Original article can be found atÌę
Originally published on December 28, 2020ÌęBy Rae Ellen Bichell
ERIE, Colo. â Whenever Larry Kelderman looks up from the car heâs fixing and peers across the street, heâs looking across a border. His town of 28,000 straddles two counties, separated by County Line Road.
Keldermanâs auto repair business is in Boulder County, whose officials are sticklers for public health and have topped the countyÌęÌęwith instructions on how to report COVID violations. Kelderman lives in Weld County, where officialsÌęÌęto enforce public health rules.
Weld Countyâs test positivity rate is twice that of its neighbor, but Kelderman is pretty clear which side he backs.
âWhich is worse, the person gets the virus and survives and they still have a business, or they donât get the virus and they lose their livelihood?â he said.
Boulder boasts one of theÌęÌępopulations in the nation; WeldÌęÌęabout its sugar beets, cattle and thousands of oil and gas wells. Summer in Boulder County means concerts featuring former members of the Grateful Dead; in Weld County, itâs rodeo time. Boulder voted for Biden, Weld for Trump. Per capita income in Boulder is nearly 50% higher than in Weld.
Even their COVID outbreaks are different: In Boulder County, the virus swirls around the University of Colorado. In Weld County, some of the worst outbreaks have swept through meatpacking plants.
Itâs not the first time County Line Road has been a fault line.
âIâve been in politics seven years and thereâs always been a conflict between the two counties,â said Jennifer Carroll, mayor of Erie, once a coal mining town and now billed as a good place to raise a family, about 30 minutes north of Denver.
Shortly before the coronavirus hit Colorado, Erieâs board of trusteesÌęextendedÌęaÌęÌęon new oil and gas operations in the town. Weld County was not pleased.
âThey got really angry at us for doing that, because oil and gas is their thing,â Carroll said.
Most of the townâs businesses are on the Weld side. To avoid public health whiplash, Carroll and other town leaders have asked residents to comply with the more restrictive stance of the Boulder side.
The feud got ugly in a dispute over hospital beds. At one point, the stateÌęÌęWeld County had only three intensive care beds, while Weld County claimed it had 43.
âIt made my job harder, because people were doubting what I was saying,â said Carroll. âNobody trusted anyone because they were hearing conflicting information.â
Weldâs number, it turned out, included not just the beds in its two hospitals, but also those in 10 other hospitals across the county line, including in the city of Longmont.
Longmont sits primarily in Boulder County but spills into Weld, where its suburbs taper into fields pockmarked with prairie dog holes. Its residents say theyÌęcan tell snow is comingÌęwhen the winds deliver a pungent smell of livestock from next door. Longmont Mayor Brian Bagley worried that Weldâs behavior would deliver more than a stench: It might also deliver patients requiring precious resources.
âThey were basically encouraging their citizens to violate the emergency health orders ⊠with this cowboy-esque, you know, âYippee-ki-yay, freedom, Constitution forever, damn the consequences,ââ said Bagley. âTheir statement is, âOur hospitals are full, but donât worry, weâre just going to use yours.ââ
So, âfor 48 hours, I trolled Weld County,â he said. Bagley asked the city council to consider anÌęÌęWeld County residentsâ ability to receive care at Longmont hospitals. Bagley, whoÌęÌęproposal the next day, said he knew it was never going to come to fruition â after all, it was probably illegal â but he wanted to prove a point.
âTheyâre going to be irresponsible? Fine. Let me propose a question,â he said. âIf there is only one ICU bed left and there are two grandparents there â one from Weld, one from Boulder â and they both need that bed, who should get it?â
Weld County commissioners volleyed back, calling Bagley a âsimple mayor.âÌęÌęthat the answer to the pandemic was ânot to continually punish working-class families or the individuals who bag your groceries, wait on you in restaurants, deliver food to your home while you watch Netflix and chill.â
âI know weâre all trying to get along, but people are starting to do stupid and mean things and so Iâll be stupid and mean back,â Bagley said during a Dec. 8 council meeting.
In another Longmont City Council meeting, Bagley (who suspects the commissioners donât know what âNetflix and chillâ typically means) often referred to Weld simply as âour neighbors to the East,â declining to name his foe. The council shrugged off his statement about withholding medical treatment but demanded that Weld County step up to fight the pandemic.
âWe would not deny medical care to anybody. Itâs illegal and itâs immoral,â said council member Polly Christensen. âBut it is wrong for people to expect us to bear the burden of what theyâve been irresponsible enough to let loose.â
âTheyâre the reason why I canât be in the classroom in front of my kids,â said council member and teacher Susie Hidalgo-Fahring, whose school district straddles the counties. âIâm done with that. Everybody needs to be a good neighbor.â
The council decided Dec. 15 to send a letter to Weld Countyâs commissioners encouraging them to enforce state restrictions and to make a public statement about the benefits of wearing masks and practicing physical distancing. Theyâve also backed a law allowing Democratic Gov. Jared Polis toÌęÌęfrom counties that donât comply with restrictions.
Weld County CommissionerÌęÌęsaid his county doesnât have the authority to enforce public health orders any more than a citizen has the authority to give a speeding ticket.
âIf you want me as an elected official to assume authority that I donât have and arbitrarily exert it over you, I dare you to look that up in the dictionary,â said James, who is a rancher turnedÌę. âItâs called tyranny.â
James doesnât deny that COVID-19 is ravaging his community. âWeâre on fire, and we need to put that fire out,â heÌę. But he believes that individuals will make the right decisions to protect others, and demands the right of his constituents to use the hospital nearest them.
âTo look at Weld County like it has walls around it is shortsighted and not the way our health care system is designed to work,â James said. âTo use a crudity, because I am, after all, just a ranch kid turned radio guy, thereâs no ânon-peeingâ section in the pool. Everybodyâs gonna get a little on âem. And thatâs whatâs going on right now with COVID.â
The dispute is not just liberal and conservative politics clashing. Bagley, the Longmont mayor, grew up in Weld County and âwas a Republican up until Trump,â he said. But it is an example of how the virus is tapping into long-standing Western strife.
âThereâs decades of reasons for resentment at people from a distance â usually from a metropolis and from a state or federal governmental office â telling rural people what to do,â saidÌęPatty Limerick, faculty director at the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and previously state historian.
In the â90s, she toured several states performing aÌęmock divorce trialÌębetween the rural and urban West. She played Urbana Asphalt West, married to Sandy Greenhills West. Their child, Suburbia, was indulged and clueless and had a habit of drinking everyone elseâs water. A rural health care shortage was one of many fuels of their marital strife.
Limerick and her colleagues are reviving the play now and adding COVID references. This time around, she said, itâll be a last-ditch marriage counseling session for high school classes and communities to adopt and perform. It likely wonât have a scripted ending; sheâs leaving that up to each community.