An opportunity to spew and sputter?
The agenda of the Park County Board of Commissioners Work Session of February 27, 2024, includes this item:
DISCUSSION RELATED TO THE COUNTY’S INABILITY TO ADEQUATELY PROVIDE RESOURCES NECESSARY TO SUPPORT THE MIGRATION OF UNDOCUMENTED PERSONS INTO UNINCORPORATED PARK COUNTY
I will go out on a limb and say the two self-identified Constitutional Conservative commissioners, Amy Mitchell and Dave Wissel, agreed to place this topic on the agenda. At least two commissioners must approve placing items on the agenda. I’ll further posit that the hair-on-fire trepidation Denver’s Mayor Johnston will begin bussing Venezuelan migrants out of Denver to the suburbs and other counties is pervasive; witness, for example, El Paso County Commissioner Carrie Geitner’s hurried remarks when a few migrants showed up at a church-run shelter in her county: “Keep going,” she said. “Find a sanctuary city. They asked for those folks to come to their cities. Find one of those. That’s where they should go.”
The Douglas County commissioners resolved it’s all Denver’s fault they’re experiencing so much angst about the specter of a migrant invasion to their county while understandably not mentioning Denver’s migrant nightmare is mainly attributable to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s expenditure of $148 million to give a middle finger salute to so-called Sanctuary City’s around the country. US House Republicans also raised their middle fingers when a comprehensive immigration bill was sent to them from the Senate. Legislating is not something the current MAGA House Republicans are interested in.
The most glaring conclusion about this item on the BOCC Work Session agenda would elicit an immediate “DUH!!!” from those interested in county matters. The county doesn’t even have adequate resources to provide road repair or 24/7 public safety coverage to its citizen taxpayers. And despite Commissioner Dave Wissel’s oft-repeated mantra, “We don’t have an income problem, we have a spending problem,” the county’s income cannot even provide for the most basic essential services for citizen taxpayers, roads, and public safety, much less for homeless migrants.
I wonder if the February 27, 2024, BOCC Work Session agenda item related to Park County’s inability to provide migrant resources will provide a bully pulpit to the so-called Constitutional Conservatives on the Commission, Amy Mitchell and Dave Wissel? Will they spew and sputter about so-called Sanctuary Cities, citing MAGA rhetorical bombast related to the border and all those murderous and diseased migrants yearning to breathe free? Indeed, will they recapitulate every dotted i and crossed t from the mouth of Donald Trump, who, as we all know, is anointed by God to be our next president? Will they strut their disdain for so-called Sanctuary Cities despite the fact Amy Mitchell tried in vain to have the county designated a Sanctuary County for the Protection of Life in April 2022?
Question: If a Venezuelan migrant (arguably a life) ends up in Park County, do we have a duty to protect the health and safety of that life? Or, is the definition of life dependent on one’s ideological bent? Certainly, we can all agree a living, breathing organism is a lifeform…regardless of its immigration status. Right?
I have no illusions about the immensity of the problem. And, no, I do not advocate that Mayor Johnston or Governor Abbott send a busload of migrants to unincorporated Park County. Nor do I have any illusions that Park County is in any way prepared to provide resources to those migrants. The county can’t even provide for decent roads and 24/7 law enforcement.
And I have no illusions about politicians driven by MAGA-inspired ideological dogma. Sure, we as a county can say, Hey, we don’t have the resources for this. Hard stop. But does this issue provide the opportunity for political posturing, the kind of politics as performance art we’ve come to expect from, for example, Loren Boebert, and certainly Donald Trump? Will Amy Mitchell make as much of this as she can to feed that very red meat to her very red constituency now that she’s running for a second term?
I don’t know. I guess we’ll see. Here’s the link to the meeting, and you can view it online via Zoom.
