From the Styx by Peggy Tibbetts

First came history. On September 10, 1969, about 18 miles SW of Silt on Doghead Mountain (near Rulison), a 43-kiloton underground nuclear bomb was detonated at the bottom of an 8,426-foot deep shaft to experiment with the possibility of using nuclear explosions to extract natural gas from low grade deposits. The test, a Plowshare Program experiment named Project Rulison, was conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission (now Dept of Energy), and CER Geonuclear and the Austral Oil Company. The blast did cause the gas to collect in the cavity and fissures produced by the bomb, however the gas was too radioactive to be sold commercially. According to the Dept. of Energy (DOE), 455 million cubic feet of gas was burned and no radioactivity was found above background levels.

Chester Mcqueary was there. He described his experience in a 1994 essay. He concludes that it’s a good thing their experiment failed. If they had succeeded, it’s hard to imagine what a barren wasteland this valley would be today.

He felt the earth move when scientists nuked western Colorado
by Chester Mcqueary

Twenty-five years ago Americans walked on the moon for the first time, and a federal agency set off an atomic bomb 8,426 feet underground in rural western Colorado.

I was there at 3 p.m. on Sept. 10, 1969, a stowaway on the surface, you might say, when our government detonated the 43-kiloton bomb. It released 2.6 times the destructive power of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima, Japan …

Fast forward 35 years to February 2004. Presco – a Texas gas operator – applied for permits and began drilling six wells in the area of the Project Rulison blast. According to Presco’s VP of Exploration and Production Kim Bennetts, the closest well is about a half mile from the blast site. Three of the wells are producing gas. “We monitor the gas from every well, and we’ve never found any radioactivity,” he said. Presco has 6 more drilling permits ready for approval with plans for 12 more wells.

Now it’s 2006, and a second company, Apollo Energy of Denver has requested permission for 10-acre down hole spacing for 12 directional wells off two pads on a 220-acre parcel near the Project Rulison blast site. Colorado Oil and Gas Commissioner Brian Macke said the closest well will be about a mile and a half way from the blast site. The DOE bans all drilling below 6,500 feet on a 40-acre parcel and requires notification of any surface activity within a 3-mile radius of the blast site. Nonetheless, Apollo’s request was approved on April 24.

The DOE is currently conducting a subsurface study of the blast site which is expected to be complete in 2008. According to Project Manager Peter Sanders the force of the nuclear detonation vaporized rock and created a glass-lined blast chamber that still has low levels of radioactivity.

However Presco’s paid geologist Brian Richter has conducted his own study of the data and research, meaning he hasn’t actually conducted any on site testing on his own. Richter concluded: “There’s nothing to be alarmed or concerned about. We truly believe drilling can be done safely, and I feel the data supports this. We feel it’s extremely unlikely that any well fracturing will reach the chamber. Even if it does, we don’t think there’s any gas left to worry about.”

Perhaps. But that’s not what folks are worried about. It’s that word – RADIOACTIVE – that makes people’s skin crawl. Even if fracturing (aka fracing — pronounced fraking) does reach the chamber, the DOE subsurface study has already determined the chamber is radioactive. Fracing uses water pressure to release the gas. That wastewater is hauled away to who-knows-where. Nonetheless through accidents, spills and dumping, thousands – maybe even millions – of gallons of wastewater have already made their way into the Colorado River, our water supply. And then there’s that whole pesky issue of air quality. But hey, what tangible harm can come from teeny tiny radioactive particles in the wind anyway? Shh. No one will even notice.

Last year this article was published in High Country News:

Drilling Could Wake a Sleeping Giant
by Jennie Lay

In Colorado, a gas company edges in on a radioactive blast site

DOGHEAD MOUNTAIN, Colorado — Cary Weldon bought a 26-acre spread in rural Garfield County, Colo., in 1976. It was his own slice of rugged Western paradise, in a landscape he had come to love during annual hunting trips. Weldon’s secluded spot on Doghead Mountain is on a wooded rise above Battlement Creek, reached by a dirt road that climbs through thick stands of aspen and pine en route to the White River National Forest. These days, Weldon spends five blissful months each summer at his stately log home, high above the bustle of Parachute and Battlement Mesa, small towns that have ridden the roller-coaster of oil and gas booms and busts over the decades.

Like most Western landowners, Weldon has a deed to his property, but he doesn’t own the rights to the minerals underneath it. Energy companies lease the subsurface mineral rights from the person or agency that owns them — often the federal Bureau of Land Management. A landowner has little say in whether or not drill rigs roll onto the property, aside from often hard-fought agreements to contain surface destruction. But Weldon’s land is different: His ranch sits atop the site where, in 1969, scientists with the Atomic Energy Commission detonated a 40-kiloton underground nuclear explosion.

The blast was part of Project Plowshare, an attempt by the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Department of Energy) to find peaceful industrial applications for nuclear explosion technology. This particular experiment, known as Project Rulison, was designed to release natural gas from the tight sandstone of the Williams Fork geologic formation. Crews drilled a well 8,426 feet into the earth, used a cable to lower the long, skinny, uranium-filled fission bomb into the bottom of the well, and detonated it. Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and optimistic mastermind behind Project Plowshare, was on hand for the excitement.

The experiment was only a partial success. According to one gas industry executive, it yielded “an economic quantity of gas — if you didn’t have to buy a nuclear device to (get it out of the ground).” But the gas was too radioactive to sell.

Weldon knew about the land’s history when he bought the property from longtime Grand Valley rancher Lee Hayward. A commemorative plaque marks the well cap, which sits like a gravestone in the front yard. But Project Rulison had a silver lining: The blast had made the property a guaranteed refuge from oil and gas development. The Energy Department had banned drilling on the 40 acres immediately around the site, including all of Weldon’s property. Later, it had created a three-mile buffer around those 40 acres; the state was supposed to notify department officials of any drilling proposed within the buffer.

Weldon says he wasn’t concerned about lingering radioactivity, because the blast had taken place so far underground and the well had been filled with concrete. Government records indicate that the site has slept soundly since the well was plugged in 1976.

“(Hayward) thought the government ruined (the place), but I thought they made it,” Weldon says.

Now, however, Weldon voices growing anxiety as drilling edges ever closer to the nuclear blast site and his property. Garfield County, home to a big chunk of the sprawling, gas-rich Piceance Basin, is second only to La Plata County in terms of gas production in Colorado. In 2004, companies extracted 165 billion cubic feet of gas from Garfield County, enough to supply nearly 200,000 American homes for a year.

In February 2004, Presco Inc., a Texas-based energy company, announced its plans to drill for natural gas in the area surrounding the blast site, and began applying for state permits. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has already granted some permits, and if all goes as planned, the company will drill at least 65 wells in the area, some as close as a half-mile from ground zero. Presco plans to use a technique called hydraulic fracturing to shatter the sandstone and free the natural gas inside its wells.

Both the gas company and state regulators say the drilling will be safe. But Garfield County residents have recently discovered gas seeping into local water supplies, and a company active in the area has found that its drilling techniques are not as accurate as it once thought. Some local residents are asking whether drilling so close to Project Rulison could unleash the radioactivity inside Doghead Mountain.

“Are they going to turn loose something deep down in the ground there that’s been asleep for a long, long time?” wonders Weldon …

Is it time to panic yet? As I mentioned in my April 26 post, we saw a white Halliburton panel truck with the word RADIOACTIVE in red letters on the side. We’ve never seen anything like that before. I don’t know what that means. When people do ask questions all they get is the gas company sales pitch or the gas company is protected by state laws or silence. Representatives of the gas companies say: “Trust us. Safety is important to us. We would never do anything to endanger our workers or the local people and environment.” Unfortunately there’s no evidence that we CAN trust them. Time and again they take actions that display breathtaking indifference to their workers and local people and the environment. Actions speak louder than words.

No, I don’t think it’s panic that sets in under these circumstances. It’s more like RED ALERT. While we’re getting screwed at the gas pump and Congress and the environmentalists’ attention is diverted to ANWR, it’s open season on the Rockies. The gas companies are raping and polluting our wilderness.

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Harvard student’s novel withdrawn from sale

A teen novel containing admittedly borrowed material has been pulled from the market. Author Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard University sophomore, had acknowledged that numerous passages in How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life were lifted from another writer …

Kay, so call me a media whore but now that the dust is settling I think shenanigans like this are just great. Megan McCafferty is really the big winner. Can you imagine how her sales have jumped? Look at all the back door publicity she gets from this. It’s just fantastic for her. More power to her. I think all the publicity – even though it’s kinda negative and there’s much gnashing of teeth – really winds up being a boon for reading and books in general. Anything that puts reading and books in the headlines is all right by me.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel one bit sorry for Kaavya Viswanathan. I think she’s incredibly lucky to be getting a 2nd chance to redeem herself. There’s a bit of a personal glee in all this for me. As a mostly YA writer myself, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with a recent trend among the big YA publishers in that they are publishing younger and younger authors. Which is fine. I’m not an age-ist. I’m all for young people being published. What I’m not so thrilled about is the growing trend of YA agents and publishers who PREFER younger and younger authors because they think it’s a good way to attract younger readers. Pretty soon they’ll publish picture books by 6-yr olds. How about attracting younger readers with a good story? Eragon (by Christopher Paolini) is a bestseller because it’s a crossover (adults read it) and it’s well written – not because it was written by a kid.

So anyway, to see Viswanathan get slapped gives me some small glee. Evidently she wasn’t up to her $500,000 job. Too bad. But a darn good lesson for the big pubs. Uh-oh. Kids’ll be kids. Here is the article about the new trend in YA books written by teens:

In their own words
Why let adults tell them how their life is? Teen authors are writing it as they live it.
by Josh Getlin

By the end of “The Notebook Girls,” the story of four teens at an elite New York high school, the main characters have had the kinds of experiences that make parents cringe — the loss of virginity, binge drinking, pot smoking. But Julia, Sophie, Courtney and Lindsey have also matured. They have mended fences with their parents and thought deeply about the world. They are on their way to college.

“Looking back on everything, I realized we all figured ourselves out in this mess,” Courtney writes in a farewell note to her pals. “There’s nothing we can’t share.”

The book is raw but also sentimental, the characters obsessed with making their way through high school’s cruel pecking order. Parents are the objects of complaint, but they are on the periphery of the story. There’s despair, and a happy ending. It reads, in other words, like the typical “young adult,” or YA, novel, found in the teen sections of bookstores and mostly written by adults. But “The Notebook Girls,” published this month by Warner Books with a first printing of 40,000, is not a novel. It’s a real-life account written by four actual teenagers.

“We wanted to tell our story in our own words,” said Julia Baskin, one of the authors. After all, she pointed out, “we lived through it.”

Or, to put it more bluntly: Why let a bunch of middle-age people tell you what it’s like to be an American teen?

That attitude is spreading as more teenage writers storm the barricades of publishing, starting with the YA category but by no means ending there. Indeed, some titles that previously would have been seen as young adult are now also being marketed to adult readers.

“Why should I have to wait years to get a book deal?” said Robyn Schneider, a Barnard College student from Irvine, Calif., who is the author of the novel “Better Than Yesterday,” which is to be published by Delacorte in 2007 and is aimed at both audiences …

The most significant point of the article is this excerpt:

Skeptics, however, say it’s one thing to blog, another to write a novel.

“I know that kids today are savvy and they have access to the means of getting published in a way they didn’t before,” said Elise Howard, editorial director of HarperTempest, a youth imprint. “But I just don’t know if it will reach a critical mass.”

Others question whether a teenager, no matter how talented, is mature enough to handle the relentless writing, rewriting and discipline that goes into creating a book.

“Until our educational system gets better we won’t see much of this,” said E. Lockhart, a New York-based YA writer who penned “The Boyfriend List” and, more recently, “Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything.”

“It took me until I was at least 30 to write a publishable book, and 38 to write a decent book,” Lockhart said. “Some people are prodigies, God love them, but it’s not that common. Fiction takes time to do well.”

Teenagers, alas, are not known for their patience.

“I mean, I’ve been writing since I was in the eighth grade,” said Robyn Schneider, author of “Better Than Yesterday.” “I felt that I had something to say.” She has posted on the Web a hilarious account of her effort to find an agent and a publisher after she wrote the book at age 18.

Other teenagers drift into the writing life by accident — including the accident of birth. It helps to be the child of a well-connected author or media figure. “The Notebook Girls,” for example, owe the impetus for their book deal to Sophie’s parents, Randy Cohen, who writes “The Ethicist” column for The New York Times Magazine, and Katha Pollitt, a Nation columnist and author. They saw some entries and suggested the material might become a book; a family friend then put the girls in touch with agent David McCormick.

Look, ok, so I don’t come off like a bitter old hag — which I totally AM — my point is, these books — for the most part — DO NOT contain a story or plot. They are teen-age ramblings. Is there a market for this? Evidently. Fine then. Publish them. But don’t make hard working YA authors who are seasoned writers, who KNOW how to weave a story, compete with these fledglings. Create a new genre. Publishers — because they are owned by big media have the power to do that. They can make it as hip and sassy as they want. They can run ads on MTV. Whatever. But teachers, librarians, parents, and oops — yes — even some teens are interested in — and dare I say RELY ON — the good quality literature for which the YA category has been known forever.

Last week Editor Anna Louise posted in her blog a rundown of how books are sold. Precisely BECAUSE of how books are sold is why I think it’s unfair that teen books by teens are marketed along with Louis Sachar and Julie Peters. Publishers had no problem creating a new marketing niche for crossover books — YA books and/or adult books that appeal to adults and/or teens. So far that hasn’t happened with teen writers. I’m pretty sure the marketing niche will come. I’m less optimistic that I won’t have to compete with 18-year olds for the YA contract dollars. Seriously, these kids up sucking up hundreds of thousands of contract dollars while “new” YA authors are being offered $5,000 to $20,000 for a 2-book deal, with little to no publicity. Ouch!

ALERT: End of rant

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Never mind the millions of phone calls, emails and snail mails. Congress doesn’t pay attention to real people anymore. The committee has rejected the Markey Amendment. Here’s the press release:

The Markey Amendment concerning “internet neutrality” has been rejected on a 34-22 vote by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. This means that telecommunication companies will be able to charge extra fees for Web sites based on bandwidth usage.

Internet carriers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast sustain that Web sites, particularly those featuring video and audio that require significant bandwidth, should pay extra so that users don’t have to wait as long for downloads.

A significant number of Internet content and service companies, including the chief executives from Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, eBay and Yahoo, are concerned that by creating a fast lane for those willing to pay for priority content, broadband operators would also foster a slower lane in which services may be compromised to encourage a switch to the more profitable tier.

The Markey Amendment forces broadband operators “not to block, impair, degrade, discriminate against, or interfere with the ability of any person to use a broadband connection to access, use, send, receive, or offer lawful content, applications, or services over the Internet.”

Democratic representative Edward Markey said his amendment was a bid to “prevent companies from setting up road blocks” on the Internet.

All is not lost. Here’s the latest news from Save the Internet.com:

Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass) said yesterday during a teleconference with a handful of bloggers. “We need to put every members of Congress on record on where they stand on the future of the Internet,” Markey said. That momentum has shifted in Congress, “is a reflection of the rumbling in cyberspace about what’s going on with this bill.”

Markey is now rallying colleagues on the left and the right to support the introduction of his Network Neutrality Amendment onto the full floor next week.

Act now!

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Don’t Let Congress Ruin the Internet

Right now Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the First Amendment of the Internet — a principle called “network neutrality” that preserves the free and open Internet. Congress needs to hear from you today or they will hand over control of what you do online to companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Politicians are trading favors for campaign donations from these companies. They’re being wooed by people like AT&T’s CEO, who says “the Internet can’t be free.”

Act now!

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This is where Silt gets real entertaining. In record time our shiny new Mayor Moore and re-elected Trustee Williams drove the bus right into the ditch. They talked about changing the name of the town at the April 24 meeting.

It made today’s Post Independent:

Fine whine: New name for Silt?
Some residents don’t like their town being named a dirty word
By Heidi Rice

SILT - The name of the town isn’t mud, but some people don’t like the reference to dirt either.

So for the second time in 14 years, some residents and town officials are looking at changing the name of the town of Silt.

The subject was brought up again at Monday night’s town board meeting, spearheaded by town Trustee Doug Williams.

“This has been discussed in the community for the past two years and at the last trustee retreat,” Williams said. “Silt is, from what I understand, a pretty dirty name - it’s not very marketable.”

According to both Williams and Mayor Dave Moore, several citizens in the community have expressed dissatisfaction with the town’s name.

“There are a lot of people who are unhappy with the name of Silt,” Moore said. “They don’t think Silt is an attractive name. And then there are the traditionalists and people who have lived here for a long time who don’t want it changed.”

Suggested names for the town include “Ferguson” or “Ferguson’s Crossing,” “Cactus Valley,” “Grand View” and “Grand River” …

How about Liarville?

There absolutely ARE NOT “a lot of people who are unhappy with the name of Silt”. That’s just a load of crap. According to what poll? I know one person who would like to change the town’s name. He’s a developer from Denver. I have HEARD there are a few people who don’t like the name of Silt. But I’ve also heard they don’t particularly like the town. They just moved here because the lots and houses were cheaper than any place else with a better name. In the past 6 years, a whole bunch of people made millions selling their homes in Vail, Aspen, and Basalt and moved to Silt “for the weather”. We have famous weather. “It’s always nice in Silt” was one of the first things we ever heard about Silt before we moved here. Silt is the gateway to the “Banana Belt” of Colorado. We average over 300 days of sunshine a year.

Maybe they should name it Sunny.

Or Snooty.

As Rice’s article points out, the Board proposed a name change back in 1992. What she failed to mention was that recall petitions were raised against those Board members back then. And the Townies’ campaign slogan was “Silt Always”. With those 2 words they sent a clear message to the future.

It’s times like this I almost wish I lived in Rifle or New Castle so I could sit back and laugh at Silt like everybody else. I mean, it’s so utterly ridiculous as to not even be believed. But I know these people. They’re serious. They want to change the name of the damn town. Elitism – and stupidity – know no boundaries.

How about Silly?

No matter how goofy it seems, I’ve learned my lesson on past idiotic proposals from the Board. People have already contacted Tod and me to say that changing the name of Silt is a stupid idea. The Townies – those of us who live in old Silt town – must rise up and defend her honor.

Four years ago the Postmaster came before the Board with a request to change the name of Em Avenue to something or other. When the Townies got wind of it, they quickly got a petition together and stormed the next Board meeting. Em Avenue is still Em Avenue.

So this is war dammit!

Here’s my Letter to the Editor:

For recently elected Silt town officials to propose a name change is dishonest and a real slap in the face to voters, especially those who attended candidate forums and pay attention to the issues. Not one word was mentioned about changing the name of Silt during the recent town election campaign. I feel lied to. If you don’t like the name of our town, then move.

I’m sending that to the Board of Trustees plus this:

To that I would add that changing the name of Silt to accommodate some phantom business people who allegedly think Silt is unattractive or dirty is an even bigger slap in the face to current business owners in Silt. Do you have any idea the costs in time and money that are involved in a change of address? I guarantee you they are considerable. Why would board members even consider saddling business owners and residents – already overburdened with the higher costs of water and gas – with the time consuming, expensive burden of an address change?

Actual real live existing business owners in Silt – as opposed to invisible business people who might consider locating in Silt at some point in the future – have told me if they have to go through the trouble and expense of an address change due to changing the name of the town, they might as well make the leap and move to Rifle.

In the coming days I will be blogging forth about more gas well drilling issues. You know, stuff that actually matters to the future. Encana has been given permission to once again drill in the Divide Creek seep area. Presco and Apollo Energy were granted permits to drill near a radioactive underground nuclear test site 18 miles upwind from Silt. Both of these developments present serious water and air quality issues for the town. The Board needs to be creating a protected watershed and developing water and air quality testing standards and means NOW. But these guys want to focus on changing the name.

Tonight as we were leaving Dogland we saw a white Halliburton panel truck — like an over-sized hot dog wagon — with the word RADIOACTIVE printed in red letters on the side.

Let’s hope we won’t be forced to change our name to Slag.

Or Sludge.

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The Department of Energy is preparing for a 700-ton conventional bomb detonation (”Divine Strake“) on June 2, 2006, on the Western Shoshone Native American reservation (which the tribe strongly opposes) in Nevada, as a preliminary for the use of actual nuclear weapons against Iran. If launched, a nuclear “bunker buster” would spew harmful radiation, potentially killing thousands of innocent people.

Click here for an animated simulation.

Take action here.

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I’m convinced Calista is the only person who reads my blog. So this one’s for Calista the radio DJ whose AM transmitter got struck by lightning last weekend for the 3rd time this year. I mentioned in an email that our house was struck by lightning 1½ years ago. And then I said I didn’t think lightning struck in the same place twice, much less 3 times. As this now makes me very nervous. I figured we got hit, so that’s it for us. Tod and I can go stand out in a meadow at 12,000 feet elevation in the middle of a lightning storm and we’re cool. Right?

Not so much.

Anyway, Calista had a lot of questions. And it seems whenever I tell people our house got hit by lightning they always want to know more. So without further delay, let me tell you my struck by lightning story.

One August evening in 2004, Tod and I were watching TV as clouds rolled in. That was during the great 5-year drought so we hadn’t been getting much rain when storms rolled through. Most of the time the rain evaporated before it ever hit the ground. Usually thunder and lightning was all we got for our trouble. That night was no different. In our house, the main living quarters is on the second floor – which I highly recommend for town living. The house is surrounded by giant Chinese elms, the effect is that our living room and deck are like a treehouse. We have fabulous mountains and sky views. The lightning bolts were enormous, reaching from one end of the horizon to the other, in amazingly rapid succession – closer and closer. Helluva light show. We heard a crack then KABOOM! Like a bomb went off. The TV went out first. The lights flickered, then gone. Stunned we stared at each other. I smelled an odd smell – I call it ozone. Then Tod smelled smoke and jumped up in search of the fire. We couldn’t find any. Everything smelled superheated. We walked around the house outside, but everything looked okay.

Back inside the electricity came back. We went around the house turning off computers, checking lights, the breaker box, anything that might be affected. That night we found out one of the breaker switches was fried – the one that controls the TV and satellite receiver. The satellite receiver was fried. Also my new printer, and the router for my computer. All the phones were dead or dying. All 3 of our remote phones had to be replaced. Any lamp that wasn’t plugged into a surge protector, the bulb burned out.

We had an electrician come in the next day and he told us that we clearly took a direct hit. Because the house wiring was grounded it didn’t explode. Had it not been grounded, it probably would have. We told him it felt like the house DID es-plode. He explained that he could fix what he could see but not what he couldn’t see. He said lightning gives your house gremlins, meaning for the next 2 weeks, 2 months, even 2 years stuff will happen that’s related to the lightning strike because the static electricity stays in the house for a loo-ongg time. Bulbs continued to burn out constantly for weeks. Three months later our satellite dish failed. Six months later the coaxial cable wiring that we ran the satellite receiver through went to hell. Last fall the wiring from the thermostat to the furnace shorted out. The thermostat is next to the TV. The TV was fine and all the appliances which are on the opposite end of the house were fine and still are.

All in all we were lucky. But living with the gremlins has been something altogether different. Got to be the makings of book in there somewhere.

Oh, btw our homeowner’s insurance didn’t cover squat. And yeah, lightning is a big deal around here. Every year some hiker or climber gets struck and killed by lightning, usually at the higher elevations 9,000 ft and up.

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Tuesday (April 4) was Election Day in Silt. It was a mail-in ballot – which I prefer – but the ballots were mailed out on March 10, nearly a full month before the deadline. Candidates weren’t allowed to campaign until after March 3, the deadline for their applications, which gave them one week to campaign before the ballots were mailed out. That added sort of a silly futility to the campaign process. But the candidates pressed on anyway, because small town politics is after all, an exercise in futility.

The biggest race this year was the Mayoral race. Incumbent John Evans was challenged by 2 other candidates. The results are:
Dave Moore   173
John Evans    151
Ron Morgan   120

So Ron Morgan was the spoiler, and John Evans lost to Dave Moore by only 22 votes. Moore has been on the Town Board for 2 years. He’s been the least orderly board member and will now be entrusted to maintain order. Board meetings should instantly become more entertaining. He also has a tendency to get bogged down on morality issues. Look for cleaner streets, in the interest of keeping up appearances. Things are going to get pretty interesting. Maybe even a little nutty, if we’re lucky. Tod and I have wagered our bets as to how long he’ll last. I’m the least optimistic. I see him going power mad and breaking some rule or protocol within 6 months.

Tod was running unopposed for his 3rd term as Town Trustee, so we were relieved he won. All 4 Town Trustee candidates won. We still need 2 more. One of the Town Trustees died 2 weeks ago and the other one was elected mayor. That’s the weird thing about small town politics. The Town Board just becomes a vicious circle – in so many more ways than we can count.

And the Town Trustee results are:
Meredith Robinson    295
Doug Williams          265
Tod Tibbetts            241
Bobby Hays             220

Huh? Okay, when I added up the total votes for mayor I came up with 444, which means about 444 people voted. Out of about 1,000 registered voters, and a mail-in ballot that’s a pretty lousy return – less than 50%. Awful.

So anyway I couldn’t figure out why approximately 150 to 200 people didn’t vote for Town Trustee. But on the ballot it was obvious they were all running unopposed so evidently some people didn’t vote at all, figuring what difference does it make, they all win anyway. And other people voted for only one, or maybe 2 or 3 candidates, but not all 4. Which means the results are skewed and they don’t mean anything – much like this whole explanation.

As for ballot issues, there were two. The majority of board members – not Tod – have been trying to pass a lodging tax. But Silt only has one motel, the Red River Inn which used to be a dive until new owners came in and spiffed the place up – new interior, stucco remodeling. It’s a clean handsome place now. Since no good deed should ever go unpunished, they get slapped with a lodging tax proposal every time an election rolls around. And the voters keep telling them no. This time it was 242 against and 207 for. Funny how people seem to get that it’s not fair to tax one business.

Home rule was the other ballot issue. Silt is currently a statutory town governed by state laws. As a home rule municipality, the town would operate more independently from state statutes as far as collecting taxes and creating ordinances. Home rule won:
261 for, and 177 against. Nine people ran for home rule charter commission membership, nine people were needed, so all nine won. Nice and neat.

I voted against home rule. When the board held public meetings about home rule and creating a charter very few people showed up. So it didn’t seem like home rule was something the PEOPLE wanted, but something the town staff and board members wanted. I’m a big fan of OVERSIGHT. I’m not convinced home rule allows for enough oversight of town government. While it’s good to control things from a local level, too much power at the local level can create little FIEFDOMS, where a chosen few make all the decisions. A poorly written home rule charter can strip the town board of any oversight over the town administrator, or police department.

My other problem with home rule is the ability to set up special tax districts. For example, Glenwood Springs is home rule. When Target opened last year, Glenwood set up a special tax district. The sales tax at Target in Glenwood is 15%. Zounds! It’s cheaper to order online and pay shipping than to drive 16 miles to the store and pay 15% tax. Small towns must have the ability to bring in sales tax revenue. I don’t dispute that. But the state puts limits on special tax districts. Under home rule, if the charter doesn’t establish limits, then you’re looking at the sky.

All is not lost however. The 9-member commission still has to come up with a charter, which in Silt time could take another year – or 2 or 3 – then they must present it to the board. Then they’ll spend another year – or 2 – picking it apart before they put it to the VOTERS, who will probably vote for whatever is put in front of them. When you add into the equation the possibility of New Mayor Antics, why there’s plenty of opportunity for the wheels to fall off the Silt town bus. And it will definitely be an entertaining ride! 

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