When Shanelle and Troy Hansen moved to De Beque in 2005 and bought an old motel with the idea of remodeling it to serve as a boarding house, the timing looked pretty good.
Shanelle Hansen said local oil and gas workers were living in rented sheds, backyards and their cars at the time. And the Hansens’ business filled to capacity when they opened it in 2008.
As it happened, though, 2008 turned out to be the peak for natural gas drilling activity in western Colorado’s Piceance Basin. With the crash that followed, the Hansens had trouble keeping their rooms filled.
These days, they’ve consistently had a full house again. While some of their customers continue to be oil and gas roustabouts, Hansen attributes much of the uptick in business to people working in the town’s marijuana businesses.
“The pot industry has been a positive impact as far as I see it, as a citizen of the town and as a business owner,” she said.
De Beque has been at the forefront among western Colorado communities when it comes to allowing the sale of retail, or recreational, pot. Voters narrowly authorized retail sales in town in a 2014 vote, and approved a 5% excise tax on marijuana later that year.
The first retail store, Kush Gardens, opened early the next year.
Today, four retail stores operate in De Beque, the maximum allowed by the town.
Hansen, a member of De Beque’s Town Council, and her husband, a former De Beque mayor, supported bringing the marijuana industry to town, and she’s happy with the direction the town has taken on the issue.
“It hasn’t brought in the riff-raff everybody thought it would bring in. People come in, they buy their stuff, they leave, basically,” she said.
While that in itself is enough to bolster town tax revenues, Hansen said pot workers also are providing a boost to the town. Some choose to live in town rather than commute, and workers also support other businesses in town. These include the De Beque Country Store, which the Hansens also own, and includes a grocery, deli, bakery and fuel station.
“It’s improved the economic conditions in De Beque,” Hansen said of the marijuana industry.
She said she and her husband supported it because De Beque needed an industry less vulnerable to booms and busts than energy development. She said when the town considered what people might be willing to drive to De Beque for, pot proved to be the answer.
Said Brendan Fall, chief operations officer at Kush Gardens, “The town has been very helpful in supporting the industry and it’s definitely benefited the town.”
“I raised my kids in this community,” said Kush Gardens’ owner Dawn Palmer. “To be able to give back to the town that helped me raise my kids feels awesome. We continue to try and support as much as we can.”
This includes charitable efforts such as providing new swiftwater rescue equipment to the local fire department and sponsoring a charity golf tournament.
Meanwhile, Hansen said marijuana revenues have helped enable the town to do infrastructure projects and other things it couldn’t previously afford to do, from basic street and water/sewer work to beautification projects such as a land acquisition and cleanup effort along the Colorado River.
Hansen said the town hopes next year to install a pavilion at a town park and provide information there on the local wild horse population. Those horses help draw visitors to the town.
Marijuana excise tax collections have totaled more than $2 million in De Beque over four years, and have funded capital infrastructure investment totaling nearly $1 million. Retail marijuana stores also pay a regular sales tax on top of the 5% excise tax.
Between 2015-18, the excise tax has helped enable the town to add about $900,000 to its general fund balance as well, increasing it to nearly $1.5 million.
As for concerns about retail pot sales driving up crime in De Beque, Hansen said there’s been no trend that can be specifically tied to the pot shops.
She said when it comes to things such as incidents that may happen at the Kum & Go store along Interstate 70, it can be hard to know if they involve normal travelers along the highway or people specifically stopping in town to buy marijuana.
But she said the town marshal’s office isn’t seeing incidents related to the shops, other than a few break-ins that were solved with the help of the security cameras in place.
The town’s new administrator, Caré McInnis, also has long served as the municipal judge there.
“As far as the court is concerned, I don’t think it’s had an impact at all,” she said of the marijuana industry.
She said she hasn’t seen an increase in criminal activity such as minors in possession.
Palmer said she cares about keeping marijuana out of children’s hands, but some of that goes back to parenting.
“We can’t control what happens after we make the sale. We can educate as much as we can,” she said.
Robin Dove, superintendent of De Beque’s school district, said the district makes clear that marijuana use is prohibited at school and extracurricular activities.
“We haven’t had really any trouble at all with it,” she said. “It’s not even, I would say, an issue that’s even regularly on our radar here.”
Hansen said neither she nor her husband use marijuana.
“We just see the benefits of it,” she said. “We see that there is a medical benefit and we see the sales tax revenues of the recreational side.”
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