Montezuma County has lowered the Law Enforcement Authority mill levy from 1.45 mills to 1.20 mills.<\/p>\n
The LEA was passed by voters in 2007 to pay for additional law enforcement services for unincorporated parts of the county.<\/p>\n
It generated controversy this year when $797,000 was tapped from the fund to purchase 13 new vehicles for the Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
The mill levy, which is collected from property taxes, generated $745,000 in 2013 and $870,000 in 2014.<\/p>\n
Commissioners have been critical of fund, calling it \u201cexcessive and stockpiled.\u201d They have considered letting it sunset.<\/p>\n
The new levy reduces the amount collected in 2015 by an estimated $200,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re lowering taxes for the county,\u201d said commissioner Larry Don Suckla.<\/p>\n
Former Sheriff Gerald Wallace championed the LEA mill levy but said it was \u201cmisspent\u201d on vehicles. He said it was intended to put more officers on patrol in rural areas.<\/p>\n
Sheriff Spruell defended use of funds for replacing an aging vehicle fleet, calling criticism a political attack. He said he also used the money to hire additional officers and give deputies a 30 percent raise.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, we were the lowest-paid agency of our size in the state of Colorado,\u201d Spruell said. \u201cIf we take away LEA funds, it will drastically reduce patrols.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
earmarked for unincorporated areas, was used to buy sheriff\u2019s vehicles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-115649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115649"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=115649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}