From the Clear Creek Courant dated 4-20-05, "Since last sumer, Georgetown and Silver Plume town officials have worked on creating a cooperative board that would take on projects and impacts from the Georgetown Loop Historical Mining and Railroad Park."

That's odd. Not a single meeting was ever held in which any town board ever discussed this possibility.

Last spring, The Georgetown/Silver Plume Joint Loop Committee was formed, consisting of Georgetown and Silver Plume officials. The conversations of this group centered around the possibility of the towns helping the CHS run the train. When the CHS proclaimed at the May 18th meeting that there would indeed be a train and that they were well on their way to finding an operator and after seeing a 1 million dollar minimum start-up cost break-down, the group saw no reason to continue. At this meeting, the group's last meeting, the Georgetown town attorney presented an intergovernmental agreement that was barely discussed. That group never met again.

The IGA was not brought up again for another 8 months.

Recently, the IGA, a legal document- drafted by the town of Georgetown's attorney,  paid for by the citizens of Georgetown and NEVER discussed by the town Board of Selectmen or any other town board, was presented by our town administrator to the Town of Silver Plume with the Colorado Historical Society. Guess who was one of the CHS reps? That's right, Georgetown Selectman/CHS Director of the Loop Park, Lee Behrens!

THEN, the town of Silver Plume actually voted on this IGA that Georgetown had yet to even discuss! The Silver Plume Trustees did not pass their IGA Resolution.

When asked about his involvement, town administrator, Chuck Stearns, explained that, "the Mayor had indicated that this was something the Town was working on". Stearns was a new hire who was clearly mislead by our Mayor. Further, when asked about how the Resolution to accept the IGA, that had yet to be discussed among the board, made it on the BOS agenda, Stearns explained that, "When doing the agenda, I asked Tom Bennhoff if we should do it just as a discussion item or action item and he felt we should list it as an action item as it had been worked on in the past." The Georgetown Board of Selectmen NEVER discussed, much less worked on the IGA.

Luckily, the NEW BOS decided that they saw no reason to proceed with the IGA and appointed Robby Hodge and Gary Haines as reps of the town in the event that there are to be any further discussions with Silver Plume and the CHS. That being stated, it is curious that the Town Administrator still has the IGA listed as one of his top priorities on his report, despite the obvious concensus of the board to table the issue.