Summary
On Feb. 12 Jefferson County Public Library announced a photo contest to pick an image for their new library cards. Contest rules required submitted images to have been captured within Jefferson County. Out of 218 submissions, three finalist images were selected by JeffCo Library administrators (curiously from only 2 different photographers), and voting commenced via a County Library Facebook page. The Library was immediately informed that the ‘star trail’ finalist image was captured near Glenwood Springs, not Jefferson County as required. The person who submitted the image denied it, claiming it was captured in Conifer, CO, and subsequently initiated an elaborate attempt to cover tracks on social media, going on to barely win the contest over a black and white ‘Red Rocks’ image. Despite assurances and abundant indirect evidence from several citizens of Jefferson County as to the dubious nature of the winning image, the Library refused to look into the allegations with any veracity whatsoever. On March 4th direct, irrefutable evidence as to the precise location of the ‘Star Trails’ image was transmitted to the Library (see image below), and they continue to remain silent on the issue, although oddly they have deleted several of the ‘contest’ pages from their Facebook post feed.
On 3/9/16, Jefferson County Public Library finally began responding publicly by resorting to circulating a ‘form letter’ in the form of Facebook posts and responses to direct inquiries by citizen email; the ‘form letter’ tries to publicly paint one or more Jefferson County Citizens as ‘disgruntled contest losers’, presumably in order to silence the vocal public opposition to their questionable actions in regard to actively ignoring verifiable information presented to them to dispute the authenticity of the image in question.
Contained within this site is information compiled from various sources by a small group of Jefferson County citizens–some publicly vocal, some not–who are concerned with truth and transparency. Much of the information is presented as screenshots since the photographer in question has deleted ‘tracks’ from social media as certain items have become inconvenient to show publicly (including many comments on Facebook and Instagram). Additionally, the Jefferson County Public Library has hidden the comments on their Facebook page from individuals who question the credibility of claims as to the source of the ‘star-trails’ photograph.
***The citizens of Jefferson County simply request that Jefferson County Public Library earnestly consider the unquestionable evidence presented to them, and consequently refuse to use the fraudulent image in any and all forms on public media of any kind.***
If after examining the photographic evidence presented below (and on other pages of this site) you agree that the ‘Star Trail’ image in question was not captured in Conifer, CO as asserted by both the photographer and Library, please contact Library administration with your concerns, and request them to immediately halt production of the library card with the fraudulent image:
Please consider sharing this page as a symbol of solidarity for truth and free speech within Jefferson County.
If you have relevant information or have questions, please send your information to info@sosforjeffco.org and someone will respond as necessary.
Information regarding the situation described above can be objectively confirmed to be fact from a variety of sources; reference the Chronology and Supporting Information pages for further specific details.
Their response may undoubtedly be “Sorry, it’s too late”, but the library cards have not been distributed. If necessary the cards can be re-printed using an honest image of Jefferson County; public servants need to take responsibility for their actions, and this fiasco can be fixed before it’s truly ‘too late’. I don’t think any one of us wants a blatant lie being forever featured on our county library card.
Sometimes someone just has to stand up, however insignificant a cause may, at first, seem.
