![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/dark_oil_rig.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\nWhat would you do if decisions that could affect your home\u2019s value, your neighborhood, and millions of public dollars were being made behind closed doors?\n<\/p>\n
Erie residents may soon face exactly that situation.\n<\/p>\n
The Town of Erie recently received a bid for mineral rights that could allow expanded gas drilling on town property. Instead of informing residents and opening a public discussion, the town quietly hired a consultant to help pursue the bid. That consultant is a former executive of the very company\u2014Civitas\u2014making the offer.\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
The consultant reportedly helped write his own contract and was hired without the town seeking competing bids from other firms. Even more concerning, the town has already committed up to $4.5 million to this consultant before residents have even seen a final proposal.\n<\/p>\n
Much of this work is occurring in executive session, where the public cannot attend. Residents are being told they won\u2019t see the details until the town already has a finalized bid in hand\u2014after the most important decisions may already have been made.\n<\/p>\n
The stakes are significant.\n<\/p>\n
Expanded fracking near residential areas can affect property values and the long-term character of our community. Under Colorado\u2019s pooling laws, homeowners may have little say if drilling occurs beneath their property.\n<\/p>\n
Erie residents deserve transparency before millions of public dollars are spent and irreversible decisions about our community\u2019s mineral rights are made.
A decision with consequences this significant deserves an open, competitive, and transparent process\u2014not one conducted largely out of public view.
This process should be paused and brought out into the open\n<\/p>\n
Tonia Sharp, Erie, CO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What would you do if decisions that could affect your home\u2019s value, your neighborhood, and millions of public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[10142,63268,4877,41115,6836,6837,1676,63263,63267,25094,6833,6838,1681,136,138,137,4688,1677,15516,17728,57514,6835,63266,82,5858,8432,976,4753,63265,63264,7608],"class_list":["post-137433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-10142","tag-affect","tag-arts","tag-bid","tag-boulder","tag-business-directory","tag-colorado","tag-consultant","tag-dailycamera","tag-decisions","tag-denver","tag-east-county","tag-entertainment","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-executive","tag-front-range","tag-lt","tag-may","tag-mineral","tag-north-metro","tag-openforum","tag-property","tag-public","tag-residents","tag-restaurant","tag-rights","tag-sharp","tag-significant","tag-town"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}