SILT — Mayor Dave Moore describes himself as a practical man who treats his town’s $1.7 million budget the same way he does the well-worn wallet he pulls from his jeans pocket.
“It’s just pure common sense,” said the frank and unabashed Tea Party member with the “Don’t Tread on Me” cap that clanks with conservative message buttons.
Moore and a slate of like-minded, budget-balancing “Save Our Silt” candidates took over the board of this struggling Western Slope town of 2,500 in the April election with a vow to put the town in the black within a year.
As a first order of business, Moore and the three new board members cleaned out town hall. They voted not to renew the contracts for the town’s administrator or attorney. They did away with the two-person planning department. They cut a deputy town clerk’s position to half time. They didn’t fill a vacancy in the five-officer police department.
Whether such an extreme fiscal makeover will work and whether Silt can be a model for other towns needing to curtail spending remain to be seen. But the mayor swears Silt will prove to be a good blueprint for other municipalities.
“We are running this town like a business now,” Moore said.
His detractors say it is being run like a fiefdom: The cuts are coming from ousting anyone who disagrees with Moore.
“The people who disagreed with them, the people who kept them in check, they are gone,” said Meredith Robinson, who almost upset the second-term Moore in April.
Robinson ran on the S-Cubed slate of candidates that promised, in part, to send Moore packing.
Mark Rinehart was another unsuccessful S-Cubed candidate with fears similar to Robinson’s.
“They are setting up house so they can play. And they want to play by their own rules,” Rinehart said.
It didn’t help that Moore, who squeaked by on a five-vote margin, shortly after the election declared himself “the godfather of Silt” in a blog post. He later said it was a joke.
“They are delusional. They are not coming from a rational mind,” Moore said of his detractors.
Moore said the town was headed for bankruptcy when the Save Our Silt members took over. It had only three months of reserve funds remaining and was over budget by $275,000. Now, the town is on track to have a balanced budget by next April, Moore said.
Moore has lived in Silt for 35 years, and in that time, as a contractor and developer, he has built upward of 50 houses in the subdivisions that fan up the foothills in manicured lawns and prosperous-looking homes.
The mostly vacant historic town core is another story. It looks like it has one foot in a ghost-town grave. But that can’t be blamed on Tea Party-style belt-tightening. Neither can the “For rent,” “For lease” and “For sale” signs all over Silt Trade Park.
In late 2008, the oil and gas development that had been buoying this town and others in the area tanked. In the past two years, Silt has approved only four new building permits.
Moore predicts that within the next year Silt will have a grocery store and a bank. There will be new sidewalks for school kids and new nature trails on a piece of riverfront land the Silt board just voted to acquire for a $40,000 local payment. Downtown revitalization will have begun, using funds from a lodging tax collected in the town’s two motels.
Moore said Tea Party budget tenets don’t nix taking help from governmental or other tax-funded agencies for these projects. Grant funds already have enabled the town to put solar collectors on top of town hall, a senior-housing building and the wastewater-treatment plant.
Silt also is preparing to hire a new full-time administrator who will do double duty on planning. The board has contracted with a part-time attorney.
While much of the most rancorous dust has settled since the election, there are ongoing rumblings about a recall. That can’t happen until the six-month, post-election moratorium on recalls expires.
This is a town practiced at recalls. Moore survived a recall attempt two years ago. In 1998, three trustees were ousted by recall after their first order of business was to send the town administrator and police chief packing. Moore was one of those behind that recall.
Moore predicts there won’t be a recall this time around: The naysayers are going to be pleasantly surprised when their town is once again fiscally healthy.
“I see things really happening and shaking in Silt in the very near future,” Moore said.
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
