Good morning, this is your Monday Briefing for the week of March 21, 2022.
1: This was supposed to be the week that the three Douglas County Commissioners, Lora Thomas, Abe Laydon and George Teal, visited the San Luis Valley to host a community meeting on Douglas County’s consideration of the Renewable Water Resources proposal to export water out of the Valley north. You’ll recall RWR submitted its plan to Douglas County seeking $20 million in funding through the American Recovery Plan Act dollars Douglas County is receiving. That started a round of work sessions by the commissioners as they worked to figure out whether the project and investment of COVID federal relief money made sense. The work sessions were supposed to culminate in a meeting to get input from Valley residents, but then Teal suggested supporters of RWR were concerned for their safety if they showed up and anti-RWR protestors would only dominate the meeting, making it meaningless.
Thomas had already voiced her opposition to the RWR plan, and Laydon agreed with Teal and so the meeting was called off. The three commissioners are scheduled to meet in executive session on Monday for a “legal discussion” on the RWR plan, according to their work schedule. Later Monday they have a presentation on the Platte Valley Water Project, which Thomas has said makes much more sense and has support Parker Water & Sanitation District, Castle Rock Water, and the Platte Valley Water Partnership.
2: The Citizen recently sat down with Alamosa County Sheriff Robert Jackson for a wide-ranging interview around how illegal narcotics make their way into the San Luis Valley, his thoughts on the 12th Judicial District Attorney’s Office and DA Alonzo Payne, and his nearly four decades in law enforcement with the city of Alamosa and Alamosa County. You can listen to the interview on Episode 21 of The Valley Pod beginning Tuesday, March 22. Subscribe to our podcasts by searching for Alamosa Citizen wherever you get your podcasts. You can always find them here.
Alamosa County Sheriff Robert Jackson
3: It’s spring break week for most of the Valley schools, as well as Adams State. Following spring break for the North Conejos School District will be its March 28 open house for the new Centauri High School. “To see that go up and to see it come to completion here, it’s really marvelous to see, it’s humbling,” North Conejos School Superintendent Curt Wilson told The Citizen. “I watch the kids get off the bus each day from kindergarten to 12, and it’s for them. To see what good times will happen there, what a great sense of pride for the community. It’s been a challenge as all good things are. It’s entirely worth it.” You can hear more of our interview with Superintendent Wilson here.
4: Selected households in the six-county San Luis Valley received a postcard invitation to participate in Alamosa Citizen’s SLV Rural Poll on quality of life issues in the Valley. The Citizen took a random sampling of registered voters in each of the San Luis Valley’s six counties – Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla, Mineral, Rio Grande and Saguache.
User voter registration lists, randomly selected registered voters from each county were mailed the SLV Rural Poll survey requesting their participation as a registered voter in their county.
AlamosaCitizen.com was branded on the postcard. The SLV Rural Poll received underwriting support from the Trinchera Blanca Foundation, Boys & Girls Clubs of the San Luis Valley and the Rio Grande Water Conservation District.
If you received the postcard, we ask that you please take the survey. Or if you know someone who received the postcard, please ask them to take the survey. Each survey respondent is receiving our newly designed The Valley sticker as a token of appreciation.
5:” Very Valleyesque”. That’s how JD Kettle, part of the family opening the place, describes the soon-to-be San Luis Valley Distillery in Mosca. Watch this video trailer on what’s going to be another hip place for the San Luis Valley. After you watch the video, check out the full story Owen Woods on AlamosaCitizen.com. Then share and pass it along.
Owner Nick Chambers
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