by Larry Patrick
WALSENBURG- The Huerfano County Commissioners will send a letter of support on behalf of the Brand Board in hopes of keeping he State of Colorado from taking funds from them in order to balance the state budget. Lewis Edmundson gave the Commissioners a rundown on the history of the Colorado Brand Board and how the money is collected and spent. There are 37,000 brands registered in Colorado. It is funded from fees collected by those registering brands for their cattle, horses, sheep and goats. It keeps rustlers of livestock from being able to steal livestock and selling it or trying to sell livestock in the state that don’t have brands and proof of ownership. Rustling continues to this day to be a problem. Unbranded animals are often taken to states like Kansas to be sold because that state has no Brand Board. Now the state sees the money they have in their budget and wants to raid those fees to help the overall state budget.
The Commissioners will write letters to the governor, and Colorado leaders, Wes McKinley and Ken Kester in support of the Brand Board keeping their monies which aren’t given to them by the state in the first place. John Stroh told the Commissioners that the state did a similar thing to the Board of Realtors a couple of years ago.
