People who came to Dolores on Wednesday night to see Third District Congressman Jeff Hurd had to make do with asking questions of the Montezuma County commissioners instead.
Shortly after the meeting was supposed to begin, Commission chair Jim Candelaria told the crowd of about 120 that he’d just been notified that Hurd would not attend because the aide with whom he was traveling had a medical emergency.
Several onlookers voiced skepticism, noting that an aide to Hurd was also a no-show at a scheduled town hall in Dolores in February.
Candelaria repeatedly said he would convey to Hurd that local people want a town hall. Satirical posters have already been put up in places in Cortez that identify Hurd as a “missing person.”
Wednesday’s meeting was only to be a sit-down between the commissioners and the congressman and his staff, and the audience was not going to be able to ask questions. Candelaria said such meetings require public notice under the law, but the event was never set up to be a town hall, that Hurd had simply asked to be able to have dinner with them.
Candelaria said any response from Hurd’s office about a town hall can be posted on the county website.
The commissioners took questions for about an hour from the audience, most of whom seemed very critical of Hurd and the Trump administration but who were civil.
Several people thanked the board for its support of legislation that would create a national conservation area along the lower Dolores River.
Many attendees asked questions relating to the effects of recent drastic cuts to federal funding for things such as Medicaid, SNAP, public-lands agencies, and food banks.
One person said, “We are in distress,” to which Commissioner Kent Lindsay responded, “We’re in distress too.”
The board said they are waiting to see how decisions made in a just-concluded special session of the Colorado legislature will affect counties. Colorado is seeking to deal with a roughly $800 million budget shortfall, some of that the result of federal budget cuts, and is expected to be passing cuts down to the counties.
In a recent newsletter, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said he had called the special session “in order to fix the billion-dollar budget [deficit] created by President Trump and H.R. 1,” which is called the Big Beautiful Bill. Polis noted that Hurd as well as Colorado congresspeople Lauren Boebert and Jeff Crank had voted for the bill.
Republicans have said that Colorado officials have known for some time that there would be a budget shortfall in the state but did not reduce spending.
“What affects us more [than the federal government] is what the state is doing,” Candelaria said.
He told the audience, “We’re going to navigate the waters the best that we can.”
One man said 12 to 15 percent of the local population is food-insecure and places such as the Good Samaritan Center and churches that offer lunchtime soup kitchens are struggling.
Commissioner Gerald Koppenhafer said the county has asked the municipalities for financial help in that regard and that most of the people who come to the soup-kitchen lunches are from the towns.
However, he said, “We’re all citizens of Montezuma County. It’s [budget cuts] going to impact a lot of different programs.”
One man urged the county to sue the federal government over the budget-slashing.
“Are you willing to fund it [the lawsuit]?” Lindsay asked. “Because we’re at the end of our budget.”
Candelaria said he is not willing to sue the federal government “because that is a no-win battle.”
A woman raised the issue of a widely circulated flyer and meme announcing a meeting of the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners in Lewis-Arriola that says, “Eliminate the radical left” and, “This isn’t a lecture. It’s a battle plan.”
She asked the commissioners if they would condemn the apparent allusion to violence.
“I will publicly condemn the use of violence any time, any place, any day,” Candelaria said. “Violence doesn’t solve anything.”
Lindsay said, “We can’t have violence over stuff like this in our community.”
Asked by one woman about having programs cut in order to provide tax cuts for billionaires, Lindsay said there is a broad spectrum of people with differing opinions in the county.
“We get a lot of crumbs down here. We’re not at the top of anybody’s list except for drugs and crimes and violence,” Lindsay said.
Candelaria said the commissioners have to strive to find the right balance between the county’s differing factions. “We’re trying to represent the entire populace of the county,” he said.
