Questions. Boy, does your article on the citizen group’s investigation of Commissioner Newberry raise a lot of them.

First, who is this group? Wasn’t the spokesman, Chas McConnell, the candidate against James Newberry in the last county commissioners’ election? We can presume all citizens who have nothing to hide are for transparency in government, or has this become some kind of personal vendetta? If not, is Chas the best person to be the spokesman of an unbiased citizen’s group? Is there more they are investigating than just commissioner Newberry?

Who funds the Colorado River District? Is Grand County part of their funding? Who is James representing when he attends their meetings? Can someone fully represent two different entities who may have different interests, at the same time? Is their meeting more important than the county commissioners’ meeting?

It would seem logical that the entity James is representing most should pay for the transportation to an event. If in fact you can represent two groups at the same time the cost of getting there doesn’t double. It shouldn’t be hard to decide which group should pay the transportation costs. Now that this has come to light, I am sure we can expect James to do the right thing. We can all look forward to hearing how James handles this matter, if not in this issue of the Ski-Hi News, the next.

Shouldn’t someone on the agenda be informed of that? If so, why was this group not informed they were scheduled? Whose responsibility would that be? If the commissioners agreed to conduct the fraud audit, does that need to be an official motion? If not …

Our county is still rather small; these things should not be that difficult if everyone is doing their best to serve.

Lots of questions.

Don McDavid

Fraser