It’s too bad the Montezuma County commissioners and the Montezuma Mosquito Control District board are not getting along, because mosquito-borne illnesses potentially are a serious threat to public health and the local economy.
But it is hard not to see neglecting to hold two scheduled elections and declineing to solicit competitive bids on a mosquito contract for 14 years as serious failures on the part of the district — which is a taxing entity, not just a club whose members sit around swatting bugs.
It may well be true that no one expressed interest in running for a seat on the board. Lots of small districts have trouble filling board seats, because many of those jobs are, at best, thankless, and at worst, magnets for unfounded criticism by people who would rather complain than take on the task themselves.
Still, continuing to collect taxes — nearly $200,000 last year — without holding elections is called taxation without representation, an action so unpopular it prompted a tea party in Boston Harbor.
It is also fairly easy to identify ways in which the mosquito district could have cultivated interest in running for those seats. Providing information to the public would have been a good start. Yes, both the public and the media should have asked more questions, but that is not an excuse for the board. After all, Facebook is free, and it is hard to imagine either the local newspapers or the KSJD declining to publicize the need for candidates.
As for going 14 years without seeking bids for mosquito control services, County Commissioner Larry Don Suckla may have been a little presumptuous in saying that the district “could have gotten a better deal and saved the taxpayers a lot of money.” He cannot know that. No one can know it without doing some comparison shopping, which the district has failed to do, at least formally.
The current contractor, Colorado Mosquito Control, may be the best qualified and the least expensive of the options available to the district, if indeed any other options exist. That, however, is not the point. The responsibility to use taxpayer funds wisely means following accepted practices and soliciting bids. If Colorado Mosquito Control is indeed the right choice, neither it nor the district board should have any reluctance to take the contract out to bid.
So far, the Zika virus that causes such horrible birth defects does not seem to be transmitted by mosquitoes that live in this area, or at this elevation. That would be more reassuring if, just last week, the federal Centers for Disease Control had not identified another mosquito vector with a range as far north as the Great Lakes. It’s not unthinkable that Zika could appear here.
West Nile virus also is still out there. Although horses can be vaccinated, no vaccine has been approved for human use, and the virus makes some people seriously ill. Mosquitoes carry other diseases, including equine encephalitis, and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that additional disease, emerging far from Colorado as Zika has done, could soon become a problem here as well.
So it is too bad that the mosquito district has been ousted from its space at the county yard, but what is really too bad is that the district board has considered itself exempt from the laws that govern special districts in Colorado. That should not give anyone confidence that the district is ready for Zika.
