Springs councilman accuses police department of retaliation

A down-on-his-luck Colorado Springs councilman is accusing the Police Department of retaliation over his proposal to cut city employees’ salaries.

The accusations revolve around a former methamphetamine lab behind the house where the councilman lives.

Councilman Tom Gallagher said police say have labeled a detached garage at the home on East Brookside Street uninhabitable, even though he says all he wants to do is store some belongings and a Corvette there.

But police say the garage is a contaminated building that must be cleaned up first, and Gallagher is being treated no differently than anyone with a contaminated site.

The home is owned by On the Ivy LLC, which is registered to developer Mark Morley, according to public records. Morley is Gallagher’s friend and former employer.

The home is one of several properties Morley wants to assemble and clear for redevelopment, said Gallagher, who estimates it would cost $15,000-$20,000 to have the garage cleaned up by a contractor.

“Why sink that kind of money (to clean it up) when you could open the garage door?” he asked.

The state requires the owner of a property that has been used to manufacture meth to demolish the property or hire an industrial hygienist to conduct an assessment to determine if a cleanup is necessary.

“Most owners forego the expense of sampling and testing and simply accept that a cleanup will be required,” according to the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment web site.

Gallagher said he and his family were forced to move out of a home they were renting on Armstrong Avenue after his landlord, who purchased the home from Gallagher for $140,000 in 2006, lost it to foreclosure.

Finding a new place to live wasn’t easy, Gallagher said.

A surveyor by profession, Gallagher has had difficulty finding work, not only because of the recession but because he has to avoid any conflicts of interest as an elected official, he said. Gallagher, who earns about $6,250 a year as a councilman, said he’s been living off savings and by “selling stuff.”

“My last paycheck was March 2007,” he said. “I’m not complaining. There’s lot of people in my position.”

Now, Gallagher and his family are living in a run-down home in a neighborhood in decline. Several houses next to Gallagher’s have been boarded up and are condemned.

Gallagher said Morley and his business partners are letting him stay there and do home improvements instead of pay rent, at least for the time being.

Otherwise, “I’d a been in a tent,” he said, referring to the scores of homeless people living in tents along Fountain Creek.

Gallagher said he wants to store personal belongings and park his 1984 Corvette — what he called a “bribe for good grades” for his son — in the garage.

But a sign on the door from March 2008 warns that the garage was “a clandestine laboratory for the manufacture of illegal drugs and

or hazardous chemicals” and that “there may still be hazardous substances or waste products” on the property.

Gallagher said he figured enough time had passed to make the garage safe and called the city’s Code Enforcement Unit to remove the sign. He said he was referred to the Metro Vice, Narcotics and Intelligence Unit.

Soon after, new warning signs went up.

“The Code Enforcement Unit of the Colorado Springs Police Department has designated this property ... as unfit for human habitation,” one of the signs states.

“It shall be unlawful for any person to use or occupy for human habitation ... until the placard is removed,” it states.

Gallagher said he interprets that to mean no one can live in the garage, which no one is going to do.

“I understand Transformers was a good movie, but trust me, it doesn’t transform,” he said, referring to the Corvette, which used to be a midnight blue but is now primer gray.

Gallagher said police are being overzealous in applying the law.

Why?

“Pay cuts,” he said. “I’ve got a bull’s-eye on my freaking head.”

Gallagher is advocating pay cuts for city employees to help erase projected budget shortfalls in 2011, 2012 and 2013. He pushed the proposal last year, but he didn’t have majority support.

Lt. David Whitlock, a police spokesman, said Gallagher is getting the same treatment as anyone else.

The garage behind Gallagher’s home is one of about 276 properties in Colorado Springs that has been investigated as a meth lab since 2001, according to a Police Department map.

“Until (a property is) cleaned up, it stays on the map,” Whitlock said.

Whitlock said he didn’t know the specifics of the case involving Gallagher’s garage, other than it is an active investigation.

“I know from my experiences over at Metro VNI when we did lab cleanups and enforcement that we placarded any facility that we thought was contaminated,” he said. “As far as the rules related to entry into those areas, I think those are pretty strict, and that’s for the safety of individuals that could possibly receive some contamination.”

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