Silt’s town board passes non-sanctuary resolution
Following in the footsteps of the Garfield County commissioners, the town of Silt’s Board of Trustees passed a resolution declaring Silt as a non-sanctuary community Monday.
The resolution was adopted unanimously, before which several board members expressed their concerns with what they’ve seen happening in Carbondale in recent months.
“To me, this isn’t a political, a philosophical or a moral question. It’s a resource question,” Mayor Pro Tem Derek Hanrahan said.
“We saw what another community, Carbondale, had to do, due to an unexpected arrival. … They were able to pull it off for three months, and they will likely be feeling the repercussions of that fiscally, as well as operationally for the balance of the year.”
The resolution lists several arguments for the nonsanctuary designation, including but not limited to:
• Municipalities with sanctuary-city designations “have seen significant increases to their budgets and costs to the public,” and now “face an accelerated budget shortfall and agency budget cuts to fund migrate services.”
• Health care and education services in sanctuary cities have faced a significant increase in demand, costing millions of dollars.
• Silt doesn’t have the financial resources nor “the physical and operational infrastructure to address the human needs an influx of migrants, whether legal or illegal, would place on the community.”
“Now, therefore, be it resolved that the town of Silt Colorado declares that the town is not a sanctuary community and will not directly open shelters or provide services, other than emergency services, to migrants and/or undocumented immigrants that may arrive in the town,” the resolution states.
The board members’ comments further reflected the points listed in the document itself, which Hanrahan first brought to the board for discussion.
“Silt doesn’t have the resources that Carbondale has to deal with that,” Hanrahan said.
“And I don’t know what we would do if that were to happen.”
Silt had not previously identified itself as a sanctuary community, although Hanrahan argued that the absence of an explicit “no” could be misinterpreted as an implicit “yes,” which is why he said the resolution was necessary to clear up any future misunderstandings.
“Carbondale did not have a yes or a no, and it was interpreted by that group as being an implicit yes,” Hanrahan said. “It’s not a judgment. It’s just an observation.”
Hanrahan said another point that pushed him to bring the idea of a resolution to the board is the challenge of helping those who are already legal residents of Silt, adding that he doesn’t think it would be right to ask the citizens of Silt to support a potentially large number of people who may show up.
The resolution also includes provisions, such as laws on public camping, taken from the town’s code, which Interim Town Administrator Jim Mann said are meant to “put on notice” that the town will continue to enforce them. The board added that there will be future discussion about further tightening camping ordinances.
Hanrahan emphasized the need for “comprehensive nationwide immigration reform,” stating that the responsibility of managing the recent influx of immigrants shouldn’t fall on individual municipalities with limited resources.
“It can’t be a patchwork of individual communities making these decisions,” Hanrahan said.