State officials confirmed this week that Hartman, Colorado has successfully pioneered a bold new form of self-government in which a town of 30 people screamed itself out of having a government at all, then moved directly into the more efficient phase where the water runs out on its own.
The Denver Post reports the southeast Colorado town dissolved into legal limbo after years of feuds, accusations, lawsuits, restraining orders, and trustee meetings that reportedly functioned less like public administration and more like Thanksgiving with a warrant. The final breakthrough came in January, when a Board of Trustees meeting ended with a four-woman brawl, hospital treatment for an injured shoulder, disorderly conduct charges, and the remaining trustees resigning en masse the next day.
“Our safety was more important than having a government,” one former trustee said, in what experts described as the official slogan of municipal collapse.
That left Hartman with no clerk, no trustees, no election, no obvious way to appoint anybody new, and no one legally authorized to do the basic paperwork required to keep human beings supplied with water. Which, in fairness, is exactly the kind of innovative process reform Colorado’s local-government class is always promising.
The town has been under a boil order since September, part of a long tradition of boil orders dating back to 2019, apparently because Hartman believes drinking water should come with a light cooking component. State inspections found the water tower in poor condition, bacteria common in animal waste in the supply, and a long list of violations that already drew a $132,746 fine last year, proving once again that if you ignore a problem long enough, it can become both a health crisis and an accounting issue.
“Over the years, I’ve worked with Hartman three different times, and three different times, it hasn’t ended well,” said a nearby water operator, sounding less like a contractor and more like a man describing a haunted oil rig. He added that all he was trying to do was make sure nobody got sick, which in Hartman evidently counted as outside agitation.
Residents remain divided on whether the town should dissolve or re-establish a government, a classic Colorado compromise in which nobody agrees on the future but everybody gets to lose potable water in the present. State officials have reportedly visited the town nearly three dozen times in recent years, which is government shorthand for “we kept showing up to the fire and the fire kept electing itself.”
Lawmakers are now considering rewriting state law to help Hartman either legally disappear or temporarily hand off its water system to someone with the emotional stability required to purchase chlorine. One proposed “tough love” solution would involve parking a massive water tank in town so residents can line up with jugs and maybe, in the process, rediscover the concept of civilization.
Until then, Hartman remains a shining example of what happens when democracy is treated like a blood feud and infrastructure is managed on the honor system.
Source: The Denver Post
Just Stop It
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