The second round, May 21, 2024
Commission Chair Amy Mitchell provided the invocation at the quasi-judicial meeting of the Park County Board of Commissioners meeting on May 21, 2024. The second round of the public hearing was on the agenda to approve or deny the proposed Platte Canyon Health Service District.
Let me take just a moment to reflect on Mitchell’s invocation.
Mitchell can believe whatever she wants to believe. And I, too, can do the same. Joseph Campbell observed, “It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is.” Indeed, the impudence of one who believes God is concerned with the “discernment and direction” of the Park County Board of Commissioners’ decision-making process bespeaks volumes about this woman. She also asks that “Those who do not know You will learn to know You,” only echoes the essential charge of the MAGA Christian Dominionists who have taken over the leadership of the Colorado and Park County Republican party. As Dave Williams, the Chair of the Colorado Republican Party, says, we need to “help bring about Kingdom values, to fulfill what the Lord has told us to do, to make disciples of all nations, spreading the Gospel, the truth. I believe the Lord “gave [Donald Trump] immense favor.” In fact, the giddy ballyhoo the Park County Republican Central Committee is giving to a Tactical Civics event in Fairplay this June, where Republican candidates for Commissioner—Amy Mitchell, Wallie Weld, Jason Gemmer—and State House District 13 candidate Dave Williams (not the State Republican Chair) but an old guy who lives in Chaffee County will appear at the event. Still, I am reminded of the State Republican Chair, Dave Williams, who I’m certain agrees with the Tactical Civics teaching that those drawn to the group have received a calling from God, that they are the “Remnants” who live in God’s grace, while the rest of us live in evil.
Back to the topic: The Platte Canyon Health Service District.
At least as far back as June 29, 2023, the Park County Board of Commissioners knew there was a grassroots citizens’ effort to establish a health service district in northeast Park County. The matter was discussed at the Commissioner’s Town Hall in Bailey that day. In a nutshell, Commissioner Dick Elsner, within whose political subdivision of the county the health service district would be established, unconditionally supported the effort. Commissioners Amy Mitchell and Dave Wissel unconditionally and adamantly opposed it.
During the May 21, 2024, second review of the Platte Canyon Health Service District Committee’s Service Plan and the Commissioner’s consequent 2-1 vote to deny approval, Wissel referenced verbiage from a DOLA (Colorado Department of Local Affairs) publication, “Special District Service Plans.” A portion of that publication reads:
“A municipality or county that is experiencing growth in special districts should consider developing guidelines for service plans that enumerate and perhaps augment statutory requirements. While these guidelines could be informally provided by staff, there are advantages to employing a more formal approach. In addition to the content of the service plan, the process of plan approval can benefit from explicit, detailed guidelines. The statutes outline a required process for review and approval, but do not inform a proponent about how the service plan approval is linked to other internal governmental functions, such as zoning approval.”
Wissel disingenuously said he wished he had been aware of this (the DOLA guidance) before the hearing. Presumably, if he had known about it, he would have hustled via work sessions to create the guidelines suggested by DOLA to ease the process for the Platte Canyon Health District Committee and the BOCC when the service plan would eventually appear on the agenda for a public hearing. He would indeed have acted in the best interests of the citizens of northeast Park County to make sure their efforts were well-spent, formulating a service plan according to guidelines established by the commissioners, providing the citizen’ committee a template to ensure their hard work was rewarded with approval from the commission.
Suppose you believe Wissel and Mitchell would have diligently dug into preparing for the known eventuality of a Platte Canyon Health District proposal with clear guidelines gleaned from DOLA. In that case, I assume you believed Wissel when he promised a Citizen’s Budget/Advisory Review Committee would be formed after he took his seat in 2023.
The excerpt from the DOLA publication begins, “A municipality or county that is experiencing growth in special districts should consider developing guidelines for service plans that enumerate and perhaps augment statutory requirements.”
Park County is not experiencing growth in special districts. The South Park Health Service District, whose service plan template was used to guide the Platte Canyon Health Service District Committee in formulating its plan, was established in 2017. Before that, you’d probably have to go back to 1998 when the South Park Parks and Recreation District was formed.
Wissel has latched onto convenient language from DOLA, which doesn’t fit the current scenario. Yet, it serves his purpose to delay or kill any effort to establish a health service district in northeast Park County.
Holding the Platte Canyon Health Service District Committee to guidelines that don’t exist, that are only contemplated by Wissel after the fact and after his MAGA-engaged kitchen cabinet has had enough time to provide him with the fodder he needs to attack the proposed service plan, is not only disingenuous but feckless (a synonym for chickenshit).
Wissel’s SOP is to laud the hard work and community engagement of those who volunteer time to make their particular slice of Park County just a little better and improve their quality of life and that of their neighbors. He did it with the 599 Rosalie property and now with the Platte Canyon Health District proposal. His sincerity is shamefully nullified by his determination to ensure those efforts fail because they do not represent his particular vision for Park County.
I’m reminded of a comment made during the health district discussion on June 29, 2023, at the Commissioners Town Hall in Bailey: “Fairplay gets, Bailey doesn’t get.”
Maybe the Bailey side of the county is too infested with evil, with those who don’t know Mitchell’s God well enough to garner favor with the majority of the Board of County Commissioners and the Central Committee of the Park County Republican Party. Which, come to think of it, are pretty much the same thing.
And there is no distinction between Mitchell and Wissel, politically and ideologically. As a matter of fact, Wissel and his kitchen cabinet (You know who you are!) pretty much run the show. Amy “Madam Chair” Mitchell? Well, she’s a lovely woman. What more can be said?
