News
Elbert Co 10-10-2013
Elbert County
October 10, 2013
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A Colorado Community Media Publication
ourelbertcountynews.com
Elbert County, Colorado • Volume 118, Issue 37
County mill levy increase: Yes or no? Ballot question seeking to raise property taxes flies under radar By George Lurie
glurie@ourcoloradonews.com
Volunteer Frank Carnesi smooths concrete on Sept. 2 on the pentagon base that will serve as the foundation for the bricks of honor. Photos by George Lurie
Veterans memorial taking shape Project entirely funded by public contributions By George Lurie
glurie@ourcoloradonews.com “Bricks of honor” will soon be laid on a star-shaped platform poured last week at the Elizabeth Veterans Memorial. Located just past the entrance to the Elizabeth Cemetery, the Veterans Memorial project is a community effort and has been under construction for nearly a year. “We came up with the idea last September,” said Bill Mansell, who on the morning of Oct. 2 was helping pour concrete at the site. “We didn’t have any sort of veterans memorial here in Elizabeth, so some of us got together and decided it was time to change that. It took some time, but we finally got the Elizabeth Cemetery Board to donate the piece of ground for the project and we’ve been building on it ever since.” “My father was a veteran and a lot of my friends served in the military,” Mansell said, pausing for a minute to compose himself, and then apologizing because “I get emotional just talking about it.” “For me,” he added, speaking softly and slowly, “our veterans are very important. They’re the reason we have the freedom to do things like this. They need to be recognized.” Mansell is one of four Elizabeth Veterans Memorial board members, volunteers who have spent hundreds of hours so far on what is clearly a labor of love — and honor. Built on a 5,000-square-foot parcel located at the northeast corner of the cemetery, the monument has been 100 percent funded by donations from area residents and businesses. POSTAL ADDRESS
In early September, county commissioners gave final approval to ballot language for a proposed property tax mill levy increase. But a month before Election Day, not many folks around the county seem to be aware of the proposed tax hike. An informal poll conducted Oct. 2 asked 25 county residents if they were aware of the proposed mill levy increase. Only two answered yes, and both were county employees. “I don’t know anything about it,” said Susan Troidl, who lives in Overland Estates outside Elizabeth. “But then I’m not a big political person. I think we need to get rid of everybody and start anew. I think there’s a lot of dead weight in our county government.” Joshua McCarthey, a Kiowa resident, also had not heard about the proposed tax increase. “Where I come from in the Texas hill country, all the little towns are broke,” he said. “I’m not against raising taxes if that’s the only way to pay for keeping up the roads.” At the September special meeting, Commissioner Kurt Schlegel warned that the county was running out of money. “This is very serious,” he said. “We’re circling the drain.”
Hot-button issue
Elizabeth Veterans Memorial board member Bill Mansell stands at the site. laid brick by “honor” brick. To help finance the project, the group is selling bricks for $150 each. Each will be inscribed with information about a veteran. When finished, the memorial walls will contain 275 bricks, honoring 275 veterans. Artifacts inside “So far we’ve sold about 90 bricks,” Before the wall was stuccoed over, one Vietnam veteran placed inside several ar- said Mansell, who lives adjacent to the ticles from his tour of duty; another man cemetery and works as a welder or runput his father’s Korean War-era dog tags ning heavy equipment. In the summer of 2012, he and Lance Homer, the project’s inside the wall. Last week, Mansell and a half-dozen board chair, “started throwing some ideas others worked in the bright 70-degree around” for a veterans memorial. “We’d been talking about doing somesunshine, putting the finishing touches on the “pentagon” — a star-shaped con- thing like this for a long time,” said Homcrete pad upon which a series of memo- er, a Vietnam veteran who suffers from rial walls, the project’s centerpiece, will be Parkinson’s disease and uses oxygen and a wheelchair to get around. “One day Bill and I started mapping out the project in some sawdust on my garage floor,” Homer explained. “Then Bill built a scale model, we made some Printed on recycled drawings and then things just sort of took newsprint. Please off from there.” recycle this copy.
The still-evolving memorial features a set of tall flagpoles and a statue of an eagle perched atop a 6-foot-tall, curved white wall displaying five, 14-inch bronze memorial service plaques.
Companies pitch in
Bricks for the wall are being engraved Memorial continues on Page 14
Tax increases of any kind tend to be a hot-button issue in a conservative county where two of three county commissioners have a direct connection to the Tea Party — Board Chair Robert Rowland founded the Elbert County chapter, and Schlegel’s wife is its current president. But Schlegel and Rowland ultimately supported the proposed mill levy hike, arguing that it was necessary to bolster the county’s anemic coffers and continue funding critical public-safety services. The county is currently facing an estimated $194,000 shortfall in anticipated 2013 General Fund revenues and has already instituted a number of cost-cutting measures including layoffs, pay cuts and the reduction of the work week for county employees from 40 to 36 hours. Adding insult to injury, the county has just $20,000 in emergency reserve funds and county officials must also figure out a way to pay for at least $291,000 in projected new — and yet unbudgeted — expenses that will come due in 2014, outlays related, in part, to shoring up the county’s decaying infrastructure and hiring sorely needed additional county employees.
Officials warn of cuts
Both Rowland and Schlegel have warned that if voters do not approve the mill levy increase, significant and immediate cuts will have to be made in county services, including decreased funding of both public safety (police and fire) and road maintenance. “In 2009 the county receipts were $9.6 million and in fiscal 2012 those receipts had fallen to $7.4 million — a drop of over Levy continues on Page 14