September 11, 2015 01:19 PM UTC

Castle Rock's UN Paranoia: The Damage Done

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Castle Rock News-Press’ Shanna Fortier reports, following up on a story we wrote about a couple of weeks ago:

The Castle Rock Senior Center will be unable to apply for 2016 federal monies from the Community Development Block Grant, which provides funding for nonprofits working with low- and moderate-income people, because of a recent town council decision to bow out of the program.

For Douglas/Elbert Task Force, which is based in Castle Rock and received close to $40,000 in grant money in 2015 for emergency rent, utility and overnight lodging assistance, that decision means it cannot use any of those funds to serve Castle Rock residents.

The council’s 5-1 vote on Aug. 18 came after lengthy discussion and public comment that urged the city not to accept federal money… [Pols emphasis]

Castle Rock has participated in the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, administered by Douglas County, since 2006. The county received $1 million in 2015 to disburse among nonprofits who applied for grants. Because the town’s population has exceeded 50,000 — the first in the county to do so — it became eligible to become an entitlement grantee, which means it would receive money directly for town organizations, in this case, $212,000.

But by Castle Rock declining to participate, Douglas County’s annual allocation in CDBG funds for 2016 will be reduced by $212,000.

As we discussed in August, the Castle Rock town board is currently dominated by stridently conservative “Tea Party” types. The decision whether or not to directly accept Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs) to fund programs that had already been receiving the funds via Douglas County’s participation in the program devolved into a debate on the supposed “loss of sovereignty” that comes with accepting federal grant money. Conservative activists like GOP state senate candidate Jess Loban invoked the dreaded “Agenda 21” conspiracy theory, linking these funds to a United Nations plot to replace local government control with unknown horrors in the name of “sustainability.”

But as we can now determine conclusively, the nefarious United Nations plot Castle Rock avoided by rejecting these federal grants was just some money for the Castle Rock Senior Center.

In a perfect world, this would be the kind of tinfoil-hat nonsense that ends political careers. But even with this stone-cold proof of an idiotic and paranoid decision made by the Castle Rock town board, tilting at proverbial windmills in a way that can be so easily proven so laughably irrational…

They’re all going to keep their jobs, folks. Because neither this board, nor the voters who elected them, seem to care about the facts. This beet-red town in beet-red Douglas County will march right on with their baseless anti-government paranoia, and no one will think twice.

Does that sting a little? Good. We invite the voters of Castle Rock to prove us wrong.