A group of residents who want their towns to secede from Arapahoe County will meet this evening to discuss their plan.
The residents want Agate, Bennett, Byers, Deer Trail, Strasburg and Watkins to form a separate county. They will meet at 6:30 p.m. at the Byers Public Library.
Phillip Steel, who is behind the effort, said the small towns are not being represented by Arapahoe County. But opponents said that creating a county is not realistic because the small towns don’t have the revenue to fund it.
Steel said the towns do not need the help of “metropolitan America.”
“Well, we are rural America,” he said. “And we want to protect our Bill of Rights and our freedoms in the end.”
Steel said that if the group collects about 70,000 signatures, the issue will go to Colorado voters. It should be on the ballot by 2010, he said.
State Rep. Debbie Stafford, a Democrat, said she has received lots of phone calls from people who are shocked and frustrated by the group’s plan. Stafford described the group spearheading the effort as a “handful of renegade, disgruntled citizens.”
“They somehow believe they will have less involvement of government in their lives,” she said. “They did not present an organized plan. They did not seem to demonstrate how they would fund necessary services that any county would need to provide for the citizens, such as roads.”
Steel said that the county would be able to generate money without a tax increase and that it would seek assistance at the state and federal level.
“Any municipal government is by definition a municipal corporation. It operates just like a corporation. It’s a business. It makes money,” he said. “You don’t have to make all of the money from taxes.”
Hugh Johnson, a 74-year-old resident of Deer Trail, said he opposes the proposal.
“You need money,” he said. “You just can’t just cut a piece of country and say, ‘We’re going to make a new county out of this.’ ”
Steel said that in the end, it will be up to the voters of Colorado — not the people of Arapahoe County.
Christopher Sanchez: 303-954-1698 or csanchez@denverpost.com
