Colorado State law requires each county to establish and maintain a county public health agency or participate in a district public health agency (C.R.S. §25-1-506). San Juan Basin Public Health was formed as a district public health agency through a joint resolution between La Plata County and Archuleta County…
— from the San Juan Basin Public Health District website.
The early morning Zoom meeting started at 7am, on Tuesday, August 18… scheduled early, I presume, to catch people before they went off to work.
SJBPH Board of Health president Ann Bruzzese called the meeting to order and took roll call. It sounded like everyone from the SJBPH board was present, and also the three County Commissioners from Archuleta County, and the three County Commissioners from La Plata County. Everyone seemed ready to discuss two rather important topics.
1. Do the Archuleta Commissioners plan to contribute $150,000 in Department of Local Affairs COVID relief funds to SJBPH? Reportedly, the County has been promised $1.2 million in DOLA-administered CARES Act relief funds, and has agreed to share half with the Town of Pagosa Springs, leaving the County with about $600,000 to fund emergency efforts. To receive the CARES Act funds as reimbursements, the County must document that the money was used for COVID-related expenses.
Such as, supporting the emergency COVID work being done by SJBPH?
2. Are the Archuleta County Commissioners currently planning to withdraw from the SJBPH District — the health district that has served our county since 1948 — and try and form a separate Archuleta County public service office? The question is fairly important to SJBPH, because Archuleta County has typically contributed about $130,000 a year to the shared La Plata-Archuleta health district. La Plata County has been contributing about $640,000 per year. Those annual contributions have made up only a portion of SJBPH’s $6 million budget, but the money is important for matching some of the grants and donations that make up the lion’s share of SJBPH’s annual budget.
If Archuleta County were to withdraw from the jointly-funded district, would that happen anytime soon?
The first portion of the meeting consisted of a rather thorough presentation by SJBPH executive director Liane Jollon, explaining the cost of the COVID testing, tracking and educational services provided by SJBPH since March to both counties — about $150,000 a month — and what the pandemic has done to the district’s operating budget. Some optional health services have been cut; some employees or contractors have been laid off.
Most of the important numbers regarding the district’s budget concerns appeared in this Power Point slide:
This chart explained the cost of emergency COVID-19 response services — services that San Juan Basin Public Health had no expectation of providing this year, prior to January 31, when the US Department of Health & Human Services declared a public health emergency, or prior to March 11, when Colorado Governor Jared Polis declared a state of emergency. As we see in the first column, SJBPH has been spending about $150,000 a month on COVID-19 related services, and expects to spend about the same amount each month for the final five months of 2020… all of which would total slightly over $1.6 million in unexpected public health expenses for the year.
Some of the $1.6 million will be covered by various state and private grants and donations, but about $786,752 of the unexpected COVID costs will need to be covered by… the two county governments?
According to the legal agreement that authorizes the SJBPH District, county funding is required to be proportional, Ms. Jollon explained. La Plata County, with a population of about 56,000, is required to supply 80% of the joint county funding; Archuleta County, population 14,000, is required to provide 20%. SJBPH’s 2020 budget, adopted last December, reflected that proportional split. But, of course, none of the emergency COVID costs were part of the budget.
The three La Plata County commissioners have already pledged an additional $600,000 — which would cover most of their proportional share of the yet-to-be-funded emergency costs. If Archuleta County is willing to dedicate $150,000 from its $600,000 CARES Act allotment…
…if Archuleta Count is willing…
…then the health district’s emergency expenditures would appear to be mostly covered for 2020. If not… well… that poses a little problem for everyone…
Part of the $432,863 in ‘non-County’ revenues consists of a grant that requires a matching donation by each county of $150,000. La Plata’s already-pledged $600,000 provides more than enough for La Plata’s share of that particular grant match. But if the Archuleta County Commissioners decide not to provide the requested $150,000… then SJBPH will not have the full required match for that grant. Which would apparently leave SJBPH underfunded for 2020 by an estimated total of $300,000… $150,000 from Archuleta County, plus $150,000 in lost grant funding. Or so it would appear.
One might be tempted to see the requested Archuleta County donation as a “no-brainer” — to borrow a term used by former Archuleta County Commissioner Michael Whiting in a recent letter to the weekly Pagosa Springs SUN newspaper. But during yesterday’s 90-minute early morning Zoom meeting, none of the three Archuleta County commissioners appeared ready to make a definite commitment to sharing their CARES Act allotment with SJBPH.
Archuleta County Commissioner Steve Wadley spoke as if Archuleta County… might not have any money to share?
“I know that we’ve got CARES Act money, but the fact of the matter is, we don’t have any other money. We haven’t taken the big hit in sales tax we thought we would, but we have taken hits in other areas… [Highway User Tax Fund] is way down, and also we’re not seeing our property tax money coming in, like we normally would. So while sales tax isn’t taking the beating we thought it would, because of [sales taxes collected from online purchases], we are losing money. We’re spending a lot of money this year on capital expenses, and the fact of the matter is, we’ve always just been a poor county. We’ve always just paved our road with food stamps. So I don’t know what else we can do…
“If there is money left over from the CARES Act, and if you guys can meet the reporting requirements in order for us to use that money — and they are stringent — I wouldn’t have an objection to it. If the money is left over…”
“This is a tough one, and we’re having a hard time coming up with it…”
Commissioner Wadley did not give any indication of how Archuleta County might otherwise spend $600,000 in CARES money that must be used only for COVID-related expenses.
But perhaps the larger question is: what would happen to emergency public health services in Archuleta County — up until now, provided by SJBPH — if our commissioners decided not to help fund SJBPH with our Archuleta County CARES Act allotment?