$500,000 moved from FIRE MITIGATION to the (now) $1.8 MILLION FOOD PANTRY!>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
$500,000 moved from FIRE MITIGATION to the (now) $1.8 MILLION FOOD PANTRY!
Dear Friends,
This will be brief. All the evidence is in my former blog posts and County recordings of meetings. These are the facts:
Two Commissioners (Hollingsworth and Berumen) voted in 2023 to build a new Food Pantry with $1.3 MILLION budgeted for the project in 2024. It has expanded from a replacement Food Pantry (modular on an empty lot) into a Community Annex with more county offices and A COMMERCIAL KITCHEN housed in a 2,500 sq.ft. newly-constructed building to be built down the road from the current location - on property that will have a forest ripped out for that purpose.
The kicker right now, and reason for my writing?
Next Tuesday at 8 a.m. at the Historic Courthouse in Central City there will be a Commissioners Work Session with one item on the agenda - “Community Annex”.
At this past Tuesday’s Commissioners’ meeting (3/11/2025), Ray Rears, the County Manager, asked the Commissioners to confirm they will meet next Tuesday for this purpose:
“to talk about the Community Annex and the value engineering from that, since we have some proposals, and it would go to the Board for formal consideration of the contract two weeks from today on the 25th…so we’re hoping to get some direction. The good news is we can value engineer the building down to make sure it’s within the budget, which is quite exciting, but we need to know what the Board is willing to give up in order to get there.”
Here’s the back story:
The Commissioners and Manager knew during this year’s Budget Hearings the $1.3 MILLION earmarked for the “Community Annex” wasn’t going to cover it. We’ve asked many times for the figures (but have been refused).
What did they do? THEY TOOK $500,000 out of our Reserve Fund scheduled for FIRE MITIGATION and moved it over to cover expenses to build their new COMMUNITY ANNEX! Yep! Money taken out of Fire Mitigation for their Community Annex!
So, now they have $1.8 MILLION budgeted for the “food pantry” 😉😉 and it’s not enough!
Mr. Rears is calling the Commissioners to meet next Tuesday - before the work day, at 8 a.m. - to figure out what to cut in order to meet this new $1.8 MILLION unnecessary building to give free food to all the people in the county - no income limits at all. All people in Gilpin County.
I thought you’d like to know. If you care to hear the details, schedule a visit to sit in their meeting next Tuesday, March 18 at 8 a.m. It looks, as usual, like this is being planned so the people don’t know it’s happening, maybe cannot attend, and they can do this all in advance of their meeting on March 25 where they are likely to award the bid for construction on a building few people want or need in this county.
Wouldn’t it be nice if this Board of Commissioners would STOP this ridiculous plan, save the taxpayers $2 MILLION and just replace the modular and add cement pads to hold freezers outside the building? Wouldn’t it be nice?
Thanks for caring about your county, your tax dollars and open government! Feel free to share this information far and wide.
Sincerely,
Donna Okray Parman
Founder, The Gilpin Light
