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As the county’s official record keepers, six employees in Weld County’s Clerk to the Board’s Office spend their days recording commissioner minutes, creating official agendas and ensuring documents pertaining to board actions are electronically filed.
All matters seem routine until an envelope crosses a staffer’s desk. It does not contain information important to the county, but rather, a check important to county taxpayers.
Almost weekly, these checks arrive — payments ranging from a few dollars to $10,000 — a result of mineral leases the county has owned for decades.
It all started in the late 1800s, when designation of county road right of way was beginning to occur. Then, during the Great Depression, in the 1930s, properties and their respective mineral rights were gained from property tax lien sales. Later, as the surface rights were sold, the county leadership at the time wisely retained the mineral interests. As a result, since the mid-1900s, these checks have proven beneficial to residents and the county.
“Royalties from various mineral interests make up a good chunk of Weld County’s budget – roughly $8 million in 2020. This money is reinvested back into the Department of Public Works fund to help fix county roads and bridges damaged by oil and gas activities,” Weld County Deputy Clerk to the Board Jessica Reid explained. “This is money taxpayers don’t have to pay.”
While most mineral lease funds typically serve as an addition to the Public Works fund building out the department’s budget, sometimes they do have a bigger role, such as when the county transformed Weld County Road 49 into a five-lane concrete county highway.
“It would be fair to say these mineral lease funds for four or five years were earmarked for WCR 49, which was heavily impacted by oil and gas activity in the area,” Weld County Finance Director Don Warden said.
Reid is the latest Deputy Clerk to the Board to receive these sums of money. It is 3:00 p.m. on a Thursday in July when a coworker stops by Reid’s office to hand her an envelope with a check from one of 15 oil and gas operators enclosed.
Reid collects payments on 1,144 mineral interests throughout the county. Some are beneath the county’s business park complex or below various strips of right of way and tracts scattered throughout the county.
Once Reid receives the payments, she accounts for them in a software system that allows her to see what leases are active and if the county is being paid what it is owed. The accompanying invoice data is entered into the county’s record-keeping system and the paper documents are filed away for safe keeping. Reid records the breakdown of charges incurred by operators for transportation, gathering of oil and gas and other miscellaneous fees. In Colorado, 17 counties develop energy ranging from solar, wind and oil and gas. Of these, only five have oil and gas development that may result in revenue, Weld County being one.
Reid strolls in from her lunch hour that next Friday afternoon to see another envelope addressed to Weld County Government from an oil and gas operator resting on her desk. She sits down, picks up the envelope along with her trusty letter opener to see what royalties await the county and taxpayers.
By Shaley Dehner, Weld County Communications Specialist
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