Ever since the city of Boulder purchased its Valmont Butte property, city taxpayers have been picking up the tab to pay for the environmental sins committed by more than a century’s worth of long-departed users at the site. And that tab may be getting bigger as more ghosts from the property’s past continue to reveal themselves.

Even art enthusiasts who believed they knew the work of leading American abstract expressionist Clyfford Still had surprises waiting when the museum of his work opened in Denver. But for everyone else, it was a surprise just knowing the man existed at all.

Frank Alexander started helping the needy in high school, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity and food pantries in tiny Hopewell, N.J. Now, decades later, he’s still helping the less fortunate, just on a much larger scale. Alexander is Boulder County’s director of housing and human services, and he’s Boulder Weekly’s Person of the Year because he has been responsible for leading a remarkable transformation in how the county helps its needy.

The 76-year-old man who calls himself Reverend Friendly walks with a shuffled gait. Old age and decades of heavy, indiscriminate drinking have reduced his mobility considerably. His long, white beard flows down to his chest, and his eyelids droop heavily over his eyes, giving him the appearance of being permanently sleepy, or at least squinting.

Had Dorothy and her dog stumbled into the Dec. 8 county commissioners meeting, where the issue of genetically modified crops on open space was the topic, she might have uttered the line, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Boulder any more.” And for good reason.

It’s never easy being a Boulder County commissioner. In the best of times it’s a cross between housekeeping and playing referee. And then there are times like we’re having now when an emotional issue — in this case the expanded use of genetically modified crops on open space lands — has turned once-routine meetings into something more akin to cage fighting. It’s not an exaggeration.

Several times a week, 47-year-old Ron Cobbley does his part to serve Boulder’s homeless. He spends much of his time assisting First Presbyterian Church with a lunch for the homeless and greets visitors by name or with a friendly pat on the back. Few would know that Cobbley is homeless himself.

Thanks to the world’s largest drug manufacturers, our elected officials and a media environment addicted to good visuals and easy answers, we have been given a culprit in recent weeks, a dastardly collection of small medical distribution companies collectively referred to as the “gray market.” These companies make their profits in the secretive shadows of the mainstream pharmaceutical sector.

Sawyer is a one in a hundred dog. He’s sweet, loyal and smart, with a playful streak likely to mature into a watchful air. At 16 months old, 83 pounds and mostly legs, he has a puppy’s energy for bounding through the backyard, but is so eager to please that his foster guardian says her best disciplinary weapon is a spray bottle. But a month ago, Sawyer, a purebred Akbash, was on the edge of becoming one of a couple hundred dogs the Humane Society of Boulder Valley euthanizes each year as untreatable or unhealthy.

As our leaders loudly preach, democracy is something that we export to the rest of the world — to certain monarchies and autocratic regimes that rule Arab nations, for example. And it’s understandable though regrettable, they tell us, that there would be eruptions of pent-up anger at aloof upper classes in India, Greece, Spain and Israel. But a genuinely populist uprising to bring democracy, both economic and political, to the U.S.A.?