Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Seth Klamann and Sam Tabachinik). Here’s an excerpt:
March 8, 2026
The mayor had quit and three active trustees resigned, too. They locked up the town’s sole public building and dropped boxes of records off with the county. The town government had ceased to exist. There was no clerk to hold an election to replace the trustees, and there were no trustees to hire a clerk…More than a century after its founding, division among Hartman’s few dozen residents has led to the dissolution of their government, dropping the town into a bitter legal limbo with few analogs in Colorado’s recent history, all while its water supply stands on the brink of collapse. A tangled web of interpersonal feuds, played out in letters to the local newspaper, in social media posts and via legal filings in county court, has left the town with no clear path out of a situation that’s not covered by state law. The imbroglio has even reached the state Capitol, where Gov. Jared Polis directed state officials to visit the area and lawmakers are scrambling to devise possible solutions…
…unlike many other small towns, Hartman has its own water supply, and one of the trustees’ responsibilities was paying for and overseeing it.
After years of limping along, Hartman’s troubled water system is on the brink of failure. The money to keep its pump running — paid in advance before the trustees quit — will lapse in the coming months. The water will be unusable before it runs dry: The chlorine that cleans it will be exhausted as soon as next month. Without elected representatives, no one can hire a new operator to test the water, nor is there anyone to pay the local power company to keep the pump running. The town has been on a boil order since September. What’s more, the town’s combative reputation has made nearby authorities wary of stepping in to help.
“It’s a bad situation,” said Ty Harmon, a Prowers County commissioner whose district includes Hartman. “It’s a very bad situation.”
[…]
State officials and lawmakers are now scrabbling to find a way to help a town with no money, no government, a dwindling water supply and a wariness of outsiders. That effort may ultimately include rewriting state law, redirecting grant money to a water authority willing to help, and charting a future for a town whose democracy has collapsed under the weight of its residents’ mutual distrust. Some have argued that Hartman has already tried to work together, without success.
“We shouldn’t be a sovereign town,” said Glenn Packer, a town resident who’s married to one of the recently resigned trustees. “It’s obvious it doesn’t work here.”
