westcliffe01
Veteran Member
The key thing if one is going to move, is to find a community that shares your values. Custer county is beef raising and hay growing country. You still see cowboys on horses and the sound of spurs on the sidewalk on main street in Westcliffe. The community there have done a lot to keep their local government in check. This is very different to what is going on in probably 90% of communities across the US. Where I live in Michigan, we have had a permanent curfew order in force for nearly 20 years. If your kids are found outside after 10 at night with no direct adult supervision, you can be charged with a misdemeanor. I wont even go over the reams of other rules that micro manage our lives. Bear in mind I live in a community of probably 10k inhabitants, average household income $45k, average deputy costs the community $200k/yr and average school teacher earns $60-80k. School superintendent $170k/yr. I have a 1300sq ft house on 1/3 of an acre and a dirt road that might get plowed 2 days after we get snowfall and I pay $4k/yr in property taxes.
The covenants in the subdivisions in Custer County are a product of the development companies which are usually located in one of the big metro areas across the US, those places where they can attract the sort of capital that can buy a 2000+ acre cattle ranch and turn it into a housing subdivision on 35 acre lots. Back in the early 80's some of the developers knew and understood that owning the water rights was a priority, but the later developers saw water rights purely as a cash cow that could be milked and anyone who bought into it would have to live with the consequences later...
The covenants in the subdivisions in Custer County are a product of the development companies which are usually located in one of the big metro areas across the US, those places where they can attract the sort of capital that can buy a 2000+ acre cattle ranch and turn it into a housing subdivision on 35 acre lots. Back in the early 80's some of the developers knew and understood that owning the water rights was a priority, but the later developers saw water rights purely as a cash cow that could be milked and anyone who bought into it would have to live with the consequences later...