unconditioned love
Elbert County Planning Commission on oil and gas zoning
Some comments
Meeting summary
The room was packed last night [May 23rd] at the Elbert County Planning Commission meeting for approval of the county’s new oil and gas regulatory package. Approval was never in doubt. This was a dog and pony show from start to finish.
Not a single elected representative of the citizens of Elbert County was involved with the drafting, approval, support, or criticism of this substantial body of local law. Citizens empowered by fiat made up a new branch of local government out of whole cloth for this exercise.
No standards exist for evaluating the successful outcome of the oil and gas regulatory package in terms of economic impacts, environmental impacts, health impacts, governmental overhead impacts, public finance impacts from consequential taxing and expenditure, impacts to air and water quality, impacts to traffic and infrastructure, etc.
Oh sure, all of those concepts get subjectively applied to applicants in the intangible touchy feely world of planning. And everyone knows that all of these things, and more, will somehow be impacted by the regulatory regime itself. But no one dares to quantify the status quo of these elements of our local existence prior to enactment of a planning regime that intends to materially change all of them.
To contemplate baseline standards for the county is to risk an objective measurement about outcomes. In government circles, “standards” and “outcomes” amount to four letter words that must never be spoken. Those two words change the entire governmental game from one of promises, emotively seductive language, and the lure of empowerment, to one of measurement against cold hard facts where performance matters more than promises. After all, people can get fired if they don’t perform, and we can’t be subjecting any public servants to the risk of that sort of thing happening.
Only people in the private sector worry about getting fired.
Many comments came forth about all of the sacrifice of participants and spectators alike to create this new local experiment in governance. People seem to think that that’s the end of the analysis. So long as there’s a good effort with good intentions, whether it actually works and delivers on the presumed benefits, that analysis never quite gets done.
Well, almost never. Occasionally a politician needs to be hung out to dry by an opposition candidate and that’s generally when you hear about things that didn’t work as planned. That’s when the standards surface, post hoc, too late for any constructive application, good only to facilitate regime change.
With objective standards in the first place, we could actually measure alternative regulatory regimens to decide which one shows promise of working better. In the present case we actually have a choice between a state regulatory alternative and this newly created local body of law. But no one in the room last night went anywhere near the notion that local government was not the be all and end all of oil and gas regulation.
The massive body of regulatory law already in place at the COGCC, functioning, delivering, working against measurable standards, solving real problems, paid for by state finances, no one wanted to talk about that last night. The political correctness du jour was puffing up the local effort – a mutual back slapping display among local appointees of heraldic magnitude. Anyone who has been to a school board meeting knows the drill.
B_Imperial
oil and gas struggles
In early 2012, Richard Miller was still an Elbert County planner. Miller was consulting with Jerry Dahl, a lawyer who specializes in representing Colorado counties when they conflict with the state of Colorado over land use regulatory law.
Dahl had given Miller advice in writing a new zoning law for Elbert County to regulate oil and gas operations. Dahl believes that Colorado counties should regulate oil and gas operations because the Colorado State Legislature gave Colorado counties land use regulatory authority, and an oil and gas operation is a land use.
The problem with Dahl’s broad interpretation of county land use regulatory authority is that it is unlimited. All human activity occurs on land, in water, or while flying in air. The vast majority of it occurs on land. According to Dahl, any use of land falls within the regulatory scope of a Colorado county. Did the Colorado Legislature really mean to give counties in Colorado absolute control over what happens on Colorado land? Not likely in America.
So Miller and Dahl wrote oil and gas zoning regulations for Elbert County to govern oil and gas land use operations.
Since then, these regulations have morphed into different legal structures, but they’ve retained several key rules that, once enacted, will probably conflict with state regulations. Jake Matter of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and the Attorney General’s Office has repeatedly warned Elbert County planners since January of 2012, by letters and in person, of the potential for several operational conflicts in Elbert County’s regulatory proposals.
Today, two days before the Elbert County Planning Commission is scheduled to conduct a public hearing about their proposed oil and gas regulations, at least two points of expected operational conflict are still in the proposal – a provision to regulate open water pits, and a provision to regulate water produced from an oil well when used for dust mitigation.
Even though Richard Miller has moved on to other employment, the philosophy introduced by Dahl of challenging state regulations with conflicting county regulations, continues in practice by Elbert County planners.
In January of 2012, Dahl explained at a Planning Commission meeting how operational conflicts between county and state regulations get resolved. Basically, a lawsuit between a county and the state provides a forum to hear evidence about a claimed operational conflict. Interestingly, county vs. state lawsuits are what Jerry Dahl does for a living.
Basically, Dahl sent Elbert County planners down a regulatory trail that has generated repeated warnings from the state about potential operational conflicts, with full knowledge that the process to resolve such conflicts is a county vs. state lawsuit in Dahl’s specialty.
Jerry Dahl has every right to do what he can to generate litigation business for himself to advance causes that he believes in. We have 1st Amendment guarantees of that freedom.
But should Elbert County be used in this manner to advance a political agenda held by one man, or by a special interest minority such as an environmentalist lobby, in an “evolving area” of law?
Litigation is very expensive while Elbert County is cash poor. Previous Boards of County Commissioners have been excoriated over litigation that occurred under their terms, regardless of whether or not they had anything to do with starting it.
And now the same vocal minority who screamed most loudly over the expense of past county lawsuits are the ones pushing an oil and gas regulatory proposal that is headed toward some really expensive litigation with the state to ferret out operational conflicts.
A key question people should think about is whether the proponents of the new oil and gas regulations are bona fide. Are they acting in good faith?
Have they pushed us into a tortuous legal path against the state that is expensive, and perhaps most importantly, time consuming, in order to bring Elbert County into some higher state of compliance with their environmentalism objectives?
Or does environmentalism merely provide cover for these folks to exploit any available technicality to buy time to completely frustrate oil and gas development in Elbert County? They play an image for public consumption of being cooperative and working within the system; meanwhile, endless procedural delays make sure nothing ever happens.
But so long as the right people sit on the BOCC, we probably won’t hear much about how much this is costing all of us.
Costs of litigation, costs to energy developers, opportunity costs of lost revenue to mineral owners, none of these will rise to the level of a material concern while an agenda lies on the table.
Tuning out the clamor of agenda pushing usual suspects can be difficult in Elbert County. They control most of the print media in the county, they have a significant web presence, and they virtually run the county at all levels – the BOCC, the Planning Commission, the CDS Department, and a host of subordinate committees and public/private forums.
The silent majority of Elbert County citizens, however, the ones you won’t see published and won’t hear much from at any public meeting, are people who have enough struggle just getting through their daily lives. They do not seek to further burden life in Elbert County with more struggles, no matter what the cause.
This silent majority have every right to expect their public officials to act in a manner to mitigate struggles, to avoid expensive litigations, to act frugally, and to not be legal spendthrifts in service of a minority agenda.
Let the Jerry Dahls go find some other county to milk.
B_Imperial
References:
Jake Matter’s latest warning of Elbert County re dust mitigation
Thoughts on Passion
Thoughts on Passion
EHS Instrumental Music Banquet – May 17, 2013
“To play a wrong note is unacceptable. To play without passion is inexcusable.” -Beethoven
What drives us to grow? Get better? Get back up when we fall down? Persistence, maybe, but even then, where does our persistence come from? I first picked up my instrument when I was nine years old. Those first sounds, to say the least, were undesirable, even to my young ears – but I kept playing.
I made mistake, after mistake, after mistake, and every time I picked up the pieces and tried it again. Why? I did not consider myself to be a “good” saxophonist by professional standards until I was a sophomore in college, nearly 12 years after I began playing it. Why would anyone work at something for more than a decade just be considered “good” at what they do? By that time, shouldn’t they be great at it?
Beethoven was on to something when he said those words: “To play without passion is inexcusable.” Passion. That’s the link, that is the why. The reason we get up and try again, the reason we continue to practice, and the reason we fight to get better is not because we are told to by a coach, parent, or teacher. We do it because we have a passion for it, and we will let that feeling inside of us push us to the very limits of our potential because, at some point, we developed this idea that we wi# be the best at it if it kills us.
Those last four words are a little ironic when you consider that the word “passion” is derived from the Latin verb for “to suffer.” Why do we suffer for something we love with our entire being? After all, that is what we do, isn’t it? We practice our trade, and suffer through the hard parts. Practicing my instrument is not necessarily what I would call a great time, and I assume most of the musicians in here would agree with me. Rehearsals aren’t even the fun part of what we do, especially some of my rehearsals! But then, all of a sudden, it’s performance time. For the audience, and for us performers, that is an experience that we often consider to be magic. The real magic, though, is in the process, not the product.It is in the process that our true passions shine through.
I have always held the belief that the true beauty in music is in the process of music making, rather than the performance itself. In that process, we all struggle, and we all overcome. Sometimes there are physical and technical boundaries we must cross, sometimes (and even more importantly) there are emotion barriers that we must break down in order to transform the code on the page into a musical statement. As musicians, we learn to thrive off of the struggle, and we thirst for the challenge a piece of music can bring us. It is only during that process that our passion for our art truly shows. We become humble, genuine, and vulnerable human beings. We take risks, make mistakes, break down… but we also support each other. There is a dynamic inside the music ensemble that is unique. We take our seats, pull out that sheet of code, take a deep breath, and exhale into our instruments. The resulting sound is not simply the aural manifestation of the black ink, but rather it is the person underneath the skin that we get the opportunity to meet and experience. In the music ensemble, we are all our best person – compassionate, kind, humble, and real. The stress of our day-to-day activities melts away, and the walls we build to protect us from “the real world” crumble. I believe that it is in those moments that we truly exist, that we experience the world for what is actually is, and that we finally gain a deep, mutual connection with one another.
It is our goal at each performance to share a part of that process with the audience. Through the presentation of a meaningful music performance, it is our hope, as performers, that the struggle – the passion – with which we approach our art is felt by our audience, thus triggering the emotional response that music, of any kind, can bring about in people. It is our passion that ignites the passions in our audience, and it is that connection that allows us all, in that moment, to exist, experience as the performers have. Everything about our art is unique – its expressive qualities, its moving power, its communicative traits. We develop our passion for it through these unique qualities, and approach each performance as an opportunity to share that passion with others.
You see, passion is infectious. It is a disease that, unlike any other disease, people actually work very hard to contract. The best part is, everybody can catch this disease, you just have to find the right pathway for infection. For some of you, catching this disease will take longer than you expect.
Others of you have been carrying it with you for years now, and if you are so fortunate to have aught this incredible sickness, it will mean the realization of your biggest dreams, and the birth of alegacy for yourself, your family, your community and the world.
“We all die. The Goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
One of my favorite quotes… It takes passion for what you do, above all else, to create something that will live forever. My goal as a music educator, as many of you know, has been and always will be to use my art and my passion for it as a vehicle; a vehicle to spark a fire in my students, a vehicle to ignite a passion, a vehicle to create my something that lives forever because, as I know I cannot live forever (and nor would I want to), I hope that I can make an impact that lasts a lifetime on at least one student, and that they’ll share that impact for generations. That hope – the students – is why I am so passionate about what I do every day. I’m passionate about you, and molding you all into good people that make a beneficial contribution to the society in which you live. Music is how I start that journey with you all.
Our culture exalts higher education, advanced degrees, the big office, the big salary, etc. That is how we have come to define success. Students, I cannot tell you enough times that that perspective is wrong. I know that if I were a lawyer, I would not feel successful, but I sure would be wealthy! What I mean to say is this: The big important job, the big office, how many college degrees you have, and how much money you make in one year should not drive your career choice. I would not have even thought of pursuing music and education if I wanted to make “the big bucks.” Instead, I chose to do something I wish we all would do, something that all of us should do. I chose to pursue my passion. I started out on a relentless pursuit of the highest level of success I could achieve in my passion in 2005, regardless of where the journey would take me, and I haven’t looked back once.
It is my greatest hope that each and every one you, especially you seniors that are about to embark on a new journey, find and pursue your passion. It may not make you rich, and you may never own a big house, or a BMW, but the fulfillment you will receive in doing so will be worth so much more than any material object. Discover what you want, and go after it, regardless of where it takes you.
And parents, I cannot tell you enough how important it is for you to support these children in hatever it is they decide to do. You know, my parents were not happy when I told them that I was going to study music in college. I believe they said something to the effect of, “Why don’t you invest your time and money on something other than a hobby?” And when I told them I was going to be a teacher, they said, “So you want to be poor now, too??!”
They were just worried about me, because they wanted me to be successful, and had been taught, like we’ve all been taught, that success comes with a six-figure salary. It was a driving force for me to prove them wrong, I guess, but I will tell you this: my mother and father have seen the work I’ve done here, and they’ve seen the fulfillment I receive from what I do, and although I don’t have a big office (I don’t even have my own office) or a huge salary, I still feel like I’m rich.
What I am saying, students and parents, is this: your passions are important, and they should be cultivated, and turned into your career, regardless of what material or monetary fulfillment it will bring you. To play without passion is inexcusable… I think Beethoven was trying to tell us all that to not pursue our passions would be a waste. Every single one of you fine students has now or will soon catch this incredible infection that is passion, and when you do, please to not ever let it go. Own it, live in it, and make it yours.
Thank you for yet another fantastic year at EHS
Christian M. Noon
Instrumental Music Director
Elizabeth High School
What Dreams May Come
BOCC Studies Oil & Gas
the Lincoln/Elbert debate
I doubt that giving government a budget surplus is quite the right thing to do. What’s so great about putting more money in the hands of an entity that will only spend it for no net positive gain?
Government consumes overhead dollars, and as a non-profit entity makes no positive contribution to net goods and services. Government builds no new investment capital to fund economic growth. Everything government has and spends is either taken or borrowed from the private sector.
The goal should be to minimize the value of government, not maximize it. The goal should be to starve it of funds, not feed it. When investors in the stock market sense that a company is profitable and a good return on investment, they buy that stock, the value of the stock goes up, the company has more capital it can use to do more of what people like, the investors’ equity value goes up, and everyone wins.
But governments don’t have to do something better or more valuable to make money. Government can just make regulations, enact fees, collect taxes, and impose fines. There is no objective market to evaluate government and rein it in based on how well it performs.
Lincoln County is touted by the Left for having a budget surplus from tax money it charges to owners of capital equipment such as windmills on wind farms. Meanwhile, the Left also complain that Elbert County does not have such a tax and is missing a tax opportunity.
While it’s difficult to look at either one of these counties’ economies and conclude much good about them, compared to each other, a few numbers stand out. In addition to enjoying revenue streams from wind farm capital equipment taxes, Lincoln County’s retail sales per capita is over 7 times that of Elbert County. Neither Lincoln nor Elbert County have a significant manufacturing base, so on that basis the two counties are roughly equal.
But apparently a budget surplus isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
Lincoln County’s population is in decline. Elbert County’s population is increasing, albeit slowly. Lincoln County’s home ownership rate is 20% less than Elbert County’s. Lincoln County’s per capita and household income are less than 60% of Elbert County’s. Lincoln County’s poverty rate is double that of Elbert County. Lincoln County’s average home value is less than a third of Elbert County’s. Lincoln County does have more jobs per capita than Elbert County, but they pay a lot less.
Looking at property taxes, in 2012 Lincoln County took $4.3M for a per capita rate of almost $800. In that same period Elbert County took $7.2M for a per capita rate just over $300. So not only does Lincoln County take money from those who install capital equipment there, they take over twice as much property tax money per capita than Elbert County does.
If a big fat well-funded government with “full coffers” were such a good thing, Lincoln County should be looking a lot better than Elbert County. But that’s not the case now, is it?
The reality is that when you put more money into government, not only do you remove that money off-line from the profit centered private economy — effectively taking it out of the capital formation cycle, but whatever that government decides to do with it, assuming that it is something desirable (and that’s a BIG assumption when it comes to government), potentially crowds out a private sector alternative that might have made a profit. And it is those private profit making opportunities that enable citizens to live, grow, have families, and prosper.
The opportunity cost – what was forfeited by choosing one path – rarely gets discussed when it comes to government taxing and spending. The folks in Lincoln County might want to reconsider those “full coffers” doing nothing for them.
And, as is the case with most of the public policy effluvia issuing from the well intentioned boys and girls at New Plains, always check the numbers before accepting one of their claims.
B_Imperial
certitude
The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ. . . .To rely on evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs. The fanatical Japanese in Brazil refused to believe for years the evidence of Japan’s defeat. The fanatical Communist refuses to believe any unfavorable report or evidence about Russia, nor will he be disillusioned by seeing with his own eyes the cruel misery inside the Soviet promised land.
It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. Strength of faith . . . manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move. And it is the certitude of his infallible doctrine that renders the true believer impervious to the uncertainties, surprises and the unpleasant realities of the world around him.
Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is.
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
Over half of Americans practice to some degree belief structures in economics and politics built on certitude. These beliefs manifest in self-fulfilling prophecies, militancy, tyrannies of identity groups, mob actions, and one-party rule. Their immunity from non believers comes from upholding truths that are not observable through objective experience, and an absolute certainty that they are correct.
Meanwhile a shrinking minority of Americans connected to observation and experience go about trying to talk sense to the majority of true believers, perhaps unaware they’re dealing with people ensconced comfortably inside an impermeable cocoon built on certainty of their own subjective truth. If a true believer can somehow overcome his fear of uncertain reality and an uncertain future, he’ll still have hard work ahead to discover and comprehend the crushing detail of modern reality.
How daunting this must be for leftists and environmentalists who have only known the certainty of belief all their lives, who have only been friends with other people who share that same certainty and loyalty to the agenda.
Free market individualists, unburdened by an overhead of subjective belief, with only unvarnished history to guide them, come along to happily share simple proven principles with the true believers. In return they get shouted down, they get accused of horrible intentions, they get maligned and impugned for completely unreal things they have no connection to.
Set back on their heals, they shake their heads in wonder about what they could have possibly said to engender such viciousness. Most free marketers probably aren’t aware that the true believers never even heard, or comprehended, what was said.
Merely speaking to them, as a non-believer–an “other,” is enough to trigger their defense systems. Words coming in that might not uphold the certitude of their true belief must be put down ruthlessly before they can be absorbed. That is the discipline of true belief and it must be preserved. The alternative is an uncertain emptiness of reality without structure, beyond belief, difficult to understand, perhaps even pleasantly surprising, but too overwhelming to imagine.
Will reality-based people succeed in breaking through the hard shells maintained by the true believers? Will more true believers continue to turn violent against reality-based people? There seems to be no end in sight to this conflict.
Though they will never admit it, true believers are clearly caught up in ideation reinforcement mechanisms that manipulate and subjugate them. Conservative realists must find a way to set them free.
B_Imperial
Energy In Depth
Sane, sound, source facts for oil & gas. Frack check the activists here:
What’s EID?
Launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) in 2009, Energy In Depth (EID) is a research, education and public outreach campaign focused on getting the facts out about the promise and potential of responsibly developing America’s onshore energy resource base – especially abundant sources of oil and natural gas from shale and other “tight” reservoirs across the country. It’s an effort that benefits directly from the support, guidance and technical insight of a broad segment of America’s oil and natural gas industry, led in Washington by IPAA, but directed on the ground by our many affiliates — and IPAA’s more than 6,000 members — in the states.
What’s so new about harvesting oil and natural gas from rocks deep underground? Not a whole lot, actually. First you need to drill a well, then you complete that well via the hydraulic fracturing process. Our industry has been doing those two things for decades, with fracturing technology safely applied to more than 1.2 million wells over the past 60 years.
But there’s one little wrinkle when it comes shale: To make it economical to explore, you have to somehow find a way to access a greater share of the reservoir underground by drilling fewer wells. That’s where horizontal drilling technology comes in, allowing producers today to tap roughly 10 times the amount of energy we did in the past with – get this! – one-tenth the number of wells. Obviously, that’s good for the environment: fewer wells means less disturbance to land. But fewer wells are also good for business. Those things are really expensive.
On this site, you’ll find fact sheets and videos and charts and graphs — some boiling down the steps involved in the development process, others straightening out the myths you may have heard about what we do and how we do it. You’ll find letters and quotes from state and federal regulators testifying to the safety of the process – from drilling and completing the well, to managing and recycling the water, to bringing that well-site back to its original condition. And you’ll also find studies – some on jobs, others on safety, and even a few about how the shale “revolution” in the United States is impacting our “friends” in Russia and Iran.
So welcome to EID. Feel free to take your coat off and stay a while. And don’t hesitate to give our supporting members a shout as well – their links and logos are included here below.
Associate Members
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the turning point
“What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?
There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.
When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
“When people revolt in a totalitarian society, they rise not against the wickedness of the regime but its weakness.”
Eric Hoffer
I observe Elbert County governing elites build their fortress of zoning legalese to control the fabric and future of Elbert County. At once, they’re possessed with a superior foresight that transcends the creative efforts of tens of thousands of citizens, but at the same time, they enforce their permits and grafted approvals with all manner of penalty and punishment, just in case a pronouncement should lack persuasive content.
As night follows day, these planning monuments will foreclose a prosperous future for Elbert County. That one is easy to predict. The only possible consequence from impossible law is stagnation. People will move away from stagnation if only to get upwind from the smell of it.
But grandiose planning documents, fêted by their writers, adoring cults, and subversive leadership, will do more than chill Elbert County’s prospects. As a corpus of dead weight over the heads of Elbert County governors, these procedures will crush any administrator, elected or appointed, who presumes to control them.
They’ve built the weakest links that will be their undoing.
B_Imperial
Leadership and its’ absence
Two contentious issues were on the table today: the Rocky Mountain Airpark and the Special District Regulations. In an effort to explore commissioner qualities, non-BOCC public employee and private citizen tap-dances and self-aggrandizements have been removed from the edit. What remains are the bare bones of our leadership, though in the case of the majority, “leadership” doesn’t quite capture it.
New special district regulations
(click images to read)
Expected to be approved by the Rowland/Ross BOCC majority on April 24th.
Intellectual Froglegs #26
California dreamin’
Gardner & Dore Townhall mtg
Oil & Gas edit committee, MOU
2013 ECRW Essay Contest
All contestants in the top ten of each category are invited to submit their essays here for publication below:
Liberum Verba, by Henry Imperial, Elizabeth High School, Grade 12
Elbert Co: “Closed For Business”
Commissioner Rowland equates the special district moratorium, now 20 months old, to the new special district zoning regulations. “One is as the other.”
Elbert County is closed for business and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
All you people looking for jobs and economic growth in Elbert County, go elsewhere.
tyranny of, by, and for, planners
To summarize, the BOCC appointed a Water Advisory Committee [WAC]. The WAC helped write the new Special District Regulations scheduled to be approved by the BOCC. The WAC wrote themselves into the regulatory process for approving new or modified Special Districts, and gave themselves the power to hold up the process indefinitely.
Here’s how they did it:
3. Incomplete Applications. If / when either a pre- or final application is found to be incomplete, Community & Development Services shall inform the Applicant, return the Application, and restart the timeline clock only after a completed application has been received.
6. Pre-Application Review. Referral agencies shall include any service district within three miles of the proposed Special District. The consultants and referral agencies will have 21 days to respond with comments to CDS in writing. A Referral Agency may request an additional ten [10] days if needed. Comments that require a written response from the Applicant will be forwarded when received. Such written responses shall be submitted to CDS and forwarded to the referral party for verification
b. The Pre-Application Service District Plan shall be reviewed by the Elbert County Review Committee as follows:
- Elbert County Water Advisory Committee & Water consultant as required
c. Review Committee professionals shall be expected to review the information relative to their professional expertise and respond in writing to CDS about:
- Professional experience / opinion related to project feasibility for the greater good of Elbert County citizens.
9. Requests for Additional Details. Elbert County may request additional detail about the project. When additional detail is requested, the project timeline will be suspended and will not restart until the additional detail is received in writing.
To conclude: an unelected board wrote the law, and will enforce the law, without any limitations beyond what they consider to be the greater good of Elbert County citizens.
This is the face of tyranny.
B_Imperial
peter pan enviros
www.gazette.com/articles/gas-153054-oil-hickenlooper.html
“Sure, some residential property owners would love to control that which they did not buy. Five-year-olds share their philosophy: “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.”
So they try to stand between minerals and their owners. It is, effectively, attempted theft. Local politicians stand far more to gain by backing the property thieves — local voters who outnumber the mineral owners.
“What planner, what affected neighborhood or elected official is not going to want to get rid of or make it impossibly hard to get to those minerals?” Hickenlooper asked.
Given the temptation for local politicians to aid and abet property deprivation, oil and gas owners have only state government to protect the property rights guaranteed them in the Fourth and Fifth amendments and at least 15 other clauses in the Constitution.”
From: Governor stands up to bullies
“The governor should not waste a lot of energy trying to convince these extremists of anything.”
Neither should anyone else.