Estes Park Town Board minutes
The Estes Park Town Board held its first meeting of the new year Tuesday evening. The meeting lasted all of one hour before adjourning to enter executive session.
Attendance was sparse, even with the call to interested parties to make their presence known and speak on behalf of awarding use of the former Senior Center to the folks who would run it as a day-care facility. Note to people who want to speak during the public comments portion of a meeting: Public comments are allowed at a scheduled time - For town board meetings, this is at the beginning of the meeting. If you are unable to be there at the scheduled time, you can either appoint someone to speak on your behalf, or wait until the next meeting. This isn't Gymboree, and you shouldn't feel compelled, if you arrive after the public comments section is over, to wedge your general observations in during other portions of the meeting when the floor is opened to public comments on a specific issue unrelated or barely related to your topic.
Ward and Bob both used board comment time to announce they had filed the paperwork and were both officially on the April ballot as candidates for re-election. This was one of the few times in the meeting audience members didn't spontaneously erupt into rabid demonstrations of support (see Patrick's emotional plea for Quinn Brett, which was so earnest and heartfelt everyone overlooked the initial distracting sniffles which seemed more related to a headcold than to a show of genuine emotion; see also the recognition of today being hug a law enforcement official day (one day only? seems kind of stingy), and the wave that started up spontaneously when CDIV approached the podium to let everyone know he, as vice-chair of the EDC's Child Development and Weightlifting Clinic, didn't want his group to zoom so far ahead of the Dual Income and Drop Off Facility Task Force that they were left with nothing to do and no reason to exist.), so take that for what its worth - They will have plenty of competition, but inertia plays a significant role in how voters fill out their ballots, and without a forum or local news organization asking anything more difficult of the candidates than "What's your favorite color?" with the follow-up "Are you sure?", there are generally few surprises.
Town administrator Lancaster brought up the school's desire to offer vocational classes - Welding, car repair, tool and die manufacturing, bong assembly, I stopped listening - and the need to use land donated by F.O. Stanley with specific stipulations for a building for that purpose. Attorney White, who has long wanted to crush F.O. Stanley's desires and stand over his dead body laughing, brought up how he failed to quiet title last time out, being only seconds away, and he would have except for those pesky kids spreading a rumor the town was going to build a Walmart, and the town board suddenly didn't want a Walmart, and didn't think F.O. did either, a vicious rumor that Glengarry Greg was unable to quash.
This nonsense about the Estes Park Development Company no longer existing so we can do whatever the hell we want is a straw man argument - Of course it doesn't exist anymore, because they sold or donated all their land, expecting the town to keep up their end of the bargain in perpetual gratitude for free land. What were they supposed to do, remain incorporated and hold yearly board meetings just to make sure the town did what the town promised to do when the land was donated, which was to use it for recreational purposes and only for recreational purposes of benefit to the entire community, so help you God? They are doing a better job as a defunct organization than our town board is doing as a living organization. How simple could it be, and how often do town officials and staff attempt to take this gift, unzip their collective pants, and whiz all over it? Quieting title will not just take the obligatory "six months", Leggo my Grego, because there are people in town who actually want to see the land used in the ways it was donated, and those people have F.O. Stanley's second-generation nieces and nephews on speed dial, along with Carl Sanborn's offspring. Just because you close your eyes and click your shoes together doesn't make human beings go away, or promises signed to paper dissolve.
But the major dust-up of the night was reserved for the audit discussion, and the audit committee's hurt feelings that their recommendation from December was being revoted on, because they had recommended an auditor with a criminal record. Discussion was all about second chances, and whether someone who had committed a felony so many years ago (back when Attorney White was attempting to quiet title on the Stanley Fairgrounds to put in a fire department that couldn't go anywhere else, except across the street when it turned out F.O. could still beat him silly from beyond the grave), before we even had a legal system or the Magna Carta, deserved a shot at redemption and could clean up their act, hell, would be even better at their job now, because so many safeguards were in place. Note: This is why I always take my car back to the repair shop that steals parts from it, not the one that fixes the problem, because they can't steal parts they've already stolen.
Mostly it was a none-too-subtle discussion about Ward and Bob (two votes) being overruled by Todd and Cody (two votes) and how this made them angry that their votes didn't count for 1-1/2 votes compared to regular board members because they drove sports cars and freely admitted they didn't know how to do proper background checks. They were angry they had to vote unanimously as a board, because, dammit, that would be like admitting they were wrong, and the only only who emerged as the passive-aggressive victor from all this was Wendy, who abstained, thus keeping it unanimous but speaking out mutely in dissent. (She's leaving, like Kansas City's OC, so who cares?) Oh, if only Ward and Bob had thought of that stratagem, we could have cut another 30 minutes from the meeting, and started quieting title that much earlier.
Attendance was sparse, even with the call to interested parties to make their presence known and speak on behalf of awarding use of the former Senior Center to the folks who would run it as a day-care facility. Note to people who want to speak during the public comments portion of a meeting: Public comments are allowed at a scheduled time - For town board meetings, this is at the beginning of the meeting. If you are unable to be there at the scheduled time, you can either appoint someone to speak on your behalf, or wait until the next meeting. This isn't Gymboree, and you shouldn't feel compelled, if you arrive after the public comments section is over, to wedge your general observations in during other portions of the meeting when the floor is opened to public comments on a specific issue unrelated or barely related to your topic.
Ward and Bob both used board comment time to announce they had filed the paperwork and were both officially on the April ballot as candidates for re-election. This was one of the few times in the meeting audience members didn't spontaneously erupt into rabid demonstrations of support (see Patrick's emotional plea for Quinn Brett, which was so earnest and heartfelt everyone overlooked the initial distracting sniffles which seemed more related to a headcold than to a show of genuine emotion; see also the recognition of today being hug a law enforcement official day (one day only? seems kind of stingy), and the wave that started up spontaneously when CDIV approached the podium to let everyone know he, as vice-chair of the EDC's Child Development and Weightlifting Clinic, didn't want his group to zoom so far ahead of the Dual Income and Drop Off Facility Task Force that they were left with nothing to do and no reason to exist.), so take that for what its worth - They will have plenty of competition, but inertia plays a significant role in how voters fill out their ballots, and without a forum or local news organization asking anything more difficult of the candidates than "What's your favorite color?" with the follow-up "Are you sure?", there are generally few surprises.
Town administrator Lancaster brought up the school's desire to offer vocational classes - Welding, car repair, tool and die manufacturing, bong assembly, I stopped listening - and the need to use land donated by F.O. Stanley with specific stipulations for a building for that purpose. Attorney White, who has long wanted to crush F.O. Stanley's desires and stand over his dead body laughing, brought up how he failed to quiet title last time out, being only seconds away, and he would have except for those pesky kids spreading a rumor the town was going to build a Walmart, and the town board suddenly didn't want a Walmart, and didn't think F.O. did either, a vicious rumor that Glengarry Greg was unable to quash.
This nonsense about the Estes Park Development Company no longer existing so we can do whatever the hell we want is a straw man argument - Of course it doesn't exist anymore, because they sold or donated all their land, expecting the town to keep up their end of the bargain in perpetual gratitude for free land. What were they supposed to do, remain incorporated and hold yearly board meetings just to make sure the town did what the town promised to do when the land was donated, which was to use it for recreational purposes and only for recreational purposes of benefit to the entire community, so help you God? They are doing a better job as a defunct organization than our town board is doing as a living organization. How simple could it be, and how often do town officials and staff attempt to take this gift, unzip their collective pants, and whiz all over it? Quieting title will not just take the obligatory "six months", Leggo my Grego, because there are people in town who actually want to see the land used in the ways it was donated, and those people have F.O. Stanley's second-generation nieces and nephews on speed dial, along with Carl Sanborn's offspring. Just because you close your eyes and click your shoes together doesn't make human beings go away, or promises signed to paper dissolve.
But the major dust-up of the night was reserved for the audit discussion, and the audit committee's hurt feelings that their recommendation from December was being revoted on, because they had recommended an auditor with a criminal record. Discussion was all about second chances, and whether someone who had committed a felony so many years ago (back when Attorney White was attempting to quiet title on the Stanley Fairgrounds to put in a fire department that couldn't go anywhere else, except across the street when it turned out F.O. could still beat him silly from beyond the grave), before we even had a legal system or the Magna Carta, deserved a shot at redemption and could clean up their act, hell, would be even better at their job now, because so many safeguards were in place. Note: This is why I always take my car back to the repair shop that steals parts from it, not the one that fixes the problem, because they can't steal parts they've already stolen.
Mostly it was a none-too-subtle discussion about Ward and Bob (two votes) being overruled by Todd and Cody (two votes) and how this made them angry that their votes didn't count for 1-1/2 votes compared to regular board members because they drove sports cars and freely admitted they didn't know how to do proper background checks. They were angry they had to vote unanimously as a board, because, dammit, that would be like admitting they were wrong, and the only only who emerged as the passive-aggressive victor from all this was Wendy, who abstained, thus keeping it unanimous but speaking out mutely in dissent. (She's leaving, like Kansas City's OC, so who cares?) Oh, if only Ward and Bob had thought of that stratagem, we could have cut another 30 minutes from the meeting, and started quieting title that much earlier.
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