News Now Blog

The Fremont County Board of Commissioners is seeking letters of interest from persons to serve on the Fremont County Fair Board.   The Fair Board is comprised of 15 to 20 members whose responsibilities include planning and conducting the annual Fremont County Fair.   The commissioners will be appointing someone to fill an unexpired term and will consider appointing several new members depending on applications received.   Fair Board members serve three year terms.

The Fremont County Fair Board meets the 2nd Tuesday of every month at 7:00 p.m.  Fair Board members also contribute many other hours of volunteer time and labor to organize, supervise, and work alongside other youth and adults in helping set up and conduct various county fair activities.

The Commissioners urge anyone with an interest in 4-H programs, agriculture, gardening, baking, floriculture, livestock, horses, crafts, photography, wildlife, or other interests that may be promoted as part of open class and 4-H programs at the county fair to submit a letter of interest.

Letters of interest should be submitted by mail, email, or in person to the County Administration Office in Room 106 of the Fremont County Administration Building.  The deadline to submit letters of interest to serve on the Fremont County Fair Board is Thursday, November 10th at 12 noon.

An electronics recycling event in Cañon City last month saw consumers deliver more than four tons of old television sets to the recycling effort.   The Upper Arkansas Regional Recycling Program and the Fremont County Commissioners sponsored the September 17th electronics recycling as 14,405 pounds of old computers, monitors, printers, and TV sets were brought in for recycling.   Recycling Program coordinator Beth Lenz said she didn’t have a precise number of television sets delivered but the 9,330 pounds of televisions probably meant that consumers brought in more than 450 TV sets.

The popularity of the electronics recycling event was due in large part to the fact that consumers were able to pay half price to recycle old computer equipment and TV sets.   The discounted recycling price was because of $7,500 the Fremont County Board of Commissioners budgeted in 2016 from the county’s Waste Disposal Fund.   $5,000 of that amount was spent to subsidize the September 17th recycling event in Cañon City while the other $2,500 subsidized a similar event in Florence last April.    The funds originate from surcharges the county gets from waste collected through local transfer stations and the landfill.

Lenz said in addition to electronic items delivered on September 17th some of the subsidy covered the cost of electronic items which were collected due to illegal dumping since the April event.   She said trucks filled up so quickly on September 17th that volunteers spent another day the following week picking up electronics items from people who were unable to drop off their items that day.

Fremont County Commission Chairman Ed Norden said the Board of Commissioners hopes to budget another $7,500 for electronics recycling in 2017.   He said one of the goals was to reduce the amount of illegal electronics dumping on public and private property and that the half price electronics recycling certainly proved to be even more popular than anticipated.

Lenz says besides electronics recycling next year in Cañon City and Florence they will look to offer a similar event in western Fremont County.

The Fremont County Planning Commission will deal with one item of business at their monthly meeting on October 4th.    The Planning Commission will hear a request to modify a Conditional Use Permit held by KrauthCo, a local landscaping company, which operates a stone quarry north of Cañon City.   The modification is for a 115 acre piece of property located one mile north of the junction of Red Canyon Road and Field Avenue.   KrauthCo currently excavates large landscaping rock from the quarry.

The Planning Commission meets at 3:00 p.m. Thursday, October 4th, in the commissioners meeting room on the lower level of the Fremont County Administration Building.

A dispute among ambulance providers in western Fremont County that lingered in the courts the last two years took center stage before the Fremont County Commissioners at Tuesday’s meeting.   Ambulances from both Deer Mountain Fire District and Arkansas Valley Ambulance (AVA) have been jointly dispatched to the same calls over the past five months after the two agencies could not settle their territorial differences.   That resulted in ambulances racing to calls thereby jeopardizing patients and crews.

Following a 2 ½ hour public hearing on whether to amend, suspend, or revoke the licenses for both agencies the Board of Commissioners sought to strike a compromise.   The commissioners voted to adopted a map proposed by Deer Mountain that would have the Deer Mountain ambulance respond to all calls within its’ district along with everything north of Cotopaxi off of County Road 12 and everything east into the Texas Creek area.    After listening to officials from AVA describe their struggles to recover financially, Commission Chairman Ed Norden said the boundaries will allow time for AVA to rebuild their operation, recover financially, and train more EMT’s to respond to calls.   Norden said if AVA is able to train more EMT’s to raise their level of service from Basic Life Support (BLS) to Advanced Life Support (ALS) then AVA could make a pitch at license renewal time next April to adjust the boundaries.

The boundaries that were adopted basically gives AVA a service area through the Howard and Coaldale areas to the western edge of the Deer Mountain Fire District.   Norden said after hearing from so many Howard and Coaldale residents that they did want Jay DeMay answering their calls for an ambulance the boundaries set out by the commissioners will assure them that AVA will respond to their calls.    DeMay formerly operated with AVA and was a former board member who now serves with Deer Mountain as Assistant Fire Chief.

As part of the motion to adopt designated response areas the commissioners also stated that it comes with the expectation that Deer Mountain will continue to staff their Cotopaxi location with medical personnel every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; that both AVA and Deer Mountain notify dispatch if they are out of service or report whether they are responding as BLS or ALS; that AVA come current on delinquent bills for dispatching fees, a license fee, and medical director’s fees; and that if AVA seeks to secure another medical director that they provide notice to the Board of Commissioners as well as written authorization from a new medical director.

Commissioner Norden said that given the decades of challenges to operate ambulance service in western Fremont County he is glad to finally hear that part of the discussion taking place in the Howard and Coaldale area is pursuit of a long range solution through creation of a taxpayer supported ambulance district.   District 2 Commissioner Debbie Bell concluded by making it clear that “professionalism amongst every single one of you, every single minute, of every single day” is the expectation of the Board of Commissioners.

Also at the marathon commissioners’ meeting the Board issued its’ findings in adopting a resolution denying a modification of premises for Today’s Health Care which operates a medical marijuana facility at 934 ‘C’ Street in Penrose.   Total Health Care sought to add another five greenhouses to their existing three greenhouse cultivation.   Among the findings adopted in the resolution, the Board found that the applicant’s claim that they do not plan to increase the number of plants being grown was not credible.   The Board also found that while the applicant claimed the five new greenhouses would employ the latest odor control technology, they in fact would rely on the same odor control system now in place.

In other business Tuesday the commissioners:

• Approved a Special Events Liquor License for Equine Lameness Prevention Inc. which would operate a beer garden at the Penrose Park on Apple Day October 1st on behalf of the Penrose Park and Recreation District;
• Re-appointed Marvin Dornhecker as an alternate to the county Board of Building Code Appeals for another three-year term;
• Approved a 12-month extension for submittal of contingency items for the Mountaindale Campground zone change;
• Approved another minor language change to a paragraph in the intergovernmental agreement for the Combined Regional Dispatch Center dealing with repayment of funds to Fremont County for money spent to build and equip the center.