To the citizens of Gilpin County

By Al Price
County Commissioner

01/25/2007 - I believe in democracy and I believe that the majority should rule, but that doesn’t mean I believe the majority is always right. Lately, I haven’t been able to sleep at night because I also believe that a major mistake is about to be made by your Board of Gilpin County Commissioners. This mistake will cost the Gilpin County taxpayers at least hundreds of thousands of dollars and more likely, millions of dollars. I am of course referring to the bio-mass facility for the new Road & Bridge building.

  The building itself is desperately needed and most of that building will be used to house our Gilpin County equipment: trucks, graders, and other heavy equipment. The proposed cost for this 21,624-square-foot building was $2.8 million, or $129.48 per square foot. Now with the addition of a bio-mass facility, that cost has jumped to $4.8 million, or $221.97 per square foot. Just remember, that’s $221.97 per square foot for mostly open warehouse-type space.

  Bio-mass is nothing more than a big woodstove heating system. The proposed building already has three other sources of heat – solar, natural gas, and a burner for used oil supplies. None of these three other sources will require a lot of extra ongoing expense or a lot of extra new employees like bio-mass will. None of these have an initial cost of $920,000 like bio-mass and none of these have already gotten huge additional cost change orders like bio-mass.

  For the most part, the R&B employees work four days a week or 208 days a year, not counting vacations. That means they are off 157 days a year, and even when R&B is normally open, the only employees in the building full-time are the secretary and R&B managers. All the other employees are or should be working outside. So who is going to be there to stoke the bio-mass the other three days a week to keep the building warm? The answer has to be either additional employees or overtime, either of which just adds many thousands of dollars to the yearly cost.

  Those additional costs don’t include the even more major costs of fuel for the bio-mass. All of this abundant free wood is hardly free. The wood has to be loaded, then trucked from and to somewhere, and then unloaded. That requires more trucks and other equipment, and more employee time, none of which is free. The wood has to be prepared, cut, chipped, and most likely washed, before it can be burned. An adequate sized chipper operation alone can cost more than $500,000, not counting maintenance and upkeep and even more employee time. Of course you could hire an outside firm to prepare and deliver the fuel, but that would cost even more. Then there’s also the cost of keeping the bio-mass going seven days a week in cold weather and the ongoing cost of cleaning and maintaining the system itself over its life.

  If you remember the wonderful things some of our previous County Commissioners did for us, it really starts to get scary. A previous Board built us the Justice Center, a recreation center, fairgrounds building, and a firehouse on Apex. Apparently the proper people were not brought in and we now are stuck with the cost of repairing these structures on a monthly to yearly basis.

  The Justice Center has many problems and I think the Sheriff would be happy to explain those problems to the public, starting with the sewer and going to the leaky roof, and a host of other things in between. 

  The Rec Center is even worse. It is a structure that has been up for about four years. In that time the County, using your tax dollars, has had to replace the flooring in the workout equipment area, the gym floor, the shower, and the pavers on the front entrance (twice), in addition to the many, many problems in the pool area. The building was never finished, the gutters were never installed, and the County never got a warranty on any of the building – even though the building was way over budget.

  Now let’s go to the fairgrounds building. This building was built too small and with a dirt floor. I have not seen it used for all the horses that it was built for because it will only accommodate small ponies or large dogs. This building has also had the roof repaired many times at your expense, but the last time I was in it, the roof still leaked. My thought is to convert it to storage use for the County since it sits empty most of the time anyway.

  These kinds of problems happen when any Commissioners take on jobs they are not qualified to handle. One of the things I thought I could get done was hiring a project manager for the R&B building. However, this county hired a facility manager instead of a project manager. Bill is a fine gentleman and will do this county a great job as a facility manager, but it’s just not the same. This is another screw-up by the current Board.

  Commissioner Whitman has written numerous articles about the wonderful things that bio-mass can do for the new R&B building and how in the long run it will save the County money. However, he has never backed up any of his claims with cold hard figures. He apparently has not included all of the extra expenses, both in equipment and man-hours that are mentioned above, in any of his claims. If he did, I think even he would have to concede that bio-mass is not going to pay for itself in 17 years or even in 117 years.

  Therefore, I think you can see why I have been voting against this issue: it is already $2,000,000 over budget. That’s $2 million over budget, right now, for a project that hasn’t even started. Right now, the County is in the black, but how long will it be before the County will have to start borrowing money, at even more taxpayer expense, to finish this fiasco?

  Please read the article in the January 19, 2007 issue of The Mountain-Ear on Bio-Mass in Nederland.

  Put another way, would you as a homeowner be willing to pay more than 25% of the total cost of your house for a wood-burning stove?