In a tiny Colorado town, infighting dissolved the government. Now the water’s running out.

HARTMAN — Tammy Lucero and Velma Casanova Cooper were leaving a Board of Trustees meeting at the old schoolhouse on Jan. 13 when they ran into familiar trouble.

For years, tensions had been building in this tiny southeast Colorado town of 30, just a dozen miles from the Kansas border. Embezzlement allegations. Lawsuits. Restraining orders. A failed vote to dissolve the town.

Hartman’s weekly Monday evening trustee meetings consistently devolved into yelling matches, residents say. At times, a sheriff’s deputy stood in the chambers to keep the peace. Town business languished amid the shouting.

As the trustees went to turn off the lights at their mid-January meeting, they were confronted by a former trustee and another woman who, locals say, had once appointed herself clerk pro tem.

A brawl ensued between the four women, witnesses say, three of whom are in their 60s and 70s.

What exactly transpired depends on whom you ask. Deputies responded, and Casanova Cooper ended up in the hospital with an injured shoulder. Lucero and Melissa Venegas, the former trustee, were charged with disorderly conduct. The Prowers County Sheriff’s Office said more charges may follow but declined to release reports from the incident because the investigation remains ongoing. (Lucero and Venegas declined to comment on the fight.)

The mayor had quit three months earlier, and a day after the fight, the 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.

“Our safety was more important than having a government,” said Pam Packer, one of the trustees who resigned.

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.

Still, under normal circumstances, Hartman would become the latest small town in Colorado to disband and fade into unincorporated obscurity. Prowers County already handles most of the town’s essential functions — law and order, road maintenance — and the trustees had few responsibilities and little money to speak of.

But 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.”

Families and feuds

Hartman was incorporated on May 14, 1910. The town, which spans less than half a square mile, is named after W.P. Hartman, a master mechanic for the Santa Fe Railroad who owned a farm in the area.

Economic opportunities in this corner of the state are scarce — especially in Hartman. On average, the town’s residents earn $10,133 a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More than 93% of the town’s 30 residents live below the poverty line.

Hartman is home to zero businesses, save for a post office. The closest grocery store is 10 miles away in Holly. The town is closer to the Kansas border than it is to the nearest bar, in Lamar.

There’s one paved road in town. Locals know each other’s houses by sight, addresses be damned. The water tower, stenciled with the town’s name, sits at the end of Main Street, just ahead of the gym that was constructed as part of a New Deal program in the late 1930s.

When Catherine Fernandez wanted to play in the gym as a kid, her father would get the keys from the mayor.

“Back then, we didn’t have to worry about anybody getting hurt or having to worry about the gym falling down. Or whether or not we could drink the water,” said Fernandez, who moved back to Hartman in 1999. She served as mayor herself before quitting in October.

Residents like Dawn Railsback came to Hartman because it seemed like a place where her grandchildren could safely play in the streets and where neighbors still looked out for one another.

“It’s the kind of place where you sneeze on one side of town and they say ‘God bless you’ from the other end,” she said.

But for many in Hartman, this small-town charm has been overrun by petty squabbles and deep mistrust.

It’s not clear what prompted the community’s current tailspin. Like most issues in town, it can be difficult to parse fact from fiction. Two people compared the town’s situation to the Hatfields and McCoys, two Appalachian families with a convoluted, generations-long feud.

“You had families fighting with each other because they thought this person was going to do the town evil, they thought that person wasn’t going to work well with the town, and it was a complete mess,” Fernandez said.

The most recent town government, including Pam Packer and Casanova Cooper, accused the previous administration of mismanaging or absconding with funds. The old trustees throw the same allegations at the new town officials. Some residents told Prowers County officials they would let the county know when they needed road maintenance, which effectively meant that crews shouldn’t show up unless they were invited.

The town in 2022 alleged in a lawsuit filed in Prowers County that the then-mayor, Kord Benson, had continued in the job after his term expired and that he was no longer eligible to hold office in Hartman. Town officials alleged he and two other elected leaders had refused to return documents and other town property after being instructed to do so.

That same year, two residents petitioned a court to reinstate them after they failed to appear on the ballot.

Elections have long been contentious in Hartman — if they even happen at all. Residents say they went eight years before 2020 without having a vote. The town is required to report election records to the state, but it’s only ever done so twice, in 2020 and 2022. The town clerk has authority over the contests — not the county nor the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

One of the town’s recent elections included a vote on whether to dissolve Hartman. It failed by two votes, said Kevin Bommer, the head of the Colorado Municipal League.

Board of Trustees meetings, meanwhile, descended into chaos. Attendees shouted at trustees. Trustees yelled back. Fernandez said she frequently had to slam her hand on the table, imploring everyone to stay civil.

“Yelling has been a factor in Hartman since God was a boy,” said Venegas, the former trustee.

Town business became nearly impossible to accomplish. As tensions escalated, Fernandez said “it was only a matter of time” before things got violent.

Bommer attended one trustee meeting in December. It ended with two residents going “chest-to-chest” with one of the trustees.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like that,” he said.

Casanova Cooper said she’s still undergoing physical therapy every two weeks for the shoulder she injured during the January fracas. She called the post-meeting incident a “traumatic experience,” saying she thought she’d be protected by her position as a trustee. She fears what else could happen to her in town.

“I’m imprisoned in my own home because of these people,” Casanova Cooper said.

The animosity has spilled over from trustee meetings into the local press and on social media.

Shawna Casey, a recent Hartman transplant, has been one of leadership’s most vocal critics, alleging a pattern of noncompliance, abuse of power and malfeasance.

“Let’s be clear — this mismanagement was never hidden,” she wrote in a July letter to the editor published by the Prowers Journal. “It was in plain view. The trustees saw it. Residents saw it. But those in power chose silence. Offers of help were dismissed. Questions at meetings were discouraged. Hostility became routine. Out of favoritism and nepotism, they preserved the status quo — not to govern, not to contribute, but to hold tight to control while the town unraveled around them.”

Others accused Casey of representing a vocal minority that has made basic town operations impossible. In an August rebuttal letter to the editor, longtime resident Mark Cooper accused Casey of being among “small groups of individuals who continuously cause turmoil within the town.”

Casey declined an interview request.

Elected officials finally had enough of the drama.

“I’m not working with criminals,” Venegas said. “If I wanna join the mob, I’ll go to freaking New Jersey or New York.”

Pam Packer, the former trustee, lamented moving to Hartman in the first place. If she and her husband felt they could get anyone to buy their house, she said, they’d be gone tomorrow.

“We moved out here ‘cause we thought we’d have peace,” Packer said. “That didn’t work out too well.”

A water crisis

The source of the feuds and infighting may be unclear. The imminent risks to the town’s water system, however, are not.

The town has had no certified water operator to test the water supply. With no one to run tests, Hartman residents have been directed to boil their water since September — one of several boil orders since 2019.

The water tower has had issues for years: A 2020 state inspection found holes and corrosion in its roof and described its condition as “poor.” Officials from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment have repeatedly directed the town to replace the tank and regularly monitor it for contaminants, and a 2025 inspection discovered bacteria common in animal waste in the water supply.

State officials also now suspect that groundwater is seeping into the town’s well, too.

“Over the years, I’ve worked with Hartman three different times. And three different times, it hasn’t ended well,” said Randy Holland, who serves as the town administrator in nearby Holly. He’s worked on and off as Hartman’s water operator but hasn’t been back since last year. “I don’t care what happens to the rest of the town. All I was doing was trying to make sure the people in the town didn’t get sick.

“I wish the residents of Hartman all the best,” he added.

He declined to describe his history with the town. Bommer, of the Colorado Municipal League, said some of Hartman’s residents had previously “chased out of town” volunteers who’d come to check the water.

Last year, the Department of Public Health and Environment hit the town with a $132,746 fine for a lengthy list of violations and issues that date back years.

Before the trustees quit in January, they paid for three months’ worth of power to keep the pump working. That bill will eventually come due, potentially as late as this summer. But the chlorine will run out before then, state officials said — as soon as the next few weeks.

On Feb. 28, a group of state officials — with a Colorado State Patrol escort — sought to impress that reality upon a roundtable of residents. The meeting was respectful, those officials said. The town remained divided as to whether it wants to dissolve or reestablish a government, said state Sen. Rod Pelton, who represents the area in the legislature and was at the meeting.

“We had a frank conversation about the realities and challenges they’re facing. I don’t believe they understood the severity, that they might run out of water,” said Maria De Cambra, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.

Her agency has been to the town nearly three dozen times in recent years, she said, and state officials have helped residents with their elections and with the water supply.

While the town’s dysfunction has been an open secret among locals for some time, there were public signs that Hartman was in distress. The town has never submitted the annual audit that it must provide to the state, according to DOLA records. It requested a waiver from audits for several years, but hasn’t even sought that since 2020.

The town also hasn’t filed a copy of its budget to the state — another annual requirement — since 2023.

The most pressing issue remains the water. To stave off further collapse, state officials hope that the nearby Granada Rural Water Authority can take over the town’s water maintenance.

But several people said the town had a bad history with the water authority. Pelton said earlier bills had gone unpaid.

“They burned all the bridges with the local water authorities,” he said.

A representative for the authority declined to comment last month but said the entity’s board would decide at a later date. Pelton said state officials were considering shifting hundreds of thousands of grant dollars that had been awarded to Hartman but never used. The money could instead be directed to the Granada water authority to help offset any cost concerns.

But to solve the water crisis, Hartman’s governance vacuum has to be addressed. With no elected leadership or administrators in place, no one — in town or anywhere else — has legal authority to make a deal with a water authority.

Pelton said if all else fails, “tough love” may be required. That could include parking a massive water tank in town, where residents could queue up for water to fill their glasses and flush their toilets. Maybe that would foster some conversations, he said — a community water cooler.

An uncertain future

With the water supply in limbo, residents say they’re worried about the future of Hartman. Even if the town figures out how to keep the water clean and flowing, residents will still be unable to hold elections or reestablish a town government.

Under existing state law, the town can’t be abandoned for another five years. The county has no role in administering municipal elections or replacing vacant positions, nor does the state. State lawmakers are now discussing legislation to expedite the town’s ability to legally dissolve, which would place it fully under Prowers County’s authority.

In a Thursday letter to Prowers County leaders, Polis wrote that legislation allowing the town to be quickly abandoned would then give the county authority over the water system.

“If Hartman’s water system continues to operate and somebody does gain authority to oversee it, the state would be willing to work with the ultimate operator to identify funding, including potentially the grant funding previously allocated to Hartman but not yet spent, for much-needed repairs to their water infrastructure,” the governor wrote.

Some residents, meanwhile, still want to hold elections and reestablish local leadership.

In any case, leaving isn’t an option for some residents. Many are retired and don’t have anywhere else to go. Others have lived here their entire lives.

But bridges have been burned. Relationships have soured. And trust between neighbors has eroded to the point that some questioned whether it could ever be repaired.

“Nothing will ever be taken seriously with the town of Hartman,” Venegas said. “We’re a joke.”

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