Roger Baker, Gilpin County Manager.  Writing a Thanksgiving column about County government is always a little difficult; the particulars of what we are grateful for in Gilpin County sometimes seem petty compared to the manifest blessings we enjoy as individuals and as a nation.

After all, we live in one of the most beautiful parts of God’s creation, in a place and time where the great majority of us have a level of health and wealth unimaginable for previous generations, and even for the great majority of the population living today.

Certainly there are people in our midst who continue to struggle, and their struggles are real and painful. However, even here, support services exist—and I’m happy to say that some of them are provided by the County—to help individuals and families cope with the difficulties of life.

Certainly no one wants to downplay the very real challenges we face as a society which will affect all of us, even here in peaceful Gilpin County. Socially and culturally, events in places as diverse as Ferguson, Missouri, and Paris, France, remind us that we are a long, long way from achieving a just and fair society in which everyone feels a valued part.

In the physical world, while we may not see locally the melting polar ice caps or the sinking reservoir levels, we know that these are problems with which our society will be dealing in future years—and maybe not so very far in that future, at that.

We know, too, that predicting exactly how events--even in the relatively predictable physical world—will turn out, can be tricky; just a few years ago we were expecting our pine forests to be devastated by the pine beetle in a way that just never materialized (fully). That physical world is a model of predictability compared to the wild gyrations of human societies.

Still, though, it is gratifying to at least see progress in addressing local issues with local resources. For example, fracking may pose threats to the environment, while at the same time inexpensive fuel has benefited the lives of millions (and the County’s budget).

Here in Colorado, though, energy and mineral extraction has contributed mightily to the state’s finances. Now Gilpin County stands to tap in to some of that wealth by participating in the Energy and Mineral Impact Grant program, which the Commissioners Tuesday approved applying for, to partially fund some of the long-overdue repairs to the historic Courthouse in Central City.

And the impacts we feel from gaming are similarly offset by revenues that make so much of our government operations possible.

The County had budgeted for receiving $9.3 million in 2015, and the actual total was over $9.8 million; that additional half-million dollars made the 2016 budget process a little easier, though there are still many competing interests and unfilled needs.

So maybe it does seem petty to be thankful for this local largess, and even though we never want to forget that it is still the people’s money, always to be used for the people’s service, it is still good to be able to improve things at the local level.

No government has all the resources required to fill all the needs of all its citizens; nor would those governments always agree on what those needs are, and how best to meet them. In Gilpin County government, at least, we have good people doing good work with limited (but growing!) resources to improve the services we provide.

We can all be thankful for that this Thanksgiving season. Enjoy the holiday.