A Candidate Platform
Accountability • Staffing • Safety • Sound Finances
Costilla County deserves a Sheriff’s Office that protects people, spends tax dollars honestly, and answers to the public it serves. Over the last several years, that trust was broken. The current Sheriff and four deputies have been indicted, and a review of the office’s own financial records revealed deeply troubling patterns — most notably in the jail food account.
Working from public records obtained through Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) requests, we documented tens of thousands of dollars charged to a “Prisoners Meals” account (account 4212.96) for a jail that was effectively closed — including untracked prepaid gift cards, retail purchases of household groceries and personal items, and roughly $400,000 spent on the jail line in 2025 alone with no inmates to feed. These are not abstractions. They are the receipts.
And the jail food account was only the beginning. The county’s own records document a pattern of budget mismanagement that goes far deeper: budgets built on unrealistic and even fictional line items, basic accounting practices ignored, and spending that bears little resemblance to the budget the public was shown — money flowing in ways the official budget lines simply do not account for.
This document lays out exactly how I will fix it: how I will staff the office, how I will pay for it, how I will keep our roads and neighborhoods safe, and how I will make certain this never happens again. Every commitment below is specific, measurable, and tied to a realistic source of funding.
These priorities are sequenced deliberately. Accountability and budget control come first, because they protect the public and free up the money everything else depends on.
| # | Commitment | Primary Funding / Tool |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Transparency & accountability systems | Existing budget; policy |
| 2 | Take control of the budget; reclaim the jail money | Re-appropriation of jail line |
| 3 | Fix ticket revenue so it stays in our county | Model Traffic Code adoption |
| 4 | Hire and fund deputies; build 24-hour patrol | Reallocated funds + state grants |
| 5 | Bring a full-time co-responder for crisis and mental-health calls | State co-responder grant |
| 6 | Attack drugs and theft; protect schools; cut response times | Staffing + regional partnerships |
| 7 | Daily community engagement and transparency | Existing channels; no new cost |
| 8 | Retain good people so we stop starting over | Pay structure + culture |
| 9 | Support the investigation; demand a clean county audit | Independent audit + DA |
Trust is rebuilt with sunlight, not promises. From day one, the office will operate as if the public is always watching — because they should be able to.
Discipline in this office will be predictable and equal — the opposite of the favoritism that helped create the current crisis. I will adopt a written disciplinary matrix: a published scale that matches categories of misconduct to a consistent range of consequences, so that the same infraction is handled the same way no matter who commits it or who their friends are.
The Sheriff is the steward of public money. The first job is to know where every dollar goes and to redirect what was being wasted toward what the county actually needs.
The jail is now officially closed and has no employees. The roughly $400,000 that ran through the jail line in 2025 — including the “Prisoners Meals” account — should not continue to be budgeted to a facility that holds no one. I will work with the County Commissioners to formally re-appropriate those funds toward patrol staffing, vehicles, and a plan for appropriate future detention arrangements.
Right now the county has no working jail. That is not a small inconvenience — it means deputies spend hours hauling arrestees to other counties and off our roads, it leaves us dependent on our neighbors’ goodwill and space, and it means there is nowhere appropriate to hold someone during booking. Costilla County needs its own detention facility, and I will lead the effort to build one.
And there is already a dedicated funding source to build it. Costilla County voters approved a 1% law-enforcement sales tax intended to go toward a new jail. My plan is to put that money to its promised use: pursue bonding against that dedicated revenue stream — combined with grants such as USDA Rural Development funding — to raise the construction dollars and finally build the facility the tax was meant for. The first question I will answer publicly is a simple one: that tax has been collecting for years — where has the money gone, and how much is there?
I will do it the right way — the opposite of how the last administration handled the jail. That means an honest needs assessment, the right size and type of facility, and a clear-eyed accounting of BOTH the construction cost and the ongoing cost to staff and operate a jail — because operating costs, not construction, are what strain a small county, and they must be funded sustainably before a single cell is built. Because issuing bonds requires voter approval under Colorado law, I will make the full case publicly and put the real numbers before the people who pay for it. After what this county just went through, no detention decision will be made in the dark.
Building takes time, so we need a sound solution now — and I have already secured one. Today the county hauls inmates as far as Archuleta County near Pagosa Springs, roughly two and a half hours each way. I am working toward an agreement with Rio Grande County to house our inmates there instead — about 55 minutes away, at a reduced cost — and I will formalize it as a written intergovernmental agreement, along with backup agreements with other nearby counties for the times Rio Grande is full.
This is not just cheaper detention — it is more deputies on our roads. Every hour cut from a transport is a deputy back on patrol sooner instead of spending most of a shift driving. And because we will have a solid, affordable interim solution in place, we can build the permanent facility the right way — carefully and on honest numbers — rather than rushing an expensive project under pressure.
The office spent roughly $140,000 on vehicles. Owning an aging, mismatched fleet means unpredictable repair bills, rapid depreciation, and surprise costs that hit the county budget without warning. There is a strong case for moving to a leased, standardized fleet, and I will pursue it — with the final decision made on the actual numbers, with the Commissioners, and shared publicly.
The case for a uniform leased fleet:
And it connects to the reserve program: a few of the paid-off older vehicles can be kept and assigned to reserves rather than surplused, so the change redeploys the county’s vehicles rather than simply discarding them.
Residents are rightly angry that county vehicles were used for personal errands. Let me be clear about the difference: the problem was personal use with no rules — not deputies taking a patrol vehicle home. I will end personal use of county vehicles entirely, and at the same time run a sensible take-home vehicle program under a written policy.
Several of the programs in this plan will be launched with grant funding that runs for a limited term. I want to be clear about the long game. The grant years are a bridge: they let us stand up programs and prove they work while the county’s finances are brought into order through the independent investigation now underway, a forensic audit, and an open, honest budget process. The expectation is that by the time these grants conclude, a properly audited and transparently managed county budget will be able to sustain what the grants started — so the progress does not disappear when the grant does.
Right now, much of the money from traffic citations appears to be leaving our county. Here is why, in plain terms.
When a deputy writes a citation under Colorado state statute as a “Penalty Assessment,” the driver pays the Colorado Department of Revenue in Denver — and that revenue goes to the state, not to Costilla County. To keep that money local, citations for routine traffic offenses generally need to be written under a county-adopted Model Traffic Code so they are payable to and handled by the Costilla County Court.
This is one of the fastest, lowest-cost wins available — it is an administrative correction, not new spending.
Public safety is impossible without people on the road. I have already identified roughly eight qualified individuals willing to serve. The goal is to grow responsibly to a patrol core of twelve deputies — the deputies who fill the around-the-clock rotation — fund them honestly, and cover the county every hour of every day.
Today, deputies have to buy their own equipment. That is wrong. It pushes an out-of-pocket cost onto people we are asking to serve, and it invites a dangerous outcome — a deputy buying a cheap vest or an unreliable firearm to save money. I will issue standardized duty equipment — body armor, firearm, patrol rifle, handcuffs, and the rest of the duty gear — so every deputy is properly equipped, the office controls the quality and knows exactly what each deputy carries, and no one’s safety depends on what they can personally afford. Body armor can be funded in part through the federal Bulletproof Vest Partnership, which matches up to half the cost; the remainder comes through equipment grants such as Byrne JAG and the equipment budget.
I will assign a single point person (initially myself) to own a grant calendar so deadlines are never missed. The priority targets are the state workforce/recruitment grants for salary support, POST scholarships for academy tuition, and federal rural-law-enforcement programs where eligible. Grant funding will supplement — not replace — county funding, as the rules require, so we never build a position we cannot sustain when a grant ends.
Covering a full day, every day, in a rural county is a math problem before it is a scheduling problem. Continuous coverage requires enough deputies that shifts can rotate without burning anyone out.
I will be honest about the limits: across 1,200 square miles, the hardest nights may still be thin. Twelve deputies and solid mutual aid cannot put a car on every road at every moment — but they make the lone, unsupported deputy the rare exception instead of the routine, and they ensure that deputy always has backup to call. A separate, detailed staffing and patrol operations plan lays out the schedule, the funding, and the patrol map in full.
I will also establish a volunteer reserve deputy program — POST-certified reserves who serve without salary to back up patrol on tough calls, cover events and traffic, and assist with search-and-rescue. Reserves add trained feet on the ground at a small fraction of the cost of a full-time deputy, and a few of the paid-off older patrol vehicles can be kept and assigned to them rather than surplused. Reserves supplement our deputies; they never replace the patrol core that staffs the 24/7 rotation.
A professional office is a trained office. Good training protects the public, protects deputies, and protects the county from the lawsuits that poor training invites. I will make ongoing training a standing priority, not an afterthought — covering the tactical skills (firearms, defensive tactics, emergency vehicle operation, active-shooter response, and crisis intervention), the legal knowledge (use-of-force law, search and seizure, civil rights, and proper report writing and testimony), and the community-facing skills (de-escalation, ethics, and professional conduct) that together make a deputy someone the public can trust. Much of this is funded through Colorado POST training grants, which cover instruction, equipment, travel, and the overtime needed to backfill shifts while deputies train.
I also bring training credentials to the office myself. As a Krav Maga instructor and a tactical shooting instructor, I will obtain the appropriate Colorado POST instructor certifications so the office can deliver defensive-tactics and firearms training in-house — saving the cost of outside instructors and allowing more frequent, hands-on training, including for our reserves and school resource officers. Qualified local legal professionals will help teach the law blocks. All training will follow recognized POST standards and be properly documented, so doing it in-house saves money without ever cutting corners on quality or accountability.
This is the change I am proudest to promise, because it fits Costilla County exactly. In a county our size — rural, isolated, with deep need and no operating jail — many of the calls our deputies answer are not really crimes. They are crises. A neighbor in a mental-health emergency. Someone struggling with addiction. An elderly resident alone and freezing in the winter with no one else to call.
Right now, the only help we can send to those calls is an armed deputy, because there is no one else. That is the wrong answer for the person in crisis, and it pulls our deputies away from the police work only they can do. With no local jail, a deputy who responds to a mental-health crisis has nowhere appropriate to take that person except a long drive to a distant emergency room. That helps no one.
I will bring a full-time co-responder to Costilla County — a licensed behavioral-health clinician, partnered through our regional behavioral-health provider, who responds alongside deputies on crisis, mental-health, addiction, and welfare calls. The clinician de-escalates the situation on scene, conducts an immediate behavioral-health assessment, and connects the person to real treatment and follow-up care instead of a jail cell or a card with a phone number.
I will also train every deputy in Crisis Intervention (CIT), so that even when the clinician is not on scene, the response is calm, safe, and pointed toward help rather than handcuffs.
Colorado runs a dedicated state co-responder grant program, administered through the Behavioral Health Administration, specifically to bring these clinician-and-deputy teams to communities like ours. Other small rural Colorado counties have used it to fund co-responder positions housed in cooperation with their sheriff’s offices, with awards substantial enough to cover a full-time clinician and program costs. Because the entire San Luis Valley is federally designated as medically underserved, our need is exactly what these funds are meant to address.
In practice, the grant flows to the behavioral-health partner that employs the clinician, and the sheriff’s office brings the program to the county and houses the partnership. My job is to make that program happen — not to add a salary the county cannot yet afford.
Grant terms are limited, and I will be honest about that. The plan is to use the initial grant years to stand the program up and prove it works — tracking calls diverted from arrest, emergency-room trips avoided, and people connected to lasting care. Co-responder programs elsewhere in Colorado report that the overwhelming majority of their calls are resolved without an arrest. That record is what makes grant renewal straightforward and gives the county every reason to sustain the program through honest, properly audited budgeting once our finances are in order.
Some of these calls are not mental-health emergencies at all — they are poverty. People so poor they cannot get firewood or water in the depth of winter, calling the only number that always answers. I will not pretend a sheriff can end poverty in Costilla County; that would be a promise I could not keep. What I can promise is this: when you call for help, the right person will show up — and that person will connect you to help that lasts longer than one visit, through the energy-assistance programs, county human services, and local aid that already exist but that too many isolated residents cannot reach on their own.
Keeping our children safe — and being prepared for the worst, including an active-shooter event — is a responsibility I will not treat lightly. I will build a School Resource Officer program: a consistent, trained, trusted officer presence in our schools, grown in stages toward dedicated full-time SROs as funding allows, and staffed in the meantime by deputies and thoroughly vetted reserves on a committed schedule. Every officer assigned to a school will clear enhanced background screening and complete recognized SRO training — that standard never bends.
Beyond a presence in the building, real safety comes from a coordinated system: rapid-response training with the school district, joint drills, threat assessment, and facility reviews. Our SROs will also mentor students and provide prevention education, including through the DARE program. Federal school-safety funding, including the COPS Hiring Program’s priority for School Resource Officers and the STOP School Violence Program, will help pay for it.
An office that hides its work earns suspicion; an office that shows its work earns trust. I will keep the people of Costilla County informed on a daily basis — not once a year at a budget meeting, but as a regular habit of the office.
This is also accountability in action. The quarterly spending reports, response-time data, and complaint statistics promised earlier in this plan will be part of that same steady public conversation.
In a county this large, the most powerful crime-fighting tool is often a well-prepared resident. A big part of the daily contact will be practical crime-prevention education — simple, free or low-cost steps people can take to make themselves a harder target. This is force multiplication: every home that is harder to burglarize is a crime that never happens.
Beyond daily tips, I will stand up three proven programs that turn good advice into lasting structure:
People often know something but are afraid to speak up, especially in a small county where everyone knows everyone. I will put two clearly separated options on the Sheriff’s Office website:
I will also use our Facebook page to fight crime in the open: posting about incidents and asking the public for information that helps solve them. I will do this responsibly — seeking information about an incident, not publicly accusing people who have not been charged — so it builds safety and trust rather than rumor.
Constant turnover is expensive and dangerous. Every deputy who leaves takes training dollars and community knowledge with them. Retention is a budget strategy as much as a morale strategy.
The financial review that started with the jail food account has already prompted the District Attorney to examine the rest of county government. I will be a partner in that work, not an obstacle to it.
I am not asking voters to trust words — I am asking them to hold me to a plan. Every promise in this document is measurable, and I will report on each of them publicly. The people of Costilla County paid for an office that was supposed to protect them. It is time they got one.
— Kirk Taylor, Kirk Taylor for Costilla County Sheriff
A note on sources: Financial findings in this plan are drawn from Costilla County’s own records obtained through Colorado Open Records Act requests. Grant programs referenced are administered by Colorado POST and the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice; specific award amounts and eligibility should be confirmed at application. This is a campaign platform, not legal advice.