Editor:
Maybe the sheriff has lost sight of what is important, but a sheriff has a certain right to expect honesty from the people he hires.
A sheriff of our county has a major responsibility to serve the people and he must do it on a very limited budget.
The problem with law enforcement in our area is that the cost to maintain our legal process has grown out of proportion. You can only raise so much funds on repeat offenders. To continue to pay our judges and police officers we need hundreds of new offenders. In order to do this, we need to increase our population base, but we can’t do that, because we push people away instead of encouraging people to stay and new people to move here.
Since we don’t want any outsiders moving here, maybe we could try this: Let’s stop passing stupid laws against everything everyone does. My weeds are too high; my shed doesn’t match my house; my neighbor has someone living in a tent in his backyard, or someone is walking on my river bottom or selling pots and pans on the street corner. If we could get rid of half of our laws, we could start saving money. We don’t have a tax base like Durango, so we have to stop spending like Durango or we are going to end up like Detroit.
Any sheriff anywhere knows there are no shortcuts, they have a thankless job, there is no glory or fame. They also know that when they accept the job, they accept the responsibilities that go with the job, and if you fail to fulfill these responsibilities, then you have not just let yourself down, you have let the whole county down.
Louis Szabo
Cortez
