By BRIAN PORTER | Rocky Mountain Voice
FORT MORGAN — Vagrants are trespassing in residential and business property, doing drugs in public, urinating and defecating in the library and other public places, and in general becoming an out-of-control public nuisance.
It would be just another day in Denver, but this isn’t Denver. It is Fort Morgan on the Eastern Plains of Colorado, where neighbors have known each other for decades in the town of about 12,000 and residents rarely unite to air their grievances in the happy-go-lucky community.
Until now. Residents are telling city leadership they have had enough.
“We have reached the end of our rope,” said Malori Rudnik, owner of Double R Embroidery at Main Street and Beaver Avenue adjacent to Glenn Miller Park. “We have found needles and drug paraphernalia on sidewalks and alleys. Our parking lots have become temporary homes, where they use power free of charge. We have watched them urinate outside, deal drugs and use drugs, all right on the corner of Main Street.”
A Main Street some urban dwellers might find synonymous with Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Sidewalks”.
Rudnik and other members of the business community attended the Fort Morgan City Council meeting Tuesday, Sept. 17, to express concerns toward vagrants.
“I’ve talked to people who keep [baseball] bats in their office because strung out people are coming into their businesses and making them feel very uncomfortable,” said Brian Urdiales, a Realtor and formerly a member of City Council. “They want to come in, use our restrooms, charge their phones. There needs to be a different name than homeless, because these guys are just strung out on something.”
The conversation continued Wednesday at the Fort Morgan library with Police Chief Loren Sharp. The library sits adjacent to Glenn Miller Park, and when the Wednesday meeting adjourned a vagrant was sleeping inside the gazebo.
“I’ve heard from numerous people,” Mayor Kevin ‘Doc’ Lindell said. “Your complaints aren’t falling on deaf ears, its just falling on someone who doesn’t have any idea how to tackle this problem to make it go away.”
City Councilman Loren Boyett is heading up a series of meetings he hopes will lead to solutions to the vagrancy.
“You’ve made it known this is an issue we have to deal with,” he said. “We have heard you.”
Urdiales reflected on his time on City Council, when he says the issue previously arose and no action was taken.
“[Residents] are going to come and nothing is going to be done,” Urdiales said. “That is how a majority of the people feel.”
On Wednesday, several residents addressed vagrancy concerns with Sharp during his monthly ‘Chat with the Chief’. One resident relayed a story where she discovered two people in the basement of her home during a renovation. She termed it an invasion of privacy. Another resident complained vagrants are in the alley behind her home every day.
A mother attending the library meeting detailed that her daughter is not allowed to visit the library or sit in the park for fear of the harm that could come to her.
Still another complained of vagrants who parked a vehicle one day and illegally changed plates with another vehicle to drive it the next day. He told Sharp the present approach to homeless is “feeding the bears…don’t feed the bears.”
Business owner Andrea Spresser relayed a story of a vagrant startling her by popping out of the dumpster outside her business, only to be topped by the police chief noting a vagrant has stayed inside the lobby of the police station and police can’t remove him.
“I don’t want to say there is nothing we can do,” Sharp said. “We have to come up with solutions.”
Rudnik, who initiated the discussion Tuesday during open forum at the City Council meeting, is concerned members of City Council don’t understand the issue the way a business owner has experienced it.
“We know you are aware there is a homeless and drug problem in town,” she said. “What we don’t know is if you understand the extent of how bad things have gotten for business owners and homeowners. It has gotten so bad multiple businesses now lock their doors during the day.”
One of those is Urdiales, who offices next to an Edward Jones adviser, who also locks his doors. Another Edward Jones adviser three blocks south on Main Street also locks his doors. Urdiales is aware of a restaurant locking their doors during the day, he said. There are many others.
Rudnik’s business is adjacent to two silos placed on Beaver Avenue during the filming of HGTV’s Hometown Takeover. Members of the previous City Council had instructed the silos to be removed.
“When I drove here in the storm, [the vagrants] are all standing inside the silos,” Urdiales said. “If you drive by anytime of day, those gentlemen aren’t on the corner, but their stuff is in there.”
The vagrants spend almost every afternoon outside Rudnik’s business, loitering on benches and in the silos.
There are an estimated 250 homeless persons in Fort Morgan, and about 10 of those vagrants are a concern for police, Sharp said. Police have cited or arrested at least one homeless person every week for at least 35 weeks, Sharp says, and it has had no result. They often no-show court and don’t pay fines, he says.
He details that often the vagrants want to stay in Fort Morgan, with police believing many of them are from the town.
“When they say they want to go to Denver because there are more resources, we will take them there,” Sharp said.
One resident in the Wednesday meeting shouted: “Blame Gov. Polis!”
The issue in Fort Morgan does transcend the terms of several mayors. First, the solution was to close Riverside Park north of town with a nightly curfew, Sharp recalls.
“Did this solve the problem? No,” he said. “Then, I was asked to move them from under the bridge. Did that solve the problem? No.”
He, Lindell and Boyett have all indicated a solution must come through the community working together and through continued discussion.
“It is something we are aware of, and it is not something that is easily solved, as evidenced by cities across the nation,” Lindell said.
While Fort Morgan has healthy fund balances, Lindell is concerned the community does not have the expendable resources to address the vagrancy problem financially in the way a Denver might.
“I think it is going to be that we have to rely on being a small town and everyone coming together,” Lindell said. “Our state government has essentially handcuffed government when it comes to enforcing drug rules. They, in their wisdom, passed laws that make possession of not that small amount of drugs misdemeanors.”
One resident attending the Wednesday meeting encouraged residents to purchase non-lethal Byrna handguns to deal with vagrants.
The next meeting on the issue will be at 5-7 p.m. Sept. 25 in the Founder’s Room at Morgan Community College. Boyett indicates the crowd size continues to grow and has cautioned the meeting could move if more space is needed.
It certainly is a topic of interest. City Council meetings can often be crickets when it comes to public comment, Urdiales recalls, and Wednesday’s meeting with the chief was a capacity audience when typically it is just a few.
Former County Commissioner Brian McCracken asked City Council to consider if, because Fort Morgan is a home rule city, if it might allow it to oppose some state restrictions toward vagrancy.
“I believe you can pick up their trash. I believe you can throw it away, and I believe you can move them out of where they are at, if they are a public nuisance” he said. “The state is trying to push us into a place where they want us to be, and I believe as a home rule city we don’t have to do that.”
He asked the City Council to consider if residents and business owners stopped paying their taxes, “would you say, gee, I don’t think we can do anything about that.”
McCracken continued: “There’s something to be found here. We just have to find it, and stop kicking the can down the road.”
Lindell agreed to review what exceptions being a home rule municipality might allow with the city attorney, but objected to the analogy the city had kicked the can down the road.
“The biggest hinderance is laws that have been passed at the state level that just tie our hands,” Lindell said.
Sharp indicates the solution will not simply come from the police department.
“We need help,” he said. “It is a whole community responsibility.”
In the meantime, he’s hopeful to deter the incentive for vagrants by encouraging residents not to provide currency to anyone on the street.
“If they really do need food, there are resources,” Sharp said.
He also encourages residents to call police with any issue related to vagrancy.
“Don’t be afraid to call us,” he said. “The more you call, the more we realize there’s a problem.”