Briefs Gunnison County

County continues review of valuation protests
The County Board of Equalization (CBOE) is continuing the process of reviewing nearly 300 protested property valuations that started July 13. The CBOE is comprised of the members of the Board of County Commissioners.

The protests were passed on from the county assessor’s office, which processed 2,232 appeals. The assessor “satisfied” 125, changed the property value of 916 properties and denied 1,191 of the protests. Of those, at least 280 are being reconsidered by the CBOE.
Following a national trend, the number of property valuation appeals is the highest it has been in at least 10 years; there are about 2,000 more protests this year than last.
Board chairperson Paula Swenson says they find about 10 percent of the protested valuations are justified and the property value is changed. The rest are rejected, and property owners can continue the process to the state level, if they wish.

County chooses mail-in election over polling places
The Board of County Commissioners passed a resolution at a regular meeting on Tuesday, July 21 directing county clerk Stella Dominguez to supply only a mail-in ballot for the November 2009 election.
According to Dominguez, the move could save the county as much as $22,000 over the cost of a general election.
During last year’s election, the county spent $16,450 on election judges alone. So savings in that category will be significant since as no election judges will be needed. Dominguez says the judges are quite highly paid because she likes to see consistency in the judges who offer their services and because it is tough, tedious, but important, job.
The cost of the mail-in ballot election still depends on how many ballots are needed and how negotiations with vendors and printers proceed. The cost will be split between the districts participating in the election.
Gunnison County election supervisor Kathy Simillion says, “Gunnison County currently has 9,303 active voters, of which 3,357 are signed up for a permanent mail-in voter ballot, meaning that they will automatically receive a 2009 ballot by mail.”
Colorado statute does not allow for only a portion of the voters in an odd-year election to vote by mail, while the remainder votes at a polling place. “It’s an all or nothing decision,” Simillion says.
So far the districts that have showed interest in participating in the election are the town of Marble, the Gunnison River Valley Local Marketing District, Delta County joint school district, Montrose school district, the town of Crested Butte, the Gunnison RE1J School District and the town of Mt. Crested Butte.
The county’s districts had until July 24 to notify the county clerk of their intention to participate in the election, although late entries might be allowed, and until September 4 to submit their language to be included on the ballot. A district can pull out of the election at anytime until its ballot language is submitted.

Bureau of Land Management gets new field manager
Brian St. George, the new area field manager for the Gunnison office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made a visit to the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday, July 21. He took over his new position June 22, replacing Kenny McDaniel.
St. George formerly worked in the state office of the BLM in Denver and has been with the BLM for 10 years.
“I don’t think [the job] changes with scale all that much,” St. George said. “In my experience at the state and local level, stakeholders are just as personally involved in a different part of the land management process.”
In addition to his work on the Front Range, he has spent time working with communities in southern Africa.
Now that he’s here, St. George said, he’s “happy to be here and getting to know the all of the public land users in the county.”
St. George said he is a believer in the process that is inseparable from federal agencies, but believes there is plenty of room for the public to take part in the process.
“Try not to make a distinction between group and the little guy. It’s about who has substantive contributions to the process,” he said. “There is a place for the individual. It’s frankly beholden on us that we get the word out that there is a process, but there is an opportunity for input.”
That outreach to the community is one of the tasks St. George sees for himself as field manager. The other is making sure the local BLM staff has the resources they need to do their jobs effectively.  
He was asked by commissioner Hap Channell about the future of the relationship between the county and the BLM in closing county roads to accommodate the mating of Gunnison sage grouse. Channell also asked if the BLM would be willing to work with the county and others on the acquisition of wood to use in a woody biomass heat generator.
To the first question, St. George said there would be no problem with future cooperation between the county and the BLM on measures to conserve the sage grouse. He said there would also be the opportunity to discuss the bureau’s ability to supply forest products to feed the county’s fire for a woody biomass generator.
St. George said he was looking forward to taking on some of the issues facing the area’s public land managers, like cattle grazing permits and balancing the recreational and revenue-generating uses of the land.
St. George encourages the public to contact the Gunnison BLM office at 641-0471, or BLM officers in the field with questions or concerns to create a dialogue between the agency and the public.