Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

Yard work, right? Let's get started. We have a yard now, which we never really had before because we moved out by HMI. And I'm like so excited about yard work. I know it'll wear off, but it still feels good. Well, good morning, everybody.

We're going to get started here. It is May 26th at 11 a.m. And we're going to start with item number one of this work session, overview and discussion. Regarding domestic violence in Lake County, including existing community services and resources, current needs and challenges, and coordination among local agencies and community partners. This will be led by our community partners. Who would like to start?

I have a brief presentation that may add some context, and that might be a good place to start. Sure. If that feels okay for everybody. That feels great. Help me know what etiquette is for these meetings, because I don't want to have my back to everyone I'm talking to, but I also want to be mindful of the original stuff. I love to drive the computer, less so the car.

Thank you. Can you give a thumbs up online that you can see the screen?

Yeah, we can see it.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Cool. Hi, everyone. I'm Kristin King. I'm co-executive director at Ad Pits of Lake County, which I'm going to tell you about in just a second. And I put together just sort of a little bit of framing for where we're at with domestic violence in Lake County, particularly recently. This isn't the full picture, but it's some of the more critical stuff and then how all of that fits into violence in the community overall. So please feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions at all. I also have lots more data than what's in here, so if there's anything that you're like, I want to hear more about that, please make a note and let me know so I can get that to you. So, just a little quick background on ALC. We have been providing services to victims and survivors of domestic violence and other violent crimes in Lake County for over 40 years. Tales of our founding include 1981, 1982, and 1983. One of those, I'm roughly the same age as ALC. Oh, I'm gonna, can I admit Cameron? Yes. Okay, awesome. And we provide a variety of services from violence prevention through the resolution at the end of an instance or prolonged period of violence. We run the county's only 24-7 crisis hotline. Obviously, 911 is also a thing available 24-7, but they serve slightly different functions. We do a lot of safety planning. Although we are no longer using our property on Alder as a safe house, we do still provide emergency shelter for folks, legal advocacy, and a variety of other support services. for folks in and around Lake County. We're also part of an international network of domestic violence shelters, and so we will often support folks from other places in exchange for our folks being supported other places when it's not safe for them to stay here. In addition to our core work around domestic violence and sexual assault, human trafficking, other kinds of violent crimes. We also provide services to prevent and respond to homelessness and that is specifically for Lake County residents. So that's everything from rental assistance to keep people from getting kicked out of their housing to if they do lose their housing helping them find and sustain stable housing as quickly as possible and just helping them get connected to the resources that they need to stay safe. And all of these fit together to help people live safe well-supported lives free of violence and trauma and if those things do occur to help them recover and get back on their feet as quickly as possible um so just a little bit context in terms of the the level of use of our services in 2025 we had 830 instances of support provided through our crisis hotline we say instances of support because the same person can call multiple times so the um like unduplicated number is not necessarily 830, but because folks don't always identify themselves when they call, we can't give you a true unduplicated number, because we can have five anonymous people or the same anonymous person five times, and there's not a great way for us to parse that out, but you can assume safely that it's several hundred, but it is less than 830. So that's a pretty high volume of use, that's multiple calls per day. Some days we don't get any calls, some days we'll get 15. You just never really know. So all I have to say, we have all of these services and domestic violence continues to be a problem, not just in Lake County, nationally and internationally, but we're seeing escalation instead of improvement in a number of key areas. And the big one that I want to touch on here, because I think it is super relevant to the larger conversation that we're having, is domestic violence homicide. We know that domestic violence homicide is highly preventable. However, it is also extremely common, much more common than we want it to be. In an eight month period, we had two domestic violence homicides in this community, which is shocking and very upsetting. And it is not because we don't have phenomenal crisis response services, we do. It's because there are missing pieces, and we're gonna get to that in just a moment. But it goes beyond domestic violence. We know that that's not the only kind of violence that we're seeing here. We also had, in the same month, Actually, hang on, that's wrong. The same month a year later.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

Thank you. Sorry, since you're driving. Yeah, no worries. I used to produce webinars professionally, so I usually notice right when it pops up. So thanks for the assistance. Okay, so in August 24, we had a domestic violence homicide. We had another in April 25. And then in August 25, on the first day of school, we had a lockdown. due to an instance of gun violence, and then two days later, was it two days later, there was another youth-involved shooting incident at Ice Palace Park, neither of those involved in fatality, and then a month later, unrelated to domestic violence still, there was a road rage shooting incident that resulted in a fatality, and I believe that particular individual was charged with second-degree murder. So we're seeing multiple types of violence that are happening in the community and I'm emphasizing right now firearm violence because that's what I have the most visibility into but also because of the overlap between our rural community and rural gun death rates and also the impact of the presence of firearm in the home on the increased risk of homicide in a DV situation and so in this is nationally Overall, the rate of gun deaths in rural areas is 40% higher than in large metropolitan areas. And there are some aspects of being in an isolated community like ours that make it safer for us in many ways. But unfortunately, that doesn't track when it comes to gun violence, according to the data. Now, this is not to imply that guns are fundamentally bad or any of those things. I own firearms myself. This is just looking at the statistics of the co-occurrence of the presence of a firearm and the likelihood of death in certain circumstances. So it's really clear about that. So based on the numbers that are currently available, which are always lagging a little bit, in 2022, There were at least 83 DV-related homicides in the state of Colorado, and well over half of those used a firearm in the commission of that homicide. And that is, on average, nationally, it's about 50%. So that's a little bit higher in the state of Colorado, which tends to track with higher, on average, gun ownership in rural areas and a number of other factors that make sense. But Colorado does have a slightly higher rate We also know that when a male abuser has access to firearms, the risk of death to a female partner is substantially higher, four times higher. In some places and some circumstances, I forget the exact number, but after a certain number of instances, it's like 800% higher. So we know that there's a real clear and well-documented correlation there. And just the presence of a gun in the home increases risk of homicide for women by as much as 500%. Now, the presence of gun in a home increases the risk of homicide or accidental death for anyone, which is why safe gun storage is super important. You're going to hear a lot about that in June because that is gun violence awareness. Public health is doing amazing stuff right now with making free gun locks and other resources available. So if you take nothing away from this conversation, safe gun storage saves lives. But particularly when it comes to domestic violence, the presence of a firearm significantly increases the stakes. And this part is not in the slides, but we also know that the highest risk period for someone to die in the context of intimate partner violence is when they are trying to leave. That is the absolute highest risk period when they're trying to leave and the period immediately after they have left. And it takes people on average seven times to leave and stay gone. And so we're looking at a very high period of risk over a long period of time when people are trying to exit a domestic violence relationship.

When you say seven times, like seven incidents of being physically abused or seven times?

Seven attempts to get out of the relationship. The number of instances of abuse ranges from one to like infinity. before people have the desire and take the action to actually leave. So this is once they take the action, it's on average seven attempts to leave before they get out, stay out, and don't go back to that person. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes terrifying sense.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of reasons for that. It's pretty complicated. And that sort of goes into the ecosystem conversation that I'm hoping that this is going to turn into for a long time because there's a lot of factors that contribute to that. And it is pretty horrifyingly clear when we step back and look at it like that. So there's these other pieces though that increase the risk in Lake County in particular. And this is where we start to get into a concept called the social determinants of health. So there's the stuff that happens to us. Those are like our life experiences. And then there's the environment in which those things are happening. You can think of it like we're the plant, we're growing and we're growing in soil and we're growing surrounded by air and there's rain and there's other stuff going on. So the social determinants of health are like the environment and we're like the plant. So in our environment here in Lake County, we see higher poverty rates than we do in other areas for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is, you know, lack of available employment and the high cost of housing. Speaking of housing, we do have disproportionate cost burden for our renters, just like a lot of places, but it's particularly hard here just because the housing stock is so small and the demand is so high. We do. It's number one in the state. Is it really in the state? It's number one in the state. Thank you. Yeah, so that's a lot. That's a big deal. That is a huge risk factor for us. There's just a lot of instability that comes along with that. We've had interruptions in people's access to food-related benefits in the last year, for example. Just a lot of moving pieces. And then we also have a community that has dealt with generations of this boom and bust cycle and a lot of other vulnerabilities that all come together and just elevate the risk that our community faces, just making us increasingly more vulnerable. And I think that it's also worth noting that the Healthy Kids Colorado survey ranked our particular region as being above the state median for instances of dating violence and sexual coercion among youth. I realize this isn't specifically youth-focused, but all of these pieces fit together because this is not a problem that's specific to just adults or just children or just one other demographic group. It's really all of us because it is the soil that we're rooted in and it's the air that surrounds us as we're growing and moving through our lives. So this really speaks to the idea that this isn't happening in a vacuum. It's not just like one person did something dumb and then it caused this problem for everybody else. No, we have a lot of people who are under a significant amount of pressure, and all of those pieces compound to increase everybody's risk. And so what's the solution to that? Well, the solution is to reduce the pressure on a community-wide level, and there are lots of things that we can do to do that, and so my hope is that in the next five minutes, I'm gonna get you real on board and real excited about what those things are so we can keep moving forward together to turn around some of these trends. We're really, really good already at crisis response. We have fantastic law enforcement, both in the police department and in the sheriff's office. We have great victims advocates through the sheriff's office. We have a dedicated advocacy organization in ALC. We have just incredible work from a variety of community partners who really get the job done when something bad has happened. We're really, really good, and when we see someone drowning, pulling them out of the water. The place that we have a real opportunity to make a significant and meaningful difference is in preventing violence before it happens. And this primary prevention piece is where we go to start to relieve and reduce some of that pressure. If we think of Lake County as like an instant pot, I don't know if anyone has ever used an instant pot. If you cook the instant pot and it beats and it's like your rice is done and you try to just take the lid off, that shit's gonna explode. You're gonna get burnt. There's gonna be a big dent in your ceiling because when you turn it, it's gonna... we're kind of in a pressure cooker and what primary prevention does is turn that little venti thing. So all the steam comes out of the instant pot and then you can safely open the lid and there's no explosion. And when we're doing community violence prevention properly, the vent is always open. So we're constantly letting off steam instead of risking a big explosion. And that's where that prevention piece comes in because it stops things from escalating to a high pressure situation. Most people do not wake up and say, you know what? I feel like punching my partner in the face today. Or you know what? I feel like taking a gun to Ice Palace Park and ruining a bunch of people's day all in one fell swoop. Most people don't do that. Most people find themselves following a series of events that leads them to doing something that they had not been planning to do. And that's part of the reason that safe gun storage is really, really important because it prevents those things from escalating in ways that cannot be fixed and cannot be undone. So let me just pause there. I talk really fast and I talk a lot. Are we good? Do we have questions? Anything that I said that did not make sense?

Does domestic violence include violence towards the kid, the children in the house, or just spouse and spouse?

That is a great question. So domestic violence specifically refers to violence between intimate partners, but there are other forms of abuse that may also occur. And so oftentimes if we have a romantic relationship where one partner is violent toward another, that person is often also violent or abusive toward others in the household. So that could include elder abuse, that could include child abuse, it could include violence toward pets. So when we're talking about the statistics in terms of domestic violence, we are talking about intimate partner violence. husband and wife, husband and husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, any kind of romantic relationship, but it doesn't necessarily mean that those other types are not also happening. Does that make sense?

I apologize if you're going to go over this in a bit, but is there different age groups that are higher or lower than others? We see 20-somethings being more likely to commit this than

elderly you know like yeah that's a really good question Andy I know that there are data on that and I know that particularly for firearm instances in men it tends to skew a little bit younger like in the 25 to 45 but I don't know the current data to speak definitively on what those numbers actually are do you want me to circle back on that okay one note Okay, cool, I will. Okay, beautiful, thank you. Other questions?

Okay, keep going.

All right, so when we're talking about primary prevention, we're reducing population level risk factors before a crisis happens. And so what that looks like is a multidisciplinary approach where we look at all the moving pieces in our community and we start kind of chipping away at them as they go, holistically, rather than just tackling one thing at a time or focusing on only one individual or one demographic group. So for example, public health is, again, doing a really good job with this safe gun storage messaging. So that's one example of something we can do on a population level to reduce risk, creating increased access to food or financial support for people who are under a lot of stress. Maybe they're underemployed or they don't have stable housing or they don't know how they're gonna feed the kids this weekend. That lowers the temperature for everyone who's in that situation rather than one single individual. It doesn't mean we ignore the individual, but it means we look at adjustments and interventions that can have a positive impact on multiple people in groups at the same time. Does that make sense? OK, cool. So when we do that, when we reduce the risk factors, then as challenges happen, as people run into problems, as they have obstacles in their life, they have more resources and support around them so they're less likely to be in a state of panic or to feel like they're backed into a corner and to resort to extreme measures to deal with whatever's going on because they have other tools available rather than just one ultimate solution that's not good for anybody. What we're working on right now at ALC is relaunching our violence prevention team. And when we see communities under a lot of pressure like ours, that's a community that's under chronic stress. Chronic stress is a form of trauma that changes the way our brains work, changes the way our bodies work, changes the way we interact with people. And that, on a community level, can really break down a lot of social networks and a lot of supports that have historically been really critical to all of our survival and well-being. And the VPT's job, the Violence Prevention and Change job, is to try to rebuild and strengthen those networks with a systematic approach that, again, is multidisciplinary and involves different groups, different angles, all kind of tackling the same problem from the ways that they can from where they're at in their expertise. And when we're looking at these social determinants of health, there are a ton of ways that we can make adjustments. We can make adjustments at school. We can make adjustments through public health. We can make adjustments through community policing. We can make adjustments through the way we communicate about resources that are available and deliver services. There's lots of places that you can reach out to and start making positive changes. So what we're really looking at with relaunching BPT is a structured approach that is intentionally looking at all of these different social determinants of health so we can be really strategic about setting goals, being on the same page about who's doing what and how that's working toward those goals, and starting to track those incremental changes as we start to build momentum in a number of areas with the goal of reducing violence and increasing safety. And it's not just about domestic violence, as I mentioned, because the things that increase vulnerability to domestic violence are the things that increase vulnerability to all violence. So any place that we start to make a dent stands to have a positive impact on every other place. You're like, I'm going to start running. And so you start exercising. And then suddenly you're like, I should eat a salad or something. And then that accumulates. And then suddenly you're like, I should go to bed earlier. And that accumulates. We make one little change anywhere and those changes start to accumulate as we build momentum and we start to get gains. And so that's really what we're moving toward. Historically, the violence prevention team did have great contributors at the table and so we're really hoping that as we're relaunching, which hopefully will be next month, it was gonna be this month, but my husband was in an accident and we thought my whole family had measles and both of those things had worked out okay, but didn't go great for the scheduling. We're looking at June now, but in any event, we are really hopeful that all of those same incredible partners are going to be at the table again, as well as bringing others in. And when we are taking that social determinants approach, there's literally no one in the community who can't contribute to this effort if they want to. because it really kind of levels the playing field and gives lots of people lots of things they can do to make a meaningful difference without putting it all on any one individual or organization, because it really all goes together. What we are hoping for, commissioners, we would love some money to help fund the violence prevention team. We do have a bit of funding through our offense on violence against women grant, which is specifically for rural communities That allows us to do some of the work But we are trying to relaunch and we want to purchase some training materials that are specific to rural communities So we're asking for five thousand dollars to contribute to that Which again is braiding in with with other funding and we do have a couple of our asks out as well and this will really like it's gonna happen either way and But it really does help us make a more robust relaunch and get some things in place a little bit earlier, a little bit more quickly than if we had less funding. Happy to talk about that in more detail if you like. But let's talk about what it costs us when we're not doing anything about this. And to be clear, I don't think Lake County is doing nothing about violence. I don't think that's the case. However, I do think there's a lot of opportunity for us to be more strategic and to do it more intentionally and in a more structured way. And so I just want to acknowledge that it is happening. I think we can do even more of it. When communities do nothing, we continue to incur costs at a pretty rampant level. I don't know if we have data specific to Lake County. I'm not sure if those exist. But the average cost of a single homicide, if we put everything together, is over $17 million. And so we're talking about things like lost productivity, the hours spent by various law enforcement operations, criminal justice system. While people are awaiting trial, we have to feed them. All of this stuff, driving back and forth to crime scenes. There are all these things that go together. When we put all of it together, we're looking at over $17 million per instance. We've had three homicides in three years, and if we go by those numbers, just straight math it, I mean, that's over $50 million. Now, does it actually cost that much in Lake County? I don't know. I don't know what those numbers are, but I know that it's more than $0, and that there are things that we can be doing to prevent some of this. The lifetime economic cost of intimate partner violence outside of homicide is over $100,000 for a female victim and over $20,000 for a male victim. That comes from the CDC. The total population of the United States, that's a cost into the trillions of dollars. Again, these are things like lost productivity. We know the association between trauma experiences and physical health throughout the lifespan, all of these things come together to cost a lot of money as a result of these pieces. So there's a lot of cost that comes along with this and prevention by comparison is ridiculously inexpensive. The cost to prevent one homicide is around $30,000 in the context of a coordinated citywide prevention effort, which is what we are looking at doing with the violence prevention team. There's various numbers when you look at different types of violence prevention in different communities, but anywhere from 40 to over $80 return per dollar spent on violence prevention. And I think this last piece is super, super important. This one comes from NCBI, which is linked down below, is that violence prevention has been identified as the single most effective way to promote economic development in communities with a multiplier effect. So everything we do to reduce violence creates space for great economic development in Lake County. which reduces our vulnerability to violence because we are going directly to addressing some of those things that make us most vulnerable in the first place, not the least of which is economic instability. So that's the overview. That's the ask, $5,000, please, please, please. And this is ALC's contact info. You can get to me if you want to get me directly by when you call that main number. Just press 3. for admin, and that goes right to my desk. So that's what I got for you. Happy to answer questions. Also happy to go back to my seat and hear from you later.

I didn't see anything about alcohol and drug abuse, and that's certainly Did I miss it?

You didn't miss it. It absolutely is a big factor, and that's one of those pieces that fits into the social determinants. I didn't pull together alcohol and violence as contributors to domestic violence. That's certainly available, so if you want me to circle back with you on that, I can. But from a public health perspective and looking at social determinants, we'll see increased rates of violence, increased rates of substance use, often occurring simultaneously, or one will start and the other will follow. And those are all driven by those same risk factors. So economic instability, lack of access to resources, trauma, all of these things are symptoms of the larger issues of these social determinants not meeting people's needs. And so then they're finding other ways to get their needs met because they don't have access to safer, healthier options. Does that make sense? I always check because sometimes I don't know what I started my sentence with and what I ended my sentence with connected, so I'm counting you all to tell me if you got lost.

buying alcohol and drugs contributes to the economic instability. That stuff's very expensive.

It certainly can. It certainly can. And one of the things that we see a lot of is that we'll start to, I used to work in a public health consulting firm that did a lot with substance abuse treatment and prevention. One of the things that we'll see a lot, and I'm sure public health can speak more to this, is when communities are under stress, we'll start to see changes in purchasing patterns. around all kinds of substances. It'll be alcohol, it'll be tobacco, it'll be cannabis. We'll also see it in illicit substances. We'll start to see increased activity, and then we'll start to see increased overdose activity. We'll start to see increased instances of drug-driven psychosis. We'll start to see increased instances of uncontrolled violence because folks are vulnerable, so then they do something to try to address the stress that they're under, and then that can often exacerbate it or release some of their inhibitions, and then it spills out into other places. And then it makes them more vulnerable because they often will lose access to resources that they had. They might get fired, they might get kicked out of their home, things like that. And so it kind of perpetuates the cycle. So any place we can interrupt that has a downstream effect to everything, right? So we want to pull people out of the river, but we also want to stop them from falling in at the first place. But anywhere we can get them out of the river along the bank, is still good news. Does that get at what you were referring to, or did I answer something adjacent?

Or both? No, I think you did.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you. Kristen, I really appreciate all this information. Thank you so much for coming. You're so welcome.

As a work session, you can't make decisions about funding, but I'm going to ask

that our staff get a decision on a regular work session or a regular meeting, so we actually can. That would be great. And $5,000 is nothing. And this is one of our main tasks, is the health and safety of our community as county commissioners. So I love having ALC in here. I love the work that you've done with our departments as well. And if there are other specific asks with funding attached, I would love to continue hearing from ALC. Okay, that would be great. Thank you.

Appreciate you guys.

I also know that we cut money from the DA who was doing, and the DA was funding, what was the sexual assault response team? The sexual assault response team. In our conversations, you said that ALC can't take that specific task back up, but it just seems appropriate that, because of the funding that we did not give to the DA, that we funnel it in a different direction that can have some really local effect. I'm definitely willing to look at the amount that we did not send on to the DA and come up with some more options to address it locally.

That sounds great because one of the challenges is that everyone working in this space is seeing funding cuts and so in a community that already has to do so much more with so much less compared to others, now we're really doing that. So lots of human services organizations are seeing cuts and we are seeing cut specifically for victims advocacy work, for violence prevention work, for gun violence prevention work, and just a lot of programs that have previously funded some of this just don't exist anymore. And that's kind of what led to SART, the Sexual Assault Response Team, from what I understand, funding had to be reallocated from that to some of these other places that are no longer funded on a judicial district and state level. And because of the access that would be required to confidential information in the justice system, ALC just can't do that part of it. But what we can do is the prevention stuff, is the training stuff, is the support that used to come through SART for law enforcement. For example, training on trauma-informed victim interviews, things like that. We can do those pieces of it. And we just need funding for it because it's not part of the original plan. So we'll get the gap filled, but it may not be completely because there's just some stuff that is out of our scope that we literally can't get to.

I think that kind of answered the question I have. It sounds like, you know, putting a little bit of funding towards things like the DPT and other programs you guys are looking at sounds like a great... return on investment. It almost sounds insensitive to think about it in dollars and cents, but it does sound like a great way to benefit the community. And what you just said would be some of the examples of what this funding would do specifically.

Exactly. Well said. I think the other piece here is this isn't the only thing we're doing. If I had unlimited funding, the next immediate thing I would be doing would be adult and adolescent emotional regulation training. anger management, helping people with stress reduction, helping people take ownership of what they actually need in their own lives. Not from a like, you're lazy, take ownership perspective, but people literally don't know the places that they have power in their own life to make a decision, to advocate for themselves, to ask for what they need, to make a change in things that are happening in their home, in their family, in their substance use, in their mental health, in their employment. And I happen to be a national expert on a wellness self-management program that is evidence-based, that gives people a structure and a framework that literally anyone can do from a five-year-old to a 105-year-old. That is manualized, evidence-based intervention. It works, works, works, works, works. That would be the next thing I'd launch. I'd be running those groups every single week in the county for everybody, English, Spanish. So if you find extra money and you want to throw it at us, that's where it's going next. Oh, cool. We got big plans. Cool. Yeah, that's good stuff. Cool. Other questions for me?

You mentioned two things that sort of connected dots for me. When you talked about the pressure cooker and letting off steam, and then you talked about running, and it made me think about recreation as a form of, like, therapy almost, you know, like people blowing, like I need to go blow off steam. When we go ride motorcycles, we go, go have throttle therapy. We literally talk about these things like as a solution to being the pressure, letting off the pressure that's built up. Is there anything that you guys do that do connect, you know, maybe some targeted demographic folks, like guys my age or whatever, two like recreational opportunities that could help them like you know like go and like make turns on the mountain and let the mountain kick your butt a little bit so that you know you go home you're like all right like blow off steam you know like how is there anything yeah so that's that's one of the things that we are hoping to get off the ground um and i've actually been having meetings with a recovery program that works in the high rockies area that does

Some stuff like that. So I've been working with them on like, what are some ways that we can bring that programming into Lake County? Um, I'd love to see us have like men's groups and do like, you know, like sober fishing trips or, you know, like dirt bike club or whatever. Um, I, those things do exist, but they're not something that we are currently doing in a structured way, but that's one of the things on my list of like, if I had absolute power and infinite resources that we would be doing regularly. The two main things that we're trying to get off the ground right now are that evidence-based group that I mentioned. It's a 12-week intervention, and so it creates a lot of community-focused connection over a period of time that allows people to develop relationships, and then there's options to continue beyond. But also things like community crafting nights, support groups, group walks, just different activities to bring people together face-to-face ways that are health-promoting rather than health-reducing, but don't have a lot of pressure or stress attached to them. So I think we're on the same page. And it's about getting the funding and the resources to be able to do those things, and to do them not just once, but reliably. Because the only thing worse than having no resources is telling someone, here's a resource, just kidding. Because that's almost worse. We don't want to do that to people. Great ideas, great questions. Cool. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks, Kristen. Thank you very much. You can keep driving if you want. I mean, if you need a hand, let me know.

I got you.

You know what? I'm going to sit over there so I'm not blocking you guys. No, I'm not blocking you. You're fine.

Okay. Who's next?

Me? Yeah, jump in. Thank you, man.

Thank you.

So from the law enforcement standpoint, when we encounter domestic violence situations, this is one of those rare laws that we have to enforce.

So usually we have discretion, or speeding, or whatnot. What are we doing in that situation? We're taking in the totality of all the circumstances. However, in this type of situation, it's a shallow rest. So it's something that we want to make sure that we're meeting in front of the judge, and the judge is taking the appropriate steps

essentially what we're required to by law with our victim advocates and they're following the victim advocate rights to make sure that they're presented resources for whatever their potential needs are.

What I'm hoping to do here is I want to learn more about the stats. I think some of the answers that can help us for the prevention standpoint is to truly understand what's going on.

to understand how to pull those numbers more personally it's it's kind of complicated to pull recent numbers which i think are super important because you know things are still evolving in the criminal justice system but we have we have those records it's diving into them looking into records just for example if we if we get a call let's say it's an assault call we go to this location now it turns out to be a domestic violence assault and then there's drugs involved maybe there's kids involved so now we have this one So what this kind of leads us to is I can't just simply press a button and say I want this report of how many domestic violence calls, how many domestic violence case reports, to what level. It really takes a full record scrub. So we're trying to understand our systems better so we can do that a little easy, on the easy side versus having to go through every single call. So that's kind of where we're sitting with that.

Sorry, can I just ask a quick question? When E-1-9-1-1 receives a call, are they categorizing that call in one way? And is there a way to show co-offenses that are happening all at once? Or does it just have a one priority?

Yes, the call will be listed as that one call. And this is the problem we're having with the system currently. We want to know more. There's a lot of examples like this. We just receive a traffic complaint. wanted to see was was there also this was there also this we want to know all those numbers so i can't just simply prioritize and say okay if it's domestic violence then i want all calls to be now retitled domestic violence which is what we can't do that but now i'm losing the ability to go find how many duis we had or how many assaults so it's a lot more complex than i thought it would be we're collecting all these stats but i do believe it's worth the time

I know we've talked about data a lot in this room with you and it's definitely a priority for you, but can we talk about like is it a software issue that doesn't allow you to create multiple categories for one call to be able to then like filter all of those calls? Or like what is the barrier that doesn't allow you to have multiple categories?

Actually, right now as we speak, we're going through, staff is going through a demo on another software program, and we're bringing this to their attention. If you guys can help solve this for us, then I would consider switching over to new platforms. It was an issue in our prior software, and I used different softwares with the State Patrol, however, I didn't pull stats from them, so I don't know if that works or if this is just more of a global problem we have where we really want good information. It's just a lot of different ways to look at it.

because we will, from a law enforcement standpoint, we make that initial investigation, we find a probable cause, we'll make an arrest, and then we have to see a judge, and then what happens after that is usually we slowly discount.

And I know that's sometimes, I'm curious what happens, you know, to the victim, to the suspect, extra protection and evidence that can be made, of course the judge will issue a protection order, will require firearms to be turned in.

Problems that we're seeing in those situations is I don't trust that that person is going to be able to see all their firearms.

And so, but I don't have enough probable cause to go and search warrant for their house to make sure they're turning it off.

We honestly can't do that on every single situation. So I think it's important to bring I would love to see the district attorney's office in this group also, because they're going to see this post-arrest process more in depth than law enforcement will. We just keep seeing the reoccurring

some sort of violence involved, they're in jail, then they're back out on jail. They're coming to our office, also the victims are coming to our office to request a change to the protection order to allow contact again. So the cycle is what scares me. I don't have a great answer for that.

Treatment's good, too, in the right situations. be those extreme cases where there has to be a serious treatment plan in place, a serious oversight to truly try to prevent these. We've had a lot of homicides, we've had a lot of violence. The cost aspect, I'm glad you brought that up too.

There's one even older, a homicide case, Jared Brown. strain that some of their decisions have and how can they work better with us so we can really try to fix this globally.

Have they been involved, has the DA been involved in, or the court's been involved in the VPT in the past?

The last round we had, I don't believe we had either part of it.

Wasn't probation part of it at one time?

Yes, I think probation was part of it, so that would be a court aspect.

It's infuriating when you read about cases in, say, some of our neighboring communities where someone has already been obviously flagged and they've committed domestic violence multiple times and somehow end up back with the partner that they've been abusing. then it leads to the worst case scenario. And you're like, why was this person, you know, number one, not locked up? Like, why do they keep this? So I've written that question down as you started talking about it. And I was like, this is exactly where my mind was going. It's like, this is a revolving door. These offenders, and they just, is that, does that happen here? Like, is it, and what could we do as a community to influence those decision makers to like, hey, this person needs to be locked locked down for longer. They need to not immediately get right back out and go be a threat to the person that they're interacting with. How can we influence DAs or courts to be like, you guys need to be a little heavier on this?

Very similar to what happens in this room is people come and testify. There's always room for that. You can talk to the district attorney about testifying in court. I've done it before myself, just to have a key for higher bonds because then it's, you know, prevention's our idea, so in a prevention mindset we want to invite them earlier, start having these conversations earlier, so we've got them two-fold. I think what else is interesting to look at is the gun mention and there's a higher percentage of

And I think there's solutions in understanding who we're dealing with.

I mean, just to throw out this as a thought is there's probably a group of people that live in the mountains area because they want to be detached from a lot of people. So how do you get into that mindset for both a victim and a suspect? How do you promote that to a victim who wants to be detached from people and doesn't want to receive a lot of help, but they really need it? I don't have these answers. I think it's important too, yes.

Yeah, but like self-isolation, for people who can't choose to live rural, it's like, okay, how do we pull you into community if this is what you're choosing? Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Kristen, you had a question?

Yeah, I have a question, and Heath, I'm glad you're here, because I don't know who to ask, and I feel like you're the right person. So one thing that we often run into with advocates, and this happened recently, is we'll have someone where like, nothing happened yet, but there is a serious pattern of escalation in the relationship, and there's a gun in the home. And the person reaches out to us, because they're like, this is what's happening, this is what's happening, this is what's happening, and there's this gun. What do I do? And because nothing has happened yet, we know that there's a problem, we know there's abuse occurring, we know there's a firearm in the home, we know the stats, but if they haven't done anything illegal, there's literally nothing we can do until the person is brandishing the weapon or actually uses it. What needs to happen legally from an advocacy perspective, procedurally to be able to intervene in those circumstances where there hasn't been a legal infraction, but we know where this is going? Is there anything we can do?

Yes, I think it's worth exploring if there are any criminal charges. like feels like maybe there is something there and for the escalation component maybe there's some sort of harassment although that's these are just like really low level charges yeah and it may aggravate the situation you know they may be more threatened because now just with the harassment charge they're gonna get a PR bond and out the next day and right back to it so there's there's that component but you know they're confident and or sometimes there's just If there is any comfort in the law enforcement exploring the potential of a criminal activity, even though they think there's nothing going on in the fifth one step, there is the either or both extremist protection order option that we can explore if we have enough essential probable cause to go ahead and front the courts and say we think that we should remove this person's firearms because they're a community threat or a threat to this individual via firearms. So those are the two responses.

Did that touch on red flag laws? That is the red flag, yeah.

And there's other things too if there's, if this is substance abuse related, there's a civil commitment process that we can go through, but you have to advocate

or situation going on where we can force their detainment

I'm encouraging more people to do that now because they're saying there's substance abuse in the house and when he or she drinks, they start acting this way and it's been escalating over the past six months. So these are like civil detainer stuff that we're learning more about. I just think it's important for law enforcement to learn about it because we can kind of use these, but we're on the criminal side. That's our focus. If there's a civil issue, we usually refer to civil resources. The more we know about these, the better we can use them. So that's another option. Awesome. Thank you.

With these, that brings up something I think I'd like to ask some questions about with It sounds like these could be tools that could be really helpful could possibly prevent something really bad from happening. I think, as everyone in the room knows we're dealing with limited resources in Lake County so when things like M1 Holds or something like that come into play, where does the funding for that come from? Is that a state thing or is that coming out of the county's general fund? I just want to know so that I there ever be a situation where we're like, well, we can't afford to do that anymore.

I don't think that's the case. From the funding standpoint, we use outside resources like Solvista to do the evaluations for most events, so the cost they incur for doing their job. There's a cost associated with us doing our job, personnel-wise, overtime-wise. These are things like, to me, that are on the criminal side where my job is to enforce the law. And so that's what we do. And if it crosses over into I need to put

have this knowledge, experience, and background on how to use these different tools.

So from a cost standpoint, let's just continue to focus on building the sheriffs on this building with experience and training and what not.

Do either of you guys know what that looks like? Is there state funding available to help with these if we end up in a...

I don't know. I mean, M1 holds I think are shared also with the cost of it's also shared with the hospital. So you should go toward that little room that they put them in. It's quite interesting. But yeah, I'm not entirely sure how it's funded.

Part of it comes out of your budget, part of it comes out of the hospital's budget.

The thing that I struggle with though, I know Heath does too, M1 holds is definitely like the basic band-aid to these situations. It's like, okay, we don't have anywhere else to put this person for the night. What do we do? And so we send them to the hospital. They put them in the little room that has a little door. And then we got to figure out what to do with them the next day or two. And when you can't just walk them down the street to a treatment facility or to a, if it's a kid, a QRTP home or things like that, the person re-enters the space of our community. And so that's where we see like cyclical things going on is we don't really have the resources to move beyond the band-aids.

Well, I think that's something that comes up a lot is the lack of case management. So like the hospital, they see the same people come back in when there is a more sustainable solution because There's not another human supporting them and following them through, like, their next steps. Like, hey, did you check in with this resource? This resource exists. Let me help you do that. These people just get released, like Laura said, back into their cycle, and there's no one to support them in, like, continuing to recover.

The Band-Aids are all we've got. Oh, yeah. And it's like the wound keeps reopening, and that's why they just keep...

Yeah, and like he said, what is happening to these people? We don't know until we see them back in the emergency room again or getting arrested again. That's how we keep tabs on them is when they're back for another band.

And we've got to find the stitches.

Yeah. And it's not just for, it's for both victims and perpetrators that that's the case, right? So you have someone who, you know, throws their partner against a wall, and then that person spends the night in jail, and they're gone until they're on the road again, and you put them back in the same environment with the same stressors with no new skills, the same thing's gonna happen. And the person who was victimized is also going back. So they're both gonna keep doing it, whether they're doing it together or with somebody else. It needs to be a full wraparound solution, and that's where these prevention pieces come in, so we don't need as many Band-Aids, and there's infrastructure, right? So we don't just keep cycling the same way.

It's a real world problem, too. It's not just Leadville. They're not rural communities who have all these infrastructure. That's one of the benefits of living in a city.

Have you ever seen a difference with no longer having a co-responder program?

Has that made a difference? And we were grateful for them because we were able to pull a deputy away and allow them to continue the process of finding some sort of resource for them or a treatment facility or something like that. So on that side of things, it was helpful to have them.

But for prevention... Is there like an average or national kind of feeling of like how many reported How many unreported situations kind of go hand in hand with how many reported situations?

I think it would be good to compare numbers with Crystal. I mean, if you guys are willing to expose just like whole numbers, I think we'll probably see more reports or we will, we should receive reports. If you don't, vice versa. You have to combine numbers to see that. If you look at crime and how many times something happens before they're caught or deported, the numbers are usually very high. The number that's shared often about DUIs is somebody has a drug, you know, many times before they're caught for their first DUI.

When you look at the numbers like that, I'm sure that applies to other numbers.

I imagine what's actually happening in your community is significantly higher than what

yeah i would agree i mean i i'm confident saying it's at least double but i i would be willing to to try to find data to substantiate like up to five times or more like i i really think that it's that high it's also hard because a lot of um like domestic violence in particular it's very infrequently just one time they backhanded me and i laughed like it's it's that's not how it works, there is an accumulation, there is an escalation, it can happen over a very long period of time. It can take a long time for someone to even realize that they're being abused and to call it that and to recognize that this isn't what happens to everybody. And so the number of calls that we get versus the number of calls that you get is still not gonna necessarily give the whole picture because we have to think about what are we counting it and how are we counting it. And there could be one person who meets the criteria of an abuser who's in five relationships over a period of five years, abuses all of those partners. Is that one instance? Is it five instances? Is it 172 instances? Because every individual time, you know what I mean? So it's hard to quantify.

It's got to be incredibly complex, but I would say double the amount is probably a drop in the bucket. It's probably closer to what he said with the analogy of the DUI. And then you've got economic factors where someone's afraid to report anything because they can't afford to lose the breadwinner.

Right, exactly. And that's why people keep going back.

Or gender.

Thank you, Eve.

I can talk next. Sorry we didn't prepare nice presentations for Kristen. It's okay. But Kristen really set a great foundation, I think, for the rest of us by painting the picture of how meeting people's basic needs reduces community violence and domestic violence. And I think that's where public health comes into play a lot with our work in, you know, supporting folks in finding the medical care that they need. If you're not dealing with a chronic illness or even an acute illness, the stress in your food the stress in your household is less and housing like all of those things she did a great job painting those pictures and then an area where we've been doing a lot of work we're trying to be upstream as opposed to pulling the people out of the river is in substance use prevention and that does start with our youth and we have really great data surrounding our youth I've come and presented to y'all on it so I won't like repeat it here now but we do consistently see increased substance use in our youth at higher rates than in other counties in Colorado or across the nation. And then in the data we have available for adults, which usually comes in the form of DUI arrests or narcotic arrests or overdose deaths or non-fatal overdoses, we are also ranking higher in all of those areas than other places in our state and the state average. So I think what we're doing to try and support the upstream work is substance use prevention and support with their relief. And then that also ties hand in hand with access to behavioral health supports and primary care and all of these other things. And then we work closely with some of our community partners on our prevention subcommittee or our harm reduction coalition like probation, and that has been our best in with the court system is working with probation. They've been excellent partners and really show up to do the work and help. And then working with the advocates and all of our other community partners to try and build up that safety net. But ultimately, I think what we're finding is a lot of holes in the safety net as funding gets cut and things that maybe seem small to folks who have access to food and housing And safety net, other folks, they don't have that access and they're falling through our net or they're leaving our community. But I think we do have a lot of opportunity, and it's more cost-effective, as Kristen also showed us, to support those basic fundamentals of life that are shown to reduce community violence and also other things. It's the same web of things that support folks. So I don't think that's groundbreaking, but I think Kristen did a great job painting that picture. And I'm happy to answer any questions about what public health is doing or what we're seeing. I do also want to share that, obviously, we all know when we look at numbers, each of those numbers represent a human. But those humans, they work for us. They're part of our teams. And we have folks who have survived domestic violence who come to work the next day. And we work with them every day. nobody is immune to this. So I just wanted to highlight that. Like these are the people that we all know and love and sometimes we know that they're a part of these numbers and then other times we don't. And I think a lot of times folks who even work in these fields are nervous to reach out to help. Like the irony of sitting at a desk next to a sign about how we're a safe space for the advocates but yet that human you know, as part of these homicide numbers, like it's not lost on us, like how do we make sure that all of these people access this?

Yeah, because we have like 8,000 people here, like we know all of these victims. They're not just a number, they're a real person, they're like our neighbors, they're our kids' teachers, they're our, you know, the person we run into at Safeway, and we know their name, but we see them there at the same time every Tuesday. Like, it's these people who are parts of our lives, and it's happening right now.

You know, Andy, to your point about, like, throttle therapy, which I love, just a reminder that GOAL was created from public health, as a violence substance pregnancy prevention project and to be able to focus on our youth and some of our identity markers that need more support than they have historically gotten. So that was like a huge initiative from this community to try to work on this problem specifically through recreation and healthy social emotional connections And it was born from public health. So I think it's just important to remember what that was for and that it worked. We saw a reduction in teen pregnancy and substance use, et cetera. Which has trickle-down effects. Yeah.

And then these youth become the adults in our community. So supporting them and catching them when we have time in those prevention spaces and for the individual. And then thinking about our youth continue to tell us they want a safe indoor space to do things here that aren't associated with recreation. In the scheme of things, it actually wouldn't be, I'm not going to use the P word because that is costly, but some other things that can be done to support that are less costly and would have long effects in our community of listening to the youth. And they're the ones that know. They're the ones who are starting to drink heavily and use other substances heavily because they're bored and they have nothing else to do. And maybe they're not interested in recreation. It's not for everyone. It's not like a one-size-fits-all prescription of, well, if you do this, then you'll be fine, right? They want a space to have community indoors as well. And I think that listening to them and supporting them in this space is something we can all do. It's very actionable.

Attracts. This winter I sat down with a room full of high school kids, and it blew my mind when I asked them, like, if you could have any, like, one thing in this community that you don't have right now, what would you have? And every single kid in the room wanted a movie theater. And I'm like, a movie theater? you guys just want a dark place to smooch with your girlfriend but no I think it's somewhere safe to go inside and not be stuck outside hanging out in a car with your friends off a dirt road somewhere they also talked about at the youth summit they did an audit that LC Bag puts on the youth summit and the youth coalition and they did an audit of all of the

mental health and behavioral health services available to teens, and it is bleak. It is bleak in our community.

So, like, they... What, one? Yeah, but they couldn't even get anybody on the phone.

So, it's like, okay, well, if you're in a mental health crisis, you've got the, you know, the hotline, the statewide hotline, but, like, in this community, it's not only that there aren't, like, opportunities for them to do things, but when they are in crisis, they have fewer and fewer options, too. to be able to try to help themselves. Pull themselves out of the river, right? And they want to be able to do it and they don't have the opportunities.

No one's giving them a rope.

And that's like the evidence-based group thing I mentioned earlier. It's swim lessons. So when you find yourself in the water, you can get yourself out and you don't drown and you don't pull other people down with you. That's the point of these evidence-based skill development resources is that it teaches people how to swim so when they fall in the river, which we all do, they don't die. And a bunch of other people don't die trying to rescue them.

They're asking for them as well as the third space.

Yeah. And those kids who get those supports are the ones who shift the pattern of generational trauma for their entire lineage. And that's where we do it. It's top down, but it's also bottom up. We have to go both directions or we're not doing it.

Totally.

I love it, Kristen.

Those kids will be raising kids. Exactly. Like a lot of the situations right now are people who are like parents who when I first met, when I first moved to Leadville 20 years ago, more of these conversations happened two decades ago. We'd probably be seeing a lot more, like a lot less generational issues. You know, I have this feeling where there's so many kids in this community being raised by kids. It's emotional.

I think public health, we dabble in the enforcement, right? Like we do tobacco enforcement, but that only works if you're also doing prevention work as well. If we just remove all the access to all these things, we're not actually solving the problem of why people are seeking out these things or turning to violence to relieve their stress or whatever it might be. So they all have to go really hand in hand to create the network. I see that Kate came on camera, which makes me think she would love to say something.

Hi, guys. Hi. Sorry, I'm not there in person. But yeah, I just want to stamp a lot of what's been said so far and give a little bit of a school perspective since there's been a lot of conversation about youth. Do I have the power to share my screen? Let's find out. Nope, I do not. Yeah, we can grab it. Could I have the power or no? You should know, yeah. Okay.

Let's see.

So I just want to, this is going to really mirror a lot of what we've been talking about, but this is, I do want to give like a school lens of like what happens to us when something like this happens. And Heath is intimately aware of a lot of this. But, you know, we kind of think about um there's a like there's a bright red line in my mind which is an incident actually occurs that impacts schools and that's when we flip from like a conditions and systems prevention mode into a tactical response mode and It's hard for me to overstate the downstream impacts of that tactical response on kids and teachers and families. It is highly disruptive and highly scary. And I like to say like our schools are not violent places. But our schools suffer the downstream consequences when there is violence in our community that can be confusing and can make people feel like our schools are not safe. And that is that could not be further from the truth. Obviously, we don't have complete control. I would never say never promise anybody that we have complete control over every aspect of the school environment. We certainly do not. But we have leaned in in so many ways to make sure that we are ready on the sort of tactical response side. And I actually feel like we've been punching above our weight on the prevention side. Right. And that's just that's not just here. This is the burden our society has placed on public schools. We feed kids breakfast, lunch, after school snack and a to go dinner. They can have dental services, they can get their physical, they can access mental health services in our school in partnership with elevated and school-based health. So schools have now become this place that is expected to do all of this prevention work. And I think we've been doing a pretty good job of it. But I think the message I want the commissioners to hear, which emphasizes what Kelsey said, what and also what Kristen said is like prevention is the key. And we simply, simply, simply cannot do it ourselves. So I think that is my big request is to listen really carefully and seriously to the request to support this conditions and systems that will prevent the need for us to have a tactical response. Because as soon as we're in that mode, we're creating additional trauma for a lot of kids who already have had a lot of trauma. And I mean, more fundamentally, it's a distraction from our core mission of educating kids. So that's really I don't have a lot to add other than that perspective and really just like. plea right like I'm in close contact like I've got on speed dial the Colorado school safety people and literally they're like you again I'm like I know you know like what is happening up there I and I'm like I I know like we are presenting to them as if we are a large urban district with a very serious community violence issues and i just i i need you all to hear that so that's all i got i hear it kate thank you so much for saying that thank you kate

Loud and clear. I think that what helps as a BOCC is for us to have the specific request. So us being informed today, really critical for our foundational understanding of how we can impact, what impact we can have. And then from there, having the specific request of what we can do, it becomes an easier and easier yes. So thank you so much for the information today that can help actually contextualize what agency we do have in this issue with our partners. So I really hope to see all of you all back in this room to talk about next steps for how the BLCC can contribute to the work that you're already doing and how we can also do our job, which is health and safety for our community. I think it helps to be told like this is what is important next, especially as I know that we're not a new board anymore. You can't say that after 16 months. But I think that any BOCC is going to have a certain amount of expertise or experience before they step into these seats. So continuing to help educate this board, no matter who's here, is going to be critical to making sure they make the right decisions.

Matt keeps looking at me.

I'm going to call on you next. If you have something you'd like to contribute, that would be great. Thank you.

This is a hard discussion for me because I have an important hat in this space, but I also have feelings and big ones, right?

I think they're all, can I just offer, I think they're all allowed here.

Okay.

I wanna offer that.

Well, is the press here? I'm just kidding. The answer's also yes. Thanks. Ah, shoot.

It's a recorded meeting.

It's okay. Okay. It's okay. Y'all can quote me on this, I'm not scared. You know, what's difficult is you have this population of individuals in any community that it's almost like it's kind of too far gone, right? We've gone way too far down this path that for a community like us to have the resources to pour into an individual or whatnot that has really made ongoing bad decisions and created a space for ongoing badness in their life, that taking our investments in that realm, to me, is difficult. I mean, I have said many times in my office to myself and to my fellow peers, like sometimes I feel like I could hang some people up by their toe-nose by what the stuff that we see on a day-to-day basis, what Kristen sees, what Heath sees, what we feel in our offices with our staff when we duck into each other's offices and just have a moment because we know what our staff is going through. And I really do think this investment in the younger folks, is going to be important. Think about the safety net that you had in your households. You had the abilities, and I don't know how you grew up, but even in my household, which was a cluster, right, I had the ability to make bad decisions and still have the safety net to move me in the right direction later on in life. And what I'm finding is that More and more of our kids, and Kate can speak to this, because she and I have phone calls with each other, of like, oh crap, kind of just banging our heads up against the wall from both of our perspectives, is that more and more of these kids do not have those safety nets at home to make good decisions in the future. They make bad decisions now, or they make good decisions now that are not supported. Um, and therefore they end up in this same cycle. And so we know this about our community, that we have bad actors and that we have a lot of these factors that we cannot control. Then our investments in providing that safety net for the younger generation should be a priority because that's when we stop. That's when we start seeing the cycle stop. I worked at a camp for 13 years, full spectrum of kids, the rich kids that were legacy kids, and then the kids that came to us through a boxing program that were kind of the most challenging inner city kids in Chattanooga. The camp was a safety net for those kids, right? It was a place for them to go, even rich kids that had shitty parents, right? It was a great place for kids to go and be able to be themselves and learn what it's like or should be, right? What should life should be? Let's take ourselves out of every situation that we're dealing with whether it's a positive one or a negative one or an absent one, and let's learn what life should be. And the impact that camp has had on those kids for generations, for over a hundred years, is massive. And I see how my campers that did not come from great places you know, were basically sent to camp to escape from their problems, have really made something of themselves. And so I see that it is possible, but our investments need to mimic what that needs to look like. And so while I would like to hang people up by their toenails some days, I really do think that that should be our focus moving forward as a small community. Let's be this rock star place for our youth, right? We're gonna have bad actors, especially with the factors, the overarching factors that we just cannot control. Not gonna be able to have affordable housing. It's really going to change that, you know, space. Nobody's fixed it in any community. um we're not we we don't have the job base here for that not going to be able to fix that um entirely right we have a population that has generational poverty not going to be able to fix all of that right so let's focus on the things that we can fix yeah give places for people to go kids places for people to go right do things positive things congregate with each other in a positive way. I just, I don't know. This is a hard conversation for me because I am very frustrated. Every one of our cases has some element of this going on and it is a repeat. When he gets involved and we get involved, it's been going on a lot longer before that. So it's just this constant cycle that we're going to continue to see if we don't see those investments happen.

And I think, too, just understanding that when requests come across to the BOCC that are to support the foundational needs of humans, like whether that's supporting St. George or supporting application programs through our nonprofits, those are the things that reduce the stress in people's life that then reduce our community violence and our substance use and all the other bad things things that we don't wanna see, by supporting those foundational things, regardless of who the ask comes from, that's public health work, and that's how we can support it, because also thinking like, yeah, access to recreation is great, but if someone's not being fed, then giving them access to recreation is not actually super helpful for them. So it's not always gonna come from us, it'll come from our other partners, but acknowledging and naming those spaces where we can move the dial, it matters, it makes a difference, and it will take some time, but then we'll see changes in these other things.

We've talked a lot about let's focus on our statutorily required things as a county, which I completely agree. Thank you, statutorily required. Statutorily required. yeah we're here the arms here um but statutorily required means like we are the the bottom we are the bottom of the barrel of in terms of programming and like what has to happen in order to make change and a lot of times we are the bottom of the barrel that people have hit yeah And we talk about upstream, downstream, whatever. Barrel to me makes more sense because people that hit it hard, hit it hard at the bottom of the barrel. And so while yes, we need to focus on statutory required things, that's going to continue to be forced into holes that are non-attainable. because we have these less expensive things that we could do over here that we might not invest in because we are so focused on this, need to focus on this too, because we're expensive, right? And if we could stop it here, I would love to, frankly, work myself out of a job. It's not gonna happen, but work myself out of a job.

That's such an important point because crisis response is the most expensive way to deal with any of these problems. The absolute hands-down cheapest way to deal with it is before it becomes a crisis. And that's why, not to muddy the waters, but when we look at models like Housing First, for example, where we just literally house people and meet their basic needs with absolutely no requirements other than don't burn the place down, it saves over $130,000 per year. per person per year over having them live on the streets and exclusively use emergency services and those sorts of things. The math is really good on how much cheaper it is to do this stuff on the front end than the back end, but the statutory requirements, the actual practices don't line up with the math, so we end up in this cycle of doing everything the most expensive possible way, and it takes something to shift from that approach. It really takes something. bold and not cheap thing to do on the front end, but the repercussions of it for the long term are substantial and absolutely worth it.

And a lot of times the statutory required things are fitting a square peg in a round hole. We are a round hole, but we're forced to do programs that are here when we all know that Leadville has its own way. So I think it's important that we recognize that some of the programs that we're required to do don't necessarily meet the needs of our community.

And I think that's also why we see a large group of nonprofits in our community. Because what the advocates do is public health work. What Elsie Bagg does is public health work. what Full Circle does is public health work. They are extensions of county public health doing the upstream work that we can't do because I'm responding to measles for four weeks and somehow that actually takes all of my life for four entire weeks and I can't even be a good human to my family. So it's like, see all these people as extensions of public health in the non-statutory realms that actually build up less of a need for crisis response.

Well, we've got a little bit of an elephant in the room here, too, that I think we just need to be open and honest about. When there's been asks made and we want to act like, oh, $5,000 isn't anything, that's not really the case. And the reason that, to your point, we're really looking at like what are we statutorily obligated to do that's not because we don't want to do everything else it's because the county is literally in a position where we have to think we have scarcity mindset i guess i don't like to think about it that way but for lack of a better term and so i think we we should really have a bigger conversation about funding and how can we generate funding? Because it can't all come from the county. And I can be real about that and honest about that. And that's sad. But what are ways we can get creative and think outside the box about generating more revenue for these programs that obviously are important, that are a huge return on investment, that are outside of the county's budget? I think there's a lot of smart and motivated and creative people in this room and we're connected to other people in similar positions and I think working together, these next conversations should have some components of where can we get more resources from.

I think it's allocation of resources too. Yeah. Looking at that prevention space you know, what does fall into it and what doesn't, and how can we allocate some of our nice-to-haves to more of that foundational space.

I also have been told people have money in this community and I haven't found it yet. Is there? Is there? And so, you know, working for a nonprofit forever, I've just been, like, bum-buzzled as to, you know, You go to, you don't even go to VV. People have a name on buildings, right? They have supplied money to things. And where are our people? It is not Laura Cruz, humble servant, but it, you know, I think that's one of the things that there has been such a dependency on a county for so long to like provide for all these things. I mean, we've talked about in these meetings where we've even inherited things from the city, right. To take care of that. It's like, okay, we'll take it, but now we have to figure out how to pay to pay for it.

Yeah.

We gotta stop doing that. And we need to put some pressure on whomever these people are that people speak of that have money to invest in our community.

Or create structures where they have to.

Yes.

Some of the other fundraising events that I've participated in or seen firsthand, and it's like the jobs. The revenues that are generated for things like riding bicycles and stuff like that is impressive. Why aren't we doing this? Anyone who had listened to a conversation like this and was like, well, I'm not going to give to this cause. probably pretty soulless, I don't know. It'd be hard for me to imagine someone not wanting to see successes in the community.

But I also think we don't have access to good storytelling. I don't have a marketing person in public health It's me and Alana, and we're also doing all of the other things. And we have needles.

And I'm tired of saying the word, but it really has been awful.

You guys got your hands full of lead and figuring out where metal is. Yeah, and right now I'm missing an EPA site visit for another crisis that our community is having. We don't have time to successfully tell this story or get it out to the right people because we are just doing the work. And I think that other places have people telling the story. And telling the story gets people to invest and to spend money.

Maybe these would be as valuable as asks. It's like, hey, who in the community can volunteer some time and help us come up with some outreach that makes the ask. You know, like, we can't find out who those people are who do have the money if we're not asking.

We also need a plan. Like, I mean, you want people to invest in our community, you've got to have a plan as to what that is. And I know we have one community project that's a plan that's driven by the community, but ultimately we need decision makers, which are you guys, to say, okay, this is what we're going to invest in, and this is what we're going to go after our investors. to make happen. And that's not necessarily putting that on you, Andy, or you, Matt, or Elsa to go after those investors, but it's also giving us a more star direction and staff to say, okay, here is our plan. We need to figure out how to fund this plan as a community, each having our part of that plan. One of my pet peeves about One Community Project has been all about what the county's going to do or the city's gonna do. Well, what the crap is the community going to do? What piece of the pie are they in charge of, right? And that gives you a roadmap, too, because you guys are community-based, right? And so I think that it's just important that whatever we do, we have to embrace our plan, just like building a house. If you don't have a plan, it doesn't get a foundation made, and you don't have electricity once a house is built, right? and you end up in a campground. Fairly specific, completely hypothetical situation.

That's being played on every day.

But ultimately, whatever we decide and whatever we adopt, we have to stick to it. We've had too many commissioners come through with different ideas that hasn't had a, you can't put together a plan that never gets implemented because you have turnover every four years all right we see that in the federal government let's not do that here and it's important that whatever we put together it is something that lives and not dies every time you guys turn over that's tricky i know so tricky but i hear you and i agree on the communications issue because if people haven't don't understand what's happening here

then this board turns over with new ideas and they don't get on the same page because they have no idea what page is being offered to them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Andy, you wanted to build a tiny house community. Where are you with that now?

I wanted to repave all the roads.

There you go.

And then it was like, oh, people are kind of more important than potholes. Yeah. Yeah.

Life changes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Should we let Kate? Yeah, say Kate.

Okay, thanks. I can't resist this opening about sort of efficiency. And while you might be able to raise enough money from private donors to do what we're talking about, having done that work, my speculation is you would raise enough to start something that you couldn't sustain. This is a structural issue that is going to take a bolder action than that, in my opinion. And it has to do with looking really hard at how we operate. And I think it's incumbent upon the county and the city keep or you know sort of start or keep having conversations about efficiency um and it is sort of one of the lead-off things in the one community plan i believe is like this duplication is probably costing resources that could be applied to this problem i think about LC bag moving in with full circle. I think about what we're doing in the school district. I mean, we, we reduced 15 FTE through school consolidation and did it in a way so that only, you know, very, very few down to like one employee was actually displaced. And we did that because we said we are not going to privilege adult comfort over what's best for kids. And it is not for the meek, right? Like these conversations are really, really hard. Um, especially when people start to feel like, like, where am I going to land when the dust settles, but I just really want to plug the continuation of those conversations. Because my guess is that if we really leaned into that, we would find that we could free up some amount of resources and I'm not an expert on. statute that impacts county services versus city. So, you know, I don't want to just lob a grenade out there and say, good luck. Like, I'd be happy to come to the table having just lived through this. But my guess is that is a far more fruitful path than try to raise enough money through private donations. Yes, don't worry.

We have a meeting, Heath and City Council and The BOCC, we have a joint work session in June to specifically have those conversations. Totally agree, Kate. We need to structurally change in order to serve our community better. We're going to start with law enforcement, just to be clear. But we're going to start the conversations.

I'd like to find a building that doesn't cost us a lot of money.

Same.

Same.

Working on that too.

Electricity and a building you can afford? Come on.

So greedy.

It makes my heart hurt.

I want to say I really appreciate everybody's candor today. I really, really do. Because it can't just be a You can't just do your, there's no such thing as, like, separating your job and your feelings, especially when you're in service-based positions. So I don't find it professional to, like, not bring your feelings, frankly.

Well, I agree. Thank you. And I can share any time my feelings. I know.

I love it.

I know that your jobs are to provide direct services, especially public health and DHS, but honestly, it's also to inform us. I have missed having you all in here, so I really appreciate you all coming to the table, telling us what you think some of the bigger issues are and some of the structural issues are. I think that that candor alone is valuable to us as BOCC.

So thank you. It is. Especially to me. I don't know. This world, I've never seen it or been in it. I had an idyllic upbringing. Now that's a joke. That's not true. You don't know and you don't see it. People are always talking about the problems in the community. I'm like, where? I see kids doing wheelies down Harrison. That's about the extent of it. I live on a crazy speedway, but... So... I don't hear it. I don't see it, and maybe I should see it. Is there a way I could see it? I did hear of a good friend who reported an incident and has since regretted reporting it because now she's a target.

Yeah, it's complicated.

For sure.

And I don't live in town. I'm sort of isolated. Just to echo what Elsa's saying, it's valuable for me to hear these things and to see the emotion.

Matt, I don't want anybody to see it, to be honest.

Well, maybe it's better to hear it.

Yeah.

Just report back.

Yeah. You just have to trust your people. I don't want anybody to be exposed to the crap that we have to deal with.

That's fair. I really don't want to see it.

People need to sleep.

That's the delicate dance of awareness. Protecting people's identities, but getting the word out that this is happening is tough.

I also want to acknowledge that it can be really hard to make time to come sit in this room for a long time, especially when there's an unknown. You're like, OK, well, I'm second on the agenda, so am I going to be here for 15 minutes, or am I going to be here for three hours? Because I don't really know. And I think that when we do have an item that's on the agenda that know that like we're bringing it to you because it is important to us in our community and we've done the research and we're not gonna bring you, I can commit to myself, I'm not gonna bring you something frivolous that is not like evidence-based or wouldn't be supportive for our community. So I think you all have done a great job supporting public health initiatives. But it does require a lot of trust being placed in us because if we took the time to make you all experts in the things that we do you would actually just work at our office all the time and actually still not be an expert because we learn new things every day. So just know that we don't bring things to you lightly and we appreciate your support in them which you have shown us. So thank you.

Yeah. And I just want to add, I often, when we have these conversations and we're talking about kids, it's a very common reaction for people to say, well, okay, like let's get the schools to do that. And I didn't hear that once today. And that feels like incredibly supportive and like, we're not like alone out on the sharp end when we're talking about kids. And so super grateful. And I mean, just so you hear it from me like laura and kelsey and alana and heath they're the only ones i can see who i work with like very regularly and they're all amazing so well kate we appreciate you greatly yep did you want to say something um what should next dance look like we're getting the what i think is a

Small amount compared to the impact that can have $5,000 request. On to our regular meeting for decision. Number one. So the violence prevention team can get the job started.

I want a $30 million activity center. Put it on the list.

You have a violence prevention team? Yes. Perfect. Come sign. I don't know.

I feel like, I mean, y'all correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like, Andy, to your question, every decision that comes in front of us, this needs to be one of our lenses that we're using to make decisions. So every decision that we make becomes an action step from this. And then also to Laura's point, like coming up with a plan, I think that that's a reasonable ask from us and we just need to make the time to actually start. And maybe that's just another conversation like this that's kind of like an audit of where we are so that we understand our place of what we can do next. That's what I would take from this.

Yeah, and the grace and awareness that this isn't going to happen overnight.

No, it's a multi-generational issue. We will be dead before we can talk about it.

Yeah, but I don't want to be the board that didn't start something, because that's been happening for too long. It would have been great if these conversations were happening more 20 years ago. Yeah.

Well, some of them were, right? Honestly, I mean, I'm going to go back to goal, but like our community did come together significantly and they spent years trying to study and create the ask to create an initiative. So, so these, these projects, same with like full circle being created, that was a true initiative. Same with build a generation being created, like that build a generation was created to address this, to start with a generation. and say, this is where we're gonna stop these comorbidities. And they chose that generation and they have been working towards supporting that generation through their time. I think they just graduated. Or maybe they're about to graduate. But these things have been happening. It's important for us to get on board with what's been happening and understand our role in supporting them too.

And what hasn't been happening. Yeah, totally.

How has the county been getting in the way? What are our opportunities to change that moving forward? How can we be part and pull together in this initiative?

Where the goals start to diversify too much and expand the bandwidth to a point where some of their initial focus seems like it got lost.

I don't know if that's actually true, honestly. So I think that actually doing an audit of what's been going on versus what people are saying has been going on That's important for us as leaders to be able to parse out those things and say, well, what was the purpose? How are they doing? Who needs our help? Whether it's GOAL or the Build a Generation or whomever, are we still all pulling in the direction we thought we were? And why not, if it's the case?

I have to go. I have a hiccough, Director. Thank you, Laura. So I'm sorry. And I'm sorry to write it. That pretty much brings us to the end of our time slot here.

Can I just ask a clarifying question? Sure. Related to the funding request, that will need to come back to a regular meeting. Do you want that to exist inside the normal supplemental process or budgeting for next year or community requests? How do you want that to work? Okay, so like the Q2, I guess we're coming up with.

I mean, they're trying to start in June. So Kristen, can you be clear about when this funding is important for you so we know when to?

I mean, as soon as possible would be ideal. I would love to have it in hand in the next 90 days. If we don't have it in June, it won't be the end of the world, but it will, like, you know, June is in what, like four days? Yeah. You know, like, we'll be okay, but if we could have it before the end of summer, that would be great. And whatever you need from me to document the request, let me know, I guess. So it's not?

If it can land in Q2 supplemental, great.

I'll follow up on that. Yeah, we'll have to look on the data. All right, thanks. But I'll let you know.

Well, thank you all for coming.

Can I add something to Andy's point? Sure. We're all going to die with our work undone, and we're going to do it imperfectly between now and dead. But we don't want to die without attempting it, right? Yeah. The goal here isn't to fix it all in one shot. It's to not be people who didn't start. And it's better to do it imperfectly than not at all. And that's going to be true of prevention. It's going to be true of crisis response. It's going to be true of all the stuff we try that doesn't work. At least it's something. And every single time, we're going to learn something about it. So it's never going to be a waste, and it's never going to be a failure. And that's the energy. We don't want to be the ones who didn't start.

Well said. Yeah.

Thank you.

Well, thank you all for coming.

Thank you so much. Good luck out there. I've sweated up.

I'm sorry. It really wasn't that hot in here compared to . Josh, we're going to take five minutes. OK. No, no pause. Oh, 10 minutes. We're going to take 10 minutes.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you, Chris.

Good to see you again.

Good to see you guys, thank you. I don't know if we've ever actually officially met. Have we? Nice to meet you. I am.

I'm a big fan of your daughter's singing voice.

And I also have twins.

I know lots of... I think it's in the packet. Is the options that you provided those? Let me just announce it here. Sure.

Next up in our work session, item number two, overview and discussion regarding the future home of Right Start Learning Center. This will be led by Adam Gusharm, our tourism and economic development director.

Yeah.

You want this up now, Adam?

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, this is, don't necessarily have like a much larger, more formal presentation, other than, you know, the memo we sent and then also wanting to share with you. These are the options. So do you all know Megan? Hello. Nice to meet you. So Megan is the chair of Bright Start, the nonprofit board that helps Bright Start Learning Center. And I joined the board officially a month ago or something like that. But I am also on the strategic investment planning committee for that's looking at kind of child care on a larger issue, zero through five, for the community. So I've been kind of like looking at this and understanding the larger ecosystem of childcare and I think one thing that has been identified in that trend or in the analysis we've done is we currently serve, Lake County currently serves 24% of children with licensed childcare childcare, ages zero through five. We only serve 2% of our zero to one and a half or zero to two pages. Like 24% total. And we're one of the lowest in the state in terms of the amount of children that we provide licensed childcare for. So our strategic investment plan that we will be presenting to you all soon We're just putting the finishing touches on that now, but we will be advocating to grow that to 60% and so that will require not only Bright Start to remain viable and vibrant and potentially even have an opportunity to grow a little bit within the confines of what makes sense for Bright Start and their operations and their strategic plan, but we're going to be meeting and looking at the addition of four to five additional child care centers of a variety of different types and sizes right so we could be looking at one that's sort of infant care specific because that's such an immediate business model from a licensing perspective in the cost recovery because infant requires the most amount of feet per or yeah square feet per child and there's just a ton of teacher requirements, it's a big lift. It costs a lot of money to do infant care. And it's the reason why we don't have infant care in our communities. But regardless, Megan and Kelsey have, much longer than I have, they have been sort of in conversations and looking around and thinking about the future of Bright Start in terms of where their home is, where their base of operations is. They are currently located in Pitts Elementary School, and as you might be aware, the school district is trying to right-size their financial situation and understand where they can find efficiencies, so that's why they are moving kids to the elementary school and the high school, and sort of digesting themselves, at least from a programming standpoint, the intermediate school but they also as a board have been considering for some time the future of Pitts and we have been talking now with the county for about three months but they have been working for a few years as I mentioned to try and understand kind of what the future of Pitts or Bright Start looks like at Pitts and for the past let's say two years there's been a conversation around potentially the school district wanting to divest themselves at some point from pits and in the since we originally talked with josh in the county around um the future of bright start at the pit school the school district has kind of changed their timeline in terms of we were kind of under the assumption that by the end of 2027 that they might be needing to they meaning the school district might need to make a decision about the future of pits and they might that that building could maybe be going up for sale as an example and so that kind of created a pretty strenuous timeline for bright start and we're now under the assumption that that that timeline might be pushed back into 2028 so it changed it changes the urgency and the house is on fire type mentality. So I just want to set, I want to set you all up with that information because it does impact kind of where we're focused and how we're focused on the urgency of the future home of Bright Star. So, but regardless, Kelsey and Megan did reach out to Josh and the county and said, Hey, we're trying to explore all of our options. And one of those options potentially is a new build or trying to potentially identify land and purchase, figure out a way to acquire some land in order to build a future home for pets. So Josh was nice enough to put together this set of assets that are owned by the county that Megan and Kelsey and myself used as the basis of some fact finding. And so we actually took some existing properties around Lake County that are either for sale or have been identified as potential remodel. And then we also took these pieces of property here and we did some analysis on them. And Megan, if you want to maybe talk about the relationship with Shape Architecture to sort of do some of this analysis.

Yeah, we hired Shape Architecture. There was a property on East 10th that we looked at as a potential location, and we hired them to do some initial analysis on if it was feasible to turn that into a child care facility and a couple other properties in Leadville, land options. Unfortunately, everyone that they looked at is not feasible.

Is 4,000 feet still the magic number you guys need as a minimum, or now that there's not as much pressure, would you try and look for something maybe a little bit bigger to kind of future-proof growth?

4,000 was the minimum to do for like. I mean, when we think of like, we have like different, we have minimum ideal and dream state kind of visions of number of classrooms and stuff. And I mean, I think the dream state aligns much more with what Adam was talking about with the strategic investment plan that's coming out. But the cost of that and the timeline of that, at least when we were digging into it, was just not even on the table. Potentially, it could be back on the table. I feel like with the news that he was talking about that our timeline isn't as crunched as it was, it's almost like back to the drawing board of know what is what is possible now that you know we're not going to get our legs cut off from underneath us um which i don't want to say back to the drawing board we were still continuing forward but i think we have more time and more ability to dream bigger um and when we have more time we have more ability to raise funds and things like that but it was looking really grim in the last couple of months and i feel like you know the news that we got weeks ago or within the last month has been a big weight off of our shoulders of just keeping doors open.

I think a lot of the purpose of today is, I think, also just situational awareness around where Bright starts at. As I mentioned, the dynamics have been shifting almost every 12 hours around the situation. So part of this, I want you all to know that this is just more informational for you all to understand, number one, where REG starts at, number two, where the child care conversation is, and then number three, I'd like to just quickly go through these parcels and just make you all aware of all the information that has been circling in around them. So I think, and here I can, I'll turn it over.

I'll just add context too. So when we started having the discussions about these parcels, you all know that we're in the process of working towards a capital asset management plan, right? So we had, kudos to Stuart, we had him and Shelby from CPD start to put together an inventory of all the parcels that the county owns in advance of us working towards this capital asset plan. So when Bright Start approached development we're really looking just based on space concerns and I think it was 18,000 square feet of the land so that works out to a little over 0.4 acres so we just kind of took that cursory list of what we had recognizing where we are in our decision-making process on all assets just wanted you to be aware of where these came from and that land requirement came from our like

medium size scope of buildings so it was going to give us one extra classroom with opportunity to expand one to two more in the future and enough space for parking and playground etc all those requirements that need to be met it wasn't the dream dream size space and for the good of the board can you and myself can you remind uh everyone how many classrooms bright start currently has and how many students we serve with that We currently have three classrooms, one toddler, two preschool rooms, licensed for 45, I believe. Give or take five, but I'm pretty sure it's like 45 students are licensed for. Total or each room? Total. Yeah, it's 10 in the toddler, I think it's 15 in either one of the preschool and 20 in the other. With hopes of opening, we still really would like to open another toddler room. That is on our radar soon. We've just done some tuition increases to help make that more feasible, because toddler is a loss for us, but it's a huge need for the community since there's only 10 spots in all of Lake County. Remind me what the other things were you wanted me to say? The three classrooms? Yeah, and then the space requirement for the land, it was four classrooms, so we were assuming two toddler, two preschool, all the other requirements that meet for licensing and parking and playground. with the hopeful in the future of two-classroom expansion possible. But that wasn't going to be part of the initial build.

And just so you're aware, I mean, what's challenging about that thought is that that does not, you know, that's a Herculean effort and a massive capital stack that doesn't move the needle one iota around infant care. Right. I was just about to ask that next.

What happens to the zero to one-year-old?

Yeah, and I don't want to take the wind out of the strategic investment plan, but that's a big part of the strategic investment plan. The cost of infant care and toddler care is higher than what our tuition rates can be. you know weighing that and trying to figure out how to get sustainable funding to long-term be able to keep doors open and offer that like it's just not something most or any you know nonprofit child care organization does without sustainable funding coming from other sources so tax initiatives grant money does come in but that's not always sustainable or guaranteed we do get a significant amount of grant funding today and we'll continue to go after it but It's hard to open up a room without some other long-term sustainable plan to know that we can keep the door of that room open.

This might not further the conversation a bunch or at all, but for awareness, I'm trying to wrap my head around, as a kid who grew up in the 80s, why is it so unachievable to have childcare for these age groups nowadays versus What changed? What made it? Is it insurance and liabilities? I don't know, but maybe licensing requirements?

To answer the question as easily as possible, it's licensing requirements. And the state of Colorado has gone after a bunch of licensing requirements that, in theory, were for child safety. And when you have a scale, like if your average population is 50,000 or above, makes it so that a very small amount of subsidies are required. There's still no examples, not even in Denver, of any sort of nonprofit, and again, there's a big difference between like a Montessori school or something that's a for-profit model, where, you know, again, we're talking $200 a day for care. Those ones pencil out, and they're in the black, but otherwise, any nonprofit model, even in a place like Denver, the cost of care versus The true cost of care versus tuition rates that the market will bear, even in a place like Denver, it doesn't work out. It doesn't pencil out.

Has there ever been a conversation at the state level about waiving licensing fees for certain communities of certain sizes or where it doesn't pencil out?

necessarily. It's just the licensing requirements. And our biggest expense is salaries. I mean, teachers. Teachers are our number one expense by far. I think it's 80%, maybe even more. It might even be like 85% of our costs are staff. And so it's the ratios. So for a toddler room, you have to have one teacher for every five kids. And that's like bare minimum. If you want to do higher quality, you have like one teacher for every four kids or three kids or depending on that. But like We try to I mean we try to be as cost effective as possible, so we operate at the you know the minimum requirements to keep their doors open, but in staffing right now, we have nine staff. And we try to pay them livable wages and we give them benefits and retirement packages and paid time off and we like the whole kit and caboodle and it's not cheap to be able to do that so.

Also salaries for the. Parents paying for those things have not increased at the same rate as the cost of doing this. So parents have less money to be able to spend on childcare than they would if their salaries had increased at the same rate. That's a big difference in cost for anything if you compare 80s to now is salaries plateauing.

Yeah, I was trying to get a picture like outside of inflation, what has changed, and it sounds like, you know, I'm sure there was, you know, historically lots of child care facilities where there was one adult for 15 or 20 kids, you know, like just like... Yeah, and actually, we did, I was given information about like five or six different properties that used to have child care.

You know, the... Morningstar. Yeah, Morningstar is one, but the... What's the church over there? The Jehovah's Witness. That building used to have child care. And not only did they not have the space, especially when I found out how many kids were in there, but there's no outside facilities. And as an example for Bright Start, if you were, let's say, going to have toddlers and preschool, they have to have two different playgrounds for each one. And there needs to be a divider, a physical divider between them. These are all part of licensing requirements. And when we talk about quality care, in order for a learning center like Brainstar to advance in terms of their credentialing, then the quality has to be there in terms of the care. So again, if you're just going for bare minimums, you're not going to get those quality certifications, which also will give you access to larger grant funding pools and things like that.

and and parents to look at that too you know what level of the state is our it's a colorado shines rating system so it's a colorado quality rating system that they put on licensed child care facilities that based on audits and things that they've done to the facility that's reading the quality of it so speaker just as an example speaker has been advocating strongly and trying to fight at the state level against the licensing requirements and how much of a limiting factor they've been

Right well intentioned but then ended up you know, in the interest of trying to make better childcare made like no job yeah yeah and the Colorado sun article that was recently put out that feature lead building.

They talk about how, when you push people too far in another direction, you end up with. what can be potentially really dangerous and scary situations for kids, because you're not gonna be able to meet licensing requirements. So why even try, is an example.

Yeah, unlicensed options, which I mean there are, they call them the FFN networks, so friend and family network, which is really strong in Lake County, of people unlicensed watching kids in their home.

Yeah, it was scary. It was a need. What was scary for me about that sun arc was to shine such a light on our FNF. That work was that I was worried that it would bring unwanted attention.

When I read that that was the first thing I thought. yeah.

So okay in the interest of time i'll just kind of go through the options. Um, just start with this one. Um, it was one that seemed promising at first. So this is the, you know, it's one of this one is so, yeah, the, um, probably no, this is a fun, um, west eighth street. Um, it's a, it's a really, it's a residential neighborhood. It is zoned residential here. Um, but this is eighth and ash, and there were a few concerns around this one. The biggest, the largest sort of stumbling block here is lack of infrastructure. And it would require about a half a million dollars worth of infrastructure to bring water and sewer to it. There was also potential mining. So there is a historic mining claim that is under way here. And Morgan did recently tell me, as recently as last Friday, that there is actually some documentation to suggest that this actually was deeded properly to Lake County government. So Lake County government does actually own this piece of property without disputes from a mining claim perspective. But again, Megan did some tuition modeling. And if Bright Star was to take on, let's say, a $3 million note in order to be able to build, the impacts on tuition would be pushing us in the direction of outside of what the market would bear in order to build on a facility like this. And that's not necessarily taking into account the cost of the land. Is that right? Would you be modeling that?

Yeah, correct. I mean, we would obviously, any land option, you know, any land that we find and we decide to move forward, if we decide to move forward and rebuild. I mean, we would start a capital campaign in hopes that we would be able to raise a lot of the funds, but, you know, if we aren't able to get there on our own, we did the modeling, you know, to have in our back pocket, make sure that on paper we could get a loan, because you have to show certain profits on paper to be able to even get a loan. So, yeah, we passed the total increase model that we're doing three increases in the next year, we already did our first one, it is in effect in June, to get it to the point that we can show profits on paper so that we can qualify for a loan, but it was only up to a $2 million loan. So as of right now, if we move forward with a new build, $2 million we could potentially get a loan for and cover those payments, but any remainder needs to be capital campaign.

So this is another site that you might all recognize. It's by the hospital, by the high school. So there's the skate park, things like that. And this was an area that was looked at for affordable housing. And in talking with Leadville Sanitation, there is no trunk that goes all the way down here currently. And he gave us a rough cost estimate of like $400,000 to $500,000 to be able to get. And we're talking, this is New Leadville, and yet, you know, half a million dollars worth of infrastructure just to be able to, and not to mention the grading issues on that land. Because that's currently an infill space where dirt. Yeah, that is supposed to be not toxic is being dumped there. So... That's right, exactly. So this is just up from the hospital, and this one has remediation concerns.

Oh, this one on the east side.

That's just up from the hospital, not the hospital. Yeah, the hospital. Yes, exactly. Sorry, the hospital. But yes, and it does. It has remediation concerns.

Yeah, that tailing pile is gnarly.

Tailing pile right there. So, and again, the remediation concerns, I think one of the things that I'm learning about the remediation stuff is where do you actually put the remediated dirt. So a place to put the remediated dirt is also a big issue.

That's us. We manage the repository.

Repository, okay. And what, where is it?

It's up there. It's a fenced in area.

Oh, okay, cool. Nice. And the And then this is the other one too that we looked at over by ice college park and some of the issues here were grading. Water not going to there so again water was the big one.

Yeah, for all three that we thought were good options, they didn't have water going to it. I was shocked at the estimates. I was like, what? There's water very close by. Why is it so wet?

And the other was parking. So from an ADA perspective, this was a little bit of a challenging parcel.

And that one has a power line easement right here, which seems that it could be a little bit of a challenge as well.

Yeah, oh yeah, and also from sanitation, there is a sanitation pipe that goes right through here, which also would cause a re-engineering and would be a big challenge. So not one property that we've looked at currently requires any less than half a million dollars in stuff, additional work, infrastructure work or remediation work, et cetera.

brought this up on third looking at this picture right here i brought this up on thursday with the mayor about the community space they have there and whether it would is it an option for them to partner with bright star and she's mentioned something about the upstairs spaces in that building there's been some talk but we we've talked with them um the upstairs is not large enough

to meet our needs, but they are currently doing a survey of the land because there's talk of this lot potentially being big enough.

Right, there's like an old house there or something.

Yeah, there's a house right here and a garage here. There's some weird things that seem to be happening with easements between the building and potentially here. So that's what we were waiting on.

I love that location. That's really central.

It's accessible to a lot of people in the community. The only problem with this is that if they do move forward with the community center option, where they actually do invest money in the building, unless they spend a million dollars on an elevator, in order to make this building ADA accessible, they would basically need to use this space here in order to provide access to it. So then that would kind of negate, that would kind of remove Bright Start as an option for that space. So I think really more than anything, it was just to want to make the board kind of aware of the research we have done on parcels that do exist for the county. And again, I think probably some of this information will be bore out in the asset management plan. But again, happy to share the research because we've now done it. And Morgan did put all this in writing for us. And I am putting together kind of a further another one pager as well as presentation on this because as we Bright Start look at not only the congressionally directed spending that Bright Start has access to but also as we talk to funders etc and talk about Bright Start's future we need to really make the strong case of we've explored many many many options and there really aren't that many that are super exciting You know, and again, we have had conversations as well with Climax in terms of some of the parcels that they own, but as a publicly traded company, they have a really low risk tolerance in terms of divesting themselves from their land and their property because of the remediation liability concerns. So, when you think about some of the parcels over by the intermediate school and things like that, they haven't made a definitive determination, but they're really nervous about potentially trying to think about divesting themselves from those properties, especially for childcare. So yeah, this, again, conversation is more about situational awareness and less of looking for the board's sort of support on any one specific thing. But yeah, happy to answer any other questions that you all have about these parcels or this conversation or sort of where we're headed. Any other parcels? Yeah, so there was this one, which is over by OEM. And Megan, I don't know if you all had talked at the city, because there was a couple.

I mean, we just, we ruled that one out just based on shape and surrounding.

It actually isn't, it's not that small.

It looks small, but it's 272 acres.

You need to write formulas in and out of it.

I mean, it's flat. Like we went over today, it just seemed really questionable, especially like the surrounding parcels and who owned them. And I think it's like technically landlocked with other owners and stuff. So that was just an easy one to be like, I'm not so sure about that one.

What about the one that you guys were talking about in STEM by the past time?

Yeah, that one we had to rule out due to proximity to sex offenders. Okay.

And that was kind of an interesting one, too, because we did, Morgan did do an analysis of that and compared it to the property that's behind the Family Dollar that used to be a marijuana grow operation. That would be a remodel, and to remodel that space was like $2.6 million. What? Yeah. Why? One of the big reasons is, from a licensing perspective, the slab would need to be completely torn out and put back in because of the temperature, the radiant temperature of the floor. It's not warm enough and wasn't done well enough to be able to support child care.

And there was a lot of plumbing infrastructure that needed to be done, and it was a slab foundation, so in order to get the plumbing done.

The remodel basically involved scraping the whole thing.

Yeah. Even some of that we probably wouldn't look past, but the end result was not ideal space. I think we could only have gotten three rooms in there in the shape of the rooms. It was definitely trying to put, like, Yes, and it was like, well, you're going to spend $3 million. And Morgan's brand new build, he did the analysis on that other lot. I mean, it was just beautiful. On paper, it was around the same price. So we were really excited about that. But then when we did a little more research as a board, no one felt comfortable moving forward with that land. So we have some rough drawings that can be used. on other land. That was not the land for us.

I'm guessing the one between Four Seasons and Matchless is just too far out of town to make much sense. And also remediation as well. Oh, that needs remediation.

Yeah, and this one? I think this is on.

It's like two, I think.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry. For this one, yeah, this one was remediation and also ownership, because there are some historic landmines. Mining, claim, things that have moved forward. Because this was a lot. It was also identified, potentially, for affordable housing. And there's some people that stepped forward that said, I have a piece of paper that says my great-grandfather gave me this, gave me this, whatever.

So. Yeah, number two is the one that I was referring to.

That's just the one. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. This is the one. too far out of town, residential.

Yes, we thought it was too far out of town, very residential, and we thought there might be a lot of pushback from the neighborhood on that. I'm not sure if that should be a reason to cross it off the list.

That's where all the fancy houses are in my neighborhood.

That's our property?

Yep. That's wild. So random.

Weird. Yeah, it's surrounded by houses.

There's some really nice houses, right?

And it's three acres. And they were like, where are three acres? It just didn't seem like it. Oh, you live right there?

I wouldn't push back.

Yeah. So any other questions or thoughts?

Why did you rule that one out? Because it's such a neighborhood? Location's kind of weird, I guess, for people to access.

I mean, again, now that we went down the path, like, I mean, we picked our, what we thought were the best locations on the top three, but then once we started digging more into those and other things were coming up, such as, like, the infrastructure, you know, it might not be a bad idea to I put this one back on our list. The lot that was right next to the hospital, I think everybody was like, oh my god, this is the dream lot, just based on location, because it was near the hospital, the school, and the playgrounds, and kids could still walk into town for field trips, and it just seemed ideal. But you don't know until you start digging.

And I think one of the things that Kelsey Woods had brought up, too, is sort of the beginning of day, end of day parking and the in and out of cars and everything, that that was a concern for her in the neighborhood, in a neighborhood that's like that.

Is there any groups or other identified user groups that would be like a potential partner situation where the cost of infrastructural improvements could be split?

We have close conversations with the housing authority. It is really common in communities to do childcare on the first floor and housing on the second. A lot of those conversations in the past six months or so have kind of stopped because of timelines and we just didn't, it's expansion of scope and we were so on a timeline of we need to get this ball rolling and we need to have it completed or well underway by the end of 27. So it was making it more complicated. But now that we have more time, it's definitely an option for us to try to, you know, look into something bigger. But it was really only housing authority is who we have identified as like a good partner.

I did bring it up with Trident, those folks who are, we did a letter of intent, a letter of support for the Trident land banking application through the Housing Authority?

We got multiple different Tridents.

Was that through a beginning project?

Nope.

Trident is a project? It is a project. Oh, okay. And we just submitted the land banking letters for it. And that was the one in phase three.

Really hard.

And I asked them specifically about it and they were like, we'd be really open to doing it. But to Megan's point, that was before.

A week ago, or whatever, when the school district was like, okay, we'll slow down.

This isn't a real-time one yet. So maybe it's back on the table?

I would say for sure. We never didn't want it on the table because the more people at the table, the longer and more complicated things get. So we didn't really have the luxury of that.

Yeah, and I think for me, I just want to make it really clear wearing my Bright Start board member hat is I really want Bright Start to, as a nonprofit learning center that is fighting a really, really steep curve when it comes to the cost of care, I want them focusing on operational excellence and operational efficiency. I do not want them chasing partnerships and Living in this space of being quasi developers quasi everything so i'm looking for the most straightforward solution for them.

That would definitely be the ideal, but you know desperate times might be worth. having more conversations with the RHA? Totally.

No, and we will. And that's, I mean, to be honest with you, part of why we're here is not because this is like the most, this isn't a slam dunk at all. We just need to keep exploring all options and keep communicating with all of our partners exactly where we're at because, again, we're, you know, we are, we are at the mercy of the school district with our current operations.

I would think it would behoove the situation to still treat this like it's something with a sense of urgency.

I would say that it was getting to the point of like this is not going to happen. The months keep ticking by and we all know especially new construction projects like we don't have land, we don't have a plan and if you really want us to be done by December of 27 like that is no longer going to happen. So yeah, I don't think that the, I don't think we're, you know, totally letting our feet, you know, off the gas. It's just, we have breathing room and, you know, we're confident now that the doors are not going to close, which is what we were really afraid of. Yeah.

Seriously, hasn't there always been a correlation or a type of partnership between like church buildings and childcare?

Yeah, and as I mentioned with the strategic investment plan, we're going to need to identify four to five additional facilities. So there are some contacts that I've been given to make in that space. But I'm not quite sure if it's the direct right fit for Bright Start. Do you know what I mean?

We're two rooms down, which is great. I mean, it's a great problem to have. We were two rooms. We expanded to three rooms last summer. And so I mean, we're serving. too many families to be in one or two rooms when we already have three rooms. It's a great thing to look at for the street teachers. That's their plan, to be able to open up and serve five to 10 kids in one space and that type of thing.

Yeah, specifically for infant care, I think there is a case to be made for that. There's some willingness, there's some openness with the Catholic Church

Wasn't it the Baptist church that was in the war?

Or by itself? They were in one church. I don't know what church it was, but they were in a church.

Over on McWethy by the Mineral Belt.

What is that one?

I feel like it's Presbyterian. I feel like I've never seen anything happening there. I don't think I've ever seen a car park there.

I've been to a meeting there before. Me too.

It was like a child care coalition meeting. My kids were just talking about the other day, they were like, why do they put kids in that basement?

It was so scary.

I was like, you're welcome.

There's nowhere else for you. The Advocates House is another really great example of a house that, or a property that on paper, it's like that would be a net net positive, right? But from a licensing standpoint, requirement's perspective, the fact that it's a multi-level home. It's impossible. It's impossible.

Yeah.

What about all the property the school district owns down on 3rd Street and down by the ball field or the old football field? Talk to them at all? See if they're willing to divest in their property?

They need money for their property. Yes. That was the conversation we had with them was are you guys willing, and it was more fair market value, we can talk. And we've been trying to go down paths where that might not be the case, but there might not be a path that we, you know, find a partnership on the end, and it might be fair market value.

Because we did also talk with Colorado Mountain College about, you know, anything on their property and a lot of its timelines, too, because, you know, again, you have board and then the chancellors and their timelines and their priorities around when they want CMC as an institution wants to see things built in what order and again we've been operating under this timeline of 2027 and they're kind of really trying to prioritize and move forward with the things that are kind of part of their strategic plan so again it's not that any of these doors are it's nothing's an absolute no it's just that so far the timing has really not worked out for any of these conversations.

Yeah, people, institutions like that one really had, I don't know a lot of those, but very complicated maybes.

Did they, did, I mean, we have plenty of land up there.

NCUC. Yeah. Yeah, and they were open to, they are, like, from a child care perspective, they're invested in, like, something, like a teaching incubator, if you will. Something that's not like, you know, Bright Start with their operations and their growth objectives, but something where it's like there's a classroom where you could have people work towards credentialing and things like that, and there's maybe five to ten families that are being serviced.

So maybe it's part of the SIA, but not a Bright Start.

Yeah, and they said it's probably like five years out, but it's great for our community, just not a current problem.

Yeah, more than anything, too, wanted to make you all aware that especially Kelsey and Megan have been grinding really hard on this. And it's not something that has an easy solution to anything. But the land part and the new build part does seem to be more challenging than anyone had maybe imagined.

Yeah. appreciate this information.

I think one thing to consider too as we kick off the capital asset plan is we do have larger parcels right throughout the county like we were looking very kind of specifically based on a size need you know we had we know we have the Monroe parcel that's been discussed for various uses that's a fair bit of land that would accommodate this kind of thing but obviously this is a decision on how we want to use that Harrison Field

yeah we've had conversations about that and similar to a lot of the other conversations it wasn't aligned with our timeline but now that our timeline has changed it's definitely um there was talk of like one corner of the harrison field could be like dedicated to this that seems like an ideal school and to be perfectly blunt like we that's part of all of this is like sorry sorry no it's just how how fraught how politically fraught these things are

is like up until now we've been trying to think of like what is the thing that's gonna actually get something in the ground and not be mired in too many controversy thoughts and feelings petitions so but again I mean yes if we have five years and you know whatever like okay I mean we had a lot of those conversations with the Harrison ball fields was potentially putting childcare like childcare and housing

for things you can solve with that. Yeah, I would think that would be like an ask from me. It's just, I mean, you guys obviously see a lot of these projects or hear about a lot of these projects before we do. Like the one you were just talking about, like a land banking, like if or when you hear about that, keeping child care in mind, seeing if you can, you already heard you. Every time. Every time. What about child care? If there's anything that we can do or push for or, because again, like with the more time, I think we can be a little more strategic with, where it is that we're trying to go. We just don't always know what's going on. But I know the Gateway Project is one that we have had early conversations. They applied for a land-based grant and did not receive it. So then that kind of went off the table. The rail yard, if there's something new coming there, that could be a possibility. Gateway, I'm not really familiar with any.

As soon as it becomes like an actual conversation, Because there's like the letter of intent, but then you actually apply. Yeah. As soon as it could become an actual conversation, then I promise I will connect with you guys. I've heard loud and clear, like, don't use Bright Start's name without actually letting Bright Start know. Not saying that I was doing that, but I've just heard the request.

Well, yeah, I mean, use our name and it helps the cause, but let us know so that when someone's like, we're doing this, we are at least in the loop on it.

Absolutely. Yeah, the structure of nonprofit child care is really fascinating to me because at least for the past 12 years that Bright Start's been operating, it's not necessarily like a normal board where it's an advisory board. It's a working board. Beyond a working board. I mean, Kelsey and Megan, it's professional development. Policy writing. Budget and finance. It's everything. And that's all to support an ED who ultimately, when I really think about the landscape and compare it to the private business model and industry, I mean the ED has their hands full with operations. So it's not an ED in the traditional sense of they have the bandwidth to identify properties and do all this work. This falls on a volunteer working board.

Well done, Megan.

Yeah.

Seriously.

I know. Yeah, but it's barely me. I'm just entering and learning. And every day that I, the past six months have been just such a master class in how broken the child care model is. It's not a business model. It's not. It's not.

It's not even close to a business model. 50, where does Colorado rank in its complexity and difficulties compared to other states?

I mean, it's really bad. I mean, I think part of it is that we're the third, we're number 47 on the list of affordability in terms of states. So Colorado is the third least affordable state in the union. And so to speak to what else is talking about is when your costs go up 293% and your wages go up 92%, I mean, that has a massive impact, but yes, also the complexity of licensing. And, you know, CCAP, I mean, if Laura was here, she could tell you, CCAP, if you're applying for CCAP and you're getting CCAP in our community, there's so many other straws that are gonna break the camel's back. Because the, you basically have, your household has to make $42,000 a year in order to be eligible for CCAP.

And CCAP is under threat because of the big, beautiful bill. Yeah, absolutely. CCAP is under threat.

Yeah. So again, in order to access funding currently at the state or federal level for child care, you basically are already on the verge of being displaced from this community. Is there a head start here? Yeah.

The center of the school district.

The school. The school, yeah. Bright Start doesn't.

So there's two licensed child care facilities in the county. Bright Start is the only year-round licensed child care. And then the center at the school district does it during school hours and days. So no Fridays, no summers, no long winter breaks and spring break, et cetera.

And I can just tell you from my lived experience, with my first child, we went through the center. And with our second child, we learned our lesson and went through Bright Start. How can you, the average household here has two working parents. How can you just not have childcare throughout the summer and every Friday and every holiday?

Yeah, exactly.

And FFN, I will just say like the FFN option that my family had since for the past two years has not been an option because that person is too afraid to do FFN anymore. And that's not, obviously, I know anecdotally of other examples of that. Just from the state regulation perspective? No. Thank you. And that person actually has asked, please don't share my information, as in two other families.

Okay, you guys. Well, thanks for coming in. It's 2 of 3. We'll probably stay on schedule here. Yeah. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, guys.

Thank you, guys. Megan, thanks for coming in to talk about this. It's awesome to be here.

Yeah, sorry it was, like, nice to meet you. I think we have sat down and talked about this before.

Yeah, it's okay. I'm sure you guys talked to a lot of people.

Maybe you weren't wearing your glasses last time. I don't know.

That could be. Or my hair down. I never let my hair down. But I couldn't find my ponytail holder, so it got in the way. Not intentionally. Thank you guys.

Next item number three on our work session agenda is legislative legislative updates led by political advocacy group. Welcome and thank you. In advance.

Hi everyone. How are you doing?

Well, good, thank you.

It sounds like you had just had a sobering presentation about the state of child care and the budget. And unfortunately, we will continue that sobering news as we present to you on what's going on at a state level with the budget. We just closed our legislative session. It ended on May 13th. It constitutionally gets 120 days, so they go from January through May. And then in the interim, there's a lot of budget and other work that happens that will keep you apprised of. We did send along a pretty comprehensive report, so we didn't do any slides today. We just wanted to refer to that report for you to look through. Alan's going to highlight some of the budget items and some of the commissions and things that we're going to be paying attention to and really wanting to dig in and get information from you over the interim. But if it's okay, I'll hand it over to Alan to discuss some budget updates.

Good to see all of you. As you know, we've said a lot. The budget was really terrible this year. They had about a billion dollar hole they had to fill. They did, the governor signed the budget into law last week. We've been trying really hard to keep staff up to date on some of the all the moving parts this year with the budget and some of the cuts that the county should be aware of and kind of prepare for that includes the cut local public health. That cut is less than what the governor requested. So it's only about a 1M and a half statewide. There's also all the changes that they made to TANF programs to try and make that program solvent. Basically, they will not be backfilling county reserves using the general fund there. And then there's the regionalization process for county admin that will continue to be an ongoing conversation this summer. That bill did turn into a working group that was not impressed with the Department of human services plan. So they will continue to work on that and what that will look like over the summer here. um they've canceled pretty much all of their interim committees um as a cost saving measure um the one that will meet is this new uh commission on medicaid that the jbc um created uh that that committee will include the members of the joint budget committee and then uh the chairs of the health committees um and they have a pretty large charge so they're going to be looking at Medicaid kind of broadly, how to make it more sustainable as we go forward. Elizabeth, what am I missing kind of high-level stuff?

I mean, I would just highlight that how to make Medicaid more sustainable from a state perspective is going to be cuts. It'll be less services. I think the state is really in a challenge point when it comes to services versus access. At a certain point, if provider rates are so low that providers aren't willing to take on Medicaid clients, you don't really have access anymore. We also are going to see the effects of HR1. I know you guys were just talking about that with child care. So that will also have impact down the road when it comes to Medicaid. We anticipate further cuts and declines in in those areas from the federal government as well. There are a number of things that are going to be on the ballot to just keep an eye on. Colorado is a pretty easy place to get things on the ballot. So there's a few measures that are going to be out there that could potentially have a hard time on the state budget or help the state budget. There's a measure which right now they're gathering signatures. It's initiative 175. And this will ask voters without increasing your taxes, would you like to dedicate a certain amount of money to fix roads and construction, which on its face sounds great. And we need more money for our roads. The problem is that the without paying raising taxes part means that this would be hundreds of millions of dollars directly from the general fund that already doesn't have enough money to sustain what they're trying to sustain in the state. So that's something that a number of groups that counties, healthcare, education are all keeping an eye on as that moves forward. There was also a referred measure. So the legislators voted to send an item to the ballot. This was coming from the Colorado Education Association. And this will try to increase the amount you can keep under the TABOR cap, a little similar to RFC 20 years ago, so that if more money is coming in, that 50% of that can go to education and the other 50% could help with the state budget. It's not going to be a huge influx right away, but would be a little something to help relieve the pressure on the state budget. The other thing that's really being talked about and is having a lot of drama right now at the state capitol is Governor Polis convening the sentence for Tina Peters. So a number of the Democrats are very upset about this. They talked about having a special session, which... There's no point because it's solely within his discretion to do this. But it does mean that typically we are really busy right now with bill signings and people wanting to be out and about and be seen with the governor. And those bill signings are getting canceled right now. So. It's been a little bit quiet on the calendar front when it comes to getting some legislation signed. We did highlight in the report for you some of the key pieces of legislation we really engaged in on behalf of Lake County. Obviously, Senate Bill 40, which Commissioner Tharp testified on to try to help with Prop 123 dollars. We were very active with the salary legislation in terms of the elected official salary increase to help with our sheriff. And then active with Senate Bill 176, which would have put a lot of liability on county and county officials and other local governments. And so we had really weighed in on that one as well. But happy to open it up to any questions. We just put a lot of information out there for you.

Thank you so much, Alan. At one point in the beginning, I'm sorry, I wasn't following enough, but you said that there was money that was not going to go to backfill county's budgets. What part of the county budgets was that money?

It's the county TANF reserves.

Oh, TANF. Okay.

Thank you. Yeah.

Okay. And we detail a lot of that out in the report. So if you dig through that and have any questions, please reach out.

I honestly just couldn't find the word backfill, so I couldn't understand which part I was not understanding.

So thank you. As far as 175 goes, how much pushback or what is the temperature in the room with the HB261430 sort of doesn't that effectively neuter 175?

It was trying to. Yeah, that was the goal of that was to try to To try to get at that, it ended up being, House Bill 1430 itself ended up getting a little neutered through the process. So it isn't as effective as people would have, as the people pushing it would have hoped and getting going after 175. It will get at some of those dollars. But at this point, at this point, we have not heard that the initiative is getting pulled.

Can you talk more about the JBC's response to the CDHS-CCI, frankly, proposal? Because I thought that that was moving ahead a pace, and that we're actually, it got passed. So what do you mean?

Yeah, so there's nothing in the bill that actually sets up that new process and how things will be organized. A working group will meet this summer to actually figure out what that looks like because the State Department couldn't come up with a plan that the JVC was impressed enough with. So this will be a working group. It'll have counties, CCI will be there, the department, and then they'll have a third party administrator that'll work through that process.

I would add that the ability for counties to be in the room making these decisions versus being told what the decisions are going to be is because a lot of the work that CCI did with the Joint Budget Committee.

Yeah. I am hoping to get Laura on that task force. I'm shy with Candace about it, but we can nominate her onto the task force. Is there any way that you all like would play a role in potentially helping to get somebody onto the task force? Yes. That would be amazing. We would love your help. We would love Laura to be on the task force. And she was, excuse me, she was involved in the, like a, it wasn't a task force. The working, yeah. So I'm hoping that that will be like a leg up. But if there's anything that you all need from us to help her continue that work, that's a huge priority.

Yeah. We will take a look at the requirements and the deadlines for submission and help Laura and work with Candice to facilitate that. Okay, awesome. Thank you.

And Laura's okay with that?

Yeah. She wants to be. The only trick is the capacity for her, like she was saying, to do her job just day to day. And so Candice had said that that is one of the places where they were actually going to open up.

the ability to hire yeah yeah so i think it has to be twofold it's like yes we would love laura to do this but we also need to make sure that she has capacity support yeah there's a lot of value in having i mean i think they're leaning towards the larger counties and we definitely need to have someone from you know our regional coalition yeah and laura has expressed interest so we'd love to see that possible yeah

There's a nomination process through CCI as well. So Elizabeth, if you want to connect about how we do that and who does what, I'm happy to. But I already did connect with Candace and Laura about.

OK, great. Yeah, well, we can give CCI and others a call and then also work through that process. So we'll work on that and follow back up.

Thank you.

Thanks for the report. This is great.

I have no further questions.

Good luck to the governor. Yeah. He's got some more free time.

Yes.

Yes.

Elizabeth, we talked a little while ago I think last year sometime about you were going to help support a process for us internally to be able to create suggested legislation or even to like advocate for difficulties within somebody's job that's like statutory or regulatory to inform us.

How has that been going? So during the session, our check-ins with the county team were really session-specific stuff and bills that were on the calendar. But we will be having regular meetings with them through this interim to try to develop that process and find that and bring that forward. And then also, you know, weigh in on when you guys want to bring things to CCI or CCAT for them to consider legislation and stuff.

And we had made some forms that we shared with Candace to kind of help facilitate that process and get suggestions from staff. But we'll bring that back up at our next meeting and how we want to use those going forward.

That'd be great because now is the time where we start, now that the legislative session is done, now we actually start talking about which bills or initiatives we can bring through any of these advocacy groups. So maybe we're still behind the eight ball, but if there's any If any of that process or pipeline has been created. Now's the time where we would actually be bringing that forward so even if we're going for next year. It would be, I would love to know what's happening. So we can be ready to bring forward legislation say to reduce regulations on childcare.

For instance, for instance.

Yeah, we'll make sure to cover those at our next meetings with staff so that at our next board meeting, we can bring forward some ideas for you to dig into.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you.

I think it's due in July.

These initiatives are like due in July for CCI. And I think CCAT is just a little bit later. So if we can do it this year, awesome. I'd love to hear from staff where we think we are. And if it's not this year, that's fine. But it'd be cool to do it next year then. Sorry, I just repeated myself.

There's a lot of things we want to chase at the state level.

Yeah, but we have to have our ducks in a freaking row. And we are not. We're really cute still.

We're still that new commissioner smell.

Well, there's going to be a lot of changes, right? It's going to be interesting. We all have to figure out how this new administration, whoever the new governor is coming in, we're going to have new leadership in the building. And so it's going to be a trial time to see where people are willing to make changes and not.

Yeah.

We kind of, you know, we've gotten used to, you know, after eight sessions, knowing exactly what polis will or will not be for. And now we'll have a new entity to work with and meet.

Challenging and exciting.

Yeah. Opportunity. Okay.

Well, thank you guys.

Thank you.

And thanks for the report. We will talk to you soon unless Elsa has more questions.

I might as well while we're here. Okay, can you give us advice? Now that the legislative session is finished and there probably won't be a special session called, at least about Tina Peters. Right. And then they've cut like all their committee work. What are... are opportunities for engaging with legislators in the off season.

Yeah, I mean, we can definitely be setting up some times for your senators staying the same, but obviously your representative is going to be changing. So we can work with Candace and staff to develop maybe some listening tours with the candidates that are out there. I know you're very familiar with one of the candidates, obviously, and probably also know the other one. given everyone being up in the community. But we'd be happy to kind of help facilitate some of those conversations so you guys can get to know them better, an opportunity to speak more with Senator Baisley, if you'd like. And then we are out and about constantly During this interim process, since the entire House, a lot of statewide races, and half the Senate are up for reelection, we are attending a lot of fundraisers and keeping you all front of mind as we have conversations with those legislators at those events. If you ever wanted to attend any of those, you're welcome to. You know, we can definitely help facilitate some conversations with the candidates up in your area so that you guys can decide if you wanted to endorse anyone or just build those relationships going into next session.

Well, um, Thank you. What about like power mapping. So like if there were initiatives that have failed in the past that we will be on board with or Somebody is really friendly towards certain ideas that haven't actually been presenting yet presented yet, but they don't represent us like mark basely or. Consuelo or Chris like how, how do we, how can we be at the table to help build those relationships and potentially build some momentum for coalitions of things that we want to see past.

I think continuing to engage in some of those, the CCI, the CCAT, I know Laura is very involved with the human services side. You know, definitely if there are potential legislative items that you're interested in that another legislator would be better to carry and to champion, we would reach out and have those conversations with them and with you. But a lot of times outside of your main legislators, being able to leverage and work with your associations is really helpful for that.

Okay. It just feels like there's so often times where like CCI, especially since CCI is more conservative, the legislator, the legislation, like this legislature has been less. So it kind of, oftentimes it doesn't actually matter what CCI takes a position on. So I hear you and I do understand that there are like relationships built there. I was just curious if there are other.

Well, and that's where CCAT could be helpful too, right? Which is, yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Cool.

Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, man.

Okay. I think that's it. Thank you again.

All right. Thanks everyone.

You guys have a good day. Appreciate this. Do we have anyone coming in with us for the conversation?

We do. We have C4. You saw the email at C4. Yeah, there. True. But everyone who was still intending to come in and have that discussion is planning. So we can pause recording now. If you want to take another break, we're 35 minutes ahead. Scheduled for 3.

I can message Duncan and see if he can come by now. I don't know if anybody else is playing.

Who else? Do we have anyone from CMC or CCMS or anybody respond? We can check with Sandra on that.

I do believe so. Tamara was interested. Brian just joined. I don't know.

I think maybe we just take a break instead of trying to get people to show up early. It's about a half hour away. I could do some jumping jacks, run around the block. I could go to work. Go bust out some work.

All right, folks online, we're a little ahead of schedule, so we're going to go ahead and pause the recording, and we'll convene back at 3? Yeah. All right. Thanks, all.

Okay. Item number four on this work session at 3 o'clock is number four, overview and discussion regarding potential future options for the yurt owned by Lake County government. This will be led by Josh Becker, our deputy county manager.

Yeah, I can set the stage for everyone who's in the room here. So this discussion grew out of a meeting we had. I guess a week ago now with C4, we come to the county with a proposal and an idea to utilize the yurt that's been in storage up at the airport, out at the farm for some educational programming. And so everyone in the room was invited based on that discussion and sort of grew into a little bit bigger conversation. We want to talk about the use for the yurt. We did have an MOU drafted with C4. They have subsequently, to the last meeting, withdrawn their request to use it at the farm location as they were considering. And so we did not want, we still wanted to continue to have this conversation because there were a lot of ideas about what we could do with this. It's a fairly expensive county resource that's currently sitting unused up at the airport. So I'll use that to sort of set the stage and kind of tee it up for commissioners to ask questions, guide the discussion however you want with the farm. that you discussed last week and frame that for everyone. Sure.

Well, when I heard of it, it was nice to hear that we still had it. It's been kind of a mythical item that we own. So as soon as it was brought up, my idea was, hey, we're going to straighten. We're doing so much on that corner. I'd really like to see it. And then C4 could certainly use it in that location, but my vision And it's mine alone, not the board's, is to have a place where the sledders can go, the parents can go and warm up, maybe have a stove in there, maybe sell some hot chocolates and brownies. And then I since individually talked to a few people on the Inter-Rebel Trail Committee, and the consensus is, unofficially, maybe we'd be willing to use some of those substantial funds to create a base and figure out how to do that. I don't think I'm personally asking for Lake County to pitch in because I know some people are adverse to that. I really think if we partnered up and had a grand vision for it and now we were under the time constraints of C4 saying please have a work session and if you can't work it out make a decision next week and so that is why we pulled it together so quickly. So I'm thankful that they pulled it out because I really see it. I see it down there. I envision it down there. At least, you know, we can all use it. The skiers, the sledders, the kids. You know, the ski club has their own building. Anybody can use it. Maybe we could rent it out. Maybe we could make some money off it. So that's my vision. I don't have a plan. We haven't had a Minerva Trail board meeting, but that'll certainly be one of the topics we discussed in that next meeting. We have about $135,000. $115,000. $115,000. That's in this account, and then we have a donations account held with the community fund, which is full donations. I've asked Sandra for the specs on it, but I know most people build a deck, Maybe we could just pour a slab and set it on the slab to keep it cheap, because it is just temporary.

My personal thoughts are very aligned with what you've just said. I see things starting to take shape, some great vision happening with Dutch Henry, and just as important as classroom space or educational opportunities, I think recreational opportunities for the youth for kids to get outside and play hard and do things is super important and I would like to see the yurt be an accessory to the newly straightened out tubing hill in whatever capacity serves that function the best whether it's the rental shop whether it's hot cocoa and you know whatever but I think having that yurt down there at the tubing hill where it's accessible to multiple user groups, whether it's CCMS or the skewers on the mineral belt or the tubing kits or whatever. You know, I think that's a great spot for it. I'd like to see it down there.

I'm super down. I want to figure out how we do it. How do we do it? How much money will it cost to actually do the investment? And then what kind of capacity do we need to actually run it? reliable is our own funding to actually accomplish it so that it can be utilized consistently. So I'm super down with this idea, to be clear. I just don't think that we have currently the resources to do that unless, of course, we have partners in the room who want to help with that. And I really wanted to hear from Duncan More about the tubing hill. Remind us how that has been going. Obviously, this was a weird year. I'm not talking about this year. But the complications of hiring people, keeping people, hours of operation, et cetera. So I just want to make sure we're actually having all of that conversation, because there are a billion wonderful ideas that we could do. And I want to be realistic about what's possible.

Yeah. And how much it costs. I should have said on the outset, thanks, you guys, all for being here and short notice. You know, it was kind of... I'll spare you the details, but thanks for coming. So, Duncan, do you want to start?

Yeah. Okay, I'll just... I'll give some context for our operation on Dutch Henry. So, I pulled some figures from 2022 through to this non-existent year. And it's mixed. So, we don't count actual users. because if you are local and have your own tube, you're not actually counted. So we're only counting tube rentals, and there's a price differential between locals and non-locals, $5 to $10, but we don't differentiate that in our numbers of what that split is. So in example 2022, We had 230 users and revenue of around $2,000. That increased 2023 to roughly 966. 966 users? Yeah. Rentals.

Can you just say rentals?

Yeah.

Oh, two rentals.

Yes. Okay. Users might have been much higher.

Yeah. 2024, they went over

Up to 1,000.

What was the revenue in 2023? Sorry, 8,325.

2024, roughly 1,000 users and 9,000 in revenue. 2025 was back down to 539. Still not lower than that. Yeah. What were the hours of operation difference? So we run it 32 days a season, so Saturday and Sunday effectively 10am to 4pm. So it's reasonably limited. And obviously in 25, 26 we can run an hour. So saying that, you know, roughly a season is 192 hours. What's that?

192 hours.

season of operation.

Was it open through the holidays, the Christmas, New Year's, two weeks?

Yes. I think it's fluctuated a little bit, depending on staff as well. But yes, my standards were reasonably moderate from December through to February. You're right.

How many total rentals do you have available?

That's a good question. I don't know the answer. so yeah we don't want it as a business right personally um and five dollars a tube it's it's pretty cheap uh other models out there i looked at frisco which is obviously didn't set up and they charge per hour. And it's something like $35 per person per hour, including the tube. You can't bring your own. So we've got some room for movement. I've done some real life figures around how much it would cost us to set up the thing here. So we bought it for $43,000. So that's it. It's got to be included in whatever cost we look at.

So 30 by 30?

Yeah.

Yeah.

30 feet. 30 feet. So my rough estimation is that we're probably looking at somewhere between 2,500 to 5,000 for any perimeter. We need to figure that out with CPD on type of perimeter needs, on sort of structural engineering stink drones it needs, any update to any sort of site plan, we would need to demolish the existing hut. That's a cost as well.

The other thing we need to consider

because we currently take electricity from the car service. I don't know if we actually pay for it. I don't think we do. Again, if we were to put a yurt in, we'd probably want to put either our own supply, so a new meter, a new connection, as opposed to what was required and where we got from. In terms of foundations, again, not sure about understanding exactly where, but any excavation that we had to do at the site. Again, to Matt's point, what concrete footings are we putting in? How far do I have to go? Did we build a deck to it? A deck would be seven grand, if anyone wanted it.

And that's it, he'll do it all himself. And he wants to help, so there you go.

Then comes the fit-out. So what are we actually going to use it for? If we're going to operate the tubing held from it, it needs probably a higher level of fit-out than just a warmer pad. Because it will need electricity, obviously, to power, you know, port-a-cylinder and other things like that. The wood stove, again, do we put a wood stove in it? Do we put propane to it? So forced air, do we have to keep it warm? How much does propane going to cost us? Do we need a 500 gallon tank? You know, it starts to add up. And for my calculations, you know, total cost, we're looking around about somewhere between 60 and 80,000. Depending on who does it, what the level of fit-out is. So it's not free, is my point. And again, if we were going to operate it as a tubing business, effectively, what's the return over how many years are we expecting? A payback, or will it ever pay itself back? And are we prepared to bear that cost? That's some of my thoughts. And then there's, on top of that, annual operating costs, staff, heat, you know, set up, take down if you need to, insurance. Having a, developing a reserve so we can replace the fabric cover with it, because that's the bit that's going to fail the fastest in the current conditions. And then the other note I'll make is we need to be really careful around our snow forecasts and build them, build some thinking around what happens if we continue to have below-average years, you know, what does that look like? So, yeah, again, conservatively, I think we could Based on current sort of thing, we might make eight grand a year if we kept it exactly the same operation. Optimistically, we might double it. You know, that's best case. But again, that's only $16,000 a year. You know, how many years do we want to calculate in our payback?

Do those numbers include tracking out your costs for your staffing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But again, low-level staffing, paying people almost at a minimum wage, but pretty close to it. Again, there's probably some flexibility in that. We would also have to examine, can you actually run a business just on weekends? Is there a market for a greater demand? Yeah.

No, I think that's all realistic, and thanks for helping. I think we can all, I'm kidding. Yeah, there's certainly some challenges for sure. I mean, I really think that the numbers would at least double with a straightened hill. It's dangerous, it's no fun. I've gone up there with family, do it once and go, okay, if I want to ski the rest of the year, I don't want to go over the embankment and roll into the creek. done so I could see that being a real so say we double the revenue to 20,000 then we're looking at a four year four or five year return on investment say we rent it out or let C4 use it then there's benefits to it that aren't monetary but they're they help the community in a way that's that you can't monetize I think

minor low-hanging fruit type of concessions there, like snacks, bagged chips, candy and stuff. I don't know how you'd pull off hot cocoa without some serious power supply or whether that would pencil out, but things of that nature might help boost the revenues a little bit.

When you need power supply for point of sale, no matter what.

Yeah, refrigeration.

1,500 watts, you're good.

Yeah, I mean that's kind of what I was thinking. They make generators pretty quiet these days.

Do you have power? Do you think you have to dim the power structure first? I'm a little nervous about that.

Just the brown shed, right? That's what I'm talking about. The CCMS building. The CCMS building has been fine for a long time. They just removed it. That's a historic doing.

The car works over there if you get through that break around your school. I mean one of the options is it doesn't solve the year thing in this moment but giving ourselves a year with our current setup to continue renting with the straightened out like to continue using the shed with our straightened out situation maybe even there's room to expand to Fridays since Fridays the kids are off school people are up here every weekend. I don't know, maybe there's just opportunity to see what the market does with this new thing before we invest in the setup of the yurt.

Yeah. A portable lighting system gets it to like 7 o'clock at night. Something for kids to do after school.

That'd be pretty wild. Well, if it was a hybrid, we pour a slab, we put the yurt in the stove, and there's no electricity. It's only run during the day. And see how that goes.

So you guys... Who uses it? The use of the yard?

I don't know. Anybody who wants to. I don't know. I guess who tends the fire? Who buys the firewood? What's it really used for?

Who's there?

I'm not... I don't... This is a moving target. I know.

I'm just asking. I have no agenda. I have no idea.

...community spreadsheet or something through the rec department that would determine scheduling of who, you know, here's a Cloud City Mountain sports group that wants access to it while their kids are using the hill to warm up, because I don't think the Cloud City building is heated. It is. It is? Oh, okay.

I don't think Cloud City would use it. I no longer represent Cloud City. Right. But they're all silent there. I didn't think their building was heated. No, they broke their furnace this year. When I was the coach, I would always turn the heat off so the kids would ski. But they do have heat. Okay.

That being said, it's not a super inviting place for kids to put their boots. It's mostly a waxing.

No, I think for Cloud City's purposes, it's fine. All the Nordic kids keep all their Nordic stuff in there. And they have benches, and they have waxing stuff. So for getting dressed and undressed, I think it's adequate. I don't imagine Cloud City kids would use a different facility. They don't sell chips, candy, and hot cocoa in there. They do not. And I think you'd have to talk to the coaches if they want them doing that. during training.

And we have mixed advice in there in the summer, so then you have to talk to the mountain bike coaches too. Right, yeah.

I think Cloud City's fine for now with their facility. I mean, I think, of course, they eventually like a new facility, but I wouldn't worry too much about them for now.

OK. Well, we know C4 wouldn't use it. So who, I'm honestly asking, who would be the user of this?

I don't know. I guess I envisioned it mostly

tubing hill folks as a concession but it's also open to anybody fat biker anybody who wants to go in there and get warm there are other events that happen right there at the base of that hill too you know like with races and things like that yeah um but like i feel like we explore more options you know more options would present themselves sort of like if you build a table

Just to stay pretty part of the world.

You know, like, birthday parties or, you know, there could be things we can't think of in this room in this moment that might pop up.

I agree. And if we were running a business, I mean, I think a lot of creative ways we could use the space, but as a government running it versus like a business, like we're not a business. We don't have a whole lot of creativity.

flexibility so it's not going to pencil out it's unless you know that the tubing hill just takes off or we get a you know so i mean i mean i think that the college would be very interested in running tubing hill eventually right yeah right and i think a yurt in the mix would be useful like for sure i think for next year That's where I'm a little stuck is like I don't know if for next year I could really see it unless Duncan's team was able to operate it using high school kits like they always have and using that to kind of run the tubing and then it's open, it's warm, Saturday, Sundays, and holidays, and we just stick with the model we've been using and do it that way for another year. I don't know if there's like a pretty affordable way to put it there for just a year knowing that like we probably want to think long term like what the location should be. I mean, obviously the straightening is going to have implications for Josh's land.