It’s straightforward to overlook Moffat — a 120-person city in southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley that lengthy has been recognized for its agriculture and ranching historical past.
But when Mike Biggio has his method, this tiny outpost on the sting of Nice Sand Dunes Nationwide Park and Protect quickly will probably be rebranded to replicate what he views as the way forward for a dying valley.
Welcome to Kush, Colorado.
“I’m seeking to set up this as a world-renowned hashish area,” Biggio mentioned.
5 years in the past, Biggio and his enterprise associate based Space 420, a set of 70 develop operations on the town that doubtless represents the best focus of hashish producers in Colorado.
Now Biggio needs the city’s title to showcase its financial engine: “Kush,” a moniker for marijuana named after the Hindu Kush mountain vary in south-central Asia, may very well be the subsequent Humboldt County, California, he mentioned. The Napa Valley for bud.
“This might present the city has each ft in on this and replicate the brand new tradition right here,” he mentioned.
Biggio’s effort to vary the city’s title begins 7 p.m. Tuesday at Moffat’s Board of Trustees assembly. The city lacks the flexibility to showcase PowerPoint shows, so Biggio has printed out pages of proof that this may be executed: Wikipedia pages for the Hindu Kush, a radio station’s checklist of earlier Colorado title adjustments and Forbes articles speaking about tourism booms precipitated by authorized weed. Tuesday’s assembly is strictly informational, a gap salvo earlier than any votes are taken.
The craziest a part of all this? Biggio could nicely have the assist he wants.
“Change is all the time good,” mentioned Cassandra Foxx, Moffat’s mayor, who mentioned she’d vote for Kush. “Probably the most harmful phrase is, ‘We’ve all the time executed it this fashion.’ That’s the dying of society.”
Moffat is an anomaly, a hashish oasis in a deeply pink swath of Colorado not too eager on bringing in grows or dispensaries.
However hashish has unequivocally reinvigorated the city, Foxx mentioned. Since Space 420 took root 5 years in the past, tax income has skyrocketed in a spot that had nearly none beforehand: $80,000 rapidly turned $120,000 per 12 months. Then $200,000. Final 12 months Moffat took in some $400,000 in excise taxes — almost all of which got here from the marijuana business.
The infusion of money has been used to fund analysis for a brand new water and sewer system, faculty upgrades, contemporary paving and housing improvement.
“This city was capable of simply exist,” Foxx mentioned of life earlier than Space 420. “They had been simply there. The established order was stored. Then Space 420 got here and introduced us business. It’s been exponential progress.”
Longtime resident J.W. Matthews known as the push for Kush “good.”
“We want contemporary blood,” he mentioned. “The title change is gonna be a fantastic factor, a optimistic step ahead.”
Not everyone seems to be dying to get Kush on the map, although.
“The title change?” mentioned city trustee Ken Skoglund. “(Expletive) no!”
The longtime Moffat resident considers Biggio a buddy, somebody who employed Skoglund’s excavation enterprise to construct the weed enclave. He helps Space 420 and all it’s executed for the city and is even keen to market hashish as a part of the city’s attract.
However calling the city Kush?
“That’s overreach,” Skoglund mentioned. “It’s not about cash. It’s about proper and unsuitable and we characterize the folks.”
It doesn’t occur a lot anymore, however Colorado municipalities have a protracted, wealthy historical past of altering their names.
Telluride, earlier than 1887, was referred to as Columbia, however modified its title as a result of the U.S. Postal Service stored delivering folks’s mail to a city by the identical title in California. Eldora was referred to as Eldorado, however had the identical downside as Telluride. Aspen was known as Ute Metropolis into the late nineteenth century.
Biggio says another excuse for the title change is that the city is usually confused with Moffat County, which sits within the far northwest nook of the state. That confusion precipitated one hashish cultivator on the town to tear up $100,000 price of vegetation weeks early, anticipating a frost destined for Craig, not Moffat.
“The title isn’t simply to be cute,” he mentioned.
City officers say they’re nonetheless determining how a change may even occur — whether or not it might take a poll measure or a petition. Biggio mentioned considerations about residents having to redo all their paperwork if the city flips names are overblown.
“Let’s put this as much as no matter honest democratic measure and let the general public communicate,” Biggio mentioned.