by Sandia Belgrade

The Baca Grande fire department and Baca Crestone Ambulance Service, run by the Baca Property Owners’ Association, are one of the very last remaining private homeowner association emergency operations in the state. That may be about to change.

Efforts are underway to create a combined fire district here that would put us in alignment with the rest of Colorado, which has a total of 1,869 active Title 32 Districts and 253 fire protection districts. Property owners may well have a chance to vote on this proposal in November if it is politically or financially possible this year. The new district would combine the Baca Grande and Crestone Fire Departments, which the firefighters heartily support.

The Crestone Fire Department is currently part of the Northern Saguache County Fire Protecion District (NSCFPD).

Many people volunteer on both the Baca and Crestone Fire Departments and also on the ambulance service. The new fire district plans to include the Baca-Crestone Ambulance Service as soon as possible.

A district composed of both the Crestone and Baca Fire Department will have many advantages: it will improve emergency communications; it will also provide for funding opportunities not available to us now; reduce operational costs through combined insurance, training, etc; and reduce liability exposure for members of the POA and the volunteers.

Background

Special districts date back to the early mining camps in Colorado.  As Colorado grew, towns and regions/areas sought mechanisms to join together to provide essential services. Special districts were first authorized in 1949 under Title 32 Article 1 of the Colorado Revised Statutes. These “special districts” have been instrumental in creating a public infrastructure to meet the increasing demands of a growing state. They often cross the boundary lines of towns and villages and play a vital role in providing many basic services such as fire, rescue and ambulance services, structured in a similar way to Baca Water and Sanitation.

Districts possess fiscal and administrative autonomy and are supported primarily by taxes, usually a property tax, but sometimes an excise or sales tax, for the services

that they provide.

The Town of Crestone Mayor, Ralph Abrams, and Crestone Fire Chief Warren Stephen initiated discussions with the Northern Saguache County Fire Protection District Board in January. The NSCFPD Board was receptive to the idea and asked for more information which was provided to them in March.

The boundaries

The proposed Baca Crestone Fire Protection District is planned to include the area between Road AA to the north; west of Road 65 T at the Section line; to the east to the Rio Grande National Forest; and south to the Wildlife Preserve and the Sand Dunes. This area was chosen by evaluating which fire department could get there first—the closest responders. Jackie Stephens, the County Assessor, has been very helpful in working on the boundaries, maps and assessment estimates.  When the Baca Crestone Ambulance Service becomes part of the district, they plan to continue their arrangement with the Northern Saguache Ambulance Service to provide services beyond jurisdictional boundaries—like they do now—and that will include the Moffat region.

Safety & liability protection

With all the issues involved it’s important to separate the wheat from the chaff. The main consideration is safety and avoiding delays. To call for help from the fire department the Baca residents call 911;  but in Crestone the calls go through the Sheriff’s Office. This can result in response delays—and a quick response is critical for community.

The issue of liability is also paramount. In our present situation, a catastrophic event could have momentous repercussions for property owners in the Baca because there is limited liability protection provided by insurance—the fire fighters and EMTs themselves could even be sued, and the POA property owners could be assessed if the award is greater than the insurance coverage.

This is an unacceptable burden for devoted volunteers who put their lives in jeopardy. However, a fire district has governmental immunity protection.

Other incentives

Another benefit of creating the fire district is that it will expand fire protection to include all of Crestone and the Baca, and will also include areas such as the town houses, spiritual centers, White Eagle Village, and the Colorado College campus, areas that are not now in a fire protection district. Property owners will have the option of asking the County Commissioners to exclude their property from the proposed district if they have a good reason to do so.

Cost factors

POA property owners pay for the Baca Grande Fire Department and the Ambulance Service  through membership dues, which are not tax deductible. Instead there will be a mil levy, which is tax-deductible to property owners. Once the County Assessor has determined the exact boundary definitions she can say what the tax base will be and what the mil levy will look like.  It is projected to be the same as the current mil levy that Northern Saguache Fire District is receiving. An example: for  property owners in the Baca under the proposed fire district, for every $100,000 of assessed valuation, homeowners would pay a similar amount of tax. Check your tax bill to find your “assessed valuation”. The POA property owners would take on a mil levy in exchange for less liability exposure, with the Board of Directors deciding whether to lower dues for services they would no longer be providing. Fire protection costs will also be lowered through combined insurance policies and administration. Many people will be paying about the same amount as they are now for emergency servies.

Service plan

The formation of a special district begins with a service plan and  a process established by State law.  The service plan includes a description of the area to be included, the proposed facilities and services to be provided, and a financial plan for the transfer of land and facilities  necessary to provide the district services. The District Formation Committee, with members from both Crestone and the Baca, has dedicated many hours to researching the process and details of formation. Their efforts have built a lot of momentum  in moving the service plan along and  many of the required legal documents have been drafted. The financial information is still in the preliminary stage. The service plan will be a document which all parties will review. The plan must be approved by the Board of County Commissioners. All property owners in the service area will receive notice of a public hearing on this issue. Once the plan is approved, a petition must be signed by 30% or 200 tax-paying electors of the proposed district.

What special considerations does the POA have?

The intention of the POA Board is to divest themselves, but they are still in an information-gathering stage. They feel a responsibility to represent the property owners and put the matter of a district to a vote of the POA membership. For one thing, the POA has to decide about the transfer of assets such as the trucks, equipment, fire house and the Laurel Road future-fire house site to the new district. The Property Owners’ Association has a right to convey assets with a membership vote. It’s important for property owners to realize they will not lose the equipment. The district will serve the same area with the same equipment as before due to mutual aid agreements. It will belong to everyone, so there’s no loss. We are the district.

The ultimate benefit of creating this district is improved emergency services, a better working arrangement for all the volunteers and less liability exposure. It will in the long run help unite two communities to provide better emergency services under the protective umbrella of one fire district. As Warren Stephen said, “We all stand to benefit.”

by Thomas D. McCracken,
President, Green Earth, Inc., Saguache, CO

A new awareness of our carbon footprint brought about by global warming and high fuel prices has recently brought more attention to the issue of local food production and consumption. Here are some thoughts organized into five categories.

Health

Mica Lakai can’t believe the size of these onions! photo by Janet Woodman

Intuitively I think most of us understand that food grown in the vicinity where we live contains more nutrients than those foods that have traveled long distances to arrive on our tables. This idea is backed by science which shows a decrease in nutritional levels in relation to the time that passes between harvest and consumption. Not so obvious is the fact that many of the fruits and vegetables we eat the most, tomatoes for example, are bred specifically to make the trip and to look good on arrival.

Shelf life and appearance are prioritized over taste and nutrition, which are often ignored entirely. Can a tomato that is picked green, shipped a thousand miles or more and then ripened with ethylene gas have the taste and nutrition of a backyard ripened tomato? The problem is that I live in Colorado and still want to have tomatoes on my burrito. Locovores commit to eating seasonally.  Unless they have the benefit of season-extending greenhouses this can severely limit dietary choices. Canning, freezing and dehydration are other ways to mitigate this problem, but many of us do not have the time or energy to spend on these activities like our ancestors did.

Our country has some of the highest obesity and diabetes rates in the world. This problem exists even though we also have the best access to fresh food. Many folks do not eat fresh food even when it is readily available. Changing people’s diets may be the first issue to face so that when fresh local food becomes available there is actually a market for it. The public schools should be an area of primary focus. We can teach our children to make healthy food choices. The costs of providing fresh local foods to our schools should be part of the overall heath care plan our country is formulating. Preventative measures to ward off disease are the key to lowering health care costs. This investment will pay off many times over in reduced costs of caring for the population by teaching healthy lifestyles.

Food safety

This is a buzzword that has been used by multi-national agribusiness to scare us into believing that they have all the answers. They propose that if we use GMO seeds, which require petrochemical inputs, that our wellbeing will be enhanced. And that if we follow strict hygienic practices which include the elimination of birds, insects and wildlife of any kind near farm fields we can protect ourselves from possible contamination. They assure us that by processing in FDA/HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) certified facilities we can still raise our livestock in overcrowded filthy feedlots, force feed antibiotics and growth hormones and consume with confidence.

The greenhouse at Green Earth Farm. photo courtesy Green Earth Farm

Food safety will come when consumers get to know their local farmers and buy the food that they produce. How are terrorists going to contaminate the food supply if there are thousands of farmers selling their food to people they know in their own communities? Vulnerability comes when salad greens from one field get mixed with greens from other fields in one facility and then shipped nationwide. Or meat from 500 head of cattle gets ground and mixed in one facility and shipped all over the nation. The problem is the mass production model we have come to depend on.

Agribusiness would like to put small farmers out of business and remove the competition. Thus you have attempts to patent seeds, illegalize seed saving, eliminate liability for GMO contamination, require costly processing facilities, continued farm subsidies for huge corporate farms and the constant pressure to get big, specialize or quit.

Environment

At the Eco-Farm conference in Monterey, Ca. in January 2008, one of the presenters spoke about compliance with the recently enacted Leafy Greens Act, which purports to ensure food safety in leafy greens production. Organic farmers in California are subject to rules which require that all buffer strips surrounding fields that may harbor insects, birds or wildlife be removed. This goes directly against the principles of organic production which promote integration of vegetative wind breaks and cover cropping.  He showed pictures of surrounding conventional farms that had used herbicides to kill all vegetation surrounding the fields, including all the grasses and other vegetation in the ditches that carry irrigation water. This had the immediate effect of causing significant erosion, both from wind and water movement & successfully eliminating habitat.

One day’s pickings of summer squash at Janet & Kizzen’s garden.

The science actually shows that the vegetation in the ditches helps eliminate e-coli, salmonella and other pathogens. Vegetative buffer zones stop blowing dirt which can be a source of e-coli contamination from far away animal confinement operations. The hysteria surrounding these food-borne illnesses is taking us down a road I don’t think any farmer or consumer wants to go. The Leafy Greens Act is being used by the powers that be as a template for a national law.

We reduce our carbon footprint by consuming locally produced foods thus significantly reducing the amount of emissions related to transportation. Consumers can also influence farmers in their community to diversify crops, an environmentally friendly alternative to mono-cropping, and to use other environmentally friendly farming techniques.

Economy

Buying local food can help local economies in the same way that buying hardware or other goods locally does by recycling dollars. Every dollar spent locally can have a ripple effect on other businesses as those same dollars get spent over and over again in the local economy. If a local farmer can sell his product directly to the consumer, eliminating the middleman, then those extra dollars can be used to hire more help, or build infrastructure like greenhouses, all of which are a boon to local economies.

Logistics

Buying locally can be expanded regionally to include what can be called food sheds. In our area we can produce fantastic lettuce, greens, grains, potatoes and meats during season but we have a very limited time frame to produce these crops. Just over the hill they are producing melons, squash, tomatoes, eggplant, fruits and a whole variety of crops that we cannot produce, and they can grow the same crops we grow but earlier and later in the year. It is very unlikely we are going to change our lifestyles to exclude the foods we love to eat. By supporting growers throughout Colorado and New Mexico and Arizona we can significantly extend seasonal availability.

Squash & chamomile

The best way to influence the food economy is to vote with your purchasing dollars. Buy locally and regionally whenever you can. You will be rewarded with taste, nutrition and variety.

by Lisa Cyriacks
Two years ago, Democratic precinct caucuses drew crowds to choose between Obama and Clinton supporters.  Less than a month from now, smaller crowds are expected to choose between U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in a closely run race for the party’s nomination to run in November for the U.S. Senate seat that Bennet now holds.
Republicans meet that same night to start selecting their party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate race among Former Lt. Governor Jane Norton, former State Senator Tom Weins, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, businessman Cleve Tidwell, and patent attorney Steve Barton. The field of Republican hopefuls has expanded since Ken Salazar, considered a strong favorite for re-election to a second term, stepped into Secretary of the Interior and put the seat in play.
In what will likely be the most expensive campaign (more than $20 million) ever waged in Colorado, national Republicans, for their part, hope for the chance to reverse a string of Democratic victories in Colorado. They are hoping that this election year with a sour economy and the possible frustration with ruling Democrats could tilt the state. Democrats, in turn, are anxious to hold the seat and, with it, a chance at keeping a majority in a Senate politically divided along party lines.
Local precinct caucuses
Saguache County voters will be convening in caucuses all around the county.  Crestone’s Democratic Caucus will be held at the POA Hall at 7pm.  Republicans in Crestone can caucus at Moffat
School.  To find other precinct caucus locations around the county, please contact your party chairs:  Richard Drake (R) at 580-3478, or Randy Arredondo (D) at 719-221-2709.
Precincts are the smallest political unit in the state. There are nine precincts in Saguache County and close to 4,000 precincts in Colorado. Anyone is welcome to attend the caucus, but must have been a registered voter and affiliated with the party of their choice in their precinct no later than February 15, 2010. There are two exceptions: if you turn 18, or become a U.S. citizen during the two-month period prior to the caucuses.
At every caucus, the general agenda is the same:  elect a Chair to run the meeting and a Secretary to record the proceedings of the caucus; elect two precinct committee people to represent the precinct on the Party’s County Central Committee; elect delegates to the County Assembly; introduce, debate and approve or reject resolutions and platform issues.
There will be debate on the proposals as well as a vote. If the item is approved, it will be passed on the county platform committee, which will discuss incorporating into the county platform. Not all items will end up in the County Platform or the State Platform.
To participate in the Saguache County Democratic Assembly, which will be held on Sunday, April 11 at the Saguache Community Building, 525 Seventh Street, Saguache, you must attend and participate at the Caucus.  The Assembly will start with a potluck at noon and the meeting will follow.
Who’s running for election?
John Salazar (D), 3rd Congressional District is facing a re-match with Scott Tipton (R).  Tipton was defeated in the 2006 campaign by Salazar.  A second Republican, Bob McConnell, attorney from Steamboat Springs is also running in District 3.
So far, the state gubernatorial race has turned out the most surprises for 2010.  Early withdrawal of incumbent Bill Ritter and state Senator Josh Penry, heretofore a GOP rising star, were real stunners. The race for governor now boils down to a battle between Republican candidates Scott McInnis, former 3rd Congressional District representative, and Evergreen businessman Dan Maes for the chance at challenging Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a moderate Democrat with a base of built-in business support.
Hickenlooper (D), a former petroleum geologist turned business entrepreneur is currently Mayor of Denver. His reputation is for being a sharp and innovative businessman. The Democratic Party believes that a Hickenlooper governorship will be good for the Colorado economy, attracting new businesses and bring innovative companies and high-paying jobs to the state.
The Republican Party is hoping to turn the governor’s race into a referendum on Obama, citing the economic recession and the drastic measures taken by the Democrats to balance the budget as no longer being attractive to cross-over Republican and independent voters who turned Colorado blue in 2008.
McInnis, campaigning on a Platform for Prosperity, has vowed that, if elected governor, he will stimulate job growth in the oil and gas industry by rolling back regulations, cut the state budget, invest in roads and bridges, create more opportunities for higher education and workforce training and establish a “rainy day” fund.  He also promised to keep taxes low—and to abide by the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, which requires voter approval of tax increases.
Both House District 60 incumbents Tom Massey (R) and Senate District 5 Gail Schwartz (D) are up for re-election.  Massey faces one opponent so far, Libertarian Christine Smith.
On the local level most county officials are up for re-election.  Incumbent County Sheriff Mike Norris (D) will be facing a Republican challenger, former Deputy Richard Pascoe. Other incumbents running include Connie Trujillo (R) for County Treasurer, Jackie Stephens (D) for County Assessor, and Tom Perrin (D) for County Coronor.
County Commissioner Linda Joseph (D) may be in a primary run-off with Saguache native, Tim Lovato, also a Democrat.  County Clerk Melinda Myers (D) is facing two opponents from her own party—Tina Serna and Christina Wilson—which will result in a primary.

by Gussie Fauntleroy
One morning before sunrise not long after we moved here, I was standing outside when I heard the faint crowing of a neighbor’s rooster, about a half-mile away. It wasn’t a generic, half-noticed morning sound; I’d met that rooster. He had a name, a personality and idiosyncratic quirks within the social structure of my neighbor’s chicken house. I smiled to realize how specific my connection was to this sound that traveled unobstructed across the valley floor. Over time other sounds revealed the specificity of their sources: the distinctive engine timbre of a neighbor’s car, another neighbor calling her dogs.
Noise and sound

Sound of clouds. photo by Bill Ellzey www.billellzey.com

Our pre-modern ancestors—the forebears of all humans, not only those with a fraction of certifiable aboriginal blood—never knew noise; they heard sounds. It wasn’t because they lived in a world hushed in silence. They lived in a world where daily life had an auditory aspect, as it has throughout time. But noise and sound, as I think of them, are not the same experience.
Noise tends to be undifferentiated, often unnamable, existing on the periphery of our awareness rather than as the focus of our attention. It is unconsciously muted, filtered, muffled, shunted into that peripheral space so as not to interfere with the focus of our mental activity. Our modern life at the top of the food chain, in a relatively unthreatening environment, allows contemporary humans in much of the world the luxury of dulling our ears.
Sound, on the other hand, even when it originates from the same basic source as noise—the internal combustion engine, for example—is experienced as discreet (separate and distinguishable) against a background of quiet or other discernable sounds. Often, sound is namable, at least in a general sense. And in our auditory experience, it is directly and inherently connected to its source. We hear a single car as it travels in our direction on a dirt road—that is sound. We live with the continual dull roar from an interstate two miles away—that’s noise.
Why does the distinction matter?
The rare gift of quiet
Living in the vast quiet of the San Luis Valley can teach us why it matters. In this kind of quiet, our personal and collective psychic space is able to expand, comfortably and naturally, into the fullness of geographic space. It fills the distance between here and the rocky ledges and peaks in one direction, and outward across the openness of the Valley and upward into the sky.
In an exquisitely subtle way, our psychic space takes on the shape of the landscape; it slips into the spaces between branches in cottonwood trees, sinks gently into the infinitesimal vertical vaults among tall grasses; it flows unstopped, unimpeded, unbounded by human-made noise that in other places defines the edges of mine and someone else’s space.
In more populated places, with the noise of traffic, sirens, construction, voices, and the constant undifferentiated din of public commerce, our personal psychic space bumps into the overlapping acoustic boundaries of other peoples’ lives. In that world of noise—which is most of the populated planet, to whatever degree—we automatically learn to transform human-made sound into background noise. We learn to not listen to it.
And what is lost in that learning, I wonder. It’s obviously a common loss, an unacknowledged loss. We adapt and adjust and life goes on apparently unaffected; our psychic space takes on the ever-changing shape of our own activities and thoughts, overlaid upon a layer of subconsciously muffled noise. It’s not clear the specific ways we are subtly affected by this act of stifling the natural human capacity—the ancient survivalist need—for remaining continually open to and aware of sounds.
Touching each others’ lives
But I want to turn the question around. Rather than asking what’s lost when we unconsciously pull the edges of our sound-space closer in, I want to ask: What is gained by the freedom to psychically stretch out and live, day after day, in the expanse of a collective sound-space covering miles and miles?
We are unusually privileged in this gift of pervasive, profound quiet. And of course, with privilege comes an inherent responsibility to do whatever we can to protect and maintain the quiet in this valley. But also, on a personal spiritual level, we are living with an unspoken mandate to contribute positively to this collective psychic space and shared sound-space, by each working to become as deeply, strongly, and continually peaceful as we can.
This is what we need to do anyway, anywhere, all the time. But here I can see that this way of being is essential—it is essential that we live with awareness of how we affect and contribute to our collective psychic field as well as the material and auditory realm. Through the act of consciously listening we become increasingly open, accepting fully that we live in overlapping, interpenetrating worlds. Even by simply not muting the sound of a passing car, we can live as if we cared personally about every other creature sharing this space with us, even if we will never meet some of the people or ever see most of the animals that share this space.
This gift and responsibility of quiet gives an added dimension to the gift and responsibility of community. We’re not walled off from each other by the unconscious act of tucking ourselves into our own acoustical bubbles, with all else assigned to the dulled edge of awareness. Our sound-space is one, which is the true nature of reality—and we can embrace that reality when we don’t overlay it with the defenses, filters and structures of the mind.
Which of course brings us to the crucial element in all this. Living here, sooner or later we necessarily realize (or we don’t), that we must become much quieter and more still inside in order to hear and feel and appreciate the magnitude of this external quiet in which we are blessed to live.
This is the first in a series of reflections on what it means to live within the sound-space of the northern San Luis Valley. The writer welcomes your thoughts on this subject. Contact her at gussie7@fairpoint.net.