She moved her camper out there and stayed out there with her partner the whole time, which we really, really appreciate. We didn't have spare staff to send down there to man it. And so we just really appreciate her life. Uh, she wrapped up the summer gardening series. They had 14 people. a fire-resistant landscaping program. They launched the Lake County, Colorado Master Gardener Program, and they're accepting applications for apprentices for the 26-27 cohort. And then they have continued to build a partnership with CMC. They've co-hosted a dual education workforce development barbecue, and started planning two FASFA and CASFA nights to school year. TPD, moratorium work is in progress. We are trying to get that wrapped up just as quickly as possible. There's strategic growth plan. It's a statutory requirement of our comp plan. And it's in draft review from our consultants at EPS. And we'll be presenting that in the planning commission regular on 8-24. The Lake Ford PUD application is in review with CPD. CUC Housing, the CUP project review is wrapping up and the public hearing will be set soon. We also have the Hayden Ranch PUD project review wrapping up and we'll be setting that public hearing soon. Buildings, monthly building permit report, Rhianna's dropped that in her packet. We have a new permit technician and we are really excited to have that department have quite a few more staff in there so that Anne has a little bit more support in that department. Mapping, we are nearing the cloud permit onboarding and implementation. When I came on as the county manager, we found that we had been paying for cloud permit software for more than two years, but it had never been implemented or onboarded. We really, we were missing one of the requirements in the contract, which we worked to get that requirement removed so we could actually use the software. And we really just did not have the IT staff and expertise to help this team understand. So Josh, who's online, has been working with Ann and her team to really drive that. onboarding process forward so that we will be able to implement it this year.

Housing.

We had to have a housing needs update and housing action plan turned into the state. Those are both required. That is underway with the group called Root Policy. So we'll be putting that plan together. Housing at 10-2 update. We had three closings, 12 under contract and nine units still for sale. And then we've been doing a lot of enforcement alongside the county attorney's office. We've got eight pending cases, five cases resolved, and then the current case load is 65. And we have started budget season, so that takes up the bulk of my time right now. A lot of budget meetings.

That's all I've got.

Thank you. Well, that's a lot of great information. And thanks for the information written down here as well. It's very helpful.

I don't read all of it, but we've been here for a long time.

Well, thank you both, you guys, county attorney and county manager. The amount of work and progress you guys make in this building never fails to impress me.

Okay, I'll move to approve the consent agenda.

I will second that. Two vote.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Consent agenda is hereby approved. This is a reminder that all packet materials for agenda items are available upon request. Subscribe to email or text notifications. Please visit our Lake County government website. This concludes our regular county Board of County Commissioner meetings is August 18th at 1.20 PM.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioners. Thank you, staff.