P&z Meeting - Regular Meeting

all right beings it's nine o'clock time to start our regular meeting in montezuma county board of county commissioners for this september 15 2026. please join me in saying the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america Okay, we have an update on the progress made to an on-site wastewater treatment system So Bobby guys care to come on up Uh-huh

There we go, for the record. Again, just to reintroduce myself, my name is Daniel Osborne. I'm the new Environmental Health Protection Specialist here for the Montezuma County Health Department. Bobby Locke and I did visit Niecy's property located at 9506 Road 29-1 and took some pictures. Unfortunately, we did not get to email to the agenda this afternoon. Ms. Phillips is making good progress. Everything was clean. And again, Bobby and I did not see any evidence of any gray water or black water being discharged anywhere on the property. So in our eyes, it is not currently or has been an environmental issue with respect to black and gray water as far as the septic goes. Nisi did state that she was working towards getting a loan and getting an engineer engaged to install a septic system. And with that, I'll turn it over to Ms. Phillips.

Good morning.

Go ahead.

He's pretty much summed it up for me. I'm not sure. I've got calls in to a couple of contractors to get that ball rolling. The cleanup has been going pretty well. What else do you want to know?

Do you have a copy of these pictures?

I don't.

In the second photograph, is that the before and the third photograph the after?

No, sir. These are all the after shots. Okay. I didn't bring before pictures. Okay. They should already be on the notes from the initial meeting.

It doesn't look very good in this picture. But the second picture is where the burned house was. And this is this debris from moving it out of there, getting it out of there. And that is all cleaned up now also. Yeah.

Gerald, you want to try and do something like we did out at Pleasant View?

Well, they've actually hauled off a couple of loads of stuff from there. Actually, I saw that one really good trailer load go out of there where they actually were working to clean it up. So they've been working on it.

I had a roll-off out there, a big roll-off dumpster out there that that has been hauled off. And my brother, bless his heart, he's been hauling right and left for me out of there. So it's just about squared away as far as that is concerned.

They've made quite a bit of improvements to it. They really have. From what? Just from looking from the road.

There's two of the campers gone and one almost ready to move now i'm just looking into the uh... contractors to get that going you guys have any recommendations any

We're happy with Niecy's progress cleaning up the property. Again, we'd like to see, I think, a situation much like we did for Mr. Smith, Nelson Smith, the last time we were here, in granting Niecy some extra time to install the septic system and just get a timeline and a progress. Again, we impressed upon her the need for a septic system to hopefully be installed or at least have a very good timeline before the snow flies, before the ground freezes, so that we can have This doesn't drag out into next spring, obviously. And so I think a lot of that will depend on Niecy's ability to secure a loan and secure a contractor and an engineer in order to get that system installed. But again, I think one step at a time and cleaning the property off in order to be able to dig a pit for septic is key. and so we're seeing good progress we're happy with it and again we recommend giving DC a little bit more time and just touching base to make sure that the septic system installation is moving forward okay

Gerald? No, I mean, they're obviously making progress and they're trying. You know, it'd be one thing if they weren't trying, but they are trying and they are doing some stuff. So, I mean, from what I've observed anyway, so I mean, I don't have any problem giving them some more assignment. As long as we're not having any sewage on the ground or anything, I have no problem with giving them some more time. What did we give Mr. Smith, do you remember?

45 days. 45 days?

Mm-hmm.

Okay. We'll put that in the form of a motion and we'll get that done.

Is that going to be long enough?

Yes. That should be plenty.

We appreciate all that you've done so far. Thank you.

I appreciate your patience.

I move to continue this approval on this site wastewater treatment system on property owned by

Nicey.

Number Nicey Phillips at 9506 Road 29.1 Cortez for 45 days.

I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

There we go. Can we have a date noted for the next appearance before the BOCC to check in?

So 45 days from today would put us to Friday, October 30th. So that following Tuesday would be That's right, November 3rd, yes.

Is that election day? That is. And we're not here election day, right?

So the following week would be the 10th. There you go.

I just have one question. Sure. Is it possible to move it, say, a week ahead of time or a week after the 3rd? We're going to move it to the 10th.

We're going to move it to the 10th.

Oh, okay, okay. Is that okay?

Tuesday, November 10th.

Okay, awesome.

Sounds good. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you so much. I appreciate your patience and your time.

Thank you for the work you're doing. You bet. Getting it cleaned up. Appreciate it.

My pleasure.

Don, you want to come up and do some planning? Hey, we need to do this.

Oh, yeah. I skipped right over that. I'm sorry about that. We need to approve our minutes. Too anxious to get right into getting something done.

I move to approve the proceedings of Board of County Commissioners for Montezuma County held on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, as presented.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Now we'll get planning.

It's pretty simple. I just need signatures. We've got the Backstrom lilar to be signed and the exemption amendment and plat for M. Key Lewis. OK.

Anybody have any other comments?

I signed two.

Okay, are we good?

Yes, sir. Nothing more to sign, nothing more to do.

Okay. Did you leave your windows down today? I did not. Okay. Thank you. Okay, moving right along. Polled the audience of three. Nobody has any public comments, so we'll move to the consent agenda. Is there any of that that needs to be brought off, or are we good? Anybody have anything they'd like to delete?

Not on the consent agenda. The individual consideration we're not going to address today.

Okay, we'll take the individual consideration off.

and i moved to approve the consent agenda which is an approval of an immunization contract amendment approval of the rocky mountain health foundation grant approval of gracious short-term rental agreement and approval of the russia's smart of software program agreement i'll second that all in favor aye aye okay and having nothing further

Do we need executive session?

We do not need an executive session today.

Man, this is going to be easy before it's done. I shouldn't have said that. But now to the county attorney's report.

Yeah, good morning, commissioners. I wanted to give an update. Towards the end of last week and into the weekend, I rode along with my wife out to the southeastern part of the state. She had a meeting out there. And I got to see a lot of the energy development that's happening out in that part of the state. I had the opportunity to talk to some of the people who are working for some of the different companies that work on those kind of projects. And I think that just gave me a little bit of a broader perspective for these kinds of issues and a better understanding of how these projects work. And that's relevant to what we're doing here because Don and I have started reviewing the submittals for a renewable project that we recently got. So that'll be working its way through the county process here. In general, this is shaping up to be kind of a busy week across a couple different fronts. We are getting our ducks in a row for our BAA appeal. We've got witness and exhibit deadlines coming up. So I know Leslie sent me some initial paperwork that we're going to be formatting and getting ready For that, we're also scheduling the arbitration for a different BOE appeal. In our litigation that we've got ongoing, Ironwood, they filed their response to our motion. That we filed a while ago to amend the stipulated injunction order again, this is all related to how we described the Facility and how one address was specifically referenced and and one was not so as we anticipated they raised a broader scope of issues in their brief and so we're working on our reply which is due later this week we're continuing to have conversations about settlement we had a long phone call last week sounds like they are going to learn some important information about possible financing for biochar operation, maybe within the next two weeks. So that'll be a big data point that might steer how these conversations go moving forward. i'm also we also got a new briefing schedule from the court of appeals for our leaf properties case so as a reminder the court had sent up the record but we noticed that the record that they sent up wasn't complete so we motioned for the court of appeals to tell the district court that they need to send some more some more documents up so we got a new briefing schedule our briefing looks like it'll be taking place about a month from now so that that's rolling again this week I also be working on some stuff with Doug Roth the road vacation that we've discussed and then also we've been discussing need for an additional easement for another county road where basically the road has migrated out of the deeded right-of-way that we have and it would be very difficult to bring the road back into the right-of-way there because there is utility infrastructure in our right-of-way on the other side of that road so we're we're trying to figure out how best to deal with that also as you heard from mel i'm working through the packet from the circular action alliance for the recycling program down at the landfill so there are a lot of a lot of balls in the air this week hoping to get through a good chunk of this stuff over the next couple days any any questions about any of those things thank you

County Administrator's Report.

A couple things, Commissioners. I reviewed the dress code policy. I think Stephen had just a minor adjustment. What we're going to do with that, instead of being a stand-alone policy, next week we should have the whole handbook in front of the Commissioners, and some of these policies are going to be incorporated into the handbook. That way it's just... Versus standalone policies will have it in one document Dustin got with Dustin. We're going to start addressing the tree issue out front He's going to be moving forward with some tree turning services Highway 184 and County Road 25 project obviously our section is done However, we were able to get seed outs approval. So it sounds like they're going to start their portion here very shortly we had a private property dispute regarding the culvert again that might be a road and bridge issue but however it is a private property aspect and then met with drew sanders we're working on a combined aspect hopefully to streamline some services between the city and the county good

We have a five by five meeting a week from Thursday, correct?

I'm going to have to follow up because I heard about that late yesterday. So I'm not sure my date and time and location. It's the 24th.

24th at 1 o'clock, San Miguel County. I just received, after the meeting yesterday, they sent a message. OK. Did you get it? Mm-hmm. OK.

And that is it, gentlemen.

OK, thank you. And down to the team clerk's office, I guess.

I just want to introduce Jerry Brazell. We're going to do some training. She's going to be working with me so she can learn the process for clerk to the board.

Yeah, Jerry's unopposed in the election coming up. And so I'm glad to see that transition happening early.

We're going to do some training.

Anything else? Okay. Not right now. Ballots going out?

October 5th.

Okay.

The week of October 5th.

Good enough. Do you have anything, Gerald?

Not much. Last week we did some interviews for our program director over at Southwest Water Conservation Board. Actually had six interviews. people that we actually interviewed for that for that position it surprised me that we had that many applications for it because it just seems like you don't get that many applications for most jobs now but that was just the six that we interviewed we actually had a bunch more than that but those six were actually ones that were actually qualified to do the job that we felt like could do the job to begin with so we actually they were six interviews to do that job We did have an MBI meeting last Tuesday afternoon too after this and set up some of our fall programs and what we're going to do this fall and we're doing a couple of those water smart grant projects this fall so we finally got all those things lined out and we're clearing pathways for for those projects to get started. So some of that's underway right now. If you see some disturbances out by Areola right there and stuff like that, we're putting in the ditch into a pipe. So start conserving some water back. That goes into a pipeline right after it crosses 491. And we always have to spill some water there all the time in order to keep that pipeline full from there all the way down 21 Road. And so by putting this in, we're going to be able to conserve it, stop spilling that water. It will actually go back off To the east, back up in Bob Neal's old place, or actually it's, and it'll go back down into our ditch that comes out of the bottom of Narragunna, down the canyon below Narragunna. So we won't lose it. It'll come back into our own ditch. So it's a project that should help us conserve some of our water in the future. So all those things are starting. Other than that, that's all I got. One of the things that came out of the drought. Do you want me to bring that energy thing up? Yeah, go ahead. I got it. If you weren't, if you don't, I will. We're getting emails about this energy development thing out here, and some of them are coming from our own state of Colorado, the state land board. I sent out stuff that, you know, to me, of all the people, they should know better than trying to influence before we even have seen anything. And I mean, I got it. Jim got it. And Kent, I think all of us got it from him. And I'm just making you aware that we're work our own states doing this.

I know Don and I are hoping to get something before you guys pretty soon. Maybe we'll put a little more pressure on getting this done this week is to formalize how the public can make kind of written comments in a way that is kind of folded into our land use review process so that there's no prejudice that these are extra judicial communications that the applicant would have an opportunity to respond to them, things like that. So maybe we'll try to get that before you next week to formalize that, kind of streamline it, and we can put it out that any comments about the eventual project should be directed towards we're thinking of telling everyone to direct it either to an online portal or something else that IT helps us set up so that all that stuff should be part of the record but you're right that at this time those kinds of communications are not part of our process and shouldn't be relied on in your decision making.

We'll figure out how to get those to Kim so they're part of the record. With this contentious issue coming, I didn't even know we had dates set, to tell you the truth. I don't know. I got... November the 3rd? No. I'll have to look back. But P&Z's in October and that BOCC's in November.

It's not going to P&Z in October.

It's not?

OK. We just got a Thursday afternoon.

OK.

And there's 900 pages.

Yeah, but we're trying to be as transparent. Everything will flow from us, hopefully, to Kim or to you, and you can get it to Kim because we don't want to mess up.

yet one thing commissioners i would recommend is uh... email that uh... you showed me yesterday that you got from the state land board yes i would refer definitely the steven became because i'm not obviously an attorney but you know i'd that was a lot of coffee causes me some concern uh... so i would definitely board that the steven in case he needs to do some intervention like then to send us this stuff before he i mean before you even get the application is just

you know to me is our own state should know better okay yeah please do send it to me because anybody that's listening will repeat it that we are we sit as a quasi judicial board and we don't want to be tainted we set up here like a judge we don't want to be tainted by any side we don't want that reflection it will come i mean somebody will will accuse us of being tainted one way or the other And we're doing our best that we can, we possibly can legally and even morally. We want to get this out there as best we can.

And hopefully that helps too if we tell everyone, you know, direct your comments here where it can be more formal.

That's why we want to bring it out because this is coming to us and it's not.

We got invited to a community meeting.

Besides that, yeah, there's another one about a community meeting. You know.

We can't do that. We can't go there.

Okay. That's all I got.

Okay. I did go to city council, and a little bit going on, but not too much. We was in and out pretty quick, and that's about all I have. We've got that meeting next week up in Telluride, but other than that, I have nothing else.

I do have a meeting tomorrow, or Thursday, for Southwest again for our budget whole process and stuff. So we've got to do that Thursday. But other than that, that's all I've got this week.

You want to make a motion?

I move to adjourn.

Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Thank you all.