Getting busy to solve issues when Henderson Mine closes
Editor:
I moved to Clear Creek County in 1986, and this is one of the first things I heard. Well, the mine apparently will now be closing within the next five years, taking many good-paying jobs and a significant portion of county tax revenue away.
As with every county resident, this causes me great concern, as do recent letters critical of our county government saying that Clear Creek, being a fairly poor county, should do like other rural even poorer counties and reduce the county staff and the buildings staffed by county employees.
It is good to run a lean operation, but the county remains solvent as it is. Without the recent mill-levy increase for road and bridge, there would still likely be people on Beaver Brook who wouldn’t be able to drive to and from their homes. Other concerns included why the county bought a new sign (because the old one blew down) and reducing money going to schools because of declining enrollment.
For most of my 75 years, I have been a student of economics, because my father was a bank manager. Unfortunately my career choice was less-lucrative public service. From my studies, I know that we cannot achieve prosperity through austerity. Sometimes you need to spend money to make money.
To attract more businesses and jobs to the county, we need to be an attractive place for them to do business and to live. Similarly with the schools, I want Clear Creek kids to continue to have an education at least on par or better than kids elsewhere. They are our future. So, I dare say, do people locating their business or home here.
School enrollment is largely cyclical, fluctuating up and down with local economic conditions. In the last couple of years, several families with young children have moved onto our road. One moved his business from California, and the other moved up here from the metro area because they like living in the mountains. He now has a second job with Clear Creek Fire, helping protect our homes.
Better approaches to addressing the inevitable loss of jobs and tax revenues from the closing of the mine might include allocating portions of current tax revenue to providing incentives for improving our infrastructure, for new businesses, for improving housing, for services such as health care, and for removing eyesores, with some going to savings to lessen the revenue loss when it occurs.
I am greatly encouraged by those who are actively working to enhance the attractiveness of our county, most notably Bob Bowland and Mary Jane Loevlie with their Argo Mine project.
Rather than “woe is us,” let’s get busy, and as Bob and Mary Jane, put our collective heads together and find solutions to this future problem while there is still time to implement them.
Glenn Wallace Sr.
Floyd Hill