Where the Green Grass Grows: Septics, Defense Jobs, Dispatchers, and What Neighbors Said at the Mic.

Where the Green Grass Grows

The episode title is a small riff on Where the Red Fern Grows, the book and movie. It also leans on the older saying about how the grass is greener where you water it — which is slightly overused at this point, agreed. But it earns its place here, because the grass actually is greener over a septic system. The leach field warms the soil. The breakdown adds nutrients. The watering, in a sense, is happening from below.

If every septic in town worked perfectly, maybe everything would be fine. Maybe not. Apparently we need a study on that. Which is why USDA wrote the check.

1 — Green Mountain Falls $85,000 Grant

USDA Rural Development. Phase-one feasibility study for a centralized wastewater system to replace individual septic. Mayor Todd Dixon accepted the check April 12 on the bridge by the Gazebo. Sallie Clark presented — former El Paso County commissioner, now USDA Rural Development for Colorado. GMS, Inc. doing the engineering report. Construction is years out.

The downstream point matters. Fountain Creek runs through Colorado Springs and into the Arkansas. A wastewater study that starts in a small mountain town is also a regional water-quality story. Bookmark fountain-crk.org. Then tell a neighbor. Who doesn’t want to know what’s in their water.

Commissioner Wysong was there because Green Mountain Falls is in his district. Productive question for any rural-district commissioner: how are you balancing the needs of the bigger and smaller communities in this district. Not a complaint. Just a question.

2 — Defense Jobs and the Wage-Housing Gap

SelectTech: 150 jobs in Monument, average wage $85,927. Quote: “126% of the El Paso County average wage.” That sentence is technically true. It’s also the regional motto.

SelectTech wasn’t the only defense announcement that week. ITS announced 500 jobs in Colorado Springs at $130,482 average. More jobs. Higher pay. Same clearance pool. Generous reading: ITS had its own publicity machinery. Fair reading.

The structural piece. These jobs require federal security clearance. Six months to a year and a half of background investigation. The labor pool is structurally military or former military with active clearances, comparing offers to military pay rather than Denver private-sector pay. The Chamber’s marketing page is honest: “Colorado Springs’ lower wages gives it an edge over cities of similar size.”

Where the county actually has a job to do: housing supply, permit timelines, zoning, accessory dwelling units, time-to-approval, public dashboards on those numbers. Not at the legislature. Not at the Supreme Court. Right here.

3 — The Dispatchers and the Comfort Room

Friday, all five commissioners distributed Telecommunicators Week certificates across all three dispatcher shifts. During her report-back, Commissioner Williams started to call it a restroom and corrected herself: a comfort room.

These rooms are real. The brain processes a 911 call with the same fight-or-flight response a person on scene would have, but the dispatcher can’t move. Researchers call it static stress. PTSD prevalence among dispatchers: 18 to 29 percent.

The Authority publicly recognized senior dispatcher Deidre Difazo for a December 2024 call where she stayed on the line for twenty minutes with a man threatening suicide, calm conversation throughout, until he agreed to get help. After that call ended, she still had calls in the queue.

Three doors on the question of whether support is matched to load. The Sheriff’s Office is the actual employer. The 911 Authority coordinates the broader system. The Board approves the Sheriff’s budget. Three different questions. One ratio. The Unsung Heroes guide walks through the project — the kind of starter civics project where the answer might turn out to be heartwarming.

The comfort room is good. Whether it’s enough is a different question.

4 — The Grocery Store Pays Off

Two commissioners spent open-mic time on items the Board has no authority over. Williams on the extreme-indifference-murder bill in the state legislature (the Alexa Bartlett case). The Chair on the U.S. Supreme Court taking up a fourth Colorado religious-freedom case. Item six is open mic. There’s no rule it must be county business. Procedurally allowed.

5 — The Bingo Card Had a Pattern

Public comment topics, in order: recreational marijuana, a Texas gas station, the underground aquifer, and a mountain recreation plan. Reads more like a bingo card than an agenda. The interesting part — once you sit with it — is they all turned out to be asking the same question.

Marijuana — Jeff Fenson

Sixteen years operating the first medical facility in El Paso County. He came to ask the Board to put recreational on the unincorporated-county ballot. Putting a measure on the ballot, he said, is not endorsement. It’s letting voters answer. Colorado Springs voters approved recreational sales last year; the city directed roughly $1.3 million to the Fire Department, which let CSPD reinstate its 2026 academy — 36 firefighters in an 18-week program right now. Colorado Springs collected roughly $3.8 million in the first three quarters of 2025. None of that is reaching the county.

Buc-ee’s — the procedural angle

An architecture-and-planning resident walked through PUD zoning history. PUDs started as a flexibility tool. Over time the discretionary process became case-by-case deal-making, with much of the negotiation between staff and applicants happening before the public ever sees a hearing. She quoted Jane Jacobs: “There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order.”

Buc-ee’s — the aquifer (Genevieve Gustafson)

Picture a giant swimming pool buried under your neighborhood. Everyone draws from it with a straw. Some straws are short — household wells. Some are long and industrial — commercial users pulling thousands of gallons a day. When the long straws drink hard, the level drops. The short straws start sucking air. Fix for the short straws: $50,000-$100,000 to drill deeper. Black Forest, Tri-Lakes, Palmer Lake, Monument — same pool. Palmer Lake and Monument have already said no on water grounds.

Buc-ee’s — Boerne, Texas (Kathleen Kobler)

Just back from Boerne, where a community has been fighting a Buc-ee’s for nine years. Concerns: I-25 traffic, evacuation routes through Monument, fire risk from cars on dry shoulders, property values, the pattern Boerne residents documented across the decade. April 2024 Denver Post: the developer said even if his Colorado Springs project failed, he’d try the county. The question being asked over and over until the answer becomes yes.

CSU recreation — Susan Jarvis

Six years on Parks and Rec. CSU running a recreation plan for the North Slope and South Slope. Surveys in 2023, 2024, and 2025 filled out mostly by on-site staff. The forty-year community using the slopes wasn’t surveyed comparably. Like a restaurant deciding to take entrées off the menu because the dishwashers said the kitchen would run smoother with fewer dishes. The dishwashers might be right about the dishes. They’re also not the customers.

Order of Operations

A defense contractor is hiring 150 cleared engineers at $86,000. The same engineer in Denver makes $130,000. Another contractor announced 500 jobs at $130,000 in the same city the same week, and the Board didn’t mention it. A house in Monument costs roughly what a house in Denver costs. The county’s strategy on the state legislature is fully developed. The county’s strategy on housing supply, permit timelines, and aggregate public data is unclear.

Wage gap, housing gap, data gap, priority gap. Connected. Housing supply, permit speed, aggregate public data — all county levers. The dishes the cashier could be doing if the cashier looked away from the restaurant menu for ten minutes.