Family Dollar building might sit vacant

The Silver Cliff Board of Trustees (BOT) held their regular meeting on October 7. Mayor Buck Wenzel asked for an amendment to the agenda under old business, to ratify approval of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Custer County Sheriff’s Office for a new parking system. Immediately after amendments to the agenda were approved, the BOT went into a brief public hearing on Ordinance 02-2025, approving an alley vacation for Block 76, a private residence north of Highway 96. According to testimony from Town Attorney Dan Slater, the property is on a cliff and the alleyway could not actually be used as an alley. At the conclusion of the hearing, Trustee Lisa Nolan made the motion to approve Ordinance 02-2025, which passed unanimously.

One focus was an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the Sheriff’s Office for 2026 services before turning to consideration of the MOU needed to ratify the new parking fees system, which will be multi-jurisdictional and will automate the ticketing and payment process for parking violations throughout the towns and county. Wenzel noted that the hardware for the system had arrived at the Sheriff’s Office, deputies have been trained on how to use it, and there has been a social media FYI post telling residents to call the Sheriff’s Office with parking complaints. “There will be a progress report to see how productive the system actually is,” Wenzel concluded: “It’s all automated, payments go to Denver.” Mayor Pro-Tem Jake Shy made the motion to approve the MOU, which passed unanimously.

Finally: “The biggest question of the month is what is happening with the Family Dollar store,” Wenzel said. “I did finally figure out who owns the property here. The property is not for sale, Family Dollar has a multi-year lease – but they told me that if the town would like to submit an offer to purchase the building, it can. I did express concern about there being a vacant building there for a bunch of years – the Post Office did not want to buy the building. Could we maybe use it as a workshop or a town hall? There are funds available through DOLA if we want to buy an existing building and turn it into a town hall. We need to think of existing places – it would be ideal in terms of footprint.”

– Elliot Jackson