Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

Everybody, welcome to this work session of the Lake County Board of County Commissioners. It is June 9th, 2026 at 12.07 p.m. The only item on this agenda for this work session is a discussion in board direction regarding monument and signage policies for the courthouse lawn. This will be led by our county attorney, Matt Hobbs.

Yeah, so I tried to put together a memo for you guys that sort of lays out the legal framework, which is quite complicated in this area. And I think for purposes of discussion, maybe we break it down in a couple different ways. One is sort of temporary signs, like the advocates do for domestic violence awareness. And then there's the more permanent So the permanent ones are a little easier legally because that's your speech. That's the government speaking. So you have a lot of discretion in terms of what you allow or what you don't allow in terms of permanent monuments. So that's probably a little easier one to tackle. I would think that would require some sort of resolution from the board. It probably wouldn't You wouldn't want that to be an administrative level decision to allow a permanent monument on a courthouse. Just taking a guess. The temporary signage is a little trickier because it's really hard to say one person's allowed to put signs and not another. You can do it in a way that is And I think historically, most courthouses have shied away from allowing that type of speech just because of wanting to remain some level of neutrality to the community. But again, it's historically happened. It doesn't mean you can't say, OK, just because it's happened in the past, we're not going to allow it in the future, as long as you're doing it in a manner that doesn't shut off somebody's speech, like targeting them. So you're allowed to change policies as long as you're not doing it and targeting an individual. So there's not a lot of policies that I was able to find out there. Jefferson County and Boulder County have policies. They're not really specific to courthouses. They're specific to all county grounds. a lot of courts themselves, not a lot, there's Denver District Court has enacted orders regarding their courthouses basically saying they don't have signs. The U.S. District Court, same thing. But I think historically it just hasn't been a large enough issue for probably most communities to regulate or even think about. You know, another I don't know whether the, it seems like my understanding is the courthouse lawn also gets used for events periodically, especially during the summer. So that's sort of a different probably category where that could be handled under temporary or special use permits, allowing sort of signs associated with the event under the use permit. I kind of want to, I think, probably just open up to the board and get some thoughts about, first of all, do you even want to allow temporary signage? And if so, we probably need to figure out how we can regulate it or allow it to happen in a manner that follows the First Amendment. It probably allows staff some pretty clear guidance and also allows some appeal rights if a decision is made. If they disagree with the administrative decision, they could appeal it to the board or something like that. Probably the first order is, do you guys want to allow that in an informed speech on the court?

Temporary, this is just referring to the temporary aspect stuff right now. What about like, where does the line, Stop with signage or start with like displays like are they kind of gonna all be considered the same thing like if we say. It feels like what i'm wondering about is like where do we have the Christmas Santa Claus and nativity scene versus like the advocates things which you know both feel important, but they're two totally different things.

Well, my understanding, the Christmas is the county puts that on, right? So they are two different things, and I think it's really confusing to probably mix them together. So let's put that aside, because there's also the issues with the establishment clause. I think you can certainly do those nativity scenes. there's really no issue there because there's some historical context to it but it's really the temporary signage when other when you're allowing other people to speak on your lawn that's probably the larger issue okay that's gonna be the stickier part of this that's the big one okay so

with regards to like basically everyone we have in the room right here what I wanted to try to figure out the goal is that and I think we've kind of gone over this a little bit but I'll just recap was that we agreed to let these guys put up a borough monument sign and then the previous staff identified the issue of like well if you're going to say yes to this you're going to say yes to everything but what you're saying here is that whatever the county accepts becomes its own expression just be selective and have a written policy with neutral criteria. And the county has broad discretion to accept or reject donated monuments. So as the Supreme Court noted in Pleasant Grove, or some of them, the government is entitled to say what it wishes. So basically, if we pick one thing that we've already said, yeah, do this, wait, hold on, let us double check and make sure we're not getting ourselves in trouble here, we could still go ahead and say, here's this one we've already agreed to, let's do that and then get a policy in place so we can be selective about what else goes in.

Yeah, I mean you could approach it that way or you could get the policy in place in either direction, whatever you guys want to do.

Okay. Then it basically that with that subject would just boil down to functionality and making sure it's not in the way of like the food tents for boom days or anything like that would be my biggest concern with moving forward with one of the things we've already said yeah let's do this too um it sounds like the temporary stuff is where it gets a lot trickier temporary stuff is much much trickier for sure

I think the permanent stuff, I don't know how you want to approach that, but I think probably that's just a case-by-case determination. I don't know how else to even put a policy in place other than as they come.

The policy will just, it's going to have you know stay neutral and probably be like well who's gonna take care of this thing is this gonna be up to public works to seal the wood every couple of years or fix any sun damage or do we need to polish the grass or you know things like that because i don't want to add workload to a department that's already stretched thin trying to take care of all the stuff around here that's falling apart but i do want to honor what we said when we first got in here like yeah let's let this thing rip and then We pumped the brakes out of caution, which was really disappointing for some people, because then they went ahead and made the monument and built it, and it was like, whoa, hold on. So it's like sitting in someone's garage somewhere or something. And I'm just one of three of us, so I feel like I'm doing all the talking, so I'm going to stop and let everybody else chime in.

Well, it's a work session. You can talk as much as you want. We'll just take turns. We're all listening. I've obviously thought a lot about it. I feel bad too that we said yes and then we stopped and now it seems more complicated. It's a lot to review and there's multiple issues.

Should we just take them one at a time? I think that's the only way we're going to get through this. Because it's highly complicated and if you want to start with the permanent, you know, signage first we can certainly shift to that one you know and if it's you know the account versus the county doing something or something a private donation if it's a private donation does it you know have to be yeah I mean all those issues maintenance and everything else whether that's you want to have a policy and what you know what's going to be even considered for a permanent monument yeah

I still feel agnostic about this. I still am, like, fine with having any rules and taking them on, though. And saying yes to everything.

That's certainly an approach, too.

I'm for the Monument Garden. I'm for the signs everywhere. And that's why we're doing this. That's why I directed Matt to give us some guidelines so that we can say yes to things within the constraints that you all have brought up.

And if you're going to take that approach, I would just have you guys do that, you know, not have staff be put in the middle of that.

Right. Each one would come to us and we would make a distinction every time.

Which would be your policy, right?

Right.

Which is what has happened over the decades.

Okay. And then it really helped us to be like, you know what, no, this one's going to block the view of Mount Albert from everyone walking down the sidewalk. I'm not okay with that.

I'm like, no, we don't want another rock. Thanks.

We want another rock. You get a rock. You get a rock. You get a rock.

We have a snowman rock. Three rocks on top of each other.

Karen's everywhere.

Karen's. POCC Karen's.

Sorry.

It's a work session. We can do whatever we want right now.

Okay, well.

Matt, what do you think? I mean, I think that you and I have been kind of opposite. We're like, man, we don't, you know, if we can't treat everybody the same, let's have nothing.

I mean, their signs, it's not controversial at all. But the next one could be pretty controversial. The next board could be like, yeah, we want to advocate for this group. Let's just say it's Lifetime Fitness. It's a controversial group. What if they want to put a monument up for their Leadville 100 legacy foundation? You know?

Wow.

Yeah.

What do you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

What will happen?

What will happen?

What will happen?

Are you mocking?

No, I'm serious. No, I'm sorry. I'm being a little playful, but, but really it's, I think that it's worth asking.

So the question is, is it up to us to dictate to future boards?

They can change the policy though.

That's what I think it's, you know, as a BOCC, maybe this is one of the things where we're just going to put our trust in future itinerations of this group and be like, you know what, like keep it classy.

We'll keep voting.

Is it a permanent sign? Permanent? If we say yes, could the next board come in and say, we don't like it? 100%. Yeah.

We can win that rock right now.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah. I saw a little kid playing on the rock. Just don't throw that out there. Might be dangerous.

Well, that seems reasonable. And frankly, it seems fair and easier. Yeah. At the discretion of the board, I guess, with the permanent stuff.

Yeah. Okay. I'm not super open to tons of other monuments, but I do want to honor the one that I was like, yeah, let's do this. That sounds like a great idea.

We might not have opportunity to say yes to a lot of monuments, you know, like they might not ever come across our desk.

I want adult do wheelies on sixth street monument.

Four wheels on the floor. Two wheels on the floor. Keep the rubber on the ground.

In town.

Okay, well then should we move on to the temporary then? Yeah.

Let's do it. I think there should be a permanent process for the temporary and there should be a time.

Time limit? Time limit. That establishes temporary, temporal.

Not a whole month or when you get to it and part of the process is you gotta clean it up. You get so many days maybe based on historically what's been out there and thinking of the advocates. That's great, it takes up the whole yard and for a month?

Yeah. In October when people aren't playing on the yard. Yeah.

That would be my two cents.

So a permit process, an administrative permitting process.

An easy permit process.

Yes, yes.

No one can come and just start putting their sign up there. And do we need to differentiate religious temporary signs? You know, the advocates want to put up their signs. Could a Christian church come up and say, you know, we want this sign that says God loves you?

Under the criteria I'm seeing here in Section 3, you can restrict signs to protect courthouse functions. If you're drawing controversy that's distracting and could theoretically interfere with functions of courthouse and staff? Is that too broad? Is that taking too much liberty with the verbiage?

I mean, if you're going to allow temporary signs, it's almost impossible to say this form of speech is okay and this isn't.

And what if the sign says, we can't, the government sucks.

They do suck. Exactly. That's true. I'm talking about us. I'm sorry. That would be ... You would be hard for us to say yes to the advocates and no to that and not survive a lawsuit. Which I think is why most people just say no to everything.

I think it's pretty exciting.

It's a conversation piece. We can put it our own sense if we don't suck.

No, we don't. You do. I'm rubber, you're glue. I think that would be very playful.

So let me make sure I got this right. We can stay pretty open with permanent stuff, but we want to be, we're discussing potentially what, like not allow temporary stuff.

Yeah, I mean, if you wanna allow it, I think you really gotta understand that you're opening it up to everyone.

Okay, loophole. Ready? Let's say, in October, we proclaim it to be Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and we request that the advocates partner with us to send the message of domestic violence impact in Lake County? Will that be coming from the government? Or would that then be something that was permitted by an outside group?

I think that is a that's an interesting thought. Yeah, I think that would probably be you could probably say that's the government. Did you find your your own?

I'm looking for you guys.

But then you're, I mean that goes back to the question, are we not allowing temporary signage unless it's the government sort of speaking?

Right. I guess I'm, I'm sorry, I'm hearing from these guys, I'm hearing from you guys, potentially nervous about it being flung open. And I was looking for the like, but we do see real value in something like the demonstration about domestic violence that impacts our community, that we are working towards reducing, and they're an important partner in that. So how do we make sure that that is allowed, but something that is like, not in the lab, that says you suck, isn't allowed. So I was looking for that work through. So you all could still see that we could

Just for context, it's funner for us to talk about someone who wants to say, you guys suck about us. But there could be some really nasty stuff that people would want to put up there. For sure. Horrible. Just certain beliefs or things like that. Is there a way to make just a specific area designated for temporary signage and then we can make sure it's booked up every single month aside from partners we think are

Yeah, you could certainly enact time, place, and manner restrictions as they're called. Put timelines on them, say this is the area you get to use. All that's permissible.

I could book it up for a month with, you know, in town, keep the rubber down sign. Drive like a knucklehead in town or you're going to ruin it for the rest of us billions of years around here. And then you could take a month and say, You know, support the Mineral Belt.

Donate here. I like that it's open, especially in the summer. A lot of people sit out there and play with their kids and have picnics.

Could that be a part of the policy? Would it be like we allow temporary signage during times when it doesn't inhibit functions, which could be community gathering on the grass to hang out in the sunshine. You get shoulder seasons and some winter. yeah i mean you could certainly do that say you know these months you know someone's allowed these once they are it doesn't change the content of the signs though no but if we were deliberate about making sure we would keep it booked up unless someone came to us and was like hey and we're like this is not offensive this isn't going to be a problem this isn't going to look bad on the community we're going to pull my Um, keep the rubber side down in town signs for that month and let these people take that spot.

It feels like a little bit of, um, number one, it's very, very sneak. It like obfuscates the intention of the policy, but also I feel like that causes, um, like administrative burden for our staff to keep track of that. Like, Oh God, it's almost up. What can we toss out there just to keep people from saying you suck? Or whatever, you know?

Yeah. It's the darker sides of that that I really worry about. People can tell me I suck all day, I signed up for this job, but it's the other things that... Maybe that would never happen.

Maybe it's just the month of October is sign month and temporary sign month, because it should be open all summer, I think. And it's nice out, people want to sit out there. But we also have the big sleigh thing and Santa Claus, the reindeers and all that, so.

I think we get to draw the line between what our decorations are versus what signage is from other parties.

And really, we're only talking about the advocates. I can't think of anybody else putting temporary signs out there, can you?

But once we establish a policy, it makes it clear that it is currently open right now.

We're shining light on it. I think we're going through all of this just to make sure the next handful of boards of commissioners don't have to deal with something that's complicated and end up being like, well, wait a second. There's not even really much existing policies around the state to base this off of. what you're saying, just some kind of vague language that maybe a couple other counties have, so I wouldn't even be surprised if we institute a policy that's kind of well thought out and has some guardrails that might end up getting copied by other counties. Yeah, I mean, Boulders and Jeffersons are pretty thorough. Oh, really? Okay.

All the county property, yeah. I would probably bring something back along those lines as well, but I think the more

Well, I'm going to propose then that we do the no temporary signs, no temporary signs by outside groups.

Just by the county government?

Then we could pass a resolution for October that would proclaim that as the final awareness month.

Even if we didn't have a proclamation about it being Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we can still work with the advocates to put those out. But it's our request that they are there. Just like in April, we could have it be Fire Awareness Month without proclaiming it to be Fire Awareness Month, where we can work with our partners to say, is there anything you want to put in the lawn? It's coming from us.

I mean, legally, that's a lot cleaner. I definitely worry. I think any sort of temporary sign policy and then just sort of opening it up and what that's going to look like. Like Matt said, it could end up being nothing, but it also could end up being a huge, huge firestorm.

Let's not mess with First Amendment stuff.

We're giving people ideas in this work session. Yes, we are.

Brett. We'll pass this to Megan, then.

And I'll bring a policy back, and obviously we'll have another discussion about the policy. I just needed some direction from you all before I got too deep into it.

Okay, that's helpful. All right, I see a path forward.

Is there anything else you want to talk about, Matt?

I'm just looking at my menu here.

I think that covers it. I think I can bring a policy back for you, a draft one, to look at and take it from there. But I think I have enough direction at this point to get started.

Cool. And we can leave it just to the courthouse? I don't really want to... We can leave it just to the courthouse. I don't really want to get into the whole blanket policy personally. And then when it comes to the permanent, I also don't want a policy that's like, like we just said, not administratively burdensome, but would come to board.

Yeah.

Well, it's hopeful for you guys. Yes. This little step, it's already taken us so long to get there. Not the blazing speed of local government. Where does that leave these guys? Where does that leave us? with the current situation. Sounds like it's up to us. Yeah.

Would we have to discuss that in a noticed regular meeting?

I don't know what was done before. But yeah, if you're going to make a decision on it, I would probably do that in a regular meeting.

So it would be an agenda item.

Yeah.

We'll just take a double look at what spaces aren't going be in the way of anything and then figure out where it works.

Maybe take one last look at the sign. Is the sign made? Because I think there was some contention that the sign wasn't as nice as we would like.

Hopefully we don't change the overall, because it's already kind of made. But if you wanted whatever you wanted to add or not have on it,

Because it is a permanent sign, it should have a permanent . Pine, for instance. Doesn't it have pine as an element?

Yeah, this slab is like 20 years old, though.

Oh, so it's antique pine. I don't know what species it is. So is it going to need maintenance? Is someone going to have to sand it down and refinish it?

I know you put, I can check with Hal to see what you put on it, but you put on a pretty decent sealer. assign it to the boom days committee and they're going to be around forever in the borough race. That's right. They're going to be around forever. So we have a group like that, so the individual person does a lot of the job that they do, if that helps.

That's really my only concern, is that it looks classy. It's not kind of janky. No offense. I think it changes.

I think when we started adding stuff on, like the shoes and We ordered donkey or horseshoes on it and added all that stuff, but that was kind of making it more monumental. That, I think we could eliminate, so it's just a nice clean look and probably more similar to the road signs that we have out by the city. Because those have that wood plank as well and then metal. But we can, if you want to talk here or talk offline, whatever. Yeah, we can talk real quick.

Yeah, I think to your point, it's going to behoove the people who are really interested in the signage to keep it in nice shape because then you get another board of commissioners sitting here and they're like, this thing's falling apart, let's get rid of it, you know what I mean? So I think that could be just part of the conditions or whatever, like, hey, just keep it in good shape. If it falls into disrepair, it runs the risk of being removed. I think it would be a reasonable condition.

And if there's another sealer that you want on it instead? No, I don't care. That you think would last longer?

It's been such a long time since I even looked at this. I thought it had, does it have two metal posts, a spruce platform engraved in the spruce?

Right now I think the only thing that's done, I can try to find out my fucking how, but right now there's like rail, is railroad steel posts? That's what they have, I think they use some kind of railroad something or other to like frame the piece of wood. So that's done and then would have been replayed and sealed. And I'm not even sure if they put the side posts on yet. I think that's all that's been done. I just have the plaques of the winners, like those are done. And those are like anti-corrosive, supposed to last forever also. You shouldn't go polish them, they're not like grass. But if you don't want like we had, Like we're going to make, again we haven't done anything but like metal cutouts of like someone running with the borough and we're going to do like an email on one side and a mail run on the other side on top of the monument. We're going to do, just again make it more monumental but you have different monumental ideas than we do so that stuff hasn't been done yet. So we're going to put like a historical plaque on the bottom that just summarized why it's historical and what the significance is.

so we can work on the wording or look at what that might look like but kind of i think we had it hanging from the bottom of the bank well i think you guys are on your way it'd be nice i'd like to review just the look of it sounds good not to be a micromanager but no i think that's all great things for at least in the construction world if you guys are Would you guys want to take a look at the sign before we agree?

I can pull it up, make sure that they have done so far.

You want to just email it to us?

Yeah.

Lisa, could you send it to Sandra so she can just put it in our packet for our discussion and approval?

I'll make sure if I get any other updated if they don't even work on it. Okay. Does that sound good? Perfect. Yep. Thank you. You still have my email address? You should. You're somewhere. Okay. I'm not signing around for that.

Should we get them to send that to any info and stuff? Send it to us individually? so that any communications direct back and forth instead of us have an email.

It goes to Sandra, though. She puts it in a packet.

I can put it in your packet and you can review it. I can put it in today's packet and you can go back to it.

Well, it'll go into an agenda, so then it would be on that.

Yeah, and I can just copy it over until we haven't decided what agenda it's going on yet.

I mean, either way is fine, as long as you're not discussing amongst yourselves outside of the meetings. It doesn't matter if you go through it either way. There's no harm in responding to that.

I know this does not seem like something as weighty as most of the things we have to deal with in here, but thank you a lot for spending the time you did going through all this and this unintentional can of worms that we kind of

Yeah, I mean, I love First Amendment. Okay. Yeah.

Cool. It's very interesting to me. It is interesting. And it's interesting that we really just did a big circle and we're right back to where I started.

Well, we did our due diligence. There was some, you know, there was issues that were brought up to us by other legal professionals that raised some concerns and i think it was important for us to make sure we weren't doing something that could expose the county and by proxy taxpayer dollars to some kind of risk you know yeah thank you i think i got it okay thank you sir all right all right i have no further questions

So in order for the Borough Monument to come to us, have we made all the decisions that we need to make in order to inform that process? We're going to get the info from Lisa and Marvin about its current iteration. And then we are going to approve it or not approve it. And that will include location and content.

Right?

Yeah. And by when that they can put it in.

That's reasonable.

Okay. Sweet. Let's do it.

Thank you for your patience. Probably took a year.

When is the burrow race? When is the race? It's August. So it would be cool to have it up by then for sure.

Wait, is boom day the second week of the month?

It's the first. So because Friday is not, it's still September, it's still July. Yeah. I'm starting to get back. Oh geez, I got my face wrong.

It's coming up, coming up quick.

So the busy sign, I just sent it to Sandra, the busy sign that's very poorly, me cutting and pasting and stuff, that looks ridiculous because I'm not a professional, I did my best. That is whatever you guys are like, get rid of that. Let's just have this. Let's make it simplified. So essentially what's already been done so you can see what we have to work with. And again, if you guys just want to scrap that and you really want to do something else, we can as well. I don't know what else we would do, but as far as, I don't think a ton of money has been spent. I mean, obviously, Helen Harrison's time, framing it up and welding, but we are not completely, this is not a thing that I have your purpose and ownership of. don't like the horseshoes, take that off. You don't want the runners on top, take that off. Yeah, so that's what she wants to do with it.

But you did that at our request.

You just said make it more monumental, so I was like, okay.

So we're going full circle with that as well.

Yeah, if you want to take it back down to simpler. Just a really nice, clean look. Okay. What I do love about it is I do like that the plaque at the bottom to explain it and that can be like I was going to send it off to some kind of designer to make it look I don't even know what kind of metal it would be like iron or what that would be for like a metal plaque to hang at the bottom that's where I don't that's where I think it would be cool probably not designed into the plaque but maybe a thing that could be placed onto it with a QR code with a visitor center or even the historic

walking tour it'd be cool for people to like go learn more and i have a little qr code on there professional but it's on there that's great that's great love it okay thanks guys we'll get some progress thank you yeah thanks for your persistence keeps things moving sometimes we sometimes we need to be reminded

county commissioners at 12 45 p.m thanks all for coming thanks counselors thank you staff thank you public