{"id":72170,"date":"2017-05-12T17:43:33","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T23:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-joins-national-monument-debate\/"},"modified":"2017-05-12T23:43:33","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T23:43:33","slug":"cortez-council-joins-national-monument-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-joins-national-monument-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez council joins national monument debate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Painted
Painted Hand ruin, part of the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.<\/span>Photo courtesy of BLM<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Cortez City Council on Tuesday debated whether it should take an official position on the Trump administration\u2019s review of Canyons of the Ancients and other nearby national monuments.<\/p>\n

During a workshop before the council\u2019s weekly meeting, city manager Shane Hale asked if they would consider writing a letter to Congress on behalf of the national monuments in the Four Corners region. He said he and Mayor Karen Sheek had received many questions from the public about the issue ever since April 26, when President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Department of the Interior to review the monument designations of about 27 protected places, including Bears Ears and Canyons of the Ancients. While some members of the council, such as Sheek and Mayor Pro Tem Ty Keel, were in favor of writing a letter, others said it was too soon to take a position.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see any problem with having some sort of validity \u2026 to say \u2018yeah, this is important to us,\u2019\u201d Keel said.<\/p>\n

Sheek said that although it\u2019s not clear yet which way the review would go, she believed it would be helpful to write a letter supporting the monuments so that the city\u2019s position would be clear when it came time for the federal government to make a decision.<\/p>\n

Council member Jill Carlson disagreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because the review is being done doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s going to strip anything of its designation,\u201d she said. \u201cI think we get a little too speculative by taking a position now, when we don\u2019t even know if the ones that are in our area are in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Council member Tim Miller backed her up, and added that he didn\u2019t think it would be worthwhile to \u201ctick off\u201d a portion of the city\u2019s residents, who might disagree with the council\u2019s position, this early in the review process.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be liked by both sides,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Most of the council members said they agreed the monuments are important sources of tourism revenue for both the city and the county, although Miller said some people believe they give the federal government too much control over local land. In the end, they agreed not to make an official statement on the issue in the near future. Amber Clark, a member of the Dolores River Boating Advocates who attended the workshop, reminded the council that the Department of Interior plans to open a public comment period about the monument review on May 12. The council members did not say whether they would re-consider making a statement after that date.<\/p>\n

Mike Lavey, a member of the parks and recreation advisory board, spoke up during the public comment section of the main council meeting to say he believed the city should write the letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to recommend that we protect our national monuments in any way possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During the workshop, the council also heard a presentation from Cortez resident Bob Waggoner, who asked them to consider taking steps to make the town more bicycle-friendly, such as adding more bike lanes to major streets and intersections. Representatives from M,E&E Engineering, a company the city hired to assess the heating, vents and air conditioning system at the recreation center, reported that several rooftop units and other pieces of the system will need to be replaced in the near future. Laura Lewis Marchino, of Region 9 economic development district, gave a report on the district\u2019s efforts to boost business in the Four Corners area over the past two years.<\/p>\n

\n

Find out more<\/h4>\n

To learn more about the U.S. Department of the Interior\u2019s review of national monuments, go to www.doi.gov. To participate in the public comment period, go to www.regulations.gov and enter \u201cDOI-2017-0002\u201d in the Search bar, or mail a letter to: Monument Review, MS-1530, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20240.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members discuss possible statement on monument review<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,318,781,13,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-72170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-cortez-municipal-government","tag-environmental-politics","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72170","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=72170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72170"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=72170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}