HomeMy WebLinkAbout931379.tiff 1 type things, and as far as I know we are definitely pushing
2 for it, the county is, and its in that program of projects and
3 its being funded at that level at this present time. The only
4 way it would be pulled is if the county would agree to that
5 and if our district region engineer for the State Highway
6 Department or the Department of Transportation would agree to
7 that.
8 MR. TOMLINE: But the beginning of that is two years
9 away?
10 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: No, the beginning of that,
11 they've already done some of the engineering for that project
12 and the beginning of that would be within the next year.
13 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Well , actually, they've already
14 begun some of the construction.
15 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Well, they've started
16 construction on Turner Blvd. , which is supposed to be done
17 here within this month and if its not they have some other
18 things .
19 MR. TOMLINE : Yeah, I think that ' s almost finished,
20 but whether that ' s a real improvement or not, you ought to
21 drive it and see.
22 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: May I ask where your facility
23 is in relation to the Interchange?
24 MR. TOMLINE : We' re about two miles south of the I-
25 25 and Highway 119 on the east, off the east frontage road.
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531379
1 One mile. Maybe it ' s because you sit there for 20 minutes
2 before you get through the light, I don' t know. It ' s fifteen
3 or twenty minutes, so it seems like two miles .
4 [MULTIPLE COMMENTS]
5 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Thank you, Mr. Tomline . Kathy
6 Neiley will be next and Conrad Hopp should be ready.
7 MS . NEILEY: Sorry, I 've got a lot of stuff . Sorry
8 about the preparation time. My name is Kathleen Neiley. I
9 live at 5416 Weld County Road 36 . And from 1985 until last
10 summer I was an investment banking employee. I was an
11 assistant vice present in the institutional sales department
12 of a real estate financing firm in Denver. I was also a
13 partner of that firm. We specialized in commercial real
14 estate financings and we were one, and still are, I don't
15 there any longer, but still are one of the nationally ranked
16 firms in housing finance in particular. We have dealt and
17 traded in prison bonds and it is to that that I have addressed
18 the majority of my research.
19 I am a registered representative. I do hold a
20 Series 7 and a Series 53 designation. Series 7 is a general
21 securities registration and Series 53 is the State Blue Sky
22 Securities Registration Law.
23 You are the first investors in this project and as
24 such you deserve the same information that potential bond
25 holders will be requiring. The Villa has a serious disclosure
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1 problem in the presentation they gave here today and the one
2 they gave the Planning Commission two months ago. That has to
3 do with the financial risks and they are many and they are
4 severe with financing of private prison issues . I have
5 substantiated all of my facts today and they are facts from
6 two major sources . Bond Buyer is a publication published
7 every business day in New York. It is basically the Bible of
8 the municipal securities industry. It costs $2, 000 a year for
9 a subscription and nobody in the financial market makes a move
10 without it. It is basically the watchdog for the industry.
11 They sent me 17 articles on private prisons that they have
12 written since 1989 .
13 The other major source that I ' ll be referring to is
14 a report, a research report published in September, released
15 in October by John Nuvene and Company. If you ' re unfamiliar
16 with John Nuvene and Company, I 've entered into an exhibit
17 their latest 10K quarterly reports, prospectus and what not.
18 They currently have $27 billion dollars under management.
19 They have over one million investors and last year they won
20 nine national awards for their research. They do not own any
21 prison bonds . They have no vendetta in publishing this
22 report. They saw this as a service to the investment
23 community. There was very little information being published
24 about these bonds . They saw that as a real disservice to the
25 investment community.
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1 In 1989 , six counties in Texas listened to
2 presentations by a developer similar to that that you have
3 heard today. In 1991, all of the prisons were completed. In
4 1992 all the prisons defaulted. They were all built with no
5 contract to house prisoners in place. They did not receive
6 prisoners from the State of Texas . They all defaulted, the
7 bond holders received fifty cents on the dollar for their
8 investment. After that, the State of Texas condemned the
9 facilities and filled them with their own state level
10 prisoners .
11 In 1992 , a prison in Appleton, Minnesota also
12 defaulted. It too was built on speculation. It too did not
13 have a contract from the state, and it too never received any
14 prisoners . They did default in 1992 , they were able to
15 procure prisoners this year. They were sent 500 prisoners
16 from Puerto Rico.
17 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Before you go on would you give
18 me the words for the acronym COP.
19 MS . NEILEY: Oh, I 'm sorry. Yes, the title of the
20 report from John Nuvene is entitled Prison COP' s . COP stands
21 for Certificate of Participation. It ' s a common term when
22 you ' re talking about a lease-backed financing as this would be
23 a lease. We would be getting a lease from the state to rent
24 the beds .
25 The off-sited prison in Brush actually defaulted on
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1 its first foray into the financial markets . The investor
2 there, Colonial Bond Fund, received 20 cents on the dollar.
3 That facility was refinanced by a venture capital group and
4 does now hold juvenile offenders . I understand they are from
5 not just Colorado but from other states as well .
6 Among other things, the report draws the following
7 conclusions . Let me see if I 've got another slide for you.
8 For-profit jail COP ' s have the worst default record of any
9 known group of tax exempt securities and jail COP' s may be the
10 most fundamentally flawed credits ever offered to tax-exempt
11 investors in mutual funds . I 'd like to make a point here that
12 they have typically been financed using tax-exempt securities;
13 however, it doesn' t really matter if they' re financed with
14 taxable or tax-exempt, it' s the same credit behind the issue.
15 It' s the same prison or pre-parole facility. It' s the same
16 contract or lack thereof with the state that secures these
17 bonds .
18 What are the factors that led to Nuvene' s
19 conclusions? Rental prisons are highly counter-cyclical .
20 According to Nuvene, jails are like convention centers; both
21 types of projects are locally leased financed. When local
22 economies slump, civic leaders are more likely to finance a
23 risky venture in an effort to create new jobs and new
24 businesses .
25 Number two: in a recession, private prisons are by-
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1 passed. Weak finances force states to develop lower cost
2 alternatives such as work release, electronic monitoring and
3 boot camps . Some states are abandoning rent-a-cells as their
4 contracts expire and moving prisoners into their own
5 facilities as they come on line.
6 Number three: feasibility studies, and I will speak
7 more to this later. No body of feasibility work exists for
8 private tax exempt correctional projects .
9 Number four: stabbings and riots . It' s kind of one
10 of those, gee they' re all afraid of this, I don' t really like
11 the way they titled this particular category, but the point is
12 legal uncertainties have arisen over large-scale interstate
13 transport of convicts . Injuries and lawsuits could be
14 financially ruinous to owners of a small city or county jail
15 if they happen to be underinsured. The other question Nuvene
16 raises, is does the county insurance cover the prison. Many
17 counties are surprised to find that their insurance coverage
18 cannot be extended to cover prisons .
19 Increasingly important is the civil rights liability
20 issue over prisoner illness . Two major hidden costs which
21 contracts pass through to the issuers are the costs of
22 liability awards and medical expense if an inmate becomes ill
23 or if one inmate injures another. A fairly new type of
24 financial risk is civil rights liability suits . In these
25 suits, inmates typically allege injury because of inadequate
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1 security. Many inmates tend to be litigious; most prisons
2 have heavily used law libraries . This pre-parole facility
3 will have a law library. They did change the way they
4 referred to that today and they called it a reference library.
5 In the meeting to the planning board, they did call it a law
6 library.
7 Private jails are a short-term solution to long-term
8 needs . I need to put another slide up here. Rather than
9 transfer prisoners to rental jails, wardens prefer to enlarge
10 their own. Private jails raise complaints from inmates and
11 their supporters .
12 Number seven: administering necessary force.
13 Extreme tension and conflicts result from the cultural gap
14 created when poorly trained guards find themselves supervising
15 prison-wise and violent convicts . Critics claim that
16 inexperienced guards cannot properly handle the inmates .
17 Number eight: staffing from local residents . I 'd
18 really like to focus on this . Local officials are often told
19 that they can staff their prisons with local residents ,
20 thereby creating new jobs . But jails require only one staff
21 member for every five beds . Because inmates cook and clean,
22 prisons are not labor-intensive; in actuality, few local jobs
23 are created. Also, commercial managers often bring in outside
24 staff .
25 I would like to mention at this point that I have
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1 contacted a couple of people that The Villa has referred to
2 and used as support for this type of project. Charles
3 Thomas, in particular, is the head of the private prisons
4 project at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He is
5 the author of the majority of the studies that The Villa has
6 used to convince us all that property values don' t decline,
7 that violence does not increase, that growth continues in
8 cities; almost all the information they have used comes from
9 one or more of his sources . He is paid by the private prison
10 industry. He does publish a private prison industry
11 newsletter on a quarterly basis . He is basically the only
12 source of information in this country right now on private
13 prisons and he is used and quoted heavily. Nuvene takes great
14 exception to very much of his study. They do agree with him
15 on a lot of things, but he does not study the prisons and the
16 default records of the prisons and the impacts on the bond
17 communities and the impacts on the counties when those prisons
18 default. He said to me when I called him, he said, "Oh, The
19 Villa of Greeley? Yeah, Michael Brand called me when he first
20 got the contract or the RFP from the state. He said they' re
21 contracting with MTC from Ogden to provide the training
22 programs at the facility. " I said, "Oh, who said?" He said,
23 "Well they' re a corporation that specializes in that type of
24 thing" and then he went on to say that people in these pre-
25 parole facilities tend to teach vocational type classes,
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1 teaching them welding, teaching them some sort of a field that
2 they can do when they get out of prison. I stopped him. I
3 said, "No, they' re doing more like the psychological" . He
4 said, "Oh, yeah, the family violence, the anger management,
5 yeah, those aren' t nearly as effective. " And that is what he
6 told me. But the whole point I bring that up is I would like
7 you to ask The Villa, since it' s not really proper for me and
8 I can' t ask you to do it, are they bringing in outside
9 management or are they going to be using local educators? I ,
10 for my own rectification, I don' t know.
11 Number nine: white collar prisoners are promised
12 for local facilities . In many cases, habitual criminals,
13 murderers and rapists, I know you don' t like this , are sent to
14 local facilities even though the jails are not high security.
15 Public outcries have caused prisoners to be transferred to
16 their former prisons and the new jails stand empty.
17 Number ten: remote jail locations are objected to
18 by civil rights and prisoner rights groups because this limits
19 visits by friends , family and others . Some states now have
20 legislation prohibiting transfers of prisoners, not only out
21 of state, but between jurisdictions within states .
22 And the last point: low to mid-security prisons are
23 not designed to house violent felons . If localities focused
24 on building expensive maximum security prisons instead of
25 inexpensive low to mid-security prisons , which this is , they
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1 could easily find prisoners . Hard-core convicts are the
2 fastest growing group and the ones wardens most want to
3 transfer out, not the ones coming closest to the end of their
4 sentence.
5 There are some other reactions from the business
6 community that I 've got here. I actually have many of them,
7 but for lack of time and all that we' ll just give you a few
8 others .
9 The people from The Villa have talked to you about
10 four pre-parole facilities in Texas as being examples of
11 things we'd like to keep here or have here. I did talk to Mr.
12 Thomas about those . They said, I don' t know who said this for
13 The Villa, I can't remember, that people were at first in
14 those communities unwilling to have prisons there. They were
15 worried about the security and what not. They actually
16 practically had lotteries to see which counties could build
17 prisons in Texas . Many counties in Texas wanted prisons, and
18 these pre-parole facilities were actually wanted by those
19 communities and had tremendous community support from the very
20 beginning. Mr. Thomas, when I told him of the tremendous
21 amount of opposition, he said most developers would know
22 enough to pull out.
23 Those four facilities I mentioned in Texas , two of
24 them are run by the CCA, you' ll notice at the bottom,
25 Correction Corporation of America, they run 21 facilities with
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1 a total of 7 , 300 beds . The $68 million dollar company did not
2 even become profitable until its seventh year of operations .
3 Mr. Thomas told me this was the industry leader for private
4 prison corrections . And you see they aren' t exactly a ringing
5 endorsement of the type of business that these prisons will or
6 will not bring. Wackenhut operates the other two facilities,
7 the other two private pre-parole facilities in Texas, and
8 operate of 11 facilities shows that corrections contributes
9 little or nothing to their profits .
10 I have one final slide. Nuvene' s final conclusions
11 and recommendations to investors are as follows . Investors,
12 and I take that to mean ourselves as well not because we have
13 much more invested really in this project than bond investors
14 would ever have, investors are strongly urged to avoid states
15 where for-profit prisons have been or are being built. And
16 investors should insist on a firm contract before committing
17 themselves . Charles Thomas , the head of the private prisons
18 project in Florida repeated this too. He said speculative
19 prisons have had a very poor track record. There are private
20 prisons out there that are doing well , but they had contracts
21 in place before they were ever issued.
22 A few other things you might like to know. There
23 have been 25 defaults on privately operated prisons since
24 1990, since 1980 . Nine since 1990 . This constitutes more
25 than a third of all lease defaults nationwide regardless of
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1 purpose; convention center, sports complex, jails, whatever.
2 All of the nine most recent lease defaults involved for-profit
3 prisons for which securities were issued before the owners had
4 contracts to rent cells to state and local governments .
5 Again, please remember that this facility has no contract and
6 we heard from the Department of Corrections person here
7 stating that they don't even agree on the minimum number of
8 days for prisoners to be incarcerated in this facility. Mr.
9 Brand has continually said we will negotiate this into a
10 contract, we will negotiate that into a contract, we will have
11 to come up with a mutual aid agreement. I submit there is a
12 lot that stands between them actually getting the contract and
13 today.
14 Unlike prisons that are owned by a state or local
15 government, for-profit jails are not essential to the owners
16 and carry greater than usual political risks because they do
17 not have a public mandate. I think it' s probably fair to say
18 that we don' t have a public mandate for this particular
19 facility in this particular location.
20 Now I would like to address feasibility studies,
21 which typically are done for a specific area at a specific
22 time and they determine whether or not a facility in an area
23 would be profitable . The Villa has not done a feasibility
24 study. The one for Brush before it defaulted cost in excess
25 of $50, 000 . I can see why they wouldn't want to pay for this
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1 up front . Feasibility studies are extraordinarily expensive
2 and the nationally recognized, reputable accounting firms that
3 do them want to be paid very highly because their reputations
4 are on the line for these things . I did talk to one of the
5 CPA' s that worked on the Brush facility prison and that ' s how
6 I know how much they spent on that particular feasibility
7 study. What they have done is provide you with two reports by
8 Ann Garrison called "Private Pre-Parole Facility and the
9 Greeley Economy" and an addendum to that same report. I 've
10 gone through both of those pretty extensively. I 'd like to
11 point out that one was done in September of 1992 , over a year
12 ago. The other was done in March of this year, it' s getting
13 on to be almost a year itself . Those are not timely reports .
14 They were not done for this location. They were not done for
15 any specific location. They were done for Weld County in
16 general . We all know that Greeley is different from Del
17 Camino, is different from Windsor, is different from Dacono.
18 There are all kinds of different places . These really aren't
19 relevant to this particular location.
20 I called Ms . Garrison at Mr. Brand' s suggestion at
21 the last meeting and talked to her about her research. Ms .
22 Garrison was extremely helpful to me, and was one of the more
23 helpful people I did speak to. I asked her how she could
24 state that property values would not decline based on a 1985
25 California study that sited a housing development in Folsom,
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1 California which was already a prison town. She indicated to
2 me that there ' s very little information available to her and
3 she used what she had. I mentioned to her the following were
4 missing from that report and I couldn' t consider it valid, the
5 report didn't mention home size, pre-sale information, permit
6 dates for the homes, permit dates for the prison, marketing
7 incentives, who bought the homes . It just really has a lot of
8 information missing. I also talked to Mr. Thomas about this
9 and he said as well, there is very little information
10 available on a nationwide basis for determining what effects
11 prisons have, either public or private, on property values .
12 Yet, The Villa has repeatedly endorsed reports by Mr. Thomas
13 himself as proof that property values don' t go down. Mr.
14 Thomas, who wrote the reports, says there is not very much
15 evidence. He is making large, what' s the word I 'm looking
16 for, assumptions I guess, based on a limited amount of
17 information. Nobody has really funded a study. Who wants to
18 pay for that kind of information? They're afraid what they' ll
19 find.
20 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: What about the information
21 we heard today of the Larimer County Detention Facility and
22 the business park that has since developed around that? I
23 mean, basically, that study or what that woman presented today
24 showed that property values did increase. In fact they went
25 ahead and built a whole development all the way around that
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1 detention facility?
2 MS . NEILEY: I don' t know. All I can say is that
3 the people that were buying those homes had the opportunity to
4 not buy them because the prison was already there. So, you ' re
5 starting at ground zero. I doubt if there was a piece of land
6 without a home on it and you put a house on it, I doubt very
7 much that property would decline in value once that home were
8 put on it regardless of the price it sold for. In other
9 words , the bare land had less of a value than it did once it
10 had the home on it . Property values have to increase once you
11 put a $150,000 home on a piece of land. Do you see what I 'm
12 saying?
13 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Well, then what about
14 subdivisions that were already there before the detention
15 facility was built that are within a mile of that, that were
16 already there?
17 MS . NEILEY: I don' t know.
18 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: And then they continue to
19 build homes that are of higher value.
20 MS . NEILEY: They might, perhaps they use that area
21 as a basis for a study, I don' t know. There has been nothing
22 written about it and nothing shown other than what this
23 property manager today gave you, so I guess I would tend to
24 take that with as much, I guess I would examine it as closely
25 as I would examine the information that I 'm presenting. I
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1 don't know that it has any more credence than to say that
2 these reports, on a nationwide basis, there' s very little
3 information.
4 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: So are you saying that the
5 presence of a detention facility or a pre-parole facility
6 would be a decline in property valuations?
7 MS . NEILEY: I 'm saying there' s not enough
8 information to say that it would not hurt property values .
9 I 'm saying that when, in absence of proof that it will not
10 hurt, how can we ask people to risk their homes and their
11 values on something that we can't prove that it ' s going to
12 help or not hurt?
13 Ms . Garrison also said that in no way should her, or
14 could her reports be used as an economic feasibility study,
15 although they could be used as a sub-set of one. I already
16 mentioned how expensive feasibility studies are. I should add
17 that that is a requirement for a bond issue. A feasibility
18 study will have to be done, as well a phase one environmental
19 study to determine whether or not there are any toxic waste
20 type issues and that includes oil and gas , anything that would
21 have to be cleaned up before an investor would look at a
22 property. I did reconfirm that with people in the bond
23 community and that is a minimum requirement for anything
24 that ' s got real estate on it for a bond holder. Those are
25 expensive as well, but again those could be done at a later
175
1 date .
2 The Villa continues to tell you that our opposition
3 is based on fear and they are right. What I fear is that if
4 this issue fails for any reason, the county will openly pay a
5 price in the credit markets with any other issues that bear
6 the county' s name regardless of what they have to do with. It
7 just, it tends to follow, I mean it' s a guilt by association,
8 but when there is an issue defaulting that bears our name that
9 has anything to do with us, our counties, our cities, people
10 are aware of it and they will think, hmm, and they might not
11 be, they might eventually say okay that has nothing to do with
12 Weld County nine and a halves is 62 or whatever and obviously
13 62 isn' t a valid maturity date, but it will warrant further
14 inspection, I guess, of the credits and people won' t be as
15 likely to buy them on the spur of the moment without doing a
16 lot more research. It has been proven that issues defaulting
17 in the credit markets do have a negative result, a negative
18 effect on other credits for that same county or city.
19 According to the bond buyer, which I cited earlier,
20 municipal analysts have increasingly made attempts to hold
21 issuers responsible for defaults by such conduit finance
22 projects . Can we be assured that the taxpayers, the people
23 around the county, the county officials, will be absolutely
24 fault-free if something happens to this facility? How can we
25 be assured of that?
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1 Increasingly, municipal analysts are going back. I
2 can cite an example in Texas with regard to the six facilities
3 that defaulted. They actually launched a grand jury
4 investigation of the county commissioners that had approved
5 those facilities, so it was not something where they said,
6 well the county has no liability. They actually did try to
7 get the county.
8 Neither Moody' s nor Standard and Poors, and I trust
9 you ' re all familiar with, those are the two largest credit
10 rating agencies in the United States . Neither Moody' s nor
11 Standard and Poors will rate a for-profit prison issue. If
12 they do rate a prison issue, they are either rating the G.O.
13 Debt as it is a state facility and a state budget will cover
14 the annual payments for that, or they are rating the insurance
15 company if an insurance company is involved with rating, with
16 insuring the issue. I don't know if The Villa has approached
17 an insurance company for this or not, but Moody' s and Standard
18 and Poors will not rate an issue of this type.
19 I respectfully submit that a project that
20 speculative in nature in an industry with such an incredibly
21 poor track record does not warrant your approval . I 'm open
22 for questions .
23 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any other questions for
24 Ms . Neiley?
25 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Yes . What kind of
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1 liability do you think the county would be
2 MS. NEILEY: I don't know. I just, that is a
3 question that Nuvene raised saying that liability, and I
4 assume the county has liability, in case somebody breaks out
5 of the prison, comes up to my house, steals my car, who do I
6 sue. I don' t know. That ' s the question.
7 [MULTIPLE COMMENTS]
8 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Maybe we could have our
9 County Attorney address that. Is the county liable in that
10 situation or in any type of situation?
11 MR. MORRISON: No. This facility is, if approved by
12 contract with the state, in addition to any immunities the
13 state might have and the county possesses, it is not a county
14 function. So, I don' t see that there is a liability attaching
15 to the county in any fashion as a result of activities that
16 take place at that site. I do have a question. You cited a
17 Nuvene ' s study, that study is not contained in any of these
18 documents?
19 MS . NEILEY: No.
20 MR. MORRISON: Do you have a copy of that study
21 available?
22 MS. NEILEY: Yeah. Mine' s marked up.
23 MR. MORRISON: The ones I referred to are 6H through
24 6L.
25 MS. NEILEY: There is information in there on public
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1 facilities as well .
2 COMMISSIONER HALL: Ms . Neiley, are you familiar
3 with the bond issue that they' re planning on using?
4 MS . NEILEY: Oh, thank you because that does bring
5 up something I forgot to mention. When asked if the state
6 condemned this facility or if the purpose of the facility
7 would change, what would happen to the bond holders during
8 construction or reconstruction of that facility? Mr. Coppom
9 said that ' s all taken care of, there' s a six-month pool .
10 Every bond issue has that, it ' s called the debt service
11 reserve and most bond issues of a speculative nature actually
12 have a one-year debt service reserve and that' s not meant to
13 cover bond interest in the event of construction as he pointed
14 out. It ' s meant to cover bond interest in the event that the
15 facility is slow getting off the ground and the investors
16 aren' t left holding the bag once the capitalized interest has
17 run out.
18 COMMISSIONER HALL: But do you know, my question is,
19 do you know what the bond issue is that they are talking
20 about?
21 MS. NEILEY: Nope.
22 COMMISSIONER HALL: Then are you making a lot of
23 assumptions based on no facts?
24 MS . NEILEY: Yep. No, I 'm making a lot of
25 assumptions based on there' s only two kinds of ways you can
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1 finance these facilities .
2 COMMISSIONER HALL: So you ' re making a lot of
3 assumptions saying that the county' s going to be liable for
4 these bonds .
5 MS. NEILEY: No, I didn't say the county was going
6 to be liable,
7 COMMISSIONER HALL: That' s what I heard you say.
8 MS . NEILEY: I asked the question.
9 COMMISSIONER: You implied.
10 MS. NEILEY: Implication. I actually asked
11 something that' s in Nuvene ' s report. That Is something that
12 Nuvene said. I would hope we're not liable, I mean I don't
13 want to imply that at all .
14 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Any more questions? We will have
15 Conrad Hopp speak and then following that we will break for
16 dinner. We knew this was going to be a long day. We knew we
17 could go to 10 : 00 tonight if that' s necessary, that' s what
18 we ' ll do. Conrad?
19 MR. HOPP: Madam Chairman, members of the
20 commission, my name is Conrad Hopp. I reside at 11413 Weld
21 County Road 13 . My residence is approximately two miles due
22 east of the proposed site. My property actually begins a mile
23 and a half from the proposed site.
24 Both my wife, Martha, and I are third generation
25 residents of the area. The property has been in her family
180
1 name since 1906, so I 'm not a newcomer to the area. I hope
2 when my thing is finished you don' t think I 'm anti-growth
3 because I 'm really not.
4 Zoning may be the primary issue that needs to be
5 addressed today, but I 'm glad that we're looking at the
6 infrastructure of the area that has been addressed several
7 times today, and there are basically three services or
8 infrastructure that I would like to talk to you about today.
9 The infrastructure that exists in the area must be sufficient
10 to address the needs . Different growth requires different
11 needs . Some may support your infrastructure in some cases and
12 some may tax it. And this is what I want to talk about. And
13 the facts I want to share with you today are not pretending
14 that this could happen or that could happen. What I want to
15 share with you today is things that exist today, whether The
16 Villa is there or not, they exist today. I 'm not putting any
17 responsibility for anything on The Villa itself. The Del
18 Camino area has no infrastructure whatsoever that it can call
19 its own. This is just fact for you. Everything, the
20 infrastructure that is in the area is controlled by boards
21 that live in totally different areas . There is no
22 infrastructure that we can say this is our police department
23 or this is our fire department or this is our water
24 department. Everything is controlled outside. Whether that
25 affects your decision or not, this is just information for you
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1 to think about in the area. One of the reasons there is no
2 infrastructure is because of the make-up of the area which is
3 agricultural, rural and commercial . And nothing is
4 incorporated, so they have no way of raising funds for
5 infrastructure in this area.
6 One item I want to discuss with you today is law
7 enforcement. With no local law enforcement, the area totally
8 depends on Weld County Sheriff, as has been stated before.
9 And I want to say that I have the highest regard for the Weld
10 County Sheriff ' s office. They do a tremendous job for the
11 county. I sometimes think they' re superhuman because of the
12 resources they have, basically budgeting for a county this
13 size and the money they have to cover it. The Sheriff says he
14 can protect the area. One officer serving 1, 300 square miles,
15 and that ' s what the officer does in that area, if that comes
16 under the definition of protection, it doesn't come under
17 mine . Maybe this is one thing of the Sheriff ' s I can' t agree
18 on. This isn' t protection in an area. Approximately five
19 years ago, the citizens of this area and the then Board of
20 Directors of Mountain View and the then chief, approached the
21 County Commissioners requesting a Sheriff substation in the
22 area because we recognized the need at that time for law
23 enforcement in the area on a permanent basis . I believe only
24 one Commissioner was on that board at that time. Our first
25 meeting wasn't really welcome open arms meeting. We discussed
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1 this with the Commissioners . As I recall we only met two
2 times with the Commissioners but there was several meetings
3 with the Sheriff at that time. We wanted to put a substation
4 in Station 2 which is two miles east of Del Camino because we
5 were building a new firehouse at that time and we saw the need
6 for law enforcement in the area. We did arrive at a contract
7 with the Sheriff . The contract is a year-to-year basis, can
8 be canceled by either party in 30 days and it' s kind of one-
9 sided because we only get $75 a month for the services out
10 there that we are furnishing. I just want to point this out.
11 I think the area needs a more substantial type of service from
12 the county so that we have the needed protection. Or it has
13 to come from Del Camino, they need to incorporate. I don' t
14 know how we ' re going to service it. That need exists today,
15 whether The Villa is there or it isn't there. The Sheriff has
16 been a lot more visible because the car is at the substation
17 sometimes in the evenings when he does some paperwork. It
18 isn' t there on a regular basis . The time it takes for the
19 Sheriff to respond hasn' t changed a whole lot because of the
20 area he covers . I think we could double the protection in
21 that immediate area simply by putting a sign outside the
22 Sheriff ' s office that says Weld County Sheriff Substation,
23 something visible to the community and the passer-by. But I
24 really don't feel that one officer for 1, 300 square miles is
25 good protection for an area. And that exists today and I have
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1 heard nothing of that changing. What the area actually needs,
2 by the feeling of the community, is two officers full time in
3 that area . And when I refer to the Del Camino area, it goes
4 clean up to 66 because of the businesses and that wouldn' t be
5 covering it really well . But two officers would probably take
6 ten men because of the Fair Labor Standard Act at a cost of
7 almost $400, 000 so I understand why the county can't do it and
8 I understand why Del Camino can' t do it. But that' s what ' s
9 needed today in the area, whether The Villa is built or not.
10 Another item I would like to address is the
11 emergency response. I sent a letter, or hand delivered a
12 letter on November 12th to the Commissioners . In that letter
13 I was just informing you of how things exist today out there.
14 Every item in that letter was factual except how I wanted you
15 to vote and that was a hope, I guess . But everything else was
16 documented in that letter. It did not, in no way, be meant to
17 say Mountain View Fire Protection District would not serve
18 that area. If there was any underlying message in that letter
19 that I hoped you would read into it is that Mountain View' s
20 responsibility does not start or stop at the walls of any
21 building that ' s built out there. By definition of protection
22 district, we are responsible for life and property in the
23 total district and whatever happens in the total district.
24 And I 'm not saying that The Villa is going to cause a lot more
25 problems in the district or they' re not. We're overtaxed.
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1 The other thing I wanted you to read in that is who responds
2 to these things? The majority are volunteers that live in the
3 area. Some of them were here today, they've left. Will they
4 respond? You bet. They're professionals . We 've got a great
5 fire department, but these are the taxpayers who are opposing
6 it. And are we going to put the more burden on the people who
7 opposed it, because that' s who answer the calls up there, by
8 and large, are the people of the community and that was simply
9 addressed in my letter. And if there was a misunderstanding
10 that I was speaking for Mountain View, I 'm one board member,
11 I have one vote. And I never intended that to mean that way.
12 I wanted you to have the fact of what exists in the area
13 today.
14 The next item is also in the first responder, the
15 ambulances that serve the area. Weld County has an ambulance
16 district. The ground rig is stationed in Ft. Lupton, which is
17 of no virtual use to us whatsoever because of the distance it
18 has to come. The chopper is very useful but has to be used
19 with discretion because it serves a large county and you can't
20 just call it. There are certain calls that you can make for
21 that chopper. The ambulance is dispatched out of Boulder
22 County and I think this is something important for you to
23 think about. And the fire district is dispatched out of
24 Boulder County. The reason I think it's important to you I
25 will get to later when we get into communications in the area.
185
1 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Conrad, doesn't the Tri-Area
2 Ambulance respond?
3 MR. HOPP: Tri-Area Ambulance is south of us . It is
4 an ambulance district and it has nothing to do with the Del
5 Camino area. It ' s a district that has its boundaries . We do
6 contract part of our area to Tri-Area Ambulance. My feeling
7 on Tri-Area Ambulance, they organized that district simply so
8 they'd have an ambulance. They have a county ambulance, but
9 it' s also too far away. If you want to know the truth,
10 they' re being double taxed. They're taxed for an ambulance in
11 their district and they're being taxed for an ambulance by
12 Weld County.
13 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: No, they' re not being taxed by
14 Weld County.
15 MR. HOPP: They aren' t any more?
16 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: No.
17 MR. HOPP: I 'm glad you corrected me.
18 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: They haven't been for a long,
19 long time.
20 MR. HOPP: Oh, okay. Well, I 'm not in Tri-Area
21 Ambulance ' s area.
22 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Ambulance is self-sustaining.
23 MR. HOPP: but Tri-Area does not serve that area at
24 this time. We backed up an ambulance by using Air Life or
25 Flight for Life out of St. Anthony' s . That ' s another back-up,
186
1 but that is the ambulance services .
2 The communications, as I said, both the fire
3 district and the ambulances are dispatched out of Boulder
4 County. This is information for you. The fire district pays
5 $33,000 a year to Boulder County to be dispatched. They
6 dispatch us for the calls we have in Weld County, as I
7 understand it . You know county politics better than I do, but
8 if that ' s what they' re charging us for, that ' s $90 a call . So
9 it ' s very expensive for the taxpayers of Mountain View for
10 dispatching alone.
11 The real reason that ' s important is if there was an
12 incident today that the Sheriff needed to be there and
13 Mountain View needed to be there, they have no direct
14 communications with each other, simply because one is
15 dispatched out of Weld and one is dispatched out of Boulder.
16 There' s two ways to communicate with each other. We, AS
17 Mountain View, can radio Boulder who then radios Weld, who
18 then radios the Sheriff and GIVES our message . That' s one
19 way. Or we can ask Weld County to put the Sheriff ' s
20 Department on firn channel and that ' s another channel, but it
21 would have to go through the process of changing the whole
22 thing. And I believe AT that time maybe the Weld County
23 Sheriff loses some of his communications with Weld County, I 'm
24 not sure. But the ambulance and the fire district operate on
25 that same type of thing in that area. So, growth that needs
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1 or taxes the Sheriff and/or the fire district, and I 'm not
2 talking about a fire inside the facility. That doesn't really
3 concern me so much at this time, it ' s the total, we answer
4 every emergency call in the area. And you have a copy of what
5 we 've answered this last year.
6 Those are the concerns that I have that it isn' t
7 compatible at this time with the infrastructure of law
8 enforcement, the fire district and the ambulance simply
9 because we can' t communicate. It takes dollars to correct
10 those things . Where do the dollars come from to correct those
11 things? Who ' s going to furnish those dollars? Is it fair for
12 Weld County taxpayers or is it fair for the community that is
13 taxing and working to give these services? Now, maybe The
14 Villa, as one fella said, we ' re a big family and we ' ve got to
15 help solve each other' s problems . Maybe they would assume the
16 responsibility of putting in those missing links to the
17 infrastructure, I don' t know. I mean this is something that
18 has to be addressed before we can put a facility like this in
19 an area. And I 'm not even speculating on what type of calls
20 that will come. We' re overtaxed today as far as the
21 community, to handle a lot of things we need. If there ' s any
22 questions, that ' s all I have.
23 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Any questions for Mr. Hopp?
24 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Would The Villa be in
25 Mountain View' s district?
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1 MR. HOPP: Yes .
2 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: And how does the, doesn't
3 the district collect the taxes from the property owners by a
4 mill levy?
5 MR. HOPP: From property owners in Boulder and Weld
6 County.
7 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: So you would collect taxes
8 from The Villa because they would have that mill levy on their
9 property that would go to your district?
10 MR. HOPP: Not necessarily, because of Amendment 1,
11 we can' t raise, if you're familiar with that, we can' t raise
12 our budget above a certain amount .
13 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: You can' t raise your mill
14 levy.
15 MR. HOPP: We can' t raise our mill levy and we can't
16 raise our budget.
17 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: But you ' re still assessing
18 that property a mill levy to be in your district.
19 MR. HOPP: It will lower some. I don' t know what ' ll
20 happen. I do not think the taxes
21 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: So you do assess that
22 property a mill levy to be in your district.
23 MR. HOPP: That ' s right. We do assess it a mill
24 levy.
25 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: So you will assess The Villa
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1 if its
2 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: But they' re already
3 assessing the property a mill levy?
4 MR. HOPP: There isn' t any, virtually anything on it
5 that you'd get money from. One of the problems school
6 district have, fire districts have, any taxing, every building
7 that is built is normally occupied and up for 18 months before
8 you get taxes off it. Number one, it has to go on a tax role
9 by a certain date and then you collect taxes for a year later.
10 So you ' re always behind when you ' re in a development area of
11 trying to catch up because you ' re giving services whether
12 you' re the Sheriff ' s Department or a fire district or a school
13 district, anybody. You' re always behind getting taxes and it
14 stretches you to your limit and then when you have situations
15 like Amendment 1 that you get growth plus CPI on a
16 combination, I don't know how long we can continue to operate
17 and give the services we give with Amendment 1 . It' s a
18 question and I 'm sure that you, as a county, have to look at
19 the same . It' s no different. You ' re just a lot larger.
20 COMMISSIONER HALL: If I 'm understanding you
21 correctly, you said that you weren' t necessarily singling out
22 this facility.
23 MR. HOPP: No. That' s why you may think I 'm anti-
24 growth.
25 COMMISSIONER HALL: You ' re looking at it as a growth
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1 factor because of the infrastructure in there.
2 MR. HOPP: That ' s right.
3 COMMISSIONER HALL: I understand you' re saying that
4 if there was a Hauser Chemical Company or a Specialty Products
5 Company.
6 MR. HOPP: I think we need to be looked at the same
7 way. I think we need to look at every one. Some of them
8 require a lot more than others . I don't know what the, since
9 I know nothing about pre-parole release facilities, I couldn' t
10 speculate. I 'm not even going to attempt to. I know there ' s
11 going to be a lot more traffic in the area.
12 COMMISSIONER HALL: If there are no businesses
13 paying taxes , how then do you get more services?
14 MR. HOPP: Businesses pay taxes, but let me give you
15 an example of the cooperation we get in the community. I
16 worked for 14 years to get a fire house in that area . I
17 worked hard. We lowered the ISO rating, we did a lot of
18 things . We approached the land, the owners in the Del Camino
19 area, the businesses who today say that, you know they' re in
20 favor of The Villa. And we said if we lower your ISO rating,
21 will you give half of the money you save on insurance to us to
22 build a fire house. And the comment came back from the
23 business , I 'm a self-insured, you're not going to save me any.
24 They could care less whether they had a fire department in the
25 area . But we have a responsibility. This happened many years
191
1 ago. We worked through those things, but you don' t always get
2 the cooperation you need. As far as the communications, I
3 have served on E911 advisory board for the State of Colorado.
4 It ' s a good system when it works right. Just two days ago or
5 three days ago, a call went to Weld County on 911 because all
6 calls in Weld County go to Greeley, then have to go to Boulder
7 to be dispatched to us . The fella told me this morning it was
8 25 minutes and our fire house is a half mile from his house.
9 There was a glitch somewhere . I 'm sure we can work those
10 problems out, but until we address all the problems and get
11 things working properly, we really need to know how much we
12 want to tax the infrastructure of areas like that . If there ' s
13 any other questions?
14 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any other questions for
15 Mr. Hopp? Thank you Conrad. We will break and return at
16 7 : 30 .
17 (A break was taken. )
18 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Would you please take your seats .
19 We will reconvene and let the record show all five
20 Commissioners are present. The next person on our list is
21 Diane Aites . And then Jan England will be next.
22 MS . AITES : My name is Diane Aites . I live at 4919
23 Weld County Road 24-3/4 . I am located approximately one mile
24 from the proposed prison facility. I 've lived at my residence
25 for 20 years . If the Commissioners vote yes on this issue, I
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1 will see the secured fence and the high-powered lights burning
2 all night long and you will not. I will constantly worry
3 about my safety and the safety of my family. You will not.
4 I will feel the depreciating value of my property. You will
5 not. I will awaken to sounds in the night, not knowing what
6 or whom has made them. I ask the members of the commission to
7 walk in my shoes today and if you do, I 'm sure your vote will
8 be, "We Will Not. " Thank you very much.
9 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any questions for Ms .
10 Aites? Jan England. And then Frank Canapa.
11 MS . ENGLAND: I 'm Jan England. I live at 4879 Weld
12 County Road 24-3/4 , which is nine-tenths of a mile from the
13 proposed site. I 'm Diane ' s next door neighbor to the west.
14 I 've lived there for almost 14 years and I 'm a property owner.
15 And I strongly feel that this pre-parole prison would strongly
16 affect my quality of life. I want to talk about property
17 values and perceptive property values . I agree with all the
18 other points that other people have made, but I ' ll hold it to
19 that subject .
20 When I moved from the city to this area, I knew it
21 would change. Fourteen years ago there was one gas station,
22 no eating establishments . I guess there was the one . It was
23 a farming community. I knew it would change, grow, hopefully
24 in positive ways . After the first newspaper article appeared
25 in Longmont in April , I was talking to my folks and I
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1 mentioned the possibility of this facility to them. And my
2 dad said, "Oops, " he said, "look out for your neighborhood and
3 your property values to go to pot. " I asked him what that
4 meant because we 'd been told at the Budget Host Motel meeting
5 April 26th the very opposite of those things; that our
6 property values would probably maintain a level, even improve,
7 there wouldn' t be any safety problems for our neighborhood.
8 So I asked him to explain. And he said when he was a young
9 child his dad, my grandfather, told him that there was very
10 little hope for the east side of Topeka. I 'm from Topeka,
11 Kansas . And the reason being, there was a facility there, a
12 big ugly fenced structure that was a boys reform school . It' s
13 now a women' s prison. That' s about four miles from my family
14 farm. And I 'd like to share with you, in the red folder there
15 on the left side are some reproductions of pictures I asked my
16 dad to take and send to me. The top right corner is that
17 facility, and that' s as close as one can get to take pictures
18 because it ' s fenced and the guards won' t let you drive any
19 closer to that. The other three pictures on that page are of
20 surrounding area. It' s a depressed area, low income housing,
21 kind of trashy ugly areas, if you will . By contrast, on the
22 right flap there of the red folder, is the west side of
23 Topeka, Kansas . And there ' s a recent newspaper article there,
24 that was November 14th. And very briefly, it shows just an
25 awful lot of activity, it' s all on the west side. There' s a
194
1 huge mall there, above average housing, good schools . Now,
2 that doesn' t prove anything and no one can predict that the
3 same thing might happen in the Del Camino area . No one can
4 say that it will not.
5 If this prison, pre-parole prison is a viable
6 business, a good thing to do, let ' s do it. But let' s put it
7 somewhere more appropriate, I would say. More appropriate in
8 a community that needs and wants it, that could thrive with
9 its existence. It seems to me there is an overwhelming amount
10 of evidence that everyone has presented. You can see for
11 yourself, if you will, the evidence points out that we don' t
12 think it ' s good for our community. It ' s not, in our opinion,
13 good for I-25 corridor, for the area, for the community, for
14 southwest Weld County. We just don' t want it there . I don't
15 want it there. As a property owner, I don' t want to look out
16 my window and see something that might be like the pictures on
17 the left side there. Thank you.
18 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Thank you and are there any
19 questions for Ms . England? Frank Canapa. Just a moment,
20 Frank, after we get through with your presentation, we will go
21 to those that signed up. Is David Schwind in the audience?
22 All right, you will be next .
23 MR. CANAPA: Good evening. I recognize that it ' s
24 been a fairly long day for everyone. On the other hand, I
25 think a couple issues need to be identified. We have some
195
1 facts here. I think if, as you receive the documentation that
2 I have provided, you' ll see some information that I was able
3 to receive from the Department of Corrections down in Canon
4 City in terms of how they project prisoner population. We
5 used November 1992 because that was the information that he
6 said that he had compiled and so forth. And what I did was,
7 if you take a look at this information, it basically
8 classifies the inmate population; total number of admissions
9 or expected admissions, for the month of November 1992 . And
10 then I went to a law library, which was an effort in itself
11 for someone who doesn't, who' s not a lawyer, and basically
12 spent hours turning through the Colorado Revised Statutes of
13 saying, gee if you' re a class one offender what does that
14 really mean, what did you have to do to get there? So I 'd
15 like you to kind of hold this information off to one side so
16 that you can refer back to it as we go through my presentation
17 this afternoon.
18 I think one of the key issues that needs to be
19 addressed, this morning we were addressed as if we weren' t
20 patient with people and we weren' t prepared to give people a
21 fair chance and all those types of things . This is a study
22 that was done by the Department of Corrections in 1989 and
23 this was the conclusion. And if you go back through there,
24 about 50% of all the inmates that are in prison, these are
25 felonious offenders, convicted, all of those types of things .
196
1 Half of them are there because they committed the felony for
2 which they are in prison while they were on parole, on
3 probation or in community corrections . So we have a legal
4 system here that' s basically said, hey we've given you one
5 chance, obviously you didn't learn your lesson because you
6 came back again. So it ' s a situation where, and I 've listened
7 to the presentations of the proponents of this particular
8 facility and I 've heard statements that only 17% of the
9 inmates in the correction facility or in the prison system are
10 eligible for pre-parole. And I 'm like, okay guys , if we go
11 back here, which 17%? If you look down at the bottom, and we
12 go through these numbers and we say, okay, which 17% but also
13 recognize the fact that of the 17% you get, half of them are
14 already on their second tour. So, I mean, let ' s not confuse
15 ourselves about what this situation is all about.
16 As we move forward, I think we have to look at what
17 the Colorado Revised Statutes has to say. And again, I 'm not
18 an attorney. I took this verbatim from the CRS statutes and
19 so forth and it says here what can go into a minimum security
20 facility. And this is the neat part -- they use the term
21 facility. In the RFP that was referred to by the proponents,
22 the terminology "rehabilitation center" , the word
23 rehabilitation is not in this document and if you ' re familiar
24 with RFP' s you know that this is the basis for which you state
25 your business case to respond and so forth. But that
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1 terminology "rehabilitation" is not in that document. It may
2 be implied or whatever the case may be. And the term "center"
3 is not used. As you can see here, they use the term
4 "offender" and if you go through the proposal, they don' t talk
5 about them as residents, they don't talk about them as
6 patients, they would use the word "inmates and offenders" . So
7 if there ' s any confusion in your mind about what this thing
8 really is, it ' s a prison.
9 Again, referring back to the RFP, what is the
10 objective of pre-parole facilities? And I will leave this
11 copy with you for your review. A stated objective and program
12 goal, goal number one: to expand prison capacity. Real clear.
13 What are the objectives to get inmates out of Canon City so
14 that we have effectively more beds available. So we go
15 through this thing and we say, who can go to a minimum
16 security facility? It' s right there. If you spend six months
17 or more in a higher security area or facility at any point in
18 time, you can be assigned to a minimum security facility. And
19 that' s what this thing is, with one exception. If the state
20 comes back and we have these three individuals, these are the
21 diagnostics folks, who say Joe Bob' s not a bad guy, he really
22 doesn' t need to stay in a higher level security facility for
23 six months, we can send him to minimum security if we all
24 agree on it . Now, what does that mean to The Villa? There is
25 a clause in here, in the RFP that basically says and this is
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1 part of the response and you are bound by this response if you
2 submit a proposal, and I ' ll read it verbatim: "The contractor
3 may not unreasonably refuse to accept any offender assigned to
4 the facility. " Not any patient, any offender assigned to the
5 facility. So in the RFP you say, congratulations, because
6 I 've submitted the RFP there' s a clause in here that says you
7 agree to be bound by the terms and conditions in the RFP. We
8 also have a state statute that says at any time I can send any
9 person to a minimum security facility as long as we satisfy
10 those conditions and The Villa, according to this RFP, cannot
11 refuse. Significant issues . Ma'am?
12 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I just have a question that if
13 they cannot send them after six months unless they go on
14 parole because they have to be on parole in order to go to
15 this? Is that not right?
16 MR. CANAPA: The RFP says that you can' t
17 unreasonably refuse to accept any offender assigned to the
18 facility. That ' s what the RFP says, Ma ' am.
19 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I ' ll wait until Mr. Coppom has
20 his rebuttal, would you make a note of that and answer my
21 question?
22 MR. CANAPA: And then the state, in the RFP, states
23 that they expect people to stay there between 90 and 180 days .
24 But you know as well as I do situations change, there ' s
25 legislative fiat, Governor Romer has an agenda that he ' s
199
1 trying to drive, so you change the rules to fit what your
2 moods are at any given point in time.
3 We talked about it as a rehabilitation center and
4 everything else. I think the semantics here are fairly clear
5 based on the objectives we're here to expand the number of
6 beds in the corrections system. That ' s stated here and I ' ll
7 leave this information with your attorney.
8 Let ' s take a look at some of the other facts because
9 we've been accused of being too emotional and not having the
10 facts . And I 'm not an emotional individual, you probably can
11 tell . State Senator Bill Owen quoted, "Colorado imprisons
12 only 38 felons for 1,000 serious offenses" , so now all of
13 this , Ma' am?
14 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Just a minute. We're going to
15 stick to the fact of whether this is right for this area.
16 We' re not going to go through the state bills because we have
17 no control over those bills .
18 MR. CANAPA: Absolutely, and I agree with you. I
19 think my point here, Ma ' am, is the fact, number one is this a
20 prison facility or is it a rehabilitation center? And I 'm
21 trying to prove a point that there shouldn' t be any
22 misconception of what this really is . It ' s a secured
23 facility. It ' s locked down, that type of thing. I will honor
24 that request.
25 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I ' ll ask legal counsel to keep us
200
1 on track, will you do that for us Lee?
2 MR. MORRISON: Sure. I think that Mr. Canapa has
3 heard what you said and he will try and tie what he presents
4 into that.
5 MR. CANAPA: I will do that. So we have some facts
6 about what ' s going on in the state and I ' ll let you read those
7 on your own. Okay. What does this mean to Weld County?
8 Number one, the state has identified early on as a condition
9 in the RFP that says, at the request of the pre-parole staff,
10 you could pull an inmate, an offender, out of the pre-parole
11 facility and transfer them to a local jail, has an impact on
12 Weld County and the impact supersedes the Del Camino area.
13 Statement number two: who ' s assigned to this
14 facility? Basically it says any inmate that doesn' t qualify
15 for community corrections . The proponents referred to the
16 people upstairs in community corrections that have in-out
17 privileges to this building and that nobody should be
18 concerned and everything else. They also said, gee you have
19 a facility down the street which is the Weld County Jail,
20 which is more towards maximum security, okay. But in a
21 maximum security facility like the Weld County Jail, when you
22 lock down you have two inmates per cell, and you can lock the
23 door and they're stuck and the inmates can' t have access or
24 they have extremely limited access to one another during a
25 lock-down situation. When you look at this particular
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1 facility you have 36 guys in one room. Now, I 'm a high school
2 teacher. I 've taught in some fairly severe schools in
3 California that had bad reputations and all those types of
4 things, taking care of 20 high school kids is a handful for
5 one person. And I 'm going to take 36 and as many as 50
6 inmates in a single room where they bunk together, there' s no
7 privacy. When you lock them down, you lock 36 people
8 together. You haven' t signed up for that in the Weld County
9 Jail, you say isolate them two at a time. Boulder County
10 facility is the same way, because of the types of offenders
11 they have and everything else. We have this impression that
12 this is really a country club, that you know, we go to school
13 and in the RFP they mandate that it ' s 12 weeks of classes, 5
14 days a week, 8 hours a day and everything else. It' s all
15 mandated in the RFP. So we go through and we look at this and
16 one of the key issues is, and this is the state requirement,
17 that the community knowledgeably approves of the facility
18 located in their area. And that ' s verbatim out of this RFP.
19 Ladies and gentlemen, it' s really difficult for me
20 when we have somewhere on the order of 1, 800 plus signatures
21 of people in the community, you 've had business people up here
22 saying we' re not convinced this is the right thing to do. The
23 Tri-Area Planning Board, the Mead Town Council, your own
24 Planning Commission has come back and said we don't support
25 this . That' s one of the requisites of the state on this
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1 proposal and it ' s stated there in black and white.
2 The other thing is the transportation issue .
3 Secured vehicle, the RFP states two daily trips from two to
4 four inmates and everything else. There will be inmates out
5 on the public highways . No two ways about it, they will be
6 secured. The question you have to ask yourself is if this is
7 really a rehabilitation center, why do we have two fences
8 which are buried below grade, why are the inmates restrained,
9 why do we have lock down, all of those types of things , if
10 this really isn' t a prison and that ' s exactly what it is .
11 A couple of other things we need to address and
12 these are the factors that you have to address . Number one,
13 the developers do not have a contract. There is an implied
14 agreement on the Joint Budget Committee that says if you can
15 get all of this approved in Weld County, yeah we ' ll send you
16 prisoners . But as far as I 'm concerned, this is like buying
17 a piece of property and telling your real estate agent, here' s
18 the home I want, four bedrooms, 2-1/2 baths , family room, the
19 whole go round and your real estate agent signs a contract for
20 you and calls you up and says I found a perfect home for you,
21 we 've got a contract on it and everything else, and you
22 haven' t seen it. Because there is not a contract with the
23 state and an RFP is basically the basis for a contract, but
24 any RFP as the county purchasing folks will tell you, it' s
25 open for negotiation. That ' s the point from which you begin
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1 negotiating. So you ' re in a position now, you're being asked
2 to approve something where you don't have all the details . We
3 heard the thing, we ' ll set up a relationship with the Longmont
4 Swat Team. Yeah, we ' ll get that, oh, you want this type of
5 restriction, oh, we ' ll negotiate that into the contract. And
6 my question is how can you sign up for something when you
7 don' t know what the hard and fast terms and conditions are?
8 That ' s just good business .
9 The second thing is Kathy gave a presentation about
10 the concerns about the financial viability of this type of
11 project . One-third of them have failed.
12 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I don't think that ' s a problem
13 for us . I mean, that ' s the pre-parole facility, their
14 corporation' s problem, I don't
15 MR. CANAPA: But it ' s different than a business,
16 Ma ' am. Because the facility is there and it ' s designed to do
17 one thing. So what happens if that facility financially is
18 not viable. And I 'm not talking about the risk that the
19 shareholders assume. A couple of different things that can
20 happen. Somebody else comes in and runs it under a new
21 contract, the state comes in and takes it over, or it sits
22 there idle like the ones down in Texas did. But it ' s
23 something that, as you go through your evaluation, you ' re in
24 a position to say if I construct this thing tomorrow, the
25 depreciable life on any type of building under the IRS laws is
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1 20 years . You have to look at your decision as being, if I
2 make the decision today, it ' s going to have an impact for a
3 minimum of the next 20 years . And my response is , but you
4 don' t have all the facts to make that decision, so how can you
5 approve this? There' s overwhelming opposition in the
6 community. I find it, and I 'm kind of flabbergasted for a
7 lack of a better term, that the majority, if not all of the
8 people, and I lost count, who came up here and said what a
9 great idea this was for Weld County, the closest one is about
10 11 miles away. If I lived 11 miles away, it ' s like the
11 landfill down in Erie. I 'm 9 miles from it. It' s a non-issue
12 for me. But I know the people in Erie are suffering with it.
13 If I lived 11 miles away up in Berthoud or if I lived on 26th
14 Avenue in Greeley this would be a non-issue for me because my
15 perspective is when Ault decided to pursue the prison
16 facility, I said obviously the people in Ault must be in favor
17 of it because they appear to be determined to make that
18 happen. You go through this process and you say that there ' s
19 overwhelming opposition -- 1,900 residents, you have the map
20 in front of you and you' re saying the precedence of one 56-
21 acre option, doesn't even own the property, takes precedence
22 over square miles of people that are opposed to this, who have
23 been long-time residents of the community. And I think that
24 needs to be considered. I think there is a key issue here,
25 and again the attorneys have touched on it and I ' ll let them
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1 wrestle with that, it ' s not a rehabilitation center, it' s not
2 a hospital . They' re inmates , they're offenders . By any way,
3 shape or form of the imagination, this is a prison facility
4 and you've already heard our attorney speak that prison
5 facilities are not a listed use for this area and it requires
6 a change of zoning.
7 Okay, the on-going issue of police and fire, you 've
8 heard all of that. And the key thing is, Mr. Brand made a
9 statement down at the Tri-Area Planning Commission, that
10 approximately 60% of the inmates in this facility will be from
11 Denver-metro. If you take a look at Denver-metro, three
12 different occasions they have voted this thing out. Recently
13 with Lowery Air Force Base, they were talking about putting
14 the youth detention facility there and people said it will
15 impact rent . We've got Colorado University Medical Center
16 ready to take over some of the space and they said if you put
17 it in there it' s not going to happen. The other thing is
18 there is a facility that was shown on 9-News last week, a
19 facility that' s already constructed in Denver, it doesn' t have
20 an inmate in it.
21 Other factors . We talked about the economic
22 development. Colorado Business Magazine, the first statement
23 is by a Department of Corrections official who said you can' t
24 print my name because it will put me out of a job. And we 've
25 already experienced that where the pressure is flowing
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1 downhill from Capitol Hill that basically says you need to be
2 real careful if you're a state employee about talking against
3 this particular issue. But you have a prison official who
4 says, hey it ' s not going to be an economic boom especially if
5 there ' s no place for the employees to live. The average
6 salary $25, 000, maybe $30,000 a year. The average price of a
7 home down in that area is well in excess of $100,000 . Those
8 people can't afford to live there and I think the proponents
9 alluded to the fact where would your employees come from --
10 Larimer County, Boulder, Longmont, Northglenn, Thornton. One
11 of the gentlemen came back, yeah and maybe some from Frederick
12 and Dacono. But they've already identified the issue that
13 says the majority of the people are not going to live in Weld
14 County. Yeah, there' ll be a couple of folks that come from
15 Greeley, but I 'm going to tell you what, on $25 , 000 a year,
16 the commuting costs are significant.
17 We talk about the housing rates . The Town of
18 Florence where the Federal Correction Institute is or facility
19 is, they actively pursued that facility, as did Buena Vista,
20 as did Delta, as did Limon, as did Ordway. The community went
21 out and pursued it. In Florence they had bake sales to buy
22 the land for the Federal Government to build the facility on.
23 And my position here is, as much as Florence had the
24 opportunity to embrace having a prison facility built in their
25 community, I think the people in southwest Weld County who
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1 live by this facility also should have the opportunity to say
2 no, we don' t think it ' s in our best interest. It works both
3 ways . There was a statement in the Denver Post or in the
4 Longmont Times Call that says, from one of the prison
5 facilities that says, if this prison is not pursued in Weld
6 County, I guess we' ll have to go to a rural community that
7 really wants it. And the proponents are sitting there saying
8 we want it in Weld County because it' s to our benefit, because
9 it ' s easier for us to manage it even though Canon City said
10 we ' ll take it in a heartbeat. They have the full
11 infrastructure in place.
12 We talk about some of the other factors here, about
13 the bidding process . We talked about, gee, $100, 000 a year in
14 revenue to Weld County businesses . Two dollars and 50 cents
15 a day for 400 employees over 300 days, you start doing the
16 math and it' s really insignificant in terms of the amount of
17 revenue relative to the total amount of risk that the county' s
18 going to be asked to assume and the residents in the area are
19 going to be asked to assume.
20 And then the last statement, as far as I 'm
21 concerned, who knows about prison towns more so than the
22 people down in Canon City, is Steve Thacker who says don' t be
23 fooled, prison may be overstated in terms of its salvation.
24 We talk about 110 jobs, but when you go through, and I called
25 the folks down with the Texas State Department of Corrections
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1 and I said, how many people do they really employ? And they
2 said a lot of the services they contract out for. They
3 contract out to somebody like MTC in Ogden to come in and
4 design and build and teach the training courses .
5 So I think if you take a look at, or the conclusion
6 that I 've made is I don' t think all the facts are there. I 've
7 given you what I deemed to be the facts . The proponents have
8 given you what they deemed to be the facts . But the key
9 question is, if you don't have a contract with all the terms
10 and conditions identified, how can you sign up for this? If
11 you look beyond all the political forces that play down in
12 Denver with Governor Romer and his agenda, the Department of
13 Corrections who are saying our number one agenda with this RFP
14 is we ' re running out of beds in Canon City, we don't want to
15 go through the fight of going into communities and generating
16 support for this . We ' ll let private firms take the risk and
17 in this proposal it states that they will grant a $60, 000
18 interest-free loan to a developer to go through the entire
19 process that we 've gone over the last six months . This is not
20 an altruistic agenda, believe me. There' s a lot of political
21 force at play behind this, and I think if you objectively sit
22 down and look at all of these things, I 'm not questioning the
23 integrity of the proponents . I will question the motivations
24 of the Department of Corrections, but then again that' s their
25 job, and never lose sight of that fact, but I think if you go
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1 through this and you say basically how come we approved this
2 when we don' t know what the final contract looks like. It ' s
3 a prison facility. They cannot unreasonably refuse to accept
4 any inmate assigned by the Department of Corrections . And I
5 think you have to vote no on that basis . Any questions,
6 please?
7 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Any questions for Mr. Canapa?
8 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: How many people live in
9 those blue areas on that map? Do you have that number?
10 MR. CANAPA: In the blue areas? 300 to 400, I don' t
11 know. I mean, the thing is, I have a proponent standing here
12 in front of me that says my 56 acres is more important than
13 the three sections , four sections equivalent there to there .
14 That ' s the issue. Mr. Kahn, who I spoke to on the phone says,
15 well if I lived in your area I might feel differently. He
16 owns about 10, 12 acres down there right below this facility.
17 He' s an attorney, where does he live? He lives in Denver. So
18 if you want to talk about not in my backyard, that ' s what
19 basically Mr. Kahn said to me. He said, you know, you can' t
20 build all these things in Denver. And I said well why not, if
21 60% of the inmates are from Denver. Visitation issues, civil
22 rights issues, access, all of those kinds of things, if you
23 built it in Denver where you have public transportation. Help
24 me. You have people here that own a considerable amount of
25 property that they would like to develop in the future, and I
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1 think that' s a key issue. No one here has stood up in front
2 of you that said I 'm against any growth in the area and
3 everything else. Flatirons is there, Specialty Products is
4 there, employs 65-70 people, has a super nice facility.
5 Hauser Chemical built a facility. You didn' t see 200 people
6 take time out of a full day of work to come up here and say we
7 don't want Hauser in there, we don't want Specialty in there,
8 we don' t want Texaco to knock it down and build a new station,
9 we don't want McDonald' s . The people understand, but that
10 corridor is going to be developed, but I think there has to be
11 a degree of sensitivity to the type of development that ' s
12 going to go on in that area. And based on this , where you
13 don' t have the terms and conditions detailed. Buy your house
14 without a contract, it ' s illegal . And what I 'm saying here is
15 why buy this without a contract? There is no contract in
16 place with the state today. Anything else? Thank you.
17 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: We have Dave Schwind next. Then
18 Sandy Ingram should be ready. Again, I want to bring your
19 attention to this pamphlet where it instructs you to be sure
20 that whatever you say is relevant and that they should not be
21 repetitious . If you believe what somebody else has said,
22 would you just agree with that person, referencing what they
23 said and not elaborate on it. Thank you.
24 MR. SCHWIND: Chairman Harbert and fellow
25 Commissioners , my name is Dave Schwind. I 'm with the
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1 Prudential and part owner of Prudential Real Estate office in
2 Longmont. I live at 17890 Weld County Road 5 . My residence
3 is six, seven miles north of the property. I have family
4 members that own property, two different family members that
5 own property within approximately 1/2 mile of this project.
6 I had looked at this map a little while ago and the
7 map is showing property owners that ' s just primarily to the
8 east of the site that you' re talking. Now I personally know
9 there' s people here that lives to the west and to the north
10 that' s not included on this map.
11 MR. MORRISON: Excuse me, which map are we talking
12 about?
13 MR. SCHWIND: This little map right here that.
14 MR. MORRISON: The one that is 6F.
15 MR. SCHWIND: The pink is the facility that you' re
16 talking about and all the blue is basically people to the east
17 of it. I 'm not a polished speaker and I didn' t come here
18 today to speak. I came to hear what everybody had to say.
19 And speaking as a lay person, I heard people trying to talk
20 about definitions of institutions and all this kind of stuff
21 and really, no matter how you cut it, if you see a facility of
22 a chain link fence or barbed wire or that type of thing, to me
23 it ' s a prison. And to the eyes, it becomes a perception, and
24 to the eyes of people looking for real estate it' s still a
25 prison. We had also heard some people talk about the facility
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1 in Fort Collins and a facility in Boulder. And we also heard
2 Mr. Dyer talk about the facility in Longmont. These are
3 county or city justice centers that house police departments .
4 As you drive by these facilities you may see 20, 30 police
5 cars there. We're talking about a private facility here where
6 we may see one Weld County Sheriff ' s car, maybe a mile away at
7 the fire district. I think we' re talking about two different
8 type of facilities . The one in Fort Collins, I 'm familiar
9 with that. That is in a development area. The lady that had
10 talked about it, they are the developers of the property and
11 they are leasing and selling those properties . And when you
12 have a city facility there, such as in Boulder where they have
13 a development nearby, those are pretty secure facilities .
14 When you talk about property values, and this is the area that
15 I feel pretty comfortable in talking about. If we just kind
16 of back up a number of years, I 've been in this business a
17 long time. Years and years ago when we started talking about
18 the racetrack that was going to be there on 1-25 just north of
19 this property, there was a tremendous amount of speculation
20 going on. And at that time, the activity in the Del Camino
21 area just skyrocketed. It was kind of like the oil booms .
22 And all of a sudden when the racetrack didn' t go, there was a
23 lot of people that speculated and made some major purchases
24 and found that their purchases was purely speculative and
25 their values went downhill . To coincide along with that, as
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1 you know what' s happened to our economy, our economy went
2 right down the tubes along with the oil boom. And if you
3 start talking about Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, all of us is
4 really affected by oil-type prices . And I think that alone
5 had inspired some of these towns in Texas to show some
6 interest in some of these facilities because they needed to
7 develop an economic base. We have had some organizations that
8 speculated, when we start talking the Del Camino area, they
9 were looking at what kind of growth is there going to be,
10 how' s it going to just go out of hand? I remember I sat at
11 meetings that were property owners had gotten together with
12 various planners and those planners had come to the Weld
13 County Commissioners at that time and presented their program
14 of how they thought that area ought to develop. And I believe
15 some of that was incorporated in your Comprehensive Plan.
16 The sanitation district was formed primarily to help
17 that area develop and at the time that they had formed that,
18 the economy was going downhill . Probably the timing wasn' t
19 quite what it should have been for them, and financially I
20 think that they' re in kind of a tough shape. This would
21 certainly give a good boost to them if this were to go in.
22 We've heard from businesses in the area that are
23 saying that yeah, they' re in favor of it. And again you have
24 to look at the type of business that it is . You know, it' s a
25 service business that will definitely benefit by the traffic
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1 that ' s coming there. The people that they serve primarily at
2 this point in time, is people that' s traveling up and down the
3 interstate . Their realm of growth is somewhat limited unless
4 the area were to grow, and for a facility like this, it would
5 certainly benefit them.
6 In a real estate business it ' s kind of a fickle
7 business when we start talking about property values . In the
8 last year and a half we've seen our property values really
9 appreciate quite rapidly. One of the reasons is because of
10 the interest rates being down more people can qualify for
11 larger amount of monies . People can qualify for homes they
12 couldn't in the past, and people just keep moving up in value.
13 When we go to list a property, one of the questions that we
14 have to ask people is do you know of anything that' s going to
15 affect your property values in the future. And at this point
16 in time, all of the residents in this area is going to have
17 to, if they' re looking at wanting to sell their property,
18 they' re going to have to say, yeah there is something that may
19 affect our property value, that there may be a correctional
20 facility, a prison, an institution, whatever you want to call
21 it, is going to be up the road. It ' s going to be two miles,
22 three miles, five miles away. It ' s going to have some effect.
23 And then when we have some buyers that' s coming in, we ' re
24 going to have to disclose to those people that there is a
25 facility there, whatever you want to call it. And the first
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1 thing, if I were to ask you, would you be interested in buying
2 a property located next or near a facility like this, probably
3 deep down out of your heart you'd say, well no, I wouldn' t be
4 interested in buying that. People that' s going to have to
5 sell their property, eventually they're going to have to keep
6 lowering their prices to the point where a buyer would say
7 this is too good of a deal that I can' t pass up. And the
8 point of it is that these values are going to drop. As a
9 result of these property values dropping, the taxes , the
10 property taxes that the county is realizing at this point in
11 time, is also going to drop. And you know, sure you ' re going
12 to receive some dollars in from the facility there as far as
13 property taxes, but I think the damage is going to exceed that
14 and I know that when we start talking about the Town of Mead,
15 the Tri-Town area and the amount of people that has been
16 opposed to this, the question has come up, is it compatible
17 with the area? I would have to think that the amount of
18 people that' s saying no that it is not compatible with the
19 area. That ' s all I have to say, Thank you.
20 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any questions for Mr.
21 Schwind? Sandy Ingram and then Wendy Hoffman, are you
22 available Wendy? Wendy Hoffman. Okay, will you be ready to
23 speak next?
24 MS . INGRAM: My name is Sandy Ingram. I live at
25 7201 Weld County Road 11 . I am three miles south of the
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1 facility. I 'd like to state that I am here representing
2 myself as a citizen and as a spokesman for the members of
3 CRASH which stands for Citizens Rebelling Against Safety
4 Hazards .
5 I 'm here to state that I 'm opposed to allowing
6 another noxious use in southern Weld. This is a trend that ' s
7 developed over the years and it ' s a trend that we have to put
8 a stop to. I see a lot of yellow stickers saying here that we
9 need to vote on the facts . Well here' s a fact, folks . This
10 facility is a noxious use. That ' s the fact of it . A noxious
11 use is not compatible. If it was compatible it wouldn't be a
12 noxious use. Southern Weld once again is taking on Denver' s
13 problems . We have heard that we' ll be housing, in one of our
14 the planning commission meeting, The Villa stated that 60% of
15 the inmates would be coming from Denver, also 60% of the
16 workforce will be coming from Denver. Sounds like it needs to
17 be located in Denver.
18 The Regional Land Use Planning Task Force was formed
19 because of too many noxious uses wanting to locate in southern
20 Weld. Thornton and Northglenn got in on this deal too because
21 they felt the same way. This policy was formed to preserve
22 the agricultural integrity of the area. Later, the Tri-towns ,
23 Frederick, Firestone and Dacono, also came up with an
24 intergovernmental agreement between the townships because they
25 wanted to regulate these noxious uses also and preserve the
217
1 agricultural integrity. And I 'd like to read from that IGA.
2 "Municipalities desire to maintain the rural nature of certain
3 geographical areas which are now characterized by
4 agricultural, non-industrial, residential estate and open
5 spaces environmental integrity of those areas . " Under land
6 use they state, "The municipalities agree to use their best
7 efforts to maintain the character of the area and the
8 adjoining property which is now characterized by agricultural,
9 non-industrial, residential estate and open space land uses .
10 The municipalities further agree each do adopt as part of
11 their Comprehensive Plans policies regulating noxious land
12 uses . "
13 Recreational and environmental planning. The
14 municipalities agree to cooperate with each other and other
15 affected agencies and individuals in the planning of
16 recreational opportunities within the area and planning to
17 maintain and enhance the environmental integrity of the area.
18 This planning shall focus on preserving the aesthetic values
19 and environmental integrity of the area and restricting
20 incompatible land uses which would have a detrimental effect
21 on the recreational, environmental potential of the area.
22 The developmental referral states , "Each
23 municipality further agrees that each such zoning, rezoning,
24 PUD, conditional or special use and subdivision application
25 proposal shall compatible with the rural character currently
218
1 existing in the area. " These boundaries go right up to this
2 facility and I think this is in direct conflict with the Tri-
3 Towns . It ' s not compatible, it' s not in their Comprehensive
4 Plans, it ' s not in their future master plans, and eventually
5 the Tri-Towns will probably be incorporated into this entire
6 area out there.
7 I 'm not going to state everything from the Growth
8 and Preservation Policy, but I do think that one policy here
9 really, truly kind of sums it all up. "Any development which
10 could endanger public health, safety or welfare shall be
11 discouraged. " Due to the number of current proposed uses that
12 have a potential for high negative impact on the region, the
13 area cannot sustain further degradation.
14 This facility does not provide any services to the
15 community. It has a factor on our health, safety and welfare.
16 The area does not have any services to provide back to this
17 facility, so we are not getting any benefit from it. They
18 will have to go to Longmont, they' ll have to go to Denver,
19 they' ll have to go to Boulder. We have no food service
20 vendors out there that can help them. Again, the work force
21 its already stated that it ' s going to come from Denver. We 've
22 got a problem with 119 and anybody that hasn't experienced
23 that interchange yet really should because it' s a real thrill
24 during traffic time. I don't think that we could really
25 propose a facility out here until road improvements are made.
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1 If we 've got people coming up from Denver that have to use
2 119 , and they see what it ' s like, they' re going to say, uh,
3 we're not going use 119, we ' re going to use something else.
4 Well, the next road is 52, so they're going to be using 52 up
5 to service road. Fifty-two is right next in line behind 119
6 for thrills a minute when it comes to rush hour. Either that
7 or they' re going to be using our dirt roads, and I think we' re
8 going to have a definite impact on some of these roads out
9 there. And again, in the Growth and Preservation Policy, it
10 states about impacts on these roads .
11 I 've heard how great this type of facility is for
12 cities . All examples have been given with the business parks
13 are in cities . How will they affect an agricultural
14 community? Or to use Mr. Coppom' s words, "the boondocks"?
15 Ann Garrison' s report addresses cities, nothing in the rural
16 communities . I hear property values on lots, but I 've never
17 heard property values on acreages . Police protection is a
18 real problem out there. Our 911 communications has been
19 termed as a Bermuda Triangle. It has improved recently a
20 little bit, but I talked to the Weld County Sheriff ' s
21 Department and according to him, we have three officers that
22 patrol the area from Berthoud down to the county line, and
23 from county line to county line. If, by chance, there isn't
24 an officer, is on vacation or sick or it ' s his day off, then
25 the officers from the other sectors respond to that sector.
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1 My personal experience, not just once but twice, has been a
2 20-minute response time from the Weld County Sheriff ' s
3 Department. With this type of facility, I feel that this is
4 a very inadequate response time out there. It just won' t
5 happen. In those terms, the burden of police protection is
6 going to fall on Dacono, Frederick, Firestone and Mead. As
7 far as I know, Dacono is the only one with a 24-hour police
8 force right now and these towns cannot sustain the financial
9 impact that that will have on them. Therefore, the tax burden
10 will be on the taxpayers . I don't feel that this should be
11 our burden out there. We're not asking for this facility, but
12 it ' s coming in anyway.
13 In Ann Garrison' s report, if I can read from it, it
14 states on here, we 've been talking about escapees . "The Villa
15 in Greeley has housed more than 1,800 people in 3 . 5 years with
16 10 walk-aways . " This is per John Coppom in 1992 . I 'd like to
17 point out that this facility is going to house 1,800 people in
18 one year, and that ' s based on 386 beds proposed on a 90-day
19 minimum stay.
20 Again, we' re touching on the fire departments and
21 the EMT' s are all volunteers out there. They' re not paid
22 forces . They' re great people, they' ll do their best, but then
23 again we ' re not dealing with paid forces out there. This is
24 a problem. I 've heard about SWAT teams . The nearest SWAT
25 team is 20 minutes away. Loveland' s 30, Greeley' s 45 . I
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1 haven't heard anything about any type of intergovernmental
2 agreements between the Tri-Towns for using any of their
3 agencies .
4 I have a problem with an accountability conflict of
5 the facility. The people making the bucks are making the
6 decisions and if you use Ann Garrison' s report, and facts or
7 figures that I obtained from Dave Owen of the Joint Budget
8 Committee, they' ll be making roughly, if you use the Joint
9 Budget Committee ' s figures, $2 . 25 million a year. If you use
10 Ann Garrison' s report, $3 . 75 million a year. I was also told
11 by Dave Owen that should they decide to raise their prices at
12 any time, that the state doesn' t have to go along with it.
13 They can pull that contract at any time, they don' t have to
14 stick with it. Ann Garrison' s report also talks about this
15 type of facility can work with good management. I think this
16 is where the accountability issue comes in, with good
17 management and making dollars .
18 The Villa will have you believe they are building
19 this facility as a community service, so why haven' t they
20 proposed on giving something back to the community. For
21 recreational districts, we have a water/sewer line project
22 which they will benefit from. About the Tri-Towns, a lot of
23 the business owners along I-25 have gotten together, pooled
24 money and we've had grants turned down, but yet we haven' t
25 heard anything from them. I 've heard nothing to help us
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1 provide a special district for our police, fire, EMT' s . I
2 feel that this just is not compatible and it ' s not in growth
3 of the Tri-Towns and the Tri-Towns will be the ones that are
4 mainly affected here. I would hope that if you do pass this,
5 that there are some very strict regulations put on here
6 because it sounds like the state can do just about anything.
7 Thank you.
8 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any questions for Ms .
9 Ingram?
10 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: What kind of restrictions
11 are you talking about? I have a copy of your letter here, is
12 that what you intended?
13 MS . INGRAM: Pretty much, I would like to see police
14 protection in the area paid for by The Villa. I 'd like to see
15 the employees only coming from Weld County. I would like to
16 see a board of directors govern the place that had basically
17 the power to decide who can come into the facility and who
18 cannot. I 'd like to make sure there are no repeat offenders
19 allowed in. I have a problem with their visitation. I 'd like
20 to see that restricted. I 'd like to see a minimum stay put
21 down. But I 'd like to see $8 per bed be turned back into the
22 area .
23 COMMISSIONER HALL: Can you define for me "noxious
24 use"?
25 MS . INGRAM: A noxious use. I wish I had a
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1 Webster' s Dictionary. One that will have a negative impact on
2 the community. Any other questions?
3 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Wendy Hofmann and then Dave
4 Koehler. Is Dave Koehler in the audience? No, all right . Al
5 Roberts?
6 MS . HOFMANN: Good evening Madam Chairman,
7 Commissioners . My name is Wendy Hofmann. I reside with my
8 husband and three small daughters at 1068 Glendale Circle in
9 the City of Dacono which is approximately 5 miles south of the
10 proposed prison facility. My children attend an independent
11 Montessori school located approximately 2-1/2 miles south of
12 this site. And I work at Carbon Valley Animal Hospital in
13 Firestone which is approximately 3 miles south from this
14 proposed site. I am active in our community, currently
15 serving as the president of the Carbon Valley Chamber of
16 Commerce, Vice-President of the Carbon Valley Parks and
17 Recreation Districts , Finance Commissioner and Parks
18 Commissioner in the City of Dacono, of which I am a council
19 member. Today, I do not stand here before you representing
20 any of these districts . I do not stand before you as an
21 elected official nor as an appointed official . But I stand
22 here before you as a resident of southwest Weld County with
23 grave concerns, and let me reiterate concerns , not fears, as
24 to the future of direction of this area. Because of my close
25 association with these and other government entities , I
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1 believe I come before this commission as a very informed
2 resident possessing a clear understanding of the economic
3 direction in this part of the county. There are many points
4 in today' s presentations that I take issue with. Among them
5 are the safety concerns regarding emergency response times .
6 The communication concerns due to the 911 communication
7 dilemmas and the over-extended budgets of one city, two towns,
8 two fire departments, three police departments , and one
9 ambulance district, all of which have been accused of
10 overtaxing and under-serving the area already. But most
11 importantly to me is the economic impact to this area. It has
12 been stated that this area, or that other areas, have seen an
13 increase in development since siting a prison in their
14 communities . I invite you down to our neck of the woods, to
15 look around. You will see an increase in development, both
16 residential and commercial without a prison sited here, and we
17 will continue to see this trend. Colorado is experiencing an
18 economic boom and our communities sit in the direct path of
19 development . The highway corridor has always been and will
20 always be key to our community growth. It is not seen as a
21 barrier which has been stated in the past presentations .
22 If you take I-25 and I-70, the mousetrap if you
23 will , and draw a 35-mile radius north, south, east and west,
24 north is the only place left to go. The northern I-25
25 corridor is ripe for growth and the small communities such as
225
1 Dacono, Frederick, Firestone, Mead and Del Camino are acutely
2 aware of this fact. All these communities are seeing an
3 impact of the economic rebirth in Colorado. Proposals such as
4 shopping malls, truck stops, hi-tech research and development,
5 industrial and residential projects have been investigated by
6 all of us . The northern I-25 corridor has a tremendous
7 traffic flow. Studies by Decker and Associates, a developer
8 with which the City of Dacono is working, counted 43, 000 cars
9 per day along this stretch of the highway. Ladies and
10 gentlemen, this traffic study was done prior to the Rockies
11 first pitch. Since the inception of major league baseball,
12 those numbers have increased to over 50,000, and quite frankly
13 with the resigning of Andres I think it will go up.
14 These and other strong demographics make investment
15 along this corridor appealing to a wide variety of commercial
16 interests . With the economic upswing in Colorado, our cities
17 and towns can target and choose what kind of development that
18 is sought for this area. I go on record stating today that we
19 have neither targeted nor chosen a prison on our economic
20 agendas . The 1-25 corridor is our bread and butter. It
21 allows us to pursue a broad tax base and shift the tax burden
22 away from the residents . Projects along the I-25 corridor are
23 happening every day. Community leaders are seeking
24 development that will increase the tax base, not burden the
25 tax base in our communities . Cooperation between the three
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1 communities of Dacono, Frederick and Firestone, also known as
2 the Tri-Town, is at an all-time high. We are pursing an
3 aggressive water and sewer project along the I-25 frontage
4 road beginning at Road 24, extending south to Highway 52 and
5 hopefully, continuing south to County Road 8 . Ground was
6 recently broken for an alternative elementary school on Road
7 18 . And soon, expansion of a local church will occur on Road
8 20 . The proposed prison facility is not compatible with these
9 projects . Quite frankly, I cannot understand the logic of a
10 compatibility of a pre-school playground next to barbed wire
11 and eight to ten foot high fences . I ask you to look at this
12 picture here. We've all heard the coin, don't judge a book by
13 its cover. I ask you also not to judge this facility by its
14 landscape and its flowers .
15 This project is not compatible with future projects
16 that are on our agendas . Our communities have been struggling
17 for so long to entice the right kind of developments . We are
18 finally getting the food on our table, and now there are those
19 that want to poison it . Our communities have embraced the
20 fact that times are changing. Southwest Weld has a diverse
21 population of residents that is also changing. I resent the
22 implication of apathy associated with this area. Apathy no
23 longer characterizes the residents of southwest Weld. We have
24 joined together as a unified community to stop the constant
25 undermining of this part of the county. We have had many
227
1 noxious and obnoxious uses presented to us, ranging from
2 landfills, incinerators, injection wells and now even prisons .
3 We say enough is enough. As government officials, you walk a
4 delicate line trying to bring in new growth to our communities
5 without compromising the rural atmosphere and quality of life
6 that we cherish. This commission is my voice on this issue
7 and this commission is the voice of many people in this room
8 on this issue. And as government officials, it is your
9 responsibility to listen to the people. As a fellow elected
10 official, I ask that you not lose sight of who you represent.
11 In closing, let me say that I have sat on your side
12 of the podium and I know what you ' re going through. And I
13 don' t relish your position. To some on this Board, this is
14 the first true test of your political responsibilities since
15 being elected. Let this issue serve as a litmus test, a gauge
16 by which those who have elected you can see your true
17 political intentions . I ask that you not be swayed by various
18 lobbying groups . I ask that you not be swayed by the
19 positions you hold on various committees . I ask that you
20 listen to your constituents . Make us believe that our
21 opinions count and our voices will be heard. I ask that you
22 not ignore the voice of the Tri-Town Planning Commission which
23 voted unanimously for denial of this project. I ask that you
24 not ignore the voice of the Weld County Planning Commission
25 which also recommended denial of this proposal . And I ask
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1 that you not ignore my voice nor the voices in this room.
2 There have been many facts presented here today and you are
3 being asked to vote on the facts . The fact is I am a resident
4 of Weld County. The fact is you represent me. The fact is
5 you represent a majority of the people in this room. And the
6 fact is that the majority of people in this room
7 overwhelmingly oppose this project. It is these facts and
8 these facts alone that should be the ones that you are basing
9 your decision on. Thank you.
10 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any questions? Al
11 Roberts and then June Gordon.
12 MR. ROBERTS: My name is Al Roberts . I live at 3494
13 Fairways Drive and I 'm approximately 7 miles north of the
14 proposed facility. I feel privileged to be following this
15 lady who just spoke. She has presented my opposition and my
16 feelings towards this very well, so I will not repeat anything
17 that has been said. I ask you as my elected representatives
18 to vote no on this proposed facility. Thank you.
19 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Any questions? June Gordon and
20 then Virginia Scheel .
21 MS . GORDON: My name is June Gordon. I live at 5602
22 Southmoor Lane in Englewood, Colorado. I have been tracking
23 the Criminal Justice Commission and pre-parole facilities for
24 7 years . It has been a law for 4 years . The other 3 years,
25 we spent at the legislature, my friends and myself, as unpaid
229
1 citizens caring about our community. We spent down there
2 trying to kill the Criminal Justice Commission and trying not
3 to have a pre-parole facility. There ' s something that I
4 believe that each and every one of us in this room have in
5 common and that is that we would hope that when people break
6 the law, become felons and go into prison, that they come out
7 better than they went in. Rehabilitation, if it exists and I
8 don't know where it does, should be done behind bars, not in
9 our communities . One of the most asked questions that I have
10 heard is where do the clients for pre-parole come from. The
11 most asked question, and I haven' t heard it answered yet, not
12 totally. You have before you some information that I sent to
13 you and it ' s five K' s, KKKKK in your booklets . And one of the
14 things is a copy of House Bill 1212 . And one of the other
15 things that you have is some of the original language, keeping
16 in mind that I 've been tracking pre-parole now since it was
17 even just a thought in someone ' s mind.
18 In this Bill, House Bill 1212 , this is an omnibus
19 bill and most of it came out of the Criminal Justice
20 Commission. The Criminal Justice Commission was a law that
21 was made by the legislators in 1990 and it was the majority of
22 votes on the commission appointed by Governor Roy Romer. So
23 the agenda of the commission is Roy Romer' s . And the agenda
24 is a cap on prisons . There are six bed-emptying levers in
25 this bill, and the most important and the most lucrative is
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1 pre-parole. And so far, it ' s the only one that can' t get on
2 line . And that ' s the reason that the prisons are backing up.
3 The other five bed-emptying levers have been utilized and most
4 of them are expansion, enormous expansions of community
5 sanctions . And when that happens, when you
6 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Talk about just this pre-parole
7 center because that ' s what we're talking about is this one and
8 not what the state wants to happen or what they've passed
9 because it ' s been passed and we have no jurisdiction over
10 that. So will you stick with this pre-parole facility in this
11 place.
12 MS. GORDON: In order for me to stick to the pre-
13 parole facility I must answer the question, where do the
14 clients for pre-parole come from. In order to answer that
15 question I have to continue with what I was saying, Madam
16 Chairman. Is that okay?
17 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Well , I think we can ask the
18 applicant at the end of this where they' re coming. I ' ll make
19 a note of that to ask that question.
20 MS. GORDON: I 'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
21 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: We will ask the applicant. If
22 you want that question answered, we will ask the applicant at
23 the end of this .
24 MS . GORDON: The applicant answered the question and
25 he answered it, as far as I 'm concerned, for all the studies
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1 that I 've done, it ' s not true. I 'm about to tell you where
2 they really come from.
3 MR. MORRISON: That and the five other systems, if
4 you've got it. Well if you get to the description of the type
5 of clientele that are there,
6 MS. GORDON: I 'm trying.
7 MR. MORRISON: I think that ' s, well, it' s a long
8 road.
9 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Your comments need to be relevant
10 to this pre-parole prison in this place.
11 MS . GORDON: Okay, when an enormous number of
12 people, because of the expansion of community sanctions, are
13 diverted from the courts the people who get into the hard beds
14 in prison are much more hard-core, much more dangerous and
15 more repeat offenders . So the population of the prisons ,
16 since 1990, has changed. Ninety-five percent of everybody in
17 the prison are plea bargained, so who is violent and who is
18 non-violent is hard to tell . The people that would have gone
19 in on Class 6 ' s and Class 5 felonies have been diverted to the
20 community. The people who cannot get through a community
21 correction screening board are the most dangerous segment of
22 the population in Canon City that there is . And these are the
23 people that they want to put through this facility. And it ' s
24 90 to 120 days before parole eligibility. We have
25 jurisdiction over good time in the State of Colorado, you can
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1 keep them in years and years and years . You also have, I get
2 this every single month, this is parole-eligible people. The
3 way I used to get it four years ago, there were 250 people on
4 this list . Now it ' s between 500 and 700 people. They
5 released, with the guidelines they had, approximately 40% .
6 That leaves 60% of the people in the prison population that
7 cannot, that have been refused parole, and of that 60%, many,
8 many, many of them cannot get into community corrections .
9 Now, you have the part of the population that are eligible for
10 pre-parole. And in order to get more than 40% paroled, more
11 than 40% parole dates, they have in this bill that I have
12 given you, that you have before you, 3-1/2 pages of softened
13 guidelines . The day that that facility gets on-line, that
14 pre-parole facility, these guidelines kick in and the
15 percentage goes from 40% to 65% parole dates . Meanwhile, you
16 have that huge segment in the prison that are also eligible
17 for pre-parole . That' s where the people come from. They are
18 the most dangerous people in the system. They have been
19 refused parole, they are before their parole dates and every
20 effort shall be made to put them into community corrections
21 and if they can't get through a community corrections
22 screening board, watch out because they have rapists and they
23 have murderers , they have armed robbers . Some day you ought
24 to go to some of these halfway houses that they have, the
25 community correction facilities and see who can get through a
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1 board, and try to remember who can' t.
2 And not only that, but four years ago the population of
3 the prisons of the population percentage was one in four were
4 sex offenders in the hard beds in the State of Colorado. One
5 in four were sex offenders four years ago. With the
6 diversions, that number is much higher; it' s higher than 25% .
7 The violent people are an enormous section of the population
8 and 95% of them are pled down, we don't know how many are
9 really dangerous . And this facility is not just dangerous to
10 Weld County, it isn' t just dangerous to Del Camino. It is
11 dangerous to the whole State of Colorado. It is the singular
12 lever that is going to empty the beds in Canon City and it ' s
13 going to put a cap on the prisons . And when the question was
14 asked by Ms . Barbara Kirkmeyer, when Barbara Kirkmeyer asked
15 the question, is there any way that you can guarantee us a 90-
16 day program, the answer, it wasn' t answered at all . It was
17 danced around. And the reason, of course is, that number one
18 they have no contract, and number two when you have that
19 population, that 60% that' s been turned down that ' s in Canon
20 City, and somebody here said it was going to be 1,600 or 1, 800
21 people that are going to be going through this community,
22 forget it. That ' s the tip of the iceberg. If they ever get
23 started, you ' re going to have people in there for two days,
24 one day. You think that ' s expensive? What' s expensive is
25 building prisons . That ' s what they think is expensive, and
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1 keeping people in prison is expensive. Not putting them into
2 that facility for two days and then shipping them out to
3 Denver or Del Camino if that happens to be where they live, or
4 Greeley, if that happens to be where they live. Thank you.
5 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any questions for Ms .
6 Gordon? We will have Virginia Scheel and then M.D. Hopper.
7 Is M.D. Hopper in the audience?
8 MS . SCHEEL: Good evening. I am Virginia Scheel
9 and I live at 2331 C Street NW. I 'm a Weld County resident.
10 I 'd like to bring to you some facts tonight on pre-parole.
11 You see with crime on the rise in Colorado and our nation, we
12 meet here today to decide on a pre-parole facility. A
13 facility to early release hard-core, long-term criminals who
14 cannot get through a community corrections screening board,
15 have regressed from community corrections, or parole
16 violators . This is what pre-parole is . The House Bill is
17 where I got this information from. Pre-parole does not fit
18 the PUD for Del Camino. When pre-parole releases, with crime
19 increasing faster than law enforcement officers can solve the
20 crimes, pre-parole wants to dump more problems out on our
21 streets . With a return rate of 85-90% which was stated in the
22 Greeley Tribune, a parolee' s going back to the prison system
23 for the same crimes they were released for. It' s time to stop
24 all this crime and violence and it begins here today with you,
25 our County Commissioners . We are not hysterical or emotional
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1 citizens who are here today. We are here today with facts .
2 We are not naive about pre-parole.
3 If this facility could be 100% safe, it' s the felons
4 who will be released through pre-parole that we are concerned
5 about. I could probably talk for a long time because I have
6 so much information, but I will cut it short. I have been
7 gathering facts and information since July of ' 92 when I first
8 found out that pre-parole may be wanting to establish on O
9 Street. I hope to bring to you some facts today to help you
10 make a decision for denial of the facility.
11 The applicants have spoke at the Planning and Zoning
12 meeting about the success of pre-parole in Texas . It wasn' t
13 talked about today. I would like to tell you a little bit
14 about Texas pre-parole. Texas, unfortunately, has four pre-
15 parole facilities : Venus, with a population of 414 people;
16 Kyle with 1,629 ; Bridgeport with 3, 614 people and; Cleveland,
17 the largest city with 5, 600, give or take a few in all of
18 these cities . They were dying oil towns when they lost their
19 oil resources . Pre-parole was their only means . I would like
20 to share with you today some very alarming facts . In 1992 ,
21 Texas paroled 67 death-row inmates . Yes, I said 67 death-row
22 inmates . As of April 28, 1993 , two of these death-row inmates
23 were still missing. They don't know of their whereabouts .
24 There are 6 ,000 fugitives in Houston alone; 26 ,000 fugitives
25 throughout the State of Texas , all are felons, many very
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1 dangerous felons who have walked away from parole officers .
2 Each officer is assigned 80 parolees to watch. They cannot
3 keep track of all of them. Texas releases 70 parolees every
4 day. Police officers cannot handle the load. The people are
5 outraged about this . They have formed a volunteer squad
6 called the Zebra Squad to help fight the rising crime.
7 Kenneth Allen McDuff, one of Texas ' most notorious criminals,
8 who is extremely vicious and was sentenced to die, was paroled
9 despite public outcry. He kidnapped, raped a 15-year old
10 girl, killed her and two teenaged boys in Rosebud, Texas . He
11 was paroled in 1989 . Seven months later, paroled, you guessed
12 it, he went back after more teenagers, he went back to prison.
13 Released again in two months . He is now back in prison for
14 the same crime. My point is rehabilitation in prison doesn't
15 work. Parole doesn' t work. Don' t we, as citizens, have any
16 rights to be protected from felons who are being paroled? Do
17 we want this in Colorado? The applicant was speaking about
18 the pre
19 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: We have no jurisdiction over
20 whether people are paroled or not. I mean, I realize that
21 probably there' s many that shouldn't or should or what have
22 you, but we don' t have any jurisdiction over that. So we need
23 to stick with this parole facility at this site.
24 MS . SCHEEL: But pre-parole is releasing. This is
25 what I 'm getting at. I 'm speaking here today, not in favor of
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1 it. When speaking about the pre-parole facility, emphasis had
2 been put on the landscaping and structure of the building and
3 has stated that it will have a school-house look. It is not
4 the landscaping and school-house look we are concerned about .
5 Our main concern is the type of inmates that will be housed
6 there and released from there.
7 House Bill 90, 1327 , page 11, I think probably you
8 have one, Section 17 , I ' ll leave all that, tells us of the
9 type of inmates . Would you like me to read what it tells the
10 type of inmates that will be going in there?
11 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I think we have a copy of that
12 and all of us have read it.
13 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Here ' s three of them.
14 MS. SCHEEL: You've read it. All right. Well , I do
15 not consider these types of inmates that are stated in this
16 House Bill to be minimum security. Safety is our number one
17 concern. One life lost to a parolee is not worth this
18 facility. Escape is a concern that our own Weld County Jail,
19 supposedly escape-proof, has had escapes . Our main concern is
20 when the inmates are released to live in our towns , work and
21 possibly attend our educational facilities for more job
22 training. House Bill 1327 , on page 5 states in the process of
23 enrolling in and maintaining academic courses and vocational
24 programs and in utilizing resources of the community after
25 release. We could have these felons attending Aims and UNC.
238
1 There is no such facility down at Del Camino. Do you want
2 your sons and daughters in the same classrooms?
3 It' s not safe to go into a donut shop in Colorado,
4 here. A parolee tried to kill this young woman, not once but
5 twice. We've all read about it, it just happened recently.
6 On September 12 , 1993, the Greeley Tribune ran an article
7 where Senator Phil Panke that said the prison program is
8 having a return rate of inmates after parole of 85-90% and the
9 inmates released who have not been back are 65 years or older.
10 Pre-parole' s purpose is to release inmates, drop our
11 overcrowding in the Colorado prisons . With 85-90% returning,
12 this is not emptying beds . Pre-parole is nothing but a
13 revolving door facility.
14 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: I 'd like to ask a question.
15 I was, I guess trying to put this together what you' re saying
16 here, how this possibly, whether or not this particular pre-
17 parole facility was approved, and you stories are, I agree
18 they' re horrendous . But how would that affect those, I mean
19 those people were paroled. The fact of whether this is
20 constructed or not doesn' t have any bearing on whether they' re
21 paroled or not. Or this won' t change the parole practices in
22 the State of Colorado.
23 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: That' s what I 'm trying to, no, it
24 won' t. And you also mentioned that they would be attending
25 classes . This is a secure facility, if they attend classes,
239
1 it will be within the walls from what I understand. So it
2 wouldn' t be that they would be attending Aims or going to
3 donut shops in the area.
4 MS . SCHEEL: I said they could. The House Bill
5 states that they could attend classes after release from the
6 facility. That' s what I said. After release, for more job
7 training.
8 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: But, they would be released to
9 their own community, not to the Del Camino or necessarily the
10 Weld County area. It depends on where they come from. All
11 prisoners are released to their own community, from where the
12 crime was committed.
13 MS. SCHEEL: I know that, but the applicant lives
14 here in Greeley, so he ' s not going to go all over the State of
15 Colorado to get them in different educational facilities . You
16 Weld County Commissioners are about to vote today on a very
17 adverse issue. Please take into consideration the facts of
18 the concerned citizens who you are representing. Your
19 decision should be for the majority of the Weld County
20 citizens, keeping in mind a state contract has not yet been
21 issued. Without knowing what is in the contract, how can
22 anyone vote on such a vital issue? We are asking for you to
23 deny this facility.
24 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any questions for Ms .
25 Scheel? M.D. Hopper and then Kathy Oliver, are you in the
240
1 audience?
2 MR. HOPPER: I 'm Marvin Hopper. I live at 3656 Weld
3 County Road 20-1/2 . That is just a mile south of the Del
4 Camino on the west service road. I have a concern about the,
5 not about the inmates or the facility. My concern is the
6 visitors to the inmates on visiting day. If we 've got 400
7 beds in there, and if you have half of the visitors coming
8 that day, you 've got say 200 visitors, the area is not
9 conducive to that much traffic at this point. What I have
10 here for the school district, I went to St. Vrain School
11 District. The superintendent had asked that I use only the
12 facts of which I give, I mean he has given me. Over 100
13 children pass through that intersection daily for school bus .
14 And these are anywhere from grade school up through the
15 seniors . And most of them are dropped off in this area. And
16 approximately 1, 800 activity busses, which is like football,
17 basketball, wrestling, pass through this intersection. The
18 only ones that don' t pass through there are the ones that go
19 to Boulder. Everything else, even if they go to Ft. Collins,
20 they come out, get on the interstate and go north in order to
21 bypass Highway 287 through the towns of Berthoud, Loveland and
22 that area. And then on the return, it' s always a good place
23 to stop, grab you a hamburger. Sometimes you' ll have an extra
24 100 kids off at what I call the Big Three: McDonalds, Burger
25 King and Taco Bell . And as well , there are nearly as many
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1 visiting teams coming to town and they had come through the
2 same access point. On their return they stop. And it ' s the
3 friends that are up there visiting, the only reason they're
4 not in is cause they didn't get caught. So the friends are in
5 the neighborhood and it ' s not a conducive atmosphere.
6 I don' t know whether you've been down there at that
7 intersection. We spend, we' ll walk down there just to have an
8 ice cream cone sometimes . But that, the Big Three, McDonalds,
9 Burger King, is becoming a very populated place for a hangout .
10 Also last night I called the Burger King. I talked to the
11 night manager. It was about 9 : 00 last night. And I talked to
12 Taco Bell night manager and I talked to McDonalds ' night
13 manager. And I told them what I was looking at was for the
14 teenagers that work there. And at McDonalds they have 12 to
15 15 teenagers work on the night shift, and they usually get off
16 about 11 : 00 . At Burger King, there' s 9 to 10 per night shift.
17 And at Taco Bell there ' s 8 to 12 per night shift . And this is
18 what is my concern for the area. The people who will be
19 coming visiting and all this population of the teenagers in
20 the area. That' s it. Thank you.
21 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any questions for Mr.
22 Hopper?
23 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: I 'd just make the statement
24 that I don' t think its fair to put that kind of a stigma on
25 people who go visit inmates . I mean, personally, I myself
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1 have gone and visited an inmate and I don't think I 'm a bad
2 person to be around.
3 MR. HOPPER: Well, as you' ll notice, I put in here,
4 the buddies, not family, not members of the family.
5 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Could you tell me, where in
6 here, where is the visitation? Do you know what the
7 visitation is at the site?
8 MR. HOPPER: It was stated earlier today that it
9 would be on Saturdays .
10 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I missed that.
11 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: On Saturdays only, or
12 MR. HOPPER: That' s the only date that I heard
13 today.
14 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Kathy Oliver and then Chris
15 Wagner. Is Chris Wagner in the audience?
16 MS. OLIVER: My name is Kathy Oliver. I live at
17 4465 Pioneer Drive in Greeley. My sister and I own 3/4
18 sections that are a mile and a half west of the proposed site.
19 I 'm here to state my opposition to this proposal and I 've
20 deleted quite a bit of what I would have said because it' s
21 already been covered.
22 I oppose this proposal for basically two reasons ,
23 the first being that it ' s a violation of citizens ' right to
24 due process of law, the second being that on your green sheet
25 here, item number 3, it states that the uses, buildings and
243
1 structures which would be permitted shall be compatible with
2 the existing or future development of the surrounding area as
3 permitted by the existing zoning and with the future
4 development as projected by the Comprehensive Plan or Master
5 Plans of affected municipalities .
6 This proposal is incompatible with existing and
7 future development. It should be built where land is not
8 likely to come to a higher or better use. Let ' s look at this
9 one particular fact. Perception is a fact. When I say Canon
10 City, what do you think? The pre-parole prison is proposed at
11 a high-profile site designed to dominate the image and
12 identity of the Del Camino area. The Del Camino image, thus
13 created, conflicts with development already existing in the
14 area as well as future development. The Greeley Tribune
15 repeatedly refers to Del Camino as a prime growth area in Weld
16 County. This proposed use is incompatible with that fact . Is
17 it appropriate to foster the location of a pre-parole prison
18 at the primary gateway to such a growth area? I find myself
19 pondering questions that perhaps we should consider. Why does
20 The Villa seek such a high profile site adjacent to I-25, when
21 other equally effective locations can be had even within the
22 same sewer district and equally adjacent to services? Why did
23 The Villa repeatedly state that they would not go where the
24 citizens do not want the pre-parole prison? What other
25 statements have The Villa made that they are preparing to take
244
1 back?
2 I wonder why the citizens of Weld County should have
3 to accept pre-parolees not acceptable in community pre-parole
4 facilities? Why should well-to-do, affluent, urban
5 individuals control the quality of life of decent property-
6 owning tax-paying rural citizens? Are Weld County people
7 outside the Greeley/Evans area to be treated as second class
8 citizens destined to shoulder the burden of failure in
9 Greeley, Denver, or wherever else in our state? And even yet,
10 without due process of law? The Villa needs to accept the
11 invitation of one of the communities Mr. Coppom told us about
12 today. Mr. Coppom, in his statement this morning, said he has
13 received several such invitations . Since there are other
14 sites seeking this facility, I urge The Villa to locate on one
15 of those sites . Thank you. Are there questions?
16 COMMISSIONER HALL: Could you explain to me what
17 you' re saying when you' re saying when you' re saying due
18 process of law?
19 MS. OLIVER: When I say that the proposal is without
20 due process of law, it' s because the PUD does not state this
21 use . So what really needs to happen is they need to go back
22 and amend the PUD. By going this route, it disenfranchises
23 all the citizens of that area.
24 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: You made the statement
25 about other locations in this area are in the same sanitation
245
1 district?
2 MS. OLIVER: Right.
3 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Where would those be?
4 MS . OLIVER: This particular site was offered by Bob
5 Siegrist who was told that it was not high profile enough.
6 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: It would still be in close
7 proximity to all the blue areas; however
8 MS . OLIVER: It ' s not predominant, it' s not so
9 visible, it ' s not so controlling to the image of the area.
10 MR. MORRISON: The party is indicating Lot 027 on
11 Exhibit 6F. It ' s parcel number 027 in the southeast quadrant.
12 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: I understand your contention
13 would be that these same people who represent in this area
14 would not be opposed if it was over there, and they are
15 opposed if it' s over here. Is that really what you' re saying?
16 MS . OLIVER: I don' t know that that would relieve
17 anyone. I don' t know if that would relieve all of the
18 opposition, but my point is that the location, on a high
19 profile site, adjacent to I-25 is very dominating. It creates
20 an image that, I think would be pretty hard to defeat.
21 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any other questions for
22 Ms . Oliver? Thank you. Chris Wagner and then Larry Abbott.
23 Is Larry Abbott in the audience? Larry Abbott.
24 MR. WAGNER: Good evening. My name is Chris Wagner.
25 My address is 4652 Weld County Road 28, Longmont. My house is
246
1 approximately one mile straight north of this proposed site.
2 I farm on two sides of this proposed site . On the north side
3 there' s pasture that I 've put cattle on. On this very east
4 side of this, their property line, I farm that 140 acres for
5 corn. I 'd just like to tell you that even though the
6 landlords aren't here, and they took a neutral position, I
7 take 100% opposition to this facility being built there. I
8 also would like to tell you that I was born and raised a mile
9 from this facility, 34 years now, so that' s just some of my
10 background. Thank you.
11 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Thank you, Chris . Are there any
12 questions for Mr. Wagner? Okay, Larry Abbott and then Doris
13 Huffaker. Is Doris Huffaker in the audience?
14 MR. ABBOTT: My name is Larry Abbott. I live at
15 5825 Weld County Road Number 22 . I 'm approximately 2 miles
16 from the facility, proposed facility.
17 What I wish to address is I am for the growth of the
18 corridor. I think by the fact that they' re putting that type
19 of facility and that' s too valuable real estate, that' s too
20 good of real estate for that. That corridor should be used
21 for good retail or a factory, something that produces
22 paychecks and sales tax and all the things that go with that .
23 What concerns me is the fact that since there is no other
24 commercial development in that quarter section, that the first
25 unit that goes in there is going to set the pace for future
247
1 development that' s nearby. I don't think that the facility,
2 pre-parole facility is the right kind of facility. I think we
3 need to look long and hard, especially at this point in time
4 when real estate values are up, we've got a volatile market
5 where people are looking at this land. I 'm sure they are
6 looking at this land here in other places . So that ' s what I
7 would charge you Commissioners with looking long and hard at
8 this because the impact is forever.
9 And one of my other major concerns is that these
10 people are going through an awful lot of time and expense for
11 a 386-bed facility. That concerns me. What concerns me more
12 than 386 beds is what their future plans are, their future
13 growth. Because if they ever get established there and they
14 wish to expand, you can't tell them no. If they' re a viable
15 industry, no matter what impact they cause on the area, if
16 they' re there it' s going to be awfully hard for you to tell
17 them no, you can' t expand. And that ' s what I see, is
18 expansion. They have signed up to use something like 22 acres
19 of this proposed 55 acres or something like that. I 'm
20 concerned what they have planned for the balance of that land
21 and I haven't heard that. Thank you, that' s all I have to
22 say. Any questions?
23 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any questions for Mr.
24 Abbott? Okay, Doris Huffaker. I believe you' re the last one
25 to speak.
248
1 MS . HUFFAKER: My name is Doris Huffaker and we live
2 at 11096 Road 17 , Longmont, and the south end of our property
3 is on Weld County Road 24 . So you must realize that I will be
4 facing driving past, back and forth this facility twice a day,
5 every day as I work in Longmont, and it is between me and
6 Longmont to get there. I think what you need to realize is
7 that when my husband and I first bought this property, it ' s
8 going on 30 years now, we had moved out here from Los Angeles
9 and we had left all those people behind because we had both
10 been raised in agricultural areas . And we knew that becoming
11 married and being ready to establish a family, we did not with
12 to raise them in an area such as Los Angeles , a large populous
13 area. We moved to Denver and we looked for one year to find
14 the perfect land. We had our choice. We could choose
15 anything. I must tell you, had there been a pre-parole prison
16 facility there, we would not have bought there. We had a
17 choice at that time. Now they are attempting to take our
18 choice away. They wish to say we' re going to come there
19 whether you want us or not. We don' t want them. We lived
20 there and we raised our four children. There were a lot of
21 activities around there that was great for the kids . They
22 played baseball, they built baseball diamonds , they fished for
23 crawdads, I had 18 years of Cub Scout and Campfire Girl work
24 that I put into there and it was a good place to raise
25 children. I cannot say that it will be a good place if you
249
1 get a prison parole in there.
2 I also must tell you that I have to be accused of
3 being against growth. I would rather see it as it was 30
4 years ago. We had a choice also of purchasing some property
5 right off of Weld County, no it' s right on the borderline,
6 Highway 7 . And we thought, no, that will grow too fast, we' ll
7 go farther north, it won' t grow as fast. And Del Camino has
8 outgrown everything. We sure chose wrong. I thought maybe I-
9 25 would keep the growth west of I-25 . It' s not doing that,
10 it ' s now jumped east. So we are, and I don' t care what our
11 land values go to, I don' t wish to see them escalate, but I
12 don' t wish to see them de-escalate also. I don' t want to make
13 a million dollars . I just want to live peacefully. I want to
14 live in an area that ' s nice and quiet where I ' ve planted all
15 my trees and I 've gardened and I 've really made this place
16 grow. In another couple years, my husband and I are talking
17 about retiring. If this goes in, we will not retire there,
18 and that was our idea. We are building this place, we are
19 setting it up to retire in. But it won' t be there if it goes
20 in. We will be gone.
21 The next thing I ask you is, in the few years past,
22 the Weld County Commissioners passed a law here and it was
23 that no longer would they allow all this haphazard building in
24 the County of Weld County because it was considered one of the
25 four largest agricultural counties in the United States . This
250
1 was their money and they wished to keep it as such, so all
2 building was to be kept within the inhabited areas . You guys
3 sure messed up at Del Camino. It is a mess . I mean, that
4 place has gone crazy with eateries and gas stations and
5 everything else. As I say, when we first went there, there
6 was one gas station and one restaurant. And that was all they
7 needed. You ' re not keeping to what you were trying for in the
8 agricultural community. In your seal you have, over half of
9 it shows agricultural emblems and you are not doing that when
10 you keep allowing anything to go in there. I 've not fought
11 any of the other growth and I won' t, even though it ' s travel
12 trailers and everything else that has nothing to do with
13 agriculture, but when it comes to a pre-parole or a prison or
14 a detention, no matter what along those lines, it' s totally
15 incompatible. And I vote no on it. Thank you.
16 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Any questions?
17 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: First of all, I can' t speak
18 for the actions of past or previous Commissioners, and second
19 of all I ' d like to know if you could reference the law you
20 spoke about because I don't know where that' s at.
21 MS . HUFFAKER: It was a thing they passed, it ' s been
22 10, 15 years ago that if you were going to build on a piece of
23 property, you had to have 80 acres of irrigated land to get a
24 building permit for; or if it were unirrigated land, it had to
25 be 160 acres or to get your building permit, you had to be, is
251
1 that not correct, you had to be in an inhabited area. And
2 since there were 30 some inhabited areas , those were where
3 they were going to try to keep the building. Because there
4 were too many farmers who thought, well I can make some money
5 here, I ' ll subdivide my farm and make this money and leave.
6 And they were seeing all the farms dying out. And so this is
7 when it was passed. And it ' s been 15 years or so ago .
8 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: I don' t know if that was
9 necessarily a law, but it basically sounds like some of the
10 policies and goals that were developed in the Weld County
11 Comprehensive Plan.
12 MS . HUFFAKER: And is it not still a good policy?
13 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Since that time, obviously,
14 see this is our Zoning Ordinance and there are other policies
15 and ordinances that we have to follow.
16 MR. MORRISON: I think
17 MS. HUFFAKER: I think that
18 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Did you have a comment?
19 MR. MORRISON: I just wanted to, the fact that I 'm
20 silent on this doesn't mean I agree with her interpretation of
21 the law. Some of that, if there' s a mixture of the Comp Plan
22 policies and the minimum lot size requirements, in the
23 agricultural zone but none of those prohibit application for
24 development. It discouraged breaking lots up over 35 acres
25 and less than 80, or 160 acres , but
252
1 MS. HUFFAKER: And the intent was to keep it in
2 agricultural, correct?
3 MR. MORRISON: Well, I think that' s correct in terms
4 of that particular provision, but it' s not an absolute
5 prohibition against creating a Planned Unit Development or
6 subdivision. Since then there have been amendments in the
7 Comprehensive Plan that have been discussed today that apply
8 specifically to the Del Camino area.
9 MS. HUFFAKER: Well, I have to tell you, I know from
10 a fact in dealing with Greeley, that what goes for Greeley is
11 one thing and what goes for Weld County is something
12 different. I do know of another law that was passed and that
13 was that they would not allow, now how did that go? They
14 would not allow another residence to be put upon the land
15 unless it was for a farming help. A trailer, that was it, a
16 mobile home to be put upon the land unless it was specifically
17 for farm help. We had people across the road from us who put
18 a mobile home.
19 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I really don' t think this is
20 relevant to
21 MS . HUFFAKER: No, but it goes back to how you
22 people make these, you make these stipulations and then you
23 don' t keep them.
24 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Well , I think you have to realize
25 that, you know, at least every eight years the Board changes
253
1 totally. It changes partially every 4 years usually. So, you
2 know, what a Board of Commissioners did 10, 15, 20 years ago,
3 may have been changed many times by the Commissioners that
4 have come after them. And if you would like to purchase one
5 of our Planning and Zoning Ordinances, they are available at
6 the Planning Department and so is the Comprehensive Plan and
7 the Subdivision Ordinance. And that would bring you up to
8 date as to what our policies and procedures are today.
9 MS . HUFFAKER: And you ' re telling me you no longer
10 wish to pursue the agricultural part?
11 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I 'm not saying that. I 'm just
12 saying that if you want to know what they are today, these
13 documents here will inform you of that.
14 MS . HUFFAKER: Well, as I stated earlier, I can only
15 tell you that shouldn' t go in. We bought it because it was
16 agricultural and that was as it was presented to us . We make
17 the choice that should it go in, and even if it doesn' t go in
18 and Del Camino continues to expand as it has , it may be enough
19 for us to leave, if it continues growing. Because that was
20 not why we moved out there. My other thing is since this is
21 liked so well by these people, as others have said, why don't
22 they take it to those cities or bring it up here to Greeley,
23 right where there' s so much talent or it' s so close to them.
24 Why doesn' t it come up here?
25 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: I ' d just like to interrupt for
254
1 a second here . I think more pertinent to the point is the
2 fact that the PUD was established by the Commissioners, the
3 committee at the time, and interested individuals in the
4 community. A PUD for Del Camino was established that has all
5 these uses besides agriculture. With the input of the people
6 there, there is industrial, there is commercial which this is,
7 and all those other uses were decided at that time by the
8 people with the input of live that community. So that' s what
9 we ' re looking at now. We' re not really looking at
10 agricultural areas, we're looking at a PUD.
11 MS. HUFFAKER: That is correct and as I did say, I
12 knew those were going in and we did not fight those as we have
13 been fighting this because this is totally, it ' s like 180
14 degrees opposite of what we' re looking for. The others , we
15 can live with, even though they came and we didn' t wish them.
16 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I will say that none of these
17 policy changes or ordinances were made without public hearing.
18 So they were published and public hearings were held on each
19 one of them.
20 MS . HUFFAKER: Probably out of the Greeley paper and
21 there' s a lot of those down there that don' t even read the
22 Greeley paper.
23 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Right now the bid has gone to the
24 Windsor Beacon and
25 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Before that it was the
255
1 Keenesburg New News .
2 MS . HUFFAKER: How about the Longmont paper?
3 Longmont and the Denver Post, maybe that goes statewide.
4 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: If they bid on it, well it had to
5 be bid on by Weld County papers .
6 MS . HUFFAKER: See, that 's what these people have
7 been telling you. We in southeast get lost in everything
8 because
9 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Well, anybody that ' s interested
10 in county regulations as far as ordinances or legal notices is
11 notified in all the papers what the county paper will be for
12 that year and it ' s taken by bid. And so I 'm sure the Longmont
13 paper did advertise that the Windsor Beacon this year would be
14 the official paper of Weld County Government. And it goes out
15 for bid each year with other, and any Weld County paper may
16 bid on it .
17 MS . HUFFAKER: I 'm sorry, I must have missed that
18 and I usually watch my newspaper very closely and I did not
19 see that. But I really don't follow too much what happens in
20 Greeley. As I said, when I had children that I was dealing
21 with, I came to Greeley all the time and I don't now. Thank
22 you.
23 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Madam Chairman, just as a
24 point of clarification, County Commissioners do not make nor
25 do we pass laws; it is our responsibility to enact and enforce
256
1 legislation.
2 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I ' ll get the opinion of my fellow
3 Commissioners here, do you need to stretch or do you want to
4 hear the conclusion of the
5 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Are you going ask if there
6 is anyone else who wants to speak?
7 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Well, I guess . Is there anyone
8 else that wants to speak for or against? I think we've gone
9 through all the cards that were signed up. I will ask if
10 there is anyone else.
11 MS . HOFMANN: Excuse me, for the record,
12 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: You ' ll have to come to the
13 microphone please, and I believe you've already spoken.
14 MS . HOFMANN: Yes, I have.
15 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are you going to speak on
16 anything new?
17 MS. HOFMANN: I 'm going to clarify a point that was
18 brought up. It was stated
19 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Will you state your name, please.
20 MS. HOFMANN: My name is Wendy Hofmann. I am a
21 resident and a council member in the City of Dacono. It was
22 stated prior that it was the belief of one of the speakers up
23 here that Dacono has 24-hour police protection. That has been
24 reduced to a non-24-hour police protection and that has been
25 in place since the 1992 budget has been adopted. Basically it
257
1 was a budget cutback and I think that is something that you,
2 as Commissioners should realize, that that is not a 24-hour
3 police department.
4 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Thank you for that information.
5 Is there anyone else? All right, come forward, please.
6 MS . DePAIVA: I 'm Paula DePaiva from 34 James
7 Circle, Longmont. And I don' t walk in fear, except the fear
8 of the Lord. And all I 've heard in the favor of The Villa was
9 a material gain and a gain in wealth and power and man-made
10 chore. I never saw anybody turning to God and a curriculum
11 based on a relationship with Jesus Christ as the answer to
12 crime. Thank you.
13 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Is there anyone else? Would you
14 like to stretch for a minute? [MULTIPLE COMMENTS] Art, if
15 you don't mind, we are going to take about a 5-minute break,
16 we ' ll make it real quick.
17 (A FIVE-MINUTE BREAK WAS TAKEN)
18 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: We will reconvene. Let the
19 record show that all five Commissioners are present. Mr. Roy.
20 MR. ROY: If you please, My name is Arthur Roy. I 'm
21 an attorney. My office address is 1011 11th Avenue, Greeley,
22 Colorado. I have been asked to represent the developer with
23 respect to this request and most particularly to address the
24 legal issues that have been raised and a few of the factual
25 issues which are in dispute.
258
1 I 'm going to refer to the letter of December 7,
2 1993, which I believe is from Mr. Dahl which is a, very close
3 to a previous letter, I think you received and probably
4 reviewed in October. The first position, legal position taken
5 by the opponents of the project is that the Fort Junction PUD
6 District was abandoned. Let me first say, Mr. Dahl and myself
7 will make statements to you about the law, but I 'm sure you ' ll
8 get your advice from the County Attorney who is best able to
9 advise you concerning these matters and is your counsel .
10 Addressing his letter, however, Fort Junction PUD, as of June
11 of 1993 was declared by your Planning Commission to be a valid
12 and subsisting PUD. There had been a gap of time of
13 approximately three years with no activity with respect to the
14 PUD in terms of review, as contemplated by the ordinances of
15 the county. My understanding is that the ordinances have been
16 amended to accommodate by the three-year review instead of a
17 one-year review. But all of that aside, the Planning
18 Commission has reviewed the PUD and, as of June of 1993, has
19 declared it current pursuant to your own ordinances .
20 The balance of Mr. Dahl ' s argument really turns on
21 one issue. That is, must the word "prison" or other similar
22 term, appear in the uses permitted in C-1, C-2 , C-3, C-4 and
23 I-1? I respectfully submit it does not, and I think the
24 entire Comprehensive Plan and ordinances of the county support
25 that argument. First of all, the argument ignores the
259
1 provision of the Zoning Ordinance 5 . 10 . It was mentioned
2 earlier. 5 . 10 says that the uses listed are representative
3 and are not inclusive. That means to say, that means that the
4 "list" is not an exclusionary list, but is an example list and
5 uses that are similar to and have similar impact, and have
6 similar appearance, whatever, as listed uses, are included.
7 Now, to bolster, the center of his argument centers on the
8 resolution of March 8, 1989 , where then commissioners said
9 uses as listed in the Weld County Zoning Ordinance. And that
10 language is given high meaning by Mr. Dahl .
11 I would submit to you that, and the two
12 Commissioners who signed this Resolution sit, still, on the
13 Commission, that the words 'uses permitted' in those zones
14 could equally have been substituted in terms of what they
15 intended. I think Mr. Dahl and I would both agree that all of
16 the rules that deal with how to interpret this resolution or
17 the Zoning Ordinance, the base rule is we must find the intent
18 of the body who adopted the language. I submit that "uses as
19 listed" which he wishes to have you construe very narrowly,
20 was not intended to be narrowly construed and certainly was
21 not intended to exclude the meaning of Section 5 . 10 of the
22 Zoning Ordinance. And how do I draw that conclusion? I draw
23 that conclusion because this property is in a Mixed Use, I
24 want to get the terms correct, a Mixed Use Development
25 District. It is also a Planned Unit Development and a PUD
260
1 Overlay District, all of which, if you read the purposes and
2 guidelines for those districts is to provide flexibility in
3 planning and zoning in the areas in which those districts
4 exist. The I-25 corridor will develop and it will develop
5 with commercial and industrial facilities adjacent to the
6 highway. This facility is compatible with those uses and this
7 facility is compatible with the uses contemplated in C-1
8 through C-4 and I-1; therefore, is permitted without an
9 amendment to the Zoning Ordinance, or without an amendment to
10 the underlying PUD District.
11 The balance of his argument, and I don' t want to
12 address each issue necessarily, is that they're being denied
13 some sort of due process by virtue of the fact that we are now
14 filing the final plat when they believe the matter should be
15 re-zoned. I have listened to testimony all day. I know very
16 little that could be brought up that would not be brought up
17 in a rezoning matter. All of the issues relevant to the
18 rezoning of this property have been discussed. It' s not a
19 rezoning procedure, but the same issues are addressed by you.
20 And what are those issues? The issue is compatibility with
21 the PUD and compatibility with the surrounding land. And that
22 has been discussed ad nauseam by everyone. The surrounding
23 land is agricultural . The land immediately north is a gravel
24 pit owned by the county. The land immediately to the
25 northeast is a state park. The land to the southwest is a
261
1 Commercial District, and the land to the south and east is
2 agricultural . All of that land is in and near a developing
3 part of the county, namely the I-25 corridor. The uses will
4 change in that corridor over the next few years and those uses
5 will be compatible with this development and this development
6 is compatible with the existing uses .
7 Now, you 've seen the developments in Ft. Collins,
8 you 've seen the developments in Boulder and you 've seen where
9 these facilities have gone in and you've seen the kind of
10 development that occurs around them after they go in. That
11 development is exactly the development that is going to occur
12 on I-25 . And this facility is, if anything, safer than the
13 facilities that were built in Boulder and Ft. Collins . And
14 why do I say safer? County jails are maximum security
15 facilities and in our case we have maximum and medium security
16 facilities . Prisoners are brought in there all times, day and
17 night for all kinds of crimes, with all kinds of problems and
18 they are transported in and out of that facility regularly,
19 either by vehicle or otherwise. They face the possibility of
20 extended incarceration, many of them do. Those that are
21 charged with felonies face the possibility or probability of
22 a long incarceration. This facility involves people arriving
23 once, leaving once, arriving after perhaps a relatively
24 lengthy incarceration, on the brink of being released, not on
25 the brink of being incarcerated, and they will be there for a
262
1 relatively short period of time -- 90 days to 120 days is a
2 relatively short period of time. That' s the last person
3 that ' s likely to be a risk, the last person that ' s likely to
4 break out. And when they are, in fact, released they will not
5 be released to this community, they will be released to their
6 residential community. The facility is safe. It ' s compatible
7 with surrounding land use and according to all of the
8 objective evidence, will have no negative impact on land
9 values . The opposition, the gentleman who' s a realtor from
10 Longmont and runs Prudential Real Estate Agency, rendered the
11 opinion that property values might go down. He is a real
12 estate person, apparently knowledgeable in the field and is
13 entitled to form that kind of an opinion. Laymen probably are
14 not entitled to form that kind of an opinion although they
15 feel that very desperately and very sincerely. The problem
16 is, he didn' t give you one example to bolster the fact that he
17 had for his opinion. All of the examples we have given you,
18 and we have not lacked for examples, are to the contrary, that
19 these facilities can be built adjacent to schools, they can be
20 built adjacent to daycare centers, they can be built adjacent
21 to shopping centers, residential areas, and those residential
22 areas continue to develop, continue to increase in value, and
23 continue to be a safe and pleasant place to live.
24 This facility has a, it ' s sort of its a facility
25 that people would initially react and say I don ' t want it .
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1 And many people that you 've heard from today believe that.
2 They don't want it. Just the sound of it makes it something
3 they don't want . We don' t plan and we don't zone and we don' t
4 govern land use on that kind of a basis .
5 One witness spent a great deal of time talking abut
6 the financial viability of these institutions . I 'm going to
7 leave it to Mr. Coppom to respond to that in some detail
8 because he is much more knowledgeable than I . But this is not
9 a facility that is being built so people will come. We're not
10 plowing up the corn and building a ball field. This facility
11 will not be built unless there is a contract for its use . All
12 of the examples used by that witness involved facilities that
13 were built without contracts and she very clearly stated that
14 to you. In each instance the facilities were built without a
15 contract for housing inmates . That will not occur in this
16 case. There has been no request and no request is
17 contemplated for tax-exempt bond financing. The county will
18 not be a part of the bonding structure as presently
19 contemplated. Regular, I 'm sorry, taxable bonds will be the
20 preferred form of financing and Mr. Coppom can again address
21 that. So the study which she quoted to you at length is
22 accurate. Her representations are accurate. Her facts are
23 not at all good and it ' s not at all relevant to what we are
24 doing here.
25 I would submit that there has been presented to you
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1 at great length, a substantial body of evidence concerning the
2 nature of the surrounding area, concerning the nature of the
3 PUD, concerning the compatibility of this facility to the
4 surrounding land uses , as presently zoned and as we can all
5 anticipate they will be ultimately used. I would respectfully
6 submit to you that you have an obligation to vote yes on this
7 proposal . This proposal is a valid use of an existing Planned
8 Unit Development and is within the scope of that.
9 I need to add one other comment before I quit. And
10 that has to do with the law enforcement authority. Note A on
11 the plat and Note A on the resolution refers to a law
12 enforcement authority. There' s a great deal of concern been
13 expressed by some of the neighbors concerning law enforcement
14 in the area. It ' s our view that that probably is not an
15 appropriate note on a PUD because it has no relationship to
16 use and the performance standards and development standards
17 that the county normally places, and by the way the balance of
18 the performance of the notes do relate to use, this one does
19 not. But that ' s neither here nor there. The county, under
20 the statute relating to law enforcement authorities, is
21 empowered to create such authority, and only you are. We
22 cannot create it, only you can create it. If that note
23 remains a part of the plat we will, prior to filing the final
24 plat, if approved, request the county to form such an
25 authority. It ' s my understanding that the county now believes
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1 that is not good policy, part because of Amendment 1 and the
2 problems of getting funding for these. It' s also my
3 understanding that the county has formed a number of these
4 that have remained unfunded and are not operating. To be
5 viable, the authority would have to include a large area of
6 ground, and I think it was intended that this law enforcement
7 authority could be expanded to include other land, which of
8 course it can be. That can only be done with the consent of
9 the people who own the land, or I 'm sorry, it can only be done
10 after a vote of the neighbors to accept the law enforcement
11 authority and only after a vote on the funding of it, if it ' s
12 to be funded. We have no objection to the formation of such
13 an authority prior to the recording of the final plat if that
14 is what the county continues to require; and if it continues
15 to require it, we will insist that you form one so that the
16 project can go in accordance with all of the terms of the
17 notes of the plat. Other than that note, the notes are
18 acceptable and they have been complied with.
19 With respect to the funding of the roadway, the
20 highway, I read that requirement as making sure the county
21 doesn' t have to do it, it says the developer has to do it. In
22 this case the state is doing all of it, I understand. The
23 developer will have to contribute if that doesn' t remain true.
24 And the developer is prepared to do that.
25 So I submit that all the requirements have been met,
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1 that the zoning PUD uses can be read broadly and not narrowly.
2 I would further submit that the uses that we have proposed, as
3 has been stated, meet the listed uses in terms of
4 rehabilitation centers and that' s institutional facilities as
5 contemplated by the Zoning Ordinance and therefore is
6 permitted, and I would request you vote yes .
7 Mr. Coppom has a few additional remarks .
8 MR. COPPOM: I would like to close, but I would like
9 to clarify a number of issues that were stated. Briefly.
10 Number 1 . In regard to visitors, visitation will only occur
11 on Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning,
12 Sunday afternoon. That means that the population will be
13 divided into fourths; 75 would have visitors . Our experience
14 running a drug treatment program with state offenders as well
15 as other facilities, indicate that only 30% of offenders at
16 any given time have visitors, so it' s 30 times, approximately
17 75, so about, only 21, 25 of the offenders at any given time
18 would have visitors or visitation. Now that doesn' t really
19 put a great number of people into that area, but it does put
20 some in there and I think we've presented evidence to show
21 that visitors create no problems at all to a community.
22 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Could you clarify that for
23 them, so an inmate only basically has one time where he can
24 have visitors, one session?
25 MR. COPPOM: One time a week, that ' s correct.
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1 Either on a Saturday
2 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: So even though there, or is
3 there another four visitation period,
4 MR. COPPOM: It' s different groups .
5 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: The inmate couldn't have
6 four visitations in that week?
7 MR. COPPOM: No, he could not. And also I would
8 point out to you that we are in control of the visitors . We
9 can run criminal checks on them and any visitor that does not
10 meet our criteria is excluded from visitation. And if we find
11 out that there is visitor in the community causing any
12 problems, they can be dropped by us immediately from any sort
13 of visitation in our facility.
14 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: What would make you do a
15 visitor background check?
16 MR. COPPOM: I think that first of all we want to
17 have quality visitors as we do presently in our own drug
18 treatment program. And everyone is going to have to go
19 through a screen for visitation to make sure that it' s a
20 legitimate visit. We don' t want buddies and cronies coming in
21 to visit people. So we are, we are very serious about the
22 type of business that we' re about, the rehabilitation of these
23 offenders, and we' re not going to have cronies coming in and
24 out of the facilities . So generally legitimate family members
25 need to come in to make the visits .
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1 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Will the screening take
2 place at the facility?
3 MR. COPPOM: Yes, it does, prior to, prior to. The
4 offender files a request to have a visitor and then that
5 screening takes place.
6 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: So you don' t wait until the
7 visitor shows up and then screen them?
8 MR. COPPOM: That' s correct. The second point I 'd
9 like to clarify is a point that was made by Frank Canapa who
10 made a, stated a quote out of the RFP. He stated that the
11 contractor may not unreasonably refuse to accept any offender
12 assigned to the facility. I would not second guess him, but
13 the implication was any offender. No, to me it ' s like saying
14 a pre-parole release center can have a non-parolee in there.
15 No, every person coming in to our facility has to have a
16 written, have already met with the parole board, have a
17 written parole release date and it generally would be within
18 90 days on the average of release. He failed, however, to
19 quote another part of an addendum to the RFP, the same RFP.
20 It says this : "The Department of Corrections will have clearly
21 defined policy and eligibility criteria for the placement of
22 offenders in the pre-parole facility and program. The
23 contractor will not be sent offenders who do not meet this
24 criteria. " That is a mutually worked out set of criteria and
25 there is an area where we would disagree with the Department
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1 of Corrections about an offender coming in, and we have a
2 minimum of 24-hour notice of paperwork of who ' s coming in,
3 there is a way to arbitrate someone that we do not want in
4 that facility.
5 Third rebuttal that I 'd like to make has to do with
6 some statements that Kathy Neiley made about spec prisons .
7 And the first part of what she said about speculative prisons,
8 I absolutely agree with and all of those prisons that she
9 quoted in Texas, which were actually more than the six that
10 she mentioned, I have been aware of and have read the
11 literature on and had checked into. And as a matter of fact,
12 Texas was just burgeoning with prisoners and towns, little
13 small towns jumped on the bandwagon thinking that they could
14 build prisons with tax-free bonds and be successful and making
15 money and attract then, of course, business and employees into
16 those towns . They built these prisons on speculation without
17 good design. Most of them were built without even knowing the
18 management of these facilities and then when the Department of
19 Corrections came in and said, oh we' ll use those, absolutely
20 not. They weren' t designed correctly and they didn' t have a
21 management team that could actually run them. So they did go
22 belly-up. And most of them now are beginning to work
23 themselves out. Kathy Neiley stated something very correctly.
24 She said that her sources, and she quoted a source that said,
25 and I quote her, "Investors should insist on firm contracts
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1 before communities themselves get involved with these
2 facilities . " And I can assure you that we are not building on
3 speculation and not one brick will be laid before we sign that
4 contract that will specifically say how our facility will be
5 run, operated, and the length of time that we ' ll have, in
6 terms of some guarantees into the future.
7 In summary, I 'd like to say that we, I believe, have
8 shown compliance with the Weld County Comprehensive Plan and
9 the Weld County Zoning Ordinance. Testimony and evidence has
10 shown that the proposed use fits a commercial definition in
11 accordance with your ordinances . All technical,
12 architectural, and engineering requirements have been
13 satisfied. Extensive, independent evidence and testimony has
14 clearly shown that the proposed land usage, a pre-parole
15 release center is compatible with the adjacent land uses and
16 will not present any community safety issues . This has been
17 shown by over 30 examples, not from Charles Thomas who really
18 is a researcher at the University of Florida and who has been
19 quoted mostly by Ann Garrison but not by us, but by examples
20 taken from Larimer County, from Boulder County, and from 14
21 different states and facilities classified at all levels .
22 These examples demonstrate only positive effects of the
23 development of correctional facilities, specific evidence on
24 these effects are concluded from county jails, state
25 correctional facilities, private pre-parole release centers
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1 and federal correctional institutions . The evidence has shown
2 that correctional facilities do not deter future business,
3 residential development on adjacent properties . They do not
4 adversely affect land values, and present no community safety
5 issues . Anything said to the contrary has been
6 unsubstantiated. No factual evidence was presented to the
7 contrary. This type of facility is needed in the State of
8 Colorado. We have to do a better job of what we ' re doing.
9 I am not going to go off on a tangent, but I would
10 love to share with you what I think are some great
11 achievements in the criminal justice system these days .
12 Unlike, contrary to what Virginia Scheel said, in Monday' s
13 paper the FBI reported a drop in crime again in Colorado. The
14 crime rate in Colorado stayed constant now for the last 12
15 years . But on Monday, we had a report that serious crime
16 dropped 3-1/2% . We are doing some right things . And maybe
17 part of that is longer sentences . You are not looking at a
18 company that buys into a liberal policy of handling offenders .
19 Ours is a serious, severe type, but nevertheless fair type of
20 treatment of offenders . We know that the evidence supports
21 this type of facility to the benefit of Colorado citizens, and
22 to the benefit of fewer victims .
23 You know, as Joe Cox, our next door neighbor, said,
24 an ex-police officer that when we moved into The Villa
25 challenged us and was irate saying how can I live next to a
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1 correctional facility and he stands up here ten years later
2 saying they're better than anything I 've ever had in the
3 neighborhood. We 've had an excellent reputation and most of
4 the opposition has said that. That our reputation has been
5 respected in this community. We are community-minded, and
6 I 've said it over and over and so has Michael Brand. We want
7 to be good neighbors , and we will work out issues with the
8 neighborhood no matter how large that neighborhood is . And we
9 will work in a constructive, positive way to be an asset to a
10 community and particularly, I hope, at Del Camino.
11 I want to thank you for your indulgence. As I said
12 before I think you've been Herculean about your response in
13 listening and your questions and I thank you very much.
14 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any questions for Mr.
15 Coppom?
16 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: Yes, I have one question I
17 don' t know that it' s been completely, adequately answered and
18 that ' s, there was at least the implication made that there are
19 not enough people qualified or whatever in the system to, say,
20 provide enough people to fill this facility who truly meet the
21 criteria. That you 'd have to go deeper into and get people
22 who should not be in this facility and try to classify them
23 differently. You know, I know that we touched on that
24 earlier, but that question was asked and I 'd like your
25 response.
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1 MR. COPPOM: Well the answer to that is untrue, and
2 we have Tom Waters here from the Department of Corrections who
3 could probably answer it better than I could. But we showed
4 you figures : 9 ,270 offenders in the system December 31st of
5 last year and I have figures as recent as November 5th of this
6 year that show in the next four years we' re going to add
7 another 2 ,500 offenders to the prison system. Of those
8 classified within the level that we're talking about, there
9 are more than enough offenders, and in terms of the number of
10 parolees coming out of the system each year, this facility
11 could not begin to handle those that are classified as minimum
12 risk. It is the largest DOC population. Oh, excuse me, what
13 Michael ' s handing me is a note that said, as we pointed out,
14 that the largest increase in the prison population is the non-
15 violent offenders and the drug offenders that are being
16 incarcerated.
17 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: Here ' s what I 'm getting at.
18 You feel that there are now and will be enough people to
19 choose from; that you can pick and choose as to who you will
20 allow in the facility and not have to take those you don' t
21 want?
22 MR. COPPOM: That' s correct . That is correct.
23 Absolutely. As a matter of fact, there is an overflow in the
24 neighborhood of about 800 offenders each year who meet that
25 criteria that we could not handle at an average population of
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1 300 .
2 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I guess the question was also
3 asked by one of the speakers of where do they come from.
4 Could you answer basically where do they come from? I assume
5 they want to know if they come from Canon City or the
6 MR. COPPOM: The implication of the question,
7 because I 've heard it so many times before and, is that our
8 facility would be filled with the rejects from community
9 corrections . It ' s my experience and it should be your
10 experience that community corrections boards are some of the
11 most conservative boards that I have ever worked with. They
12 are composed of district attorneys , police chiefs and lay
13 citizens . Weld County' s community corrections board is
14 probably known to be third or fourth most conservative in the
15 state and I get the figures every month in the number of
16 rejects, the offenders who meet the criteria for community
17 corrections who are referred to our board and they' re
18 rejecting at any given month between 45% and 55% of the
19 offenders referred to our facility, even though they meet the
20 criteria. So to say that people that are being rejected from
21 community corrections are therefore the most violent and the
22 serious is, I think, a gross exaggeration. They are the more
23 serious offenders that our board doesn' t want in our program
24 because we have a waiting list in our program, as you know.
25 I mean our program stays full all the time. We don' t need to
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1 take the more, the offenders that are one grade above the
2 group that we ' re taking right now.
3 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: And to clarify that for the
4 public, your facility at The Villa is considered a community
5 corrections facility.
6 MR. COPPOM: Yes, we have two programs there. One
7 is called the Restitution Center, that is a 78-bed community
8 corrections program. It takes non-violent offenders that all
9 must be accepted through a community corrections board. The
10 other program that we operate there is a 58-bed drug treatment
11 program for felony offenders out of the prison system who meet
12 the same criteria that would come into this facility. And
13 generally speaking, the population that we have in that drug
14 treatment program is the same population as we would have in
15 this pre-parole release center. I would point out the
16 difference is that the one we handle in our residential
17 treatment program are in what we call a closed program, it' s
18 not a locked program. And I am, one escapee, one person that
19 walks away from the facility is not a pleasure. One crime
20 isn' t a pleasure. But we' re in a business in which, I mean,
21 we must realize, I mean, that human behavior is not 100%
22 controllable either. But we 've run 2 ,500 offenders through
23 that program and in that closed program in which the doors are
24 unlocked but there is body management, there ' s been 12 walk-
25 aways out of 2 , 500 offenders . And I believe all of those
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1 walk-aways have been Weld County residents, have they not?
2 All except one parolee. The fact that they were right in the
3 Weld County area, they felt they had some place to go to. One
4 in the Denver group that was leaving our facility. But in
5 five years, law enforcement people will tell you that ' s an
6 extraordinary figure. It really does say something about body
7 management and probably a substantive program that really can
8 keep the offenders working on their specific problem, in this
9 case chemical dependency.
10 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: And did you say that' s an
11 unlocked facility or a locked facility?
12 MR. COPPOM: It' s locked only going into it. It ' s
13 unlocked coming out of it, but it is, in other words, if you
14 were inside and a fire occurred you could get out. And so you
15 could walk out the door. But you couldn' t walk up to the door
16 and walk into it. You have to ring a bell and be admitted.
17 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: But the facility that you're
18 planning, the one we ' re talking about now is a locked
19 facility?
20 MR. COPPOM: That ' s right. The building is secure
21 and
22 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: And they will not come and go and
23 be on a work-release program?
24 MR. COPPOM: That ' s right, it has nothing to do with
25 community at that point. Yeah, the building is secure, the
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1 outer perimeter is secure.
2 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Now there ' s no fencing around
3 The Villa, is that correct?
4 MR. COPPOM: That' s correct.
5 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: There were some other
6 concerns brought up by some of the citizens and I 'd like to
7 hear your rebuttal . First of all, I think you answered this
8 once, what about the insurance? It was brought up that you
9 don' t have insurance, but I thought you said you did.
10 MR. COPPOM: I 'm sure that there ' s been some
11 facility someplace that has been underinsured. But that ' s,
12 our insurance is all state mandated. The state tells us
13 exactly how much insurance we have to cover. And insurance is
14 a very big issue, it' s a very costly issue for us I might tell
15 you. And we do studies every year for that and I 've been
16 involved in many of them and I know what the average loss has
17 been in any of those and there have been very few losses I
18 might tell you. But at the same time we cover, we do carry
19 multi-million dollar coverages just for the sake of
20 protection.
21 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: The other question had to
22 deal with offenders from other states will be permitted at
23 this facility, is that true?
24 MR. COPPOM: I 'd like to have Michael answer that.
25 MR. BRAND: The answer is no, this is strictly a
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1 Colorado Department of Corrections contract for people coming
2 out of Colorado Department of Corrections facilities . There
3 may be some people that are in the program that have a parole
4 destination of some other state and we would have to
5 coordinate that transportation to that, but they were all
6 convicted of crimes and sentenced in Colorado.
7 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Is that part of the statute
8 or part of the mandate that they all have to be sentenced in
9 Colorado?
10 MR. BRAND: That ' s part of the RFP, the enabling
11 legislation wants to deal with Colorado inmates . They' re not
12 going to allow other inmates to come in and absorb their
13 money.
14 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: What about the question for
15 outside management? Is that true?
16 MR. COPPOM: Let me answer that. Not in the sense
17 that it was stated. MTC is Management Training Corporation.
18 It is the largest provider of training for job corps in the
19 nation. It is $167 million dollar a year company located in,
20 near Salt Lake City. We have a minor contract with that
21 company. It is not a management contract and they are not a
22 major player in our facility. But they have an excellent,
23 super program for training of offenders which has been
24 implemented across this country. And as I said, the largest
25 provider of this training for job training in the country.
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1 And we saw what they had, even though we had developed our
2 own, and we really felt that they had a lot of skill in a
3 particular area of that training, not all of the training, but
4 a small area. And so we had talked with them about coming in
5 and providing that one narrow area of training. It doesn't
6 have anything to do with taking over the facility. They have
7 no management decisions in the facility or anything like that.
8 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Then that would probably
9 lead into my question earlier about the employment base and
10 where you see that coming from. Someone answered earlier 25
11 to 30 mile radius, but I 'd like to know what your answer to
12 that would be.
13 MR. COPPOM: Well, you know at The Villa right now,
14 most of our employees come from Greeley and Evans and Kersey,
15 but we do have several employees who come over from Ft.
16 Collins . I think Harry Asmus ' answer was frankly correct, if
17 you take a facility and locate it, you have 110 jobs and
18 they' re fairly good paying jobs, you' re going to have a
19 population base around that facility as you come out, that is
20 going to apply for that position. We' re going to favor, as
21 much as we possibly and reasonably can, because we are
22 committed to the community, to Weld County and the surrounding
23 areas . So there ' s going to be some type of favoritism in
24 terms of that type of employment, but we will get applicants
25 from further away. There will be requirements, however, for
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1 response time. I think that was mentioned before, that within
2 so many minutes, we want to be able to have 35 or 40 staff
3 there. If we have to shake down the facility, for example, if
4 you lose something in the facility, we want to find it. We
5 want, you know, 35 people there and we 're going to shake it
6 down.
7 I would point out that the nuclear plant did close
8 down and we were contacted by the security people there. I
9 think they had 70 security people. Their wages there were
10 very close to the type of wages that we pay for security, and
11 many of those people who lived in the surrounding area, in the
12 small towns up and down 85, want to stay in the security area.
13 Some of those would work out well in a correctional setting,
14 some would not because sometimes you can work better with
15 things than you can with people and you really have to have a
16 certain skill . Every one of our correctional officers will go
17 through a program that is the same as the State Correctional
18 Officer Training Program, so they' ll be professionally trained
19 as correctional officers .
20 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I think you just answered,
21 but the other thing is, are those people that you employ, are
22 they bonded in any way?
23 MR. COPPOM: Every, not only are we required to
24 carry the million dollars liability insurance, we also carry
25 a professional liability insurance so that if any person
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1 conducts business on our behalf in a way that' s unprofessional
2 or whatever, we are also covered a separate type of policy for
3 that and that ' s mandated by the state.
4 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Another comment was made
5 about the state could pull the contract at any time? Do you
6 have a rebuttal for that?
7 MR. COPPOM: I think Tom Waters said that well, I
8 mean, ultimately we have to realize that the state is a God
9 unto itself and it can do an awful lot of things . And we can
10 also sit around wondering what they can do and what if 's and
11 scare ourselves to death. What if they take over my home
12 property and build a prison on it? They can do that, there' s
13 nothing you can do about stopping that . But they're not going
14 to do that in reality. And we know, for example, when the
15 Department of Corrections tried to put, excuse me, the
16 Division of Youth Services, tried to put a correctional
17 facility at Ridge Home last year, the legislators in that area
18 stopped that and I mean there' s some controls built into that.
19 Would they pull the contract? If the state didn' t have money,
20 they could possibly pull the contract, sure they could.
21 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: The other part to add on to
22 that, something was mentioned about giving something back to
23 the community. What do you feel that the pre-release facility
24 gives back to the community?
25 MR. COPPOM: I think that that' s a legitimate
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1 request. As a matter of fact, the lady that listed off many
2 of those statements, there was one, obviously $8 a day would
3 break us, the margin isn' t that good, not even close. But I
4 do think that companies need to participate on a regular basis
5 in the community and give back in certain ways . The Villa
6 does do that. I mean we participate in many activities in the
7 community and you see our names in sponsoring events,
8 including the, well maybe I don' t really want to promote any
9 of those particular charities at this time, but we promote, we
10 do promote and get involved in a number of large financial
11 contributions and promotions of different endeavors in the
12 community. And would we in that area? Absolutely. One of
13 the things that I would like to say, I guess to everybody in
14 here, is that correctional people basically are really good
15 stable people. They're the people that joined the ball clubs
16 and get involved in the different activities of the school,
17 the PTA, they' re really just mainstream, good citizens and
18 they' re very active and that leads back into the facility and
19 that ' s the same at The Villa. I have employees who walk in
20 and say would you sponsor this , would you sponsor that, and we
21 get involved in those sort of things through our employees as
22 well .
23 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: What about the concept of
24 the Community Advisory Board.
25 MR. COPPOM: We believe that that is absolutely
283
1 necessary, that there be formed a representative group of that
2 area and that they meet with us in terms of any community
3 issues or any of the concerns that they have. That goes with
4 everything from lighting to, you know, the traffic or maybe an
5 employee that isn' t really doing something he should do, you
6 know early in the morning over at McDonalds or whatever. We
7 really need to have that type of participation, yes .
8 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: There was another question
9 about the plan for the balance of the land, and I guess
10 basically that means are you looking to expand or what are you
11 going to do with the other 30 acres or whatever is out there?
12 MR. COPPOM: Well, I don' t know if I should say
13 this , on behalf of my partners . We did not ask to buy all of
14 that land. That was part of the deal, so we ended up getting
15 the land. The PUD is only on 22 acres and anything else on
16 the rest of the land has to come, again, before this Board.
17 So there are, I mean, the whole land has to be redeveloped.
18 So our PUD is only on the 22 acres, it' s not on the other part
19 of the land and there would have to be public process for
20 dealing with anything on the rest of that land. Maybe someone
21 in here would like to buy it from us, I don't know. We have
22 no plans at this time.
23 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I believe the rest of that land
24 is in agriculture, is that a fact?
25 MR. COPPOM: No, it ' s not. No.
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1 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Oh, that' s what you 're putting in
2 wheat grass or buffalo grass or something?
3 MR. COPPOM: Yes . The primary part of that land is
4 going to stay agriculture. It' s going to have corn fields in
5 there, I mean they will continue to be planted.
6 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Well, that ' s what I 'm saying, the
7 other 30 acres is in corn now, is it not?
8 MR. COPPOM: That' s right, it ' s in corn, it ' ll stay
9 in corn.
10 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: So, you 're going to lease that
11 out to somebody if you don't sell it?
12 MR. COPPOM: Probably. It ' s under a lease right now
13 and I don't want to say anything publicly at this point
14 because there may be some other people interested in that, but
15 it probably, it will stay in agricultural, in corn or
16 something like that.
17 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: My understanding was that
18 you were going to plant that crested wheat grass .
19 MR. COPPOM: I think that ' s on the back part of the
20 22 acres that is to be controlled. In other words , where the
21 building is at, it ' s that area back around that would not have
22 green grass on it.
23 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: And then are you, is this
24 facility or the site of this facility located in the Mountain
25 View District and do you pay taxes into that district?
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1 MR. COPPOM: Yes, that' s correct.
2 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Do you have any idea what
3 the amount of taxes are that are being collected off of that
4 right now for that district?
5 MR. COPPOM: No I do not . The chief is here, but
6 one of the things I really don' t want to ever speak to is the
7 issue of taxes . I want the tax experts to make those
8 statements rather than us . But the chief is here and he may
9 already know what that is .
10 MR. BRAND: The Mountain View Fire District did an
11 estimate of taxes that would be received as a result of this
12 development, if you want to ask either the chief or the head
13 of the district . They' re both here.
14 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Yes, I 'd like to ask them.
15 I 'd like to know what it is .
16 CHIEF WARD: I 'm Gerry Ward, Mountain View Fire
17 Chief . The estimates that we arrived at was based strictly on
18 the total build-out costs and it would be approximately
19 $15 , 000 to $18, 000 annually would be our estimate based on
20 today' s mill levy for the fire district.
21 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: So if you collected the $15,000
22 to $18,000 a year, would that reduce the levy then to the
23 other taxpayers and contributors to that district?
24 CHIEF WARD: I could not say that that would happen,
25 no.
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1 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: I guess the question, what do
2 you feel like the financial burden for your district would be
3 for this facility? Do you feel this is adequate, that this
4 would put you in a hardship?
5 CHIEF WARD: I don' t think at this point we have
6 enough information to answer that question properly. Right
7 now we ' re dealing with a number that was provided us from the
8 Weld County, Boulder County, Larimer County detention centers
9 which indicates that we may expect approximately 20 calls per
10 year. If those numbers are accurate, then the impact
11 financially is not going to be that large. However, we have
12 to work with the facility managers and so forth, should this
13 be approved, to talk about the appropriate comprehensive
14 emergency planning and so forth that we would require to be
15 assured that our people are safe to enter that property and to
16 take care of any emergency that might be our responsibility.
17 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Okay, then let me just ask
18 you a couple of other questions . There was some questions,
19 whatever, concerns regarding the emergency response time
20 there. I know you sent a letter in to us, I couldn' t find it
21 amongst all this other stuff we 've got. So could you maybe
22 rebut that; they have that you wouldn' t be able to respond.
23 And they are also concerned about the time that it takes to
24 dispatch Mountain View to that area.
25 CHIEF WARD: Our response, our organization is
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1 somewhat of a unique organization in that we have seven fire
2 stations, six of them being all-volunteer and one being a
3 career-staffed group. The career-staffed station is a support
4 for our volunteers because you never know how many you're
5 going to, of course pull, during an emergency. Our station,
6 our closest station is an all-volunteer station that would be
7 approximately a couple of miles away. So they would be first
8 response in. Our back-up career staff comes from County Line
9 Road just south of Highway 119 , so they're going to be fairly
10 close behind our volunteers . Average response time to the
11 facility would probably be in the 15 to 20 minute area
12 depending on the time of day, time of the year and so forth
13 because our volunteers have to leave what they' re doing, come
14 to the station, man the equipment and move. The other
15 question regarding communications, there have certainly been
16 problems in the past, isolated problems in the past with 911 .
17 Our dispatch center again is Boulder County because the
18 majority of our emergency runs or calls come from the Boulder
19 County area. With the enhanced 911 system we've seen an
20 improvement in that, but there are still glitches in the
21 system. In other words, we have noted of 20-minute response
22 delays or dispatch delays because the call didn' t properly go
23 from Weld County to Boulder County; or there was some sort of
24 electronic problem that delayed that call . But, routinely it
25 works pretty well .
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1 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Have your volunteers
2 expressed any concerns about their safety should they have to
3 respond to the facility?
4 CHIEF WARD: No, not to me, they have not.
5 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any other questions?
6 Thank you.
7 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I 've got one for John on the
8 same subject, a little bit, I would expect that this facility
9 would have minimum fire equipment within it, wouldn' t it?
10 MR. COPPOM: I think that ' s something that we ' re
11 willing to work out with the fire district.
12 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Extinguishers, things like
13 that, that would be located there.
14 MR. COPPOM: We're going to be heavily staffed and
15 it is a fully sprinkled building. It ' s fully sprinkled, it
16 meets all the codes .
17 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: I have a followup question.
18 Going back to what we were talking about a minute ago, along
19 with taking people from the community and where you would get
20 them, it also was mentioned where you would buy your input,
21 your supplies and all that, that you would not need to and
22 would not buy them in that area or the county, that they'd
23 probably have to come out of Denver. I 'm just interested in
24 your response to that.
25 MR. COPPOM: Let me say, talk at least in terms of
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1 our present operation, because I think the operation at Del
2 Camino would be almost the same. We made a commitment years
3 ago that we were going to stay in Weld County and the only
4 contract that we have out of Denver that I know of is Nobel-
5 Sysco and Nobel-Sysco keeps begging me because we keep
6 transferring more and more of their business to local
7 establishments . But quite frankly, we get excellent service
8 out of the local people and better, I shouldn' t say, but we
9 get more regular deliveries as well . So we spend in the
10 neighborhood of about $100, 00 a month right now in the local
11 community over and above the salaries, just in terms of food
12 and all the equipment that we buy and that sort of thing. And
13 that ' s the same type of commitment that we would have. If we
14 can get it locally, we ' re going to get it locally and that' s
15 the direction that we would move in.
16 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Another question that was
17 brought up was that you wouldn' t use I-25 as your access
18 route, that you 'd get off earlier and perhaps take Weld County
19 Road 11 and 13 to your site? Do you have a defined access
20 road to the site? In other words, do you have to go I-25 to
21 119?
22 MR. COPPOM: Well, that is the route that we would
23 take. I 'm not sure that there ' s even a reason to take the
24 others . We would have a secure vehicle. That secure vehicle
25 does have communications tied into the state patrol , not
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1 because there ' s a problem or danger, it' s just good management
2 technique to always have those safeguards . We have to have an
3 established route. The best established route, in terms of
4 coverage, is I-25 and it is with, I mean I can' t even envision
5 why the question would be raised. That is the corridor that
6 we would come up and down.
7 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: That kind of leads into another
8 point that was brought up, John, and that is that apparently
9 you were offered some land, and I can' t tell which road that
10 is, the Siegrist land, apparently, but I would assume that you
11 did not choose that because there was not good access?
12 MR. COPPOM: We looked at approximately, and I don' t
13 want to be held to this number, eight, well 8 to 12 different
14 properties in that area. We were shown those properties by
15 local owners who took us on those properties and to my
16 knowledge, all but one of them was willing to sell us that
17 land. We evaluated each of those in terms of the
18 infrastructure and a number of other issues . In one case, we
19 were offered a location, and I guess I feel like if I start
20 talking about those locations, people are going to say, ah, my
21 neighbor is willing to sell that land, or whatever. But one
22 of those locations was on a dirt road within 500 feet of a
23 house that sat across from it. And we felt that those were
24 two negative things ; we didn' t want to be right across from
25 that house and we didn't want to be on a dirt road. And so we
291
1 weighed carefully those different sites and we ended up
2 settling on the site that we thought had the infrastructure
3 that was best suited to remove ourselves from the greatest
4 number of homes , and I think we ' re like 3/4 of a mile from the
5 nearest home where we're located. And I think we have a
6 presentable building that is very non-intrusive. This
7 building, this profile here, actually is an elevated view
8 about 18 feet above the site, but the interstate is actually
9 lower than that area, so when you drive by it, you ' re not
10 going to be looking down on it, you ' re going to be kind of up
11 at it . It really is an excellent site.
12 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any other questions?
13 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: I just have two more
14 questions .
15 MR. COPPOM: I might also, Connie, excuse me
16 Chairman, if I might, some of the other areas we looked at
17 were not in the MUD or a PUD. We had to start right from the
18 beginning, so they' re agricultural .
19 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: The question I asked
20 earlier of the other attorney, Mr. Dahl, and maybe you can
21 answer it, maybe you' re more familiar with this Act, but at
22 any place in this Act and that was 1327 , do they define pre-
23 parole facility as a prison?
24 MR. COPPOM: No. But there is a section in there
25 that I 'm sure you ' re turned to right now that says a pre-
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1 parole release center is, and then it lists it in the next
2 several three or four paragraphs, it says, that say it must
3 have these type of courses . There' s a whole paragraph in
4 there that says these types of programs, and they address
5 specific types of programs that have to be in that pre-parole
6 release center. The very first paragraph that defines the
7 secure facility, defines it generically and then it defines a
8 pre-parole center specifically because it has these type of
9 rehabilitation programs built into it.
10 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Another question that Mrs .
11 Scheel, I believe brought up was that somewhere in this Act
12 she interpreted that they could go to a local community
13 college or that sort of thing. Am I correct that you do not
14 let these pre-parolees out to go to school, that anything they
15 take must be within the walls of that facility?
16 MR. COPPOM: It ' s a totally self-contained building.
17 Even the medical and dental services . Only a major medical
18 emergency would get a person out of there. Heart attack. And
19 then they would be transferred as quickly as possible to the
20 diagnostic medical center on Smith Road in Denver.
21 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Answer my question. They do not
22 go to Aims, they do not go to Boulder Community College, they
23 don' t go anywhere like that.
24 MR. COPPOM: They do not go to a college, no. They
25 cannot go out into the community, period, to anything, to any
293
1 place until they' re released.
2 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: I guess to be bluntly honest,
3 I think the question probably went a little further than that,
4 that whether you would recommend or have anything to do with
5 them going on to one of those schools after they were released
6 from the pre-parole.
7 MR. COPPOM: The answer to that is that if they' re
8 going to be paroled back into their home community and they
9 are interested in let' s say some technical training, and
10 that' s part of their parole program, yes we will tie them back
11 into that local program. We do that right now with, we have
12 2 , 200 offenders either under probation or parole in Weld
13 County. I don' t know how many of those, as a former chief
14 probation officer, I can assure you that some of those are out
15 at Aims College and some are at the university. In fact, some
16 of them were students when they went on probation. So that is
17 a part of rehabilitation with certain individuals . It ' s not
18 the vast majority, though. We' re not talking about 50-70% .
19 We' re talking about a very small percentage.
20 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: If their home community is in
21 Pueblo, then you ' re going to find them a school in Pueblo to
22 go to after they are released?
23 MR. COPPOM: After they' re released. Never before
24 they are released. That' s correct.
25 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Are they still serving time
294
1 on their sentences when they' re at the pre-release or pre-
2 parole facility?
3 MR. COPPOM: They really have an established parole
4 date. The date is set that they're going to be paroled. They
5 are being released from the prison system, placed into a pre-
6 release center and it ' s the process of the release. 90 days
7 through a step process and they' re released.
8 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: So that ' s considered part
9 of their sentence?
10 MR. COPPOM: Yes it is .
11 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are there any other questions?
12 MR. COPPOM: Thank you so much.
13 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I guess before we go on and
14 before there is a motion made or a vote taken, I would like to
15 first of all thank all of you for your participation and for
16 staying so late. We' re going on almost 12 hours now. I know
17 it' s been a very trying day for you. It certainly has been
18 for us . I would also like to thank our staff for supporting
19 us throughout this day. Our legal staff, planning staff, our
20 clerk to the board and the Sheriff ' s Department who has
21 delivered security for us . So now I will entertain a motion
22 if we have one.
23 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: I have a few questions for
24 the staff .
25 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Oh, I 'm sorry. Okay, go ahead.
295
1 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Yes , I would like to ask
2 Keith. It was mentioned that the planning staff declared this
3 a valid application back in June of 1993 . I 'd like to know
4 what the basis were for you declaring it a valid application.
5 MR. SCHUETT: Keith Schuett, Department of Planning
6 Services . The Weld County Planning Staff reviewed the
7 application and the requirements for the Planned Unit
8 Development and we, as a staff, interpreted the application as
9 submitted as being a use allowed in the Planned Unit
10 Development and that was our presentation to the Planning
11 Commission on October 5, 1993 .
12 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: I can understand that, but
13 first of all I want to know why you declared it a valid
14 application. And maybe you need to answer the question why
15 you felt that the PUD District had not been abandoned.
16 MR. SCHUETT: Okay, I see that as two questions .
17 One, as far as the PUD plan not being abandoned, the Weld
18 County Planning Commission reviewed the application on the
19 15th of June of 1993 and did determine that the final PUD plan
20 for the New Creation Church was to be extended for one year
21 and that the plan had not been abandoned. And there is a
22 resolution, I believe in the recommendation, or in our packet
23 and I can read the entire recommendation to the Board if you 'd
24 like . The request basically was to consider a request to
25 extend the submittal date of a final PUD plan. Extension of
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1 the submittal date of the final plan for New Creation Church
2 for one year due to changes in management, road requirements
3 on the original recommendation, and the possible sale of the
4 property. The motion was seconded by Julie Ann Kronkle. The
5 vote for passage was 6 in favor and 2 against. So it did, the
6 resolution was passed. Did that answer your question on
7 whether or not the plan had been abandoned?
8 MR. MORRISON: I think the other thing he added is
9 Section 28 . 15 . 5 dealing with that issue. It is not automatic .
10 The application is, can be considered abandoned only after the
11 hearing that determines it' s not being diligently pursued; and
12 rather than there simply being an automatic abandonment as a
13 result of the passage of time, the hearing is required. The
14 hearing didn' t take place in the first three years, but once
15 it was held it was found that there had not been abandonment.
16 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Okay, then you made a statement
17 about this being a use allowed in this zone? Could you say
18 the basis for that statement?
19 MR. SCHUETT: Yes Ma' am. We reviewed all the uses ,
20 the Department of Planning Services ' staff reviewed all of the
21 uses allowed in the Commercial Zone Districts and the I-1 Zone
22 District and the staff ' s interpretation of the Weld County
23 Zoning Ordinance and specifically in Section 5 of the Zoning
24 Ordinance which deals with interpretation, it does indicate
25 that the uses allowed by right, temporary uses and uses by
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1 special review listed in the ordinance are representative and
2 are not all-inclusive. So to say that a use such as the
3 parole facility or prison is not specifically listed, does not
4 mean that that use should not be located in there if it' s felt
5 by staff that, based on the uses allowed in those zoned
6 districts, that the use is representative of those uses
7 allowed.
8 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Are you trying to say that
9 you defined a pre-release facility basically as a
10 rehabilitation center?
11 MR. SCHUETT: I think you need to go beyond that and
12 look at all the uses allowed by right in all commercial zoned
13 districts . It basically is the entire commercial zone
14 districts that Weld County has . So any commercial use has to
15 be located within one of those commercial zone districts .
16 This is obviously a commercial endeavor and we felt that it,
17 as a use, should be allowed in the commercial zoned districts .
18 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: You feel it meets the
19 definition of a rehabilitation center?
20 MR. SCHUETT: I feel that it is representative of a
21 rehabilitation center. I think that was the staff ' s
22 interpretation also that it could fit in with that.
23 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: My last question will be
24 for Lee, on page 6 of the letter that was submitted by their
25 attorney, Gerald Dahl, on December 7 , 1993, he has that an LEA
298
1 prior the approval of the application, the plat requires the
2 formation of a law enforcement authority prior to the approval
3 of an application. Could you add on to that or could you
4 interpret that for me, please. What do you feel that means?
5 MR. MORRISON: The language of that plat note is
6 that it is to be approved prior to recording of a plat of the
7 district. Mr. Dahl concludes that means prior, essentially to
8 this hearing. It ' s my view that that requirement, there
9 hasn't been a failure to meet that requirement because it is
10 not due until prior to the recording of an approved plan plat.
11 And there is not yet an approved plan plat to be recorded. So
12 that deadline has not yet come.
13 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: When does that deadline
14 come, then?
15 MR. MORRISON: Prior to the plat being recorded.
16 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Then to remove that
17 requirement on the plat, the County Commissioners would have
18 to remove that?
19 MR. SCHUETT: Let me just make one statement here.
20 It ' s the planning staff ' s opinion and the legal staff may have
21 additional concerns or items stated there, if a PUD plan is
22 approved in a PUD District and there is a plat note requiring
23 that, and just because a PUD plan or this plan, should it be
24 approved, does not mean that it' s removing that plat note from
25 the change of zone plat. If there were future filings in this
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1 PUD plan, it may be deemed necessary to have the law
2 enforcement authority formed. And that would be determined
3 through the review process at that time. At this time, for
4 this application, the Sheriff, representing Weld County, has
5 indicated that he does not feel that that is an appropriate
6 requirement to require the law enforcement authority. Should
7 the Board feel that they should go through the process of
8 establishing the law enforcement authority, they could still
9 go through the process; but if it is determined that the
10 Sheriff is not going to require that, that still does not mean
11 that that district has to be formed for this application. It
12 does not mean that it does not have to be formed for other
13 applications or other filings in this PUD. So you are not
14 removing that standard or plat note from the change of zone,
15 even if that note is not required through this PUD plan.
16 MR. MORRISON: The mechanism is going to be when you
17 are requested, if a plan is approved, to create a law
18 enforcement authority. I mean, you have to take the first
19 step. In essence, the statute provides that you create it but
20 it doesn' t actually start to exist until after a vote
21 approving it occurs . But the initial steps, the
22 Commissioners, if the Board determines that one is not
23 appropriate, I think the Board is in effect, through an
24 appropriate process, relieving the applicant of that
25 obligation at the time you decide. But that isn't before you
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1 today and it isn't yet ripe for decision.
2 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Any other questions for staff?
3 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Does the staff have any
4 additional conditions of approval other than what are stated
5 here?
6 MR. SCHUETT: The ones that were on our October
7 5th presentation to the Planning Commission? They are the
8 same as what was rejected by the Planning Commission in their
9 recommendation.
10 MR. MORRISON: A reminder, the Planning Commission
11 made a motion which incorporated the recommendation of the
12 planning staff, but then in their vote, elected not to adopt
13 it as their recommendation. So the form of the resolution
14 shows the form of the staff 's recommendation, but it was not
15 adopted by the Planning Commission.
16 MR. SCHUETT: Were you asking me if there were any
17 additional ones besides what is in that?
18 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Yes .
19 MR. SCHUETT: I have jotted down some notes and I 'm
20 sure that the Commissioners have too, as far as language.
21 Some language that could be incorporated into number 2 on page
22 2 as far as notes on the PUD plat. There could be additional
23 language added to that one to identify specifically that the
24 class of inmates being located at this facility would be Class
25 2 Minimum Restricted or Class 1 Minimum Security.
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1 Additionally there could be time frames associated with the
2 length of stay that an inmate would be there. There was
3 concerns about a minimum time frame. So a minimum time frame
4 could also be added to that first item under number 2 .
5 There are other ones that could be added, such as
6 non-transferrable, that the use could not be transferred to
7 any other interest such as what we do on some Special Review
8 Permits based on the applicant ' s representation through a
9 public hearing. Additionally, note A could be reinforced as
10 far as being required to be pursued, establishing the law
11 enforcement authority. And then should, through that review
12 process, it be determined that it is not necessary, then it
13 could be dropped at that point.
14 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I think your second item on
15 the length of stay would be difficult unless you actually have
16 sought a contractual arrangement between the applicant and the
17 State of Colorado.
18 MR. SCHUETT: I agree. There was some information
19 presented by legal staff from the State Correction Facility
20 that indicated 90 days or longer, but that was just,
21 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: That' s stated in the Act
22 here, is that correct?
23 MR. SCHUETT: No, I believe it was represented by,
24 yes .
25 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: So you 're saying in these
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1 Conditions of Approval there is a standard that basically they
2 have to develop a comprehensive emergency plan for the
3 facility? Is that what lA is?
4 MR. SCHUETT: No, lA is the note prior to recording
5 the PUD plat a law enforcement authority shall be formed
6 according to state law, the law enforcement authority to be
7 formed shall be capable of expanding to serve other areas
8 within the I-25 Mixed Use Development area to avoid
9 duplication of overhead and other operating expenses, or costs
10 I guess is what it says, operating costs .
11 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Are you saying that' s a
12 mandatory action we take rather than an optional one by the
13 Commissioners?
14 MR. SCHUETT: What I 'm saying is we could
15 incorporate that plat note in this resolution and should,
16 through the review process of establishing that law
17 enforcement authority, if it be determined that it is not
18 necessary, they would not have to complete the law enforcement
19 authority formation.
20 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Do they have to develop a
21 comprehensive emergency plan for this facility?
22 MR. SCHUETT: I don't believe that that is one of
23 the items that we have listed as a plat note prior to
24 recording or as part of this application. However, I believe
25 through their contract with the state and the operation of the
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1 facility that they will have to establish some sort of plan
2 for that, yes .
3 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: And who might approve that plan?
4 Would the state approve it or would we have the authority to
5 approve it?
6 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Could Michael answer that
7 question?
8 MR. SCHUETT: I think that would be something that
9 you should probably direct to the applicant as to how they are
10 going to form that plan.
11 MR. BRAND: Commissioners, first that would be
12 something that, I 'm sorry, Michael Brand with The Villa. The
13 comprehensive emergency plan is a condition in the RFP that
14 was sent out by the Department of Corrections . It was also a
15 condition that we clarified in our response to the RFP. The
16 first approval process would be from the Department of
17 Corrections . Other people who would have to be involved,
18 first would be the Weld County Sheriff ' s Office because they
19 are the primary responding agency to that area in Weld County.
20 And then we would be dealing with contractual services with
21 other law enforcement agencies that would provide mutual aid
22 assistance through the Sheriff . The Sheriff has to request
23 that and we have to request that because the Sheriff is always
24 the first call . He doesn' t want some other agency there
25 first. That ' s why the Sheriff has to work out all those
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1 details with us and with the other law enforcement agencies .
2 So that is a condition that will be complied with, whether
3 it ' s a plat note or not.
4 And if I could add please, I don' t know if I ' ll have
5 any other opportunity. We don' t have any concerns with any of
6 the plat notes as they were outlined. The discussion that
7 you 're having today, the only concern I have would be on if
8 you want to get into the operations of this facility to the
9 point of in a plat note mandating minimum periods of time.
10 The state has said they are anticipating an average of 90
11 days . I think that ' s correct. I, in a lot of ways, would
12 love to see that 90 days because the longer people are there
13 the easier it is for us and the more effective we can be.
14 What I hate to see is if you say 90 days, for instance to have
15 an inmate who gets paroled 75 days hence from the institution,
16 who ' s coming to our restitution center not be eligible for
17 this program. It ' s the operational details I 'm concerned
18 about with the minimum stay. If you feel that you need to put
19 a minimum stay in, I would ask that you look at 30 days or
20 something like that. What we ' re trying to avoid and what
21 you 're trying to avoid is a rapid turnover that would dilute
22 the purpose of the program. We don't want that and you don't
23 want that, but we also don' t want it to be such a hinderance
24 that it would lack effectiveness for some people that
25 otherwise would be eligible and appropriate for the facility.
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1 Thank you.
2 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: What about the Community
3 Citizens Board? Could they still insure compliance with the
4 Bill and with local restrictions?
5 MR. BRAND: It ' s our intention to have a community
6 liaison or community advisory board. I don't have an issue
7 with that being a plat note if you feel it ' s necessary. It ' s
8 not normally something that would be in a plat note, but it 's
9 something we intend to do. This board would not be an
10 administrative board. It would not be a board that would
11 determine for us and for the Department of Corrections the
12 operational issues that we 're going to work out in the
13 contract with the Department. It would be a liaison board, a
14 communication board, so that we know if there' s any issues
15 that need to be addressed in the community. There would also
16 be a liaison back to this Commission on technical issues such
17 as they can review if we indeed have Level 2 inmates there.
18 They can review the average length of stay and we ' ll give them
19 monthly stat reports on number of admissions and any problems
20 and all that and they could report those issues, both positive
21 and negative, back to this commission.
22 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: So if you put it on the
23 plat would you put it maybe under number 1, prior to recording
24 the PUD Plan plat to develop a community advisory board?
25 MR. SCHUETT: Well, I think it should, if you ' re
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1 going to locate something like that, it should be prior to
2 operation of the facility because recording of the plat could
3 take place in the near future should this be approved and then
4 the facility built some time in the future. So it could be
5 under a new number 3 that says prior to the operation of the
6 facility. Or it could even be included under number 2 that
7 just states prior to operation of the facility.
8 MR. BRAND: And we would have no concerns with that.
9 We fully intend to do that any way.
10 [UNKNOWN AUDIENCE] : May I clarify by definition on
11 this?
12 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I don ' t think we 're at a position
13 to clarify that, do you?
14 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: I think he stated what it
15 would be. Basically we just have to reiterate what he just
16 said, I don ' t know if he could do that.
17 MR. BRAND: Sure.
18 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Okay, that would be good.
19 Why don ' t you just go into that.
20 MR. BRAND: Our intention is to establish a
21 community liaison committee or a community liaison board for
22 the pre-release center. The purpose of the liaison committee
23 would be to meet with the facility on a regular basis and to
24 be aware of contractual compliance issues such as level of
25 inmates served, type of program, any of the other plat notes .
307
1 They can look at those if they want to insure full compliance.
2 They can, at your request, I don't think you need to specify
3 this in a note, but they would report back to you on a regular
4 basis . What it would end up being, frankly, would be as John
5 Coppom stated, if there are issues that are being created in
6 the area by the facility we want to know that. Whether it 's
7 our staff coming down the gravel roads rather than taking the
8 frontage road or whatever, that ' s the kind of thing that we ' ll
9 hear from them. We' ll also provide the community liaison
10 board with information on number of admissions, type of
11 admission, number of discharges, where the people came from,
12 where they went to and things like that.
13 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: So, there 'd be a liaison
14 board that could report to the Commissioners that could like
15 basically advise us to the problems in the area and they would
16 have to insure compliance with the House Bill 90-1327 and any
17 local restrictions? Does that kind of summarize it?
18 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Did he say to report to the
19 Commissioners .
20 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Yeah.
21 MR. BRAND: At your request it can say that .
22 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I don' t know if that ' s
23 necessary.
24 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Could we say
prior to
25 establishing, or prior to occupying the facility, the
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1 applicant shall establish a community liaison board with
2 duties and criteria approved by the Commissioners? And then
3 we can approve what they're going to do later on? I mean
4 including all those things rather than putting all of that in
5 there, you would type up like a set of by-laws or a set of
6 policies or whatever and have us approve them before you
7 occupy the building? That ' s what I 'm saying. Like we do with
8 some of our subdivisions and our covenants and so on, on our
9 subdivisions .
10 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Those covenants don ' t answer
11 to us .
12 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Well, this could.
13 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I know, but I don ' t see the
14 reasoning behind it.
15 MR. MORRISON: I 'd hesitate to use the word 'duties '
16 as well because it ' s clearly going to be, as you presented it,
17 an advisory
18 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Responsibility.
19 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: It ' s an advisory board with
20 between the community and the facility. And it' s a
21 communication type of thing created in order to communicate
22 between the community and the facility and not to be tied back
23 into any type of government entity. And that 's my
24 understanding of what you ' re getting at.
25 MR. BRAND: It is . But my statement, that I think
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1 you 're dealing with is, do you want it, do you want
2 information, does this Commission want information back from
3 this community advisory board at any interval you would so
4 desire?
5 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: No more than I would Hauser
6 Chemical .
7 CHAIRMAN KIRKMEYER: Personally, I think it would be
8 nice at least to get an annual report to find out if they're
9 working together down in that area, if they're actually
10 communicating and the liaison board actually working.
11 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I would expect that if
12 they' re not, we ' ll certainly hear about it.
13 CHAIRMAN kirkmeyer: And if they are, we want to
14 hear about it.
15 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Okay
, if you think it would
16 be nice,
17 MR. BRAND: Well, I would want you to hear the
18 positive things too, I mean, let ' s not assume that this would
19 be negative, that ' s right .
20 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Well, I would still like it to
21 leave that open that we can approve whatever, you 're
22 disagreeing with me, Lee, I can tell .
23 MR. MORRISON: Well, I think it would be better to
24 define what it is they are offering to do now. If you 're
25 going to include such a
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1 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: All right, would you put some
2 wordage with it? I mean this took up two pages .
3 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: No, not really.
4 MR. BRAND: I 'm not even a lawyer.
5 MR. MORRISON: I think, you need to indicate what it
6 is, your goal . Is this to be liaison between the facility and
7 you or is this just, is this to be a citizen advisory board to
8 the facility in terms of the relationship with the
9 neighborhood? Because I heard two different concepts . One
10 is, you know, what ' s going on in the neighborhood that creates
11 problems as a result of the facility; and the other was a
12 broader one of monitoring the compliance county and state
13 regulations .
14 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Well, I 'd like to see them
15 be a citizen board that basically, a liaison with the
16 facility.
17 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Between the facility and the
18 community, right?
19 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Un huh. So that they would
20 be aware of any problems or and positive things that are
21 happening in the community. But I would like to just get a
22 report as to what, even an annual report, just so that we know
23 that it is happening
24 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I can easily see an annual
25 report to be given by the facility.
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1 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: No, by this board.
2 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: By the board? Okay. A joint
3 report .
4 [UNKNOWN AUDIENCE] : Madam Chairman, may I clarify
5 one issue that you brought up just now? You brought up about
6 the Planning Commission.
7 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I 'm sorry but you cannot speak at
8 the moment unless you are bringing up something entirely new
9 that has not been discussed before.
10 [UNKNOWN AUDIENCE] : It was a question by you to
11 your staff and it wasn 't fully answered.
12 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Lee, what do I do?
13 MS . MORRISON: You know, if you felt you got the
14 answer, I don' t think you don' t need to explore the audience
15 further. If you got your answer on a question of the staff,
16 I think that ' s, rather than opening everything up again.
17 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Okay. Did you understand that
18 ma 'am?
19 [UNKNOWN AUDIENCE] : I did, but you didn ' t get a
20 full answer.
21 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Apparently the answer that we got
22 was satisfying to the commissioners . All right, back to this .
23 Does someone have wordage for it?
24 MR. MORRISON: I suggest something along the line
25 that the plat note will require creation of a community
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1 liaison board consisting of members of the neighborhood to
2 deal with issues of the operation impacting the neighborhood
3 and to report at least annually to the Board of County
4 Commissioners .
5 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I 'm satisfied. That would be
6 item 3, Conditions?
7 MR. MORRISON: Actually
, it would be part of the
8 plat .
9 MR. SCHUETT: It could be under number 2 as a note
10 on the plat. Just add it under number 2 .
11 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I 'd concur with staff 's
12 recommendations as to the placement of it.
13 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Okay. Do I have a motion?
14 MR. MORRISON: Mr. Schuett made a sug
gestion that it
15 be, that he'd also note on the plat that the facility is
16 limited to a Level 1 and 2 classifications . Do you have any
17 objection to that?
18 MR. COPPOM: Absolutely none.
19 MR. SCHUETT: That could be entered into the first
20 item under number 1 and it could read as the uses permitted
21 within the PUD plan shall be a Class 2 minimum restriction
22 facility or a Class 1 minimum facility limited to 386 inmate
23 pre-release facility as described in the application
24 materials . There is also another item that I brought up about
25 transferability.
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1 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: I think that should be
2 added on here.
3 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: Is there any legal problem
4 with that, Lee?
5 MR. MORRISON: Part of the problem with it is we
6 attach those to the kinds of facilities that have a fairly
7 minimal capital investment such as a dog kennel . And to
8 attach that to this kind of facility, I think presents some
9 greater problems because you've restricted that use, not only
10 the use, but to the current ownership. I think that makes
11 potentially problems in financing and you know, I don' t know
12 what the applicant ' s comment would be on that, but I do think
13 there ' s some greater problems when you 've got a greater
14 capital investment than, you know, something of a lesser
15 investment.
16 MR. SCHUETT: Let me throw this out as far as an
17 idea that it could not be transferred to any other interest or
18 ownership without first being reviewed by the Board of County
19 Commissioners in a public hearing process .
20 MR. MORRISON: In what process? We don't have a
21 process right now for transfer of ownership in a PUD.
22 MR. SCHUETT: We ' ll take out process and just
23 indicate in a public hearing.
24 MR. MORRISON: The only public hearings we have on
25 this are a creation of the plan.
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1 MR. SCHUETT: Okay, but through other special use
2 permits we have had, such as like the transfer of a
3 certificate of compliance where the individual had to come
4 before the board and the board reviewed the individual ' s
5 ability to comply with those.
6 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I think all the restrictions that
7 we put on there would transfer with
8 MR. MORRISON: Well, yes, clearly.
9 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: However, I think some
10 times, part of our decision will be based on the integrity of
11 the experience that this ownership has and that may not
12 transfer. We 've had past experiences where the credibility of
13 the other owners isn ' t as good as the ones that applied for
14 it.
15 MR. MORRISON: I think the other, if you do
16 something like that and seek to restrict the transfer you have
17 to also go into the issue of the ownership of the corporation
18 because the legal entity that you' re dealing with is The Villa
19 at Greeley, Incorporated. And so if you talk about
20 restricting transfer you ' re talking about the facility being
21 sold to someone else and the name disappearing. You also
22 would have to deal with the issue where someone, you know
23 conceivably, could take over the corporation or become the
24 shareholders of the corporation different than these . So it
25 gets fairly involved. If you're trying to limit it to Michael
315
1 Brand and John Coppom, you know, it gets fairly involved. You
2 also do have the issue of financing, and I 'm not sure how that
3 would affect the ability to finance it.
4 MR. SCHUETT: I guess this would be a different type
5 of facility than what we 've dealt before on special use
6 permits and things like that where there were single entities .
7 I think this would become more, as Lee pointed out, it may not
8 be appropriate.
9 The other item that was brought up was that on plat
10 note A, the Board could locate that individually under item
11 number 2 as a note with this PUD plan indicating that they
12 would have to at least pursue the process of establishing a
13 law enforcement authority as plat note A does indicate and
14 then through that process, should it not be warranted, then it
15 could be dropped at that time.
16 MR. DAHL: Madam Chairman, a question of procedure.
17 Is the Board now negotiating the conditions of the approval of
18 the applicant on the record? I 'm just curious what was
19 happening.
20 MR. MORRISON: They're not negotiating. I think
21 they're entitled to find whether the applicant objects to the
22 condition or not. I think that has some relevance in their
23 determination. That was in response to Mr. Dahl 's question as
24 to whether the Board was negotiating with the applicant on the
25 terms of the condition.
316
1 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Again, could I have a motion?
2 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Madam Chairman, in view of
3 the fact that my colleagues here are hesitant to place this on
4 the, for a motion, I would make some comments and move on a
5 motion. Prior to coming to this hearing, I had a complete
6 open mind as to my thinking on this, even though for the past
7 several months actually, many people of course have been
8 coming up to us, myself as well as others I 'm sure, indicating
9 their preference and which way we should see this applicant ' s
10 situation. But I honestly say that coming into here that I
11 had a complete open mind as to listening to this testimony for
12 the past 12 hours and out of that I 've realized that of course
13 one thing that has come about is that our society has made
14 certain demands on our lifestyle. The increase, or not the
15 increase in crime, but the crime situation and the increase in
16 numbers that are being incarcerated in prisons, and the need
17 for prisons and some solution as to how we can rectify this
18 problem to get these people back into the mainstream of
19 society without them having to return back into the prison for
20 having committed another crime.
21 And another thing, of course, that we all look at
22 and in my mind is that we all live within our idea of "Not in
23 My Backyard" syndrome. It' s larger in certain areas of the
24 county and whether it ' s in a residential area or whether it is
25 in a rural area, but it 's still that we have that fear of
317
1 something coming in after we have located our home and finding
2 that we don't like it. Whether it ' s a landfill, an industrial
3 plant, even agricultural operations that are built that create
4 problems; pollution problems, the dust and air pollution and
5 water and so forth. I think, and I commend all of you for
6 your patience here today. You 've been very good in listening
7 to all the comments today. You 've been very much the ladies
8 and gentlemen that we hoped you 'd be and we have listened and
9 we have reasoned and we're here today to make the best
10 judgment possible, the best decision possible.
11 It is in my opinion that this facility needs built.
12 I think it needs built for one thing that I talked about
13 earlier in my opening remark in saying that if there 's a
14 possible way in order to be able to get people that have
15 committed crimes back in society that have been incarcerated
16 for a period of time, and if some type of training programs
17 and those type of things to accept society and come in, that
18 I think there ' s a need for. I think it might work. We 've
19 tried other things, other things aren't working. And
20 consequently, I firmly believe that this facility might work.
21 I also feel, in listening to the testimony today and seeing
22 that the locations and the questions that were asked of other
23 facilities throughout the United States; that this location is
24 compatible to southern Weld County. I think it ' s compatible
25 to the infrastructure that is there. I think that the water,
318
1 the sewer, the electrical and so forth and its location is in
2 the right area. I would have hoped possibly to have had it
3 placed in an area which was not with as many people in the
4 local area as there has been, or the potential that the area
5 will be increased in number of building sites and so forth in
6 the future, but I don ' t really think that this is going to be
7 the great deterrent that everybody is fearful of . I think
8 the safety and the security needs have been met by these
9 people to the best of their ability and therefore, Madam
10 Chairman, I would vote for, or make a motion for approval of
11 this facility.
12 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Are you including the additions?
13 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: With the staff ' s stipulations
14 and recommendations .
15 MR. SCHUETT: Does it include any changes that
16 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: The addition of item
17 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: I don ' t know what you
18 numbered those, Keith.
19 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: I believe it ' s 1, do you have 1C,
20 or you added it under just 1A.
21 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: lA I think.
22 MR. MORRISON: Yeah, it was added to lA regarding
23 the classification, the allowed uses and
24 MR. SCHUETT: The first item under number 2 .
25 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Yes .
319
1 MR. SCHUETT: Where it indicates that the uses
2 permitted within the Planned Unit Development shall be a Class
3 2 minimum restricted facility or a Class 1 minimum facility,
4 limited to 386-inmate pre-release facility, as described in
5 the application materials .
6 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: The second sentence is
7 still on there also?
8 MR. SCHUETT: And the second sentence is still
9 included. And the last item that was added as far as the
10 establishment of the community liaison board as read by Mr.
11 Morrison. And also, the addition, of plat Note A of the
12 Change of Zone.
13 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: The organization, the liaison
14 group, right.
15 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: And what was the plat note again?
16 MR. SCHUETT: Prior to recording the PUD plan plat,
17 a law enforcement authority shall be formed according to state
18 law, the law enforcement authority to be formed shall be
19 capable of expanding to serve other areas within the I-25
20 Mixed Use Development area to avoid duplication of overhead
21 and other operating costs .
22 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: I also thought you were
23 going to add under number 2, that very first one, something
24 about a 30-day minimum stay? Oh, we didn' t agree to that?
25 MR. MORRISON: Now that was discussed.
320
1 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: It was not discussed.
2 MR. BRAND: Madam Chairman, I have a question on the
3 wording on the
4 MR. MORRISON: There 's a motion on the floor, Mr.
5 Brand.
6 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Did you want the 30-day on there?
7 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: No.
8 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: Do I have a second?
9 MR. BAXTER: Madam Chairman, I would second the
10 motion and I would also reiterate that I think this has been,
11 no doubt, one of the toughest decisions that we 've had to
12 wrestle with and we 've come in here with and tried to really
13 listen to what happened, I know we had, we were charged with
14 voting for this unless it did not meet these criteria. And
15 there were some serious questions raised by people in the
16 audience that made us really look at the parts of this . In my
17 mind, this proposal, when you get down and sort it all out, is
18 consistent with the Weld County Comprehensive Plan. It is,
19 the Planned Unit Development, conforms to that PUD district
20 which is proposed because of the wording and our
21 interpretation of it and our planning staff and our legal
22 staff has looked at this and I, at least, would take their
23 word on how they feel this wording, what it really says . The
24 uses, building and structures are compatible with existing
25 development and future development. It does conform, I would
321
1 make the statement, as I looked at it, I don't know if there ' s
2 any real good word picture to show how it looks, but I 'm sure
3 that if I was to, give me a little indulgence here. If I was
4 to say "snake" to everybody out there in that audience, I 'm
5 sure that 90% of you would say that ' s bad, I don't want
6 anything to do with it. And I, myself just to relate this to
7 a personal thing, I had that same inherent, we each have that
8 inherent fear of things that we don' t know anything about.
9 But I have handled a lot of snakes . I know snakes . My kids
10 have handled snakes . I learned what those snakes were about
11 and I would say that that ' s the same type of principle. It
12 sounds far afield, but when we get the information about that,
13 we decide whether that is truly, we perceive it to be bad or
14 whether it ' s really bad. And I don' t try to belittle what you
15 think out there. I think you really feel something is that
16 way. I just don't feel like the facts support that. I think
17 that we have to go beyond our initial reactions to what we, to
18 the facts . And I believe it does conform and I would have to
19 vote for it on that, and second it on that, on those facts .
20 CHAIRMAN HARBERT: It' s been moved by Bill Webster
21 and seconded by George Baxter to approve the PUD Site Specific
22 Development Plan Planned Unit Development for The Villa as
23 presented with the additional conditions of approval and plat
24 plan notes as stated by staff. Is there any discussion?
25 Anything you want to say?
322
1 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: I guess I would just add to
2 that, it has been a very long day for everybody and I did come
3 in here also very skeptical, very critical, and obviously with
4 lot of questions . And I think a lot of my questions tried to
5 get to basically how you would define a pre-parole release
6 facility. And no where could I find it defined as a prison.
7 In fact in the legislation it ' s defined basically as a
8 rehabilitation training center or area or whatever, and
9 rehabilitation defines, basically, rehabilitating prisoners is
10 also in the definition when I went up and looked it up in my
11 Webster' s Dictionary. I think it is consistent with the Weld
12 County Comprehensive Plan and that the district is supposed to
13 allow for institutional uses and promotes freedom of
14 flexibility. It also allows for all levels of commercial uses
15 and I think in my questioning of staff, I would have to concur
16 with them in that the PUD District has been found to be
17 current. And so therefore, I will be voting for it. I think,
18 again, we weren' t here to debate the merits of whether or not
19 we believe in pre-parole facilities or release facilities or
20 anything of that nature. We had certain criteria that we had
21 to follow and if we found that they were met, basically we
22 need to be voting for this .
23 MS . HARBERT: I guess I would agree also that it is
24 consistent with the Weld County Comprehensive Plan. I would
25 go along with what Barbara just said about definitions . I
323
1 also think that the Planned Unit Development Plan conforms to
2 this PUD District by, and it' s substantiated by our Planning
3 and Zoning Ordinances . I, too, feel that it also is
4 consistent with our Planned Unit Development Overlay District
5 in Section 54 . 1; therefore, I would vote approval of this
6 also. May I have roll call please.
7 CLERK: George Baxter.
8 COMMISSIONER BAXTER: Aye.
9 CLERK: Dale Hall .
10 COMMISSIONER HALL: Yes .
11 CLERK: Barbara Kirkmeyer.
12 COMMISSIONER KIRKMEYER: Yes .
13 CLERK: Bill Webster.
14 COMMISSIONER WEBSTER: Yes .
15 CLERK: Connie Harbert.
16 COMMISSIONER HARBERT: Yes .
17 MS. HARBERT: There being no other business to come
18 before us now, we are adjourned.
19
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