A Review and Summary of Cloud City Concerned Citizens Meeting Regarding Harrison Park
On the evening of Monday, February 24, 2025, a group calling themselves “Cloud City Concerned Citizens’ Independent Voice” (C4IV) gave a presentation regarding opposition to development of Harrison Field to Lake County’s Board of County Commissioners and interested community members.
A slide deck featuring 87 slides was presented to the commissioners, two of whom actively listened to the presentation; the third came late, left early and appeared to give more attention to her mobile device than the presentation itself. None of the commissioners commented nor asked or answered any questions due to ex parte restrictions disallowing them involvement in issues expected to come before the board. Their role was to simply listen.
The slide presentation, while it mostly was read aloud, rather than summarized or discussed, a detriment to today’s proliferation of short attention spans, covered a lot of bases; the main points of which centered around forgotten deeds and documents that showed when the county initially purchased the land at Harrison Field, it was on the condition that the land remain undeveloped and maintained as a recreational space for the community. The group further provided commissioner meeting minutes from 1962 that stated such requirements from the land donor and also showed documents showing the specified restricted covenant running with the land. The group alleged that these facts and historical documents have been ignored and negated by the county’s building department, attorney and housing director.
The group also presented and explained TIFs (Tax Increment Financing) and spent a lot of time discussing this nebulous subject with a local economist explaining it in layman’s terms. LTC wrote an article on this very topic you can find here: Winners and Losers in Lake County: Private Investors vs Taxpayers Although this financing strategy is not currently being used for the proposed low income housing project at Harrison Park, the presenters wanted to highlight how it raises everyone’s property taxes if they live in Lake County.
To explain further, Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is a taxing mechanism whereby a developer of a building project is able to fund the project by diverting some of their property taxes to pay for the project. No money is ever repaid to the city or county to replace the property tax revenue that was removed from the tax rolls and redirected to the developer’s project. Your hard-earned tax dollars go to the chosen developer and result in a hidden tax increase to you.
The Leadville Urban Renewal Authority implemented Tax Increment Financing (TIF) at the Railyard for developer, John Lichtenegger. Taxing districts including the City of Leadville, Lake County, Leadville Sanitation District, Colorado Mountain College (CMC), Lake County School District (LCSD) and St. Vincent Hospital all agreed to be part of the Leadville Urban Renewal Authority (LURA). By doing so, they agreed that a portion of their tax revenue that they would have otherwise received from Leadville Railyard property owners and others within the boundary area, should instead be reallocated to LURA to help the developer pay for his project.
Why? Good question! Its stated purpose is to stimulate economic development. But it seems more to do with corporate welfare and choosing winners and losers. This agreement to diverting tax revenue can be in place for up to 25 years. The total property tax lost from these taxing entities could be as high as $9 million over that same timeframe based on current tax rates. This endeavor essentially established tax increases that were never brought forward and agreed upon by the voting taxpayers; instead it was just imposed. The presenters shone a light on this matter because precious few taxpayers are aware of its existence and even fewer understand it. Even though this scheme took place within city limits, Lake County taxpayers are making up for the tax revenue lost because it was reallocated to LURA and the developer. The City of Leadville lies within Lake County and its taxing districts and that is how all Lake County taxpayers make up for the deficit.
The presentation also highlighted the levels of toxic contaminants that pervade the land at the ballfield. Although remediation work was done at the ballfield and a cap put on the top layer of soil, any sort of construction involving moving earth would make these toxic particulates including lead, arsenic and asbestos airborne polluting the air we breathe, even within our homes as the dust settles inside and in the water that will flow through the area and into the water table. These facts alone should be enough reason to shut the project down. As an aside, excavation work done at the 10,200 affordable housing sites uncovered so much contaminated soil that they had to remove it and haul it by trucks to the east side of town. One must wonder how much toxic particulate matter we inhaled and were subject to with that affordable housing project already.
Presenters also brought forward documents to show the waste and abuse of taxpayer revenue. An independent auditor’s report of Lake County uncovered a deficit of $9.3 million, while more slides presented all Lake County positions and salaries amounting to over $10.3 million for 2024! Yet a list of ending Lake County salaries as of 12/31/24 published in the Herald Democrat on 02/20/25 reflected $11.1 million! And that is wages only, no benefits were included in those figures. The 2025 proposed budget suggests having only $2 million in the General Fund Reserve after allocating $5 million to a courthouse renovation and nearly $2.2 million for property purchases for affordable housing. Have you agreed to spending your tax dollars in this fashion and leaving little in the general fund?
Since 2012, Lake County has received $8.3 million in grant dollars from Colorado (DOLA) Department of Local Affairs alone, not counting other grant-bestowing benefactors, many of which require matching contributions from taxpayers. The City of Leadville received $5 million in DOLA grants. There is a great myth abounding that grants are “free money,” but make no mistake, there is no such thing as “free money” and publicly funded grants, are ALL taxpayer dollars. Your tax dollars paid to all levels of government contribute to grants that are freely given in some cases with barely any oversight. DOGE is doing a great job of exposing the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars within the federal government, particularly in USAID. Some wish Lake County would institute its own version of DOGE.
What happens when the well of grants supplying the seemingly endless flow of dollars to finance every pet project or non-profit runs dry? Just add them to the county payroll and have the taxpayers foot the bill.
Here’s a perfect illustration: Get Outdoors Leadville! was initially awarded $3 million over a 3.5 year period starting 3/28/17 from the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund. Additional funding was approved and agreed upon on March 17, 2021 in the amounts of $532,750 for fiscal year 2021; $531,625 for fiscal year 2022 and $435,625 for fiscal year 2023. On July 27, 2023 they requested another grant of $350,000 again from Great Outdoors Colorado with the support of Lake County Commissioners per Resolution 2023-10 and authorized former Commissioner Mudge to sign for it. On September 15, 2023, GOL! also received $200,000 over a 24-month period from a private entity, the Colorado Health Foundation whose website states “The Colorado Health Foundation is a statewide philanthropic organization that champions the overall health and well-being of every Coloradan. We do this by advocating for and investing in solutions and policies that drive health equity and racial justice.”
According to Lake County BOCC Resolution 2023-6, due to GOL!’s “inability to access necessary reports to maintain compliance with grant funders” on April 4, 2023, GOL! has been absorbed into Lake County’s payroll with its own line item and we are spending nearly $500,000 to fund this non-profit through the general fund from Lake County taxes as of end of year 2024. Again, did you vote for this?
Furthermore, GOL! services, although now funded by ALL taxpayers is NOT encouraged to be used by all taxpayers and in fact LTC has received multiple reports of adults and children being discouraged from accessing the gear library, however donations are always welcomed from everyone. See the sidebar taken from their website.
Yet in this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) by and between Get Outdoors Leadville! and Full Circle of Lake County with Great Outdoors Colorado Inspire Initiative Grant Program, the grant stipulations state something very different, as noted below.
This begs the question why are so very many Lake County non-profits funded by taxpayer dollars, especially when so few benefit and are even discouraged from using its resources? They may not all appear on the payroll like GOL! does, but all they must do is ask the County and the City for money and it is given – in some cases many times more than is requested. ‘Ask and ye shall receive’ has been the motto for publicly funded non-profits in Lake County.
LTC did not mean to digress by covering in detail Get Outdoors Leadville!; however, when a non-profit is now on the county payroll and amassing almost $500,000 in salary and wage expenses for its staff, questions need to be raised – and answered!
It is fair to say that the presenters of the Cloud City Concerned Citizens’ Independent Voice definitely made their case for a myriad of reasons why Harrison Park/Field should be left as is and BOCC and the community should choose the ‘no option.’ In fact, more questions were raised by their presentation than one suspects even they anticipated. The inner workings of county government need scrutiny, oversight and accountability which this group seems to be acknowledging.
Links to YouTube recordings of the presentation and pdf of the slide deck can be found on Facebook in the “Save Harrison Ballfield” group.