Common Ground Citizens Advisory Committee gets Underway

The Chaffee Common Ground Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) met on Tuesday, April 23 in the County Commissioners meeting room in the Salida Courthouse. The group represents a breadth of expertise; comprised of seven volunteer board members hailing from various parts of Chaffee County and numerous occupations.

The advisory group is designed to create and facilitate the grant application process for Common Ground funds, and to recommend grant recipients. The monies from Ballot Issue 1A, which passed last Nov., will be used to help fund projects falling within three distinct program areas:

1. Strengthening forest health and fire resilience with planning and execution of treatment activities.
2. Conserve and support working ranches and rural landscapes with planning and programs to strengthen agricultural operations, conservation easements, land acquisition, and other tools.
3. Protect watershed health from the negative impacts resulting from outdoor recreation use.

During its Tuesday meeting, the CAC focused on establishing coherent principles to which individual board members will agree to follow.

“We’re going to agree to principles on how this team is going to work together,” said Cindy Williams who has been involved since the beginning of the Envision process  that led to the voter’s approval of Ballot Issue 1A.

Among these principles, and a key point of discussion for the CAC during its meeting, is the CAC’s conflict of interest policy. Every Board Member signed the policy during the meeting. The CAC made public its understanding that publicly stating and adhering to a strict conflict of interest policy is important to earning the community’s trust.

“It helps us communicate with the public,” said CAC board member Mike Hannigan. “We are really serious about this.”

While the Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) alone has the power to direct funds from Chaffee Common Ground, the CAC has fiduciary responsibility to manage grants. However, in its position, the CAC holds unique responsibility to influence and recommend grant award recipients of those funds.

County Commissioner Greg Felt, who sits on the CAC and serves as a liaison with the BoCC, echoed Hannigan’s sentiments. “With our (CAC’s) fiduciary responsibility, it’s very important,” acknowledged Felt.

Vice Chair, Rick Hum, pointed out that fulfilling the conflict of interest policy requires that the CAC make decision only in public meetings.

“Anything that happens as part of this board’s decision-making process should happen in a meeting. We want to make all the decisions of this group in open, public meetings,” said Hum. He clarified that this includes discussions post-vote, and post-decision.

Hum offered a scenario example; if an individual board member who was out-voted were to voice his or her displeasure to an applicant who was denied.

“That would be inappropriate,” Hum said. “Once we make a decision and vote, then we should all support that decision unanimously.”

The CAC also discussed the board’s next steps in creating and implementing the grant process. These next steps include creating grant application rating criteria, memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with other agencies, and developing Request for Funding Proposals (RFPs) for each of the three program fund buckets.

The CAC will form subcommittees to work on developing grant rating criteria within each of the three program area, each working with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). The SME teams will be comprised of community members and various ex-officio individuals hailing from leading agencies.

“The primary focus of SMEs is to provide that expertise,” said Felt. He also pointed out that the SME teams have no fiduciary authority.

Ex officio team members will vary between the three programs but will include professionals from leading agencies within that program field. Each SME team will include five to nine members. Ex officio team members will be granted a seat. Those selected from the community will go through an application and interview process.

“The proposal was that each of those subcommittees will be working with the subject matter experts,” said Williams. “We can divide and conquer.”

Some CAC members raised concerns over the potential for SME teams to have conflicts of interest when dealing with the grant application process.

Felt acknowledged this concern.

“I think we have to acknowledge that there is that potential for concern, but just keep that in front of us all the time and navigate it,” said Felt, “Or else (without SME input) we aren’t going to end up with the best [results].”

The CAC voted to draft SME role descriptions and applications, and finalize term limits before bringing it all back to vote on at the next meeting.

The Chaffee County Common Ground Citizens Advisory Members (and term lengths):