Yahn
Vitor Yahn, one of the people Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland appointed to the Mesa County Board of Public Health on an interim basis after the original Board resigned en masse, has himself resigned from the Board.
The entire original Board of Health resigned after Rowland pressured them relentlessly to fire Health Department Director Jeff Kuhr, and they refused, and Rowland threatened to fire them all. It was questionable whether the move would have been legal, but the Board resigned rather than face a hearing with a predetermined outcome.
Rowland has been accusing Dr. Kuhr of financial wrongdoing for months, but Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein investigated Dr. Kuhr and found insufficient evidence that Kuhr engaged in any financial wrongdoing, or acted to benefit himself in any way.
Yahn agreed to serve on the Board on May 24, with two other members, Dr. Michael White and Mona Highline. Highline is a friend of Rowland’s.
Yahn’s decision to leave comes just one week after a contentious public hearing in which a parade of prominent local business leaders and citizens stepped up to the microphone to defend Dr. Kuhr, in some cases castigating and shaming Rowland for intentionally defaming Kuhr and working to ruin his reputation instead of working to fix the problems the Health Department was having with following County procurement policies.
A full video of the contentious Board of Health meeting can be seen here. The public comment period begins at 1:50:42.
People who spoke in favor of Dr. Kuhr at the meeting included Doug Simons, owner of Enstrom Candies, former Mesa County Commissioners Kathy Hall and Jim Spehar, the owner of The Winery restaurant, the owner of Crossroads Fitness, Diane Schwenke, former president of the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce, a representative of the Latino community, a registered nurse, a former banker, former CMU President Tim Foster, who is now Kuhr’s attorney, and other community members. The video of the comment period is worth a watch.
Below is a clip of Victor Yahn shouting down Kathy Hall, who defended Kuhr and continued speaking after her 3 minutes was up:
Victor did an admirable job as coroner for Mesa County for many years. He does not deserve to be impugned.
https://youtu.be/CWm1RGIBUrE
That is probably true, but let’s not equivocate that service to justify such a dubious role on a sham board. Besides, this community meeting was a one-sided farce, and it seems Victor has since realized he impugned his own integrity taking part in it as well as shouting down a citizens comment.
The purpose of the Board of Public Health is to protect the living, so how low have things sunk if the best candidate these crazed commissioners could dig up was a man whose highest, most relevant qualification was how he handled the dead. At this rate, they might have to start combing cemeteries to find the next cadre of board candidates. As at this point, only braindead zombies are going to rise up to do their bidding…
Wow— “ a man whose highest, most relevant qualification was how he handled the dead” —
Because the dead are what? Trash to be disposed of? The families are what?
A competent and compassionate coroner is a community good well known to people who have lost loved ones.
Erica, please spare us all the disingenuous pearl-clutching.
YOUR post claimed first he was impugned, so don’t pretend otherwise. But WOW what a waste of words to dodge the issue, with a weak presentation of straw men questions to dance around and that statement of nonsense. So let’s ask a reasonable question: if he really had ethereal qualifications like competence or even compassion then would have flatly refused this board role that is openly assaults the independence of the Health Dept. Besides, if we’re talking about actually saving lives or protecting public health, it sure sounded like from all the public testimony that Dr. Kuhr served this community with aplomb during COVID-19. Let’s also be honest, here in Mesa County the job is coroner is larger symbolic and therefore why a guy with a self-professed law enforcement background and not an actual medical degree was even allowed to hold the position.
I don’t see anything in this article that speaks poorly of Yahn. Even the clip shows him to be professional and efficient.
My guess is that he didn’t want to be used as a tool to handle this job for the Commissioners.
Indeed.
I’m responding to the comments, not the article.
Just ban Alice, already. She’s as unhinged as Janet (if not actually her), and is clearly violating the comment policy. The increasing desperation of her posts from self-important, pedantic rambling to now fat shaming is disgraceful. Nobody needs to read that kind of BS here, besides giving a troll like Alice a platform is like giving Victor Yahn a microphone. Neither deserve the attention and both of their 15 minute of fame are over.
I agree Alice’s comments here were disgraceful and hateful. I deleted her rude personal commentary and adjusted the settings so her comments will be put into a moderation queue prior to posting, so I can assess them for personal insults, misinformation, etc., before they appear. Any more personal insults and she will be banned.
Exactly how did they work their butts off “getting us through COVID”?
Please give details and data and tell me how it would have been if they hadn’t “worked their butts off”.
Are you serious Alice? I really can’t answer such a stupid request. Why am I feeding a narcissistic troll? Lesson learned. Don’t feed Alice.
So you really don’t know
and to question your mantra about “working their buttons off” makes me a troll.
There aren’t very many people in our society in this day and age who work their butts off. And those people definitely don’t make six figures with full benefits.
The people at the health department may have had a little extra work to do distributing vaccines and masks but I doubt any of that amounted to “working their butts off”, although they probably love the notion that you think they did.
So you have no idea how they “worked their buttons off” and anyone who questions the amount of actual work they did is a troll.
At the very most they had a lot of vaccines and masks to deliver and they had to coordinate getting the jabs in people’s arms.
I don’t call that “working their butts off”.
There are very few people in our society who do that and they don’t make health department wages with pensions and benefits.
Okay Alice, this is soooooo stupid on my part to feed your ignorance. Are you a medical professional? YES or NO? I am. I worked 12 hour days 5-6 days a week during Covid caring for a medically fragile population. I had to follow the constant daily and changing updates Dr. Kuhr and his team put together on the MCHD website Dashboard. I visited the MCHD on a regular basis and witnessed firsthand how busy and overwhelmed MCHD was. They did a fantastic job. Our County was able to remain mostly open during Covid. MCHD seamlessly put together testing sights. Dr. Kuhr was asked for constant advice and updates by business leaders in our community, all while running the health dept. Newsflash Alice: making six figures is hardly a crime & hell, not even considered great money anymore when you’re working that hard. Many of the nurses I work with are pulling six figures or just under. And rightfully so when one is working long 12-hour shifts, 5-6 days a week. And now there’s an even more massive nursing shortage thanks to Covid. Dr. Kuhr had to answer to Mesa County business leaders, State medical professionals and his health team at MCHD. Let’s see you manage a large medical services team during a stressful pandemic. You’d fold within the hour. You are mouthy as hell and ignorant as hell Alice!
Anna – exactly. Alice is a troll. She’s not going to have a conversation. She’s just endless whataboutism and goal post shifting.
Good ol’ Alice always there to put people down. Who cares if he’s a bit over weight?! Who hasn’t been? He just got our county through Covid. He and his team at MCHD worked their butts off and all you can do fat shame him? Are you perfect Alice? I’d love to see you so I could make some nasty remarks about your body type, but then I’d be stooping to your level and that would be childish. And who cares about your stupid love of the good ol’ days in Mesa County? Newsflash Alice: No one cares!
Fat shaming. Really?
He may be brighter than the rest of the “New Health Board”. Can you smell PATSY? Def:
1. a person who is easily swindled, deceived, coerced, persuaded, etc.; sucker
2. a person upon whom the blame for something falls; scapegoat; fall guy
3. a person who is the object of a joke, ridicule, or the like
When the rats leave, the shipping is sinking….