She looked at her watch impatiently.How long had they been there? It seemed like days. The agenda had looked reasonably short, but after nearly two hours they were only on the second item.

Members of the Hospice of Montezuma board gather for their monthly meeting at the Cortez library. Finding enough dedicated volunteers to serve on non-profit, special district and governmental boards can be a challenge in rural areas. Photo by Wendy Mimiaga.

She had joined the non-profit’s boardbecause she believed in the cause, butshe had nothing to contribute to thisendless droning about financial reports and staffing problems. She felt like a warm body that helped provide aquorum, nothing more. Now she waswondering what excuse she could use to resign.

The executive director collapsed in tears after the meeting. It was the same story over and over. The board members had good intentions but the meetings rarely accomplished anything and, as usual, she was left with more tasks and less guidance. Most people thought being on the board was a status symbol, something to pad their résumés, that wouldn’t require a commitment beyond the two-hour monthly meeting. She wondered where she would go if she got up the nerve to quit.

Do not try to identify these people. They are composites from any number of organizations in our community.

Communities are run by a plethora of boards and councils. The most obvious are within county and municipal government: county commissions, town councils, planning and zoning commissions. Another visible type of board operates public schools.

But there are also special districts, which oversee such operations as utilities, water, cemeteries, hospitals, firefighting, television and radio, soil conservation, sewer services, and mosquito control. In Montezuma County there are 24 such special districts; in Dolores County there are nine, all needing to be managed by some sort of board.

And then there are hundreds of nonprofit groups and foundations that work for charitable, cultural, agricultural, educational, medical, veterans’ and other causes.

There are 211 tax-exempt/non-profit organizations in Montezuma County, 19 in Dolores County, 454 in La Plata County, 44 in Utah’s San Juan County, and a staggering 454 in New Mexico’s San Juan County, according to TaxExemptWorld.com. These, too, are governed by boards.

All these entities need motivated, responsible, intelligent people to guide them. But finding such folks and keeping them can be very difficult.

What motivates someone to sit on a board? Is it a sense of masochism (or, in some cases sadism) as some former board members might report?

Pat Smith, a national author in board management, has found that people join boards for three reasons: passion for the mission, a desire to give back to the community, or because a friend asked.

All these reasons serve to get people on boards, but they can have drawbacks.

Having passion for something is not synonymous with being equipped to lead it. And joining a board because a friend asked may lead to resentment if the primary reason for joining is guilt or peer pressure. Also, having friends recruit board members tends to result in very homogeneous groups without the diversity that is representative of the community or organization.

Unfortunately, not enough effort is expended by nominating committees to analyze potential board members, not only trying to match the person to the cause, but also deciding whether or not he or she posseses the basic interest or ability to serve effectively.

The STP concept

Throughout Montezuma County and other small communities, there is a chronic shortage of people willing and qualified to serve on boards.

The result is known as the concept of STP (the “same ten people”) who provide the majority of leadership. According to Boardsource (www.boardsource.org), in any community it’s about 5 percent of the people who serve on all the non-profit boards and make decisions impacting the other 95 percent.

“It’s unfortunate, but the STP rule is alive and well in our community,” said Kathy Rousset, executive director of Hospice of Montezuma, a non-profit that provides hospice services in the area. Rousset said her organization runs into the same problem of board recruitment and retention. People come and go but she generally counts on the STP to help her accomplish a multitude of tasks.

Deb Avery, executive director of the Cortez Cultural Center, expressed the same sentiment. “I wish more people would step up to the plate,” she said. “There are just not enough people willing to serve on local boards.”

Both women voiced appreciation for their current boards but understand the difficulty of recruiting and keeping effective leaders.

Former Montezuma County Commissioner Kelly Wilson, who has served on a plethora of boards and is currently chair of the Ag Expo board and vice president of the Montezuma County Historical Society board, said it’s a challenge to find qualified individuals willing to serve.

“People work and have kids and different activities,” Wilson said. “It’s a challenge to find the people that fit the slots you’re looking for and, secondly, to get them talked into it. I fully respect people who back off.”

But the result, he said, is that “the same people seem to be doing all the things. As a result, and I don’t mean to be critical, that’s the way the community goes. You get a dozen people that go from board to board to board, and their thinking doesn’t change.”

Most boards tend to be made up of middle-aged to older folks, he said. “Young people with little kids — it’s hard for them to volunteer unless it’s for something like the school board.” Another problem, he said, is that sometimes individuals get onto a board, particularly a special-district or governmental one, because they have an “ax to grind” or a single issue that interests them. When they find out that bringing about change is a slow process, they give up and quit.

And meetings can be dauntingly dull unless they’re well-run. “People with the leadership capabilities can make it interesting and get the meeting over with and get the job done,” Wilson said. The Ag Expo meetings start at 7 and end promptly at 9, he said. “Two hours is about all your butt can take, anyway.”

Wilson recently left the Southwest Regional Advisory Council, a citizens’ group that works with the BLM, because he wanted more free time. But he still finds himself in demand. “After awhile, you start thinking, isn’t there anybody else that can do this? But people say, ‘Kelly, we asked somebody, but they don’t show up.’

“All these groups are looking for volunteers and they’re all looking for money.”

Still, he has found the work rewarding. “Overall it’s been quite a ride and I enjoyed it, mostly.”

Giving back

Pat Kantor of Dolores, a member of the Dolores Public Library board and a founding member of CFAR (Citizens for Accountability and Responsibility), said good boards have “a dedication to what the group is doing and a realization that you can make a difference.”

Kantor, who was a member of several other groups while in Sedona, Ariz., sees board service as a duty and a way to influence the future.

“Certain people feel a responsibility to give back to the community and I think that’s important,” she said. “I wish everybody did. We all live in and enjoy a community. To sit passively and watch the community happen means that it really can happen in ways that you don’t want.”

She believes more people would serve if they understood what different organizations do and what a critical role they fill. “The community depends on these people,” she said. “The people on the board shape the policies of that organization.”

Ginger Freeman of Cortez is atypical in that she is a young mother with two children who still has found time to be a Partners mentor and serve on the board of Hospice of Montezuma as well as a school parent-teacher organization.

She joined the hospice board in 2004 after being rejected by another local non-profit — that group, she said, told her mother they would not want Freeman because they wanted only business owners on their board.

“It really hurt my feelings,” Freeman said. “It seemed funny because they’re always looking for people. I was telling someone about it and he said, ‘I’m on the hospice board and they are actively recruiting,’ so I wound up there.”

Freeman is now looking to rotate off that group, of which she is vice president. “It’s hard,” she said, “because I want to make sure there is someone to take my place.”

Buying in

Montezuma County has a plethora of “amenity migrants” – retired professionals who come to the area for its beauty and bring with them a wealth of experience and knowledge. Many locals believe there is a rich pool of leaders just waiting for the right opportunity to appear.

One question is whether there is adequate representation of different cultures in the governing organizations of Montezuma County. This is a critical question boards need to ask themselves when recruiting new members.

There are many reasons people choose not to serve on boards. People may feel ill-equipped and/or incompetent to serve. If they have different ideas than the other members, they may feel out of place.

Economic factors can also be a deterrent. Serving on councils, commissions or boards rarely provides much compensation. The Cortez City Council pays its members $400 a month, but even then it has difficulty getting people to run for office. Mancos trustees receive $150 a month; Dolores Town Board members get $25 per meeting.

And it’s rare for non-profits or special districts to give anything to their boards beyond remuneration for time and travel — if that. Not only does board service not pay, it may actually cost money.

Freeman said she was surprised by the hospice board’s requirement — a common practice among non-profit boards — that members make a financial contribution to the organization as a way to “buy in” and show their support.

When deciding grants and funding, foundations may require or look for financial contribution from board members, according to many people who have served on boards.

“I didn’t like that,” Freeman said. “I felt like I’m already giving my time and my energy and my skills.” She works on fundraising for hospice and provides their web-site services for free.

Eventually she wrote a check for $1, which the other board members said was fine, because she couldn’t afford to give more.

Still, she said her service has been very rewarding. “I think hospice is a great group and a great cause.”

Bridging the gap

Board members drop out for a number of reasons; one of the most common is that they did not understand what was required of them in the first place. Both Avery and Rousset agreed that board packets and a good introduction to the roles and responsibilities of members are critical.

Another key requirement is that group members feel they’re contributing and accomplishing something – not just attending meetings.

Lisa Liljedahl, a longtime board member with many organizations, said boards needed to understand their role and not try to micro-manage an organization. She said she had seen a lot of problems with board members who went beyond their roles into active and/or intrusive management, either due to inexperience or lack of understanding.

Organizations such as the Southwest Community Leadership Collaborative and private leadership consultants are working to find and equip leaders in this area. The SCLC provides opportunities for people to learn more about the community through Leadership Montezuma; educates leaders on the roles and responsibilities of being on a board or council through the Summit Leadership Series; provides highschool students with community information and leadership skills through the High School Leadership Program; and provides information on the various water issues in this area through Water 101 (which will be conducting another workshop in October).

Efforts such as these seek to eliminate the STP concept.

Rebecca Larson, a consultant, said the idea of the Summit Leadership series came out of work groups during a Community Summit meeting five years ago. These groups identified a lack of people willing to step into leadership roles in Montezuma County. They theorized that perhaps people needed more skills to feel competent. With that in mind they and others created the Summit Leadership Series – a seven-month “board school” that teaches many aspects of serving on boards.

Kantor said both Leadership Montezuma and the Summit Leadership Series can be invaluable in helping citizens learn what different groups are out there and what they do. “I was blown away five years ago when I did Montezuma Leadership and found out about all these different organizations,” she said. “Then the Summit Leadership program really goes into the intricacies of what boards are supposed to do. That helped me a lot.”

There may not be a simple answer to the long-standing dilemma. However, a healthy community is dependent on the effectiveness of its leaders. It is up to the people who benefit from the many organizations in the area, as well as the organizations themselves, to decide how to encourage councils and boards to continue spending the time, money and energy to make decisions that affect us all.

For information on the Southwest Community Leadership Collaborative contact Susan Hakanson, P.O. Box 609, Cortez, info@swcommunityleadership. org, 970-379-3303.

White Mesa basket-weaver Adoline Eyetoo works on her flag basket, “Song of the Basket,” an exhibition of the Ute basket-making skills, is on display at the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum in Ignacio, Colo. Photo courtesy of Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum

Lynn Brittner speaks softly into the phone from her office at the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum (SUCCM) in Ignacio. Under her guidance as executive director, SUCCM preserves what is left of Ute culture, revives pieces of the culture that have been lost, and tries to teach visitors about the Utes.

“People usually go to Mesa Verde or the Navajo Nation. No one knows who the Utes are.” asserts Brittner. “That’s ironic. They’re the oldest living continuous occupants of Colorado.”

Their Uto-Aztecan language is spoken from Mexico to Canada. They once controlled the trade routes known as the Spanish Trail, running from the Santa Fe area to Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and California.

Brittner hopes two things will soon draw more attention to the Utes: the expansion of SUCCM into a new complex over the next 18 months, and an exhibition called “Song of the Basket,” up since last August in SUCCM’s present facility.

“Song of the Basket” evolved when 10 elder Ute basket-makers from White Mesa, Utah, approached Brittner and pointed out that once they passed away, no one would be making baskets.

“This new generation is just not interested [in leaning how],” says Brittner. “They’re getting educated, they’re getting good jobs, they’re moving to cities.”

Responding to the elders’ concerns, she began making trips to their homes to document basket-making methods. She promised to buy contemporary pieces they produced.

The White Mesa basket-makers also came to Ignacio in a bus from their local senior center to visit SUCCM and the Ute Mountain Casino. Brittner breaks into a delighted laugh. “They’re charming, wonderful, vivacious women,” she chuckles. “They really enjoy traveling, these ladies.”

But when they’re not roaming the countryside, the elder White Mesa basket- makers work at a demanding craft. They pick red willow or sumac branches, split them, and form coils. The task can leave their hands cut and chapped.

Then they develop a concept for each basket and start to weave, sometimes creating simple geometric shapes, sometimes pictographs, butterflies, stars, willow flowers, or pictorial designs. Some of the women shape their creations into jars and seal them with pitch to carry water, or make medicine baskets depicting stages of a person’s life.

Designs come from aunts, older cousins, and old-time traders. The Twin Rocks Trading Post in Bluff, Utah, has a small historic basket collection from which the artists gather ideas.

Each has her favorite motifs. Alice Lehi loves horse and bumblebee designs. Adoline Eyetoo works with American flags.

“They weave baskets from their hearts,” explains Brittner, adding that the women often sing traditional songs while they work, and employ the traditional form of three to five willow rods per basket coil.

Visitors can see all these pieces in “Song of the Basket.” The name derives from a poem by a Ute elder who was inspired by the weavers’ work.

Containing about 80 pieces, the show will be on display until 2010. After that, SUCCM will move to quarters northeast of the intersection of Highway 172 and C.R. 517, just south of the new Sky Ute Casino.

Brittner hopes at that time to expand “Song of the Basket” to include historic as well as contemporary pieces, and to explain the influence of Ute basket-making on other Southwestern Native American groups.

According to the White Mesa basket-makers, the Utes taught the Navajos basketry in exchange for peace after a long period of war. Brittner laughs quietly. The Navajos agree that they fought with the Utes, but don’t agree on who created peace. “Who had baskets first is the big question here.”

No matter who did, the Navajos began to prize Ute baskets. Tribal taboos forbade Navajo medicine men to make their own ceremonial baskets and pictorial designs for their rituals. Ute artists stepped in to help.

The Utes’ cousins, the Paiutes, also made baskets, but their approach to the craft hasn’t yet been fully researched. Brittner hopes to change that.

“We’ve interviewed old-time traders in their 70s and 80s, interviewed basket- weavers in their homes, and where they were born and raised in teepees in Allen Canyon, [Utah], trying to get the whole picture,” she says.

For her, “Song of the Basket” in its current form is just a preview of what is to come in the new Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum, which she predicts will “be a wonderful space” with 8,000 square feet of permanent exhibit and temporary galleries.

The facility will have a library, an elder story-telling room, two classrooms, a multipurpose space, a grand hall, and an outdoor cooking area. State-of-the-art storage will protect collections with humidity and temperature control. The building will feature a green roof, recycled furniture, and carpets made of old tires.

Besides “Song of the Basket,” oral histories with elders, veterans and other community leaders; rotating exhibits, clothing borrowed from the Smithsonian; and myths, legends, and contemporary tales will tell the story of Utes as warriors, hunters, traders, and artists.

Cookbooks will explain how to prepare groundhogs, hummingbirds, and pemmican, a mixture of chokecherries, dried elk or venison, and lard. Fashion shows, and a haunted house at Halloween will offer a chance for delightful social interactions.

“We’re hoping to create bridges to people in Durango who wouldn’t normally come to the reservation,” says Brittner. “We’re hoping to bring in people to learn more about the Ute culture from all over.”

In late summer, fields of golden sunflowers, heavy heads drooping, line the border of U.S. Highway 491 in Southwest Colorado, near the town of Dove Creek. Farmers in this part of Colorado grow the sunflowers for their oily seeds, which they sell to San Juan Bioenergy, LLC.

The bioenergy company originally formed about four years ago, with a goal of producing biodiesel fuel for the region. About one year ago, though, market fluctuations forced a change in that mission, and the company, formerly known as San Juan Biodiesel, has changed both its name and its primary purpose, switching from fuel to food production.

“We’ll be using sunflower and safflower oil to sell solely as a food product,” said Jeff Berman, chief executive officer at the company, in a recent interview.

Over the last year, said Berman, the price of sunflower seeds, and, correspondingly, sunflower oil, used for cooking, has gone up dramatically. The plant can now get between $7 and $8 per gallon for selling food-quality oil from the seeds of sunflowers and safflowers. In contrast, diesel fuel prices have hovered in the $3- to $4- per-gallon realm over the past year.

“Sunflower oil has risen to the point where it is one of the highest food grade oils on the market,” Berman said during a recent tour of oil-seed crops held at the Colorado State University Extension research station in Yellow Jacket, Colo.

Greg Vlaming, director of grower services for San Juan Bioenergy, confirmed that food-grade sunflower-oil prices have risen significantly in the past year, partly because large companies have switched to using sunflower oil, which has no trans-fats, to fry packaged foods like potato chips. “The major food companies in this country realized that they couldn’t keep feeding people fatty oil in their foods,” said Vlaming.

The bioenergy company plans to sell its food oil to markets across the country, said Berman, another change from the original goal of the plant, which was to sell fuel to a primarily local market. The plant still aims to use as much renewable energy as possible, and will use a process called gasification to turn sunflower-seed hulls and other plant remnants into a gas that provides part of the electricity to run the plant.

Both Berman and Vlaming said the plant was still pursuing biodiesel as a goal, but on a smaller, pilot-project level. The plant will not use sunflower or safflower seeds to product biodiesel, but has sought canola seeds and used fryer oil, which they would purchase from locations across the Western Slope, as feedstocks for making biodiesel fuel.

As prices for traditional biodiesel feedstocks such as soybean oil rise, biodiesel facilities across the country are turning to alternate sources to produce the raw material for making biodiesel, according to industry reports.

Amber Thurlo Pearson, a communications specialist at the National Biodiesel Board, the primary biodiesel trade organization in the United States, said that other biodiesel manufacturing facilities are also looking to alternate feedstocks as food-oil prices rise.

“Now certain plant oils are uneconomical to make biodiesel with, currently, so you’ll see more diversification of feed stocks,” Thurlo Pearson said.

Alternate sources of biodiesel feed stock include used fryer oil, also known as yellow grease, and leftover animal fats from processing, as well as oil-seed crops such as canola or camelina, a member of the mustard family, that are not fetching such high market prices as food oils. Blue Sun Biodiesel, a company based in Golden, Colo., just received a $41,059 grant from the state of Colorado to commercialize camelina as a biodiesel feedstock.

Across the United States, the industry is also looking into using algae to make biodiesel, although that technology is not yet available at a commercial scale.

San Juan Bioenergy plans to have its grand opening some time in November, said Berman. The plant’s been contracting with growers in the Dove Creek area for four years now, so it has plenty of feedstock for making sunflower and safflower oil.

“We expect to process, before the 2009 harvest, about 20 million pounds of sunflower, safflower, and canola,” Berman said.

This year, the region planted about 15,000 acres of crops specifically for the plant, most of them sunflowers. The Colorado State University Extension research station in Yellow Jacket has worked to support growers by conducting trials of sunflowers, safflowers, canola and camelina in various rotations and irrigation regimes.

For more information, see www.sanjuanbioenergy.com.

She looked at her watch impatiently.How long had they been there? It seemed like days. The agenda had looked reasonably short, but after nearly two hours they were only on the second item.

Members of the Hospice of Montezuma board gather for their monthly meeting at the Cortez library. Finding enough dedicated volunteers to serve on non-profit, special district and governmental boards can be a challenge in rural areas. Photo by Wendy Mimiaga.

She had joined the non-profit’s boardbecause she believed in the cause, butshe had nothing to contribute to thisendless droning about financial reports and staffing problems. She felt like a warm body that helped provide aquorum, nothing more. Now she waswondering what excuse she could use to resign.

The executive director collapsed in tears after the meeting. It was the same story over and over. The board members had good intentions but the meetings rarely accomplished anything and, as usual, she was left with more tasks and less guidance. Most people thought being on the board was a status symbol, something to pad their résumés, that wouldn’t require a commitment beyond the two-hour monthly meeting. She wondered where she would go if she got up the nerve to quit.

Do not try to identify these people. They are composites from any number of organizations in our community.

Communities are run by a plethora of boards and councils. The most obvious are within county and municipal government: county commissions, town councils, planning and zoning commissions. Another visible type of board operates public schools.

But there are also special districts, which oversee such operations as utilities, water, cemeteries, hospitals, firefighting, television and radio, soil conservation, sewer services, and mosquito control. In Montezuma County there are 24 such special districts; in Dolores County there are nine, all needing to be managed by some sort of board.

And then there are hundreds of nonprofit groups and foundations that work for charitable, cultural, agricultural, educational, medical, veterans’ and other causes.

There are 211 tax-exempt/non-profit organizations in Montezuma County, 19 in Dolores County, 454 in La Plata County, 44 in Utah’s San Juan County, and a staggering 454 in New Mexico’s San Juan County, according to TaxExemptWorld.com. These, too, are governed by boards.

All these entities need motivated, responsible, intelligent people to guide them. But finding such folks and keeping them can be very difficult.

What motivates someone to sit on a board? Is it a sense of masochism (or, in some cases sadism) as some former board members might report?

Pat Smith, a national author in board management, has found that people join boards for three reasons: passion for the mission, a desire to give back to the community, or because a friend asked.

All these reasons serve to get people on boards, but they can have drawbacks.

Having passion for something is not synonymous with being equipped to lead it. And joining a board because a friend asked may lead to resentment if the primary reason for joining is guilt or peer pressure. Also, having friends recruit board members tends to result in very homogeneous groups without the diversity that is representative of the community or organization.

Unfortunately, not enough effort is expended by nominating committees to analyze potential board members, not only trying to match the person to the cause, but also deciding whether or not he or she posseses the basic interest or ability to serve effectively.

The STP concept

Throughout Montezuma County and other small communities, there is a chronic shortage of people willing and qualified to serve on boards.

The result is known as the concept of STP (the “same ten people”) who provide the majority of leadership. According to Boardsource (www.boardsource.org), in any community it’s about 5 percent of the people who serve on all the non-profit boards and make decisions impacting the other 95 percent.

“It’s unfortunate, but the STP rule is alive and well in our community,” said Kathy Rousset, executive director of Hospice of Montezuma, a non-profit that provides hospice services in the area. Rousset said her organization runs into the same problem of board recruitment and retention. People come and go but she generally counts on the STP to help her accomplish a multitude of tasks.

Deb Avery, executive director of the Cortez Cultural Center, expressed the same sentiment. “I wish more people would step up to the plate,” she said. “There are just not enough people willing to serve on local boards.”

Both women voiced appreciation for their current boards but understand the difficulty of recruiting and keeping effective leaders.

Former Montezuma County Commissioner Kelly Wilson, who has served on a plethora of boards and is currently chair of the Ag Expo board and vice president of the Montezuma County Historical Society board, said it’s a challenge to find qualified individuals willing to serve.

“People work and have kids and different activities,” Wilson said. “It’s a challenge to find the people that fit the slots you’re looking for and, secondly, to get them talked into it. I fully respect people who back off.”

But the result, he said, is that “the same people seem to be doing all the things. As a result, and I don’t mean to be critical, that’s the way the community goes. You get a dozen people that go from board to board to board, and their thinking doesn’t change.”

Most boards tend to be made up of middle-aged to older folks, he said. “Young people with little kids — it’s hard for them to volunteer unless it’s for something like the school board.” Another problem, he said, is that sometimes individuals get onto a board, particularly a special-district or governmental one, because they have an “ax to grind” or a single issue that interests them. When they find out that bringing about change is a slow process, they give up and quit.

And meetings can be dauntingly dull unless they’re well-run. “People with the leadership capabilities can make it interesting and get the meeting over with and get the job done,” Wilson said. The Ag Expo meetings start at 7 and end promptly at 9, he said. “Two hours is about all your butt can take, anyway.”

Wilson recently left the Southwest Regional Advisory Council, a citizens’ group that works with the BLM, because he wanted more free time. But he still finds himself in demand. “After awhile, you start thinking, isn’t there anybody else that can do this? But people say, ‘Kelly, we asked somebody, but they don’t show up.’

“All these groups are looking for volunteers and they’re all looking for money.”

Still, he has found the work rewarding. “Overall it’s been quite a ride and I enjoyed it, mostly.”

Giving back

Pat Kantor of Dolores, a member of the Dolores Public Library board and a founding member of CFAR (Citizens for Accountability and Responsibility), said good boards have “a dedication to what the group is doing and a realization that you can make a difference.”

Kantor, who was a member of several other groups while in Sedona, Ariz., sees board service as a duty and a way to influence the future.

“Certain people feel a responsibility to give back to the community and I think that’s important,” she said. “I wish everybody did. We all live in and enjoy a community. To sit passively and watch the community happen means that it really can happen in ways that you don’t want.”

She believes more people would serve if they understood what different organizations do and what a critical role they fill. “The community depends on these people,” she said. “The people on the board shape the policies of that organization.”

Ginger Freeman of Cortez is atypical in that she is a young mother with two children who still has found time to be a Partners mentor and serve on the board of Hospice of Montezuma as well as a school parent-teacher organization.

She joined the hospice board in 2004 after being rejected by another local non-profit — that group, she said, told her mother they would not want Freeman because they wanted only business owners on their board.

“It really hurt my feelings,” Freeman said. “It seemed funny because they’re always looking for people. I was telling someone about it and he said, ‘I’m on the hospice board and they are actively recruiting,’ so I wound up there.”

Freeman is now looking to rotate off that group, of which she is vice president. “It’s hard,” she said, “because I want to make sure there is someone to take my place.”

Buying in

Montezuma County has a plethora of “amenity migrants” – retired professionals who come to the area for its beauty and bring with them a wealth of experience and knowledge. Many locals believe there is a rich pool of leaders just waiting for the right opportunity to appear.

One question is whether there is adequate representation of different cultures in the governing organizations of Montezuma County. This is a critical question boards need to ask themselves when recruiting new members.

There are many reasons people choose not to serve on boards. People may feel ill-equipped and/or incompetent to serve. If they have different ideas than the other members, they may feel out of place.

Economic factors can also be a deterrent. Serving on councils, commissions or boards rarely provides much compensation. The Cortez City Council pays its members $400 a month, but even then it has difficulty getting people to run for office. Mancos trustees receive $150 a month; Dolores Town Board members get $25 per meeting.

And it’s rare for non-profits or special districts to give anything to their boards beyond remuneration for time and travel — if that. Not only does board service not pay, it may actually cost money.

Freeman said she was surprised by the hospice board’s requirement — a common practice among non-profit boards — that members make a financial contribution to the organization as a way to “buy in” and show their support.

When deciding grants and funding, foundations may require or look for financial contribution from board members, according to many people who have served on boards.

“I didn’t like that,” Freeman said. “I felt like I’m already giving my time and my energy and my skills.” She works on fundraising for hospice and provides their web-site services for free.

Eventually she wrote a check for $1, which the other board members said was fine, because she couldn’t afford to give more.

Still, she said her service has been very rewarding. “I think hospice is a great group and a great cause.”

Bridging the gap

Board members drop out for a number of reasons; one of the most common is that they did not understand what was required of them in the first place. Both Avery and Rousset agreed that board packets and a good introduction to the roles and responsibilities of members are critical.

Another key requirement is that group members feel they’re contributing and accomplishing something – not just attending meetings.

Lisa Liljedahl, a longtime board member with many organizations, said boards needed to understand their role and not try to micro-manage an organization. She said she had seen a lot of problems with board members who went beyond their roles into active and/or intrusive management, either due to inexperience or lack of understanding.

Organizations such as the Southwest Community Leadership Collaborative and private leadership consultants are working to find and equip leaders in this area. The SCLC provides opportunities for people to learn more about the community through Leadership Montezuma; educates leaders on the roles and responsibilities of being on a board or council through the Summit Leadership Series; provides highschool students with community information and leadership skills through the High School Leadership Program; and provides information on the various water issues in this area through Water 101 (which will be conducting another workshop in October).

Efforts such as these seek to eliminate the STP concept.

Rebecca Larson, a consultant, said the idea of the Summit Leadership series came out of work groups during a Community Summit meeting five years ago. These groups identified a lack of people willing to step into leadership roles in Montezuma County. They theorized that perhaps people needed more skills to feel competent. With that in mind they and others created the Summit Leadership Series – a seven-month “board school” that teaches many aspects of serving on boards.

Kantor said both Leadership Montezuma and the Summit Leadership Series can be invaluable in helping citizens learn what different groups are out there and what they do. “I was blown away five years ago when I did Montezuma Leadership and found out about all these different organizations,” she said. “Then the Summit Leadership program really goes into the intricacies of what boards are supposed to do. That helped me a lot.”

There may not be a simple answer to the long-standing dilemma. However, a healthy community is dependent on the effectiveness of its leaders. It is up to the people who benefit from the many organizations in the area, as well as the organizations themselves, to decide how to encourage councils and boards to continue spending the time, money and energy to make decisions that affect us all.

For information on the Southwest Community Leadership Collaborative contact Susan Hakanson, P.O. Box 609, Cortez, info@swcommunityleadership. org, 970-379-3303.

A subdivision that would dwarf any other built so far in Montezuma County is being planned for a 460-acre parcel east of Cortez near Totten Reservoir.

Although the developers have yet to submit a formal application for zoning to the county, they have given preliminary documents to the planning office. A representative also spoke to the Cortez Sanitation District board about the project at its Sept. 8 meeting.

Called the Totten Reservoir Sustainable Community or the Tottenville Project in preliminary proposals, the development would be “a mixed-use subdivision of nearly 800 homes and commercial uses,” the documents say. It is described as having 700 living units, ranging from studio apartments of 600 square feet to fourbedroom homes of 2,000 feet or more.

Lot sizes would range from onequarter acre to one acre.

The biggest subdivision in Montezuma County at present is Cedar Mesa, north of Highway 160 near the Mesa Verde exit, which has 148 lots, many of them still empty.

The Tottenville development is envisioned as “a fully environmentally sustainable community” that would incorporate solar heating, solar power production, ground-source heat-pump supplemental energy, green building practices, recycling, conservation, and low-impact infrastructure development “whenever possible,” the proposal says.

An L-shaped tract near Totten Reservoir is the site of a 700-lot subdivision that is in the works in Montezuma County. Developers are planning for it to be environmentally friendly and oriented toward pedestrians and cyclists.

The subdivision would in effect become another municipality in the county.

In addition to the 700 living units, it would contain some 600 garages/carports and 73,000 square feet of business and civic centers, documents say. It would have a post office, convenience stores, coffee shops and restaurants, schools, a community/recreation center, a town meeting hall, medical/ dental offices and an 8,000- square-foot grocery store.

Eight percent of the total acreage would be dedicated to “building footprints,” according to the planning documents.

The subdivision’s mission, documents state, is to be “Colorado’s first environmentally and economically sustainable village.”

Tottenville is envisioned as pedestrian- and bike-friendly, with all residences located within a five- or 10- minute walk of a commercial area. Houses would face central pedestrian and bike avenues, providing a safe zone for children and pedestrians as well as a “kinder, gentler” neighborhood, while streets for vehicle traffic would lie at the backs of the houses.

Dean Matthews, a director with the Four Corners Builders Association and a partner in AMC Developing, which is developing Fairway View Estates east of Cortez, is one of the developers for the project. The property is currently owned by Scott and Joe D. Tipton, according to public records.

The tract is an L-shaped piece whose western border adjoins Fairway View Estates. Totten Reservoir juts northward into the southeastern portion of the property, and a private wildlife refuge lies along the northeastern boundary.

Montezuma County has a minimum lot size of three acres; however, that requirement can be waived for developments that are granted “Urban Services” zoning as defined under the land-use code. The Urban Services Zone is designed to encourage higherdensity developments near municipalities, where urban services such as sewer and water are available.

However, Tottenville as planned would not actually receive municipal services.

Instead, water would be supplied by Montezuma Water Company, and the development would have its own sewage-treatment system, with an aerated lagoon facility followed by constructed wetlands, according to the proposal. The effluent from the wetlands would be pumped to be further reclaimed and reprocessed in features such as ponds, irrigation and other uses, the proposal states.

The Montezuma County Land Use Code states, in section 3310.1, “The Urban Services Zone allows for higher intensity development where urban services appropriate to the intended use are available. An Urban Service Zone designation cannot be established without clear evidence that services are, or can be made available, to the site within a reasonable time without undue public costs.”

Whether this means that a development would actually have to obtain urban services in order to be eligible for the zoning is unclear.

Matthews came before the Cortez Sanitation District board Sept. 8 to advise the members about the development even though the promoters are not seeking for it to be taken into the sanitation district.

Jay Conner, manager of the sanitation district, told the Free Press the board had questions about the proposal when it was brought before them, but made no decision on whether to support the idea of the development having its own sewage-treatment facility. The sanitation district has no authority over the proposal other than making a recommendation to the state, he said.

“The state will probably ask us our opinion since we’re the major utility provider in the area,” Conner said.

He said the board members “didn’t give a full opinion on whether they felt [the sewage-treatment proposal] was adequate or not. Their position was to wait and see what the state thought.

“The board will have to really discuss this before we make a full recommendation,” Conner added. “It did appear the board was kind of split. Some thought it was a good idea; some thought they really need to come into the sanitation district.

“One of the things we definitely want to avoid is another Lakeside [a trailer park near Totten Reservoir with chronic septic problems],” Conner said. “By no means am I indicating this would be like that, but we want to make sure.”

Sewer taps from the Cortez Sanitation District cost $4,500 per residence, but the money can be paid over time as the subdivision is built, Conner said.

He said, in order to handle such a huge subdivision, the sanitation district would need to make some improvements to its sewage infrastructure. “The treatment facility itself would handle it, but we would probably have to do some upgrades to the collector system and we would be looking to the developer to assist us in that.”

Urban Services Zoning is fairly uncommon in Montezuma County. According to the planning department, there are currently just 13 parcels totaling 384.6 acres that carry the zoning or have it as a zoning “preference” not yet validated by the county. Two parcels are near the town of Mancos and the other 11 are just outside of Cortez.

Developers reportedly have had one meeting with some neighbors and are planning another for neighbors and interested citizens. That one is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 6 p.m., at the Calvin Denton Room at Empire Electric, 801 N. Broadway.