In recent months, San Juan Basin Public Health has been caught between two counties that don’t see eye-to-eye on public health.
That may end soon…
— from a Durango Herald article by reporter Aedan Hannon, ‘San Juan Basin Public Health moves toward a breakup’, published April 29, 2022.
Reporter Aedan Hannon didn’t explain, in his DH article last week, exactly what he means by “two counties that don’t see eye-to-eye on public health.”
He might mean, “two county governments“. Or he could mean, “two county populations“.
The “two governments” argument is perhaps the easier to make, considering that La Plata County leadership has not (to my knowledge) expressed any public criticism of San Juan Basin Public Health, the public health district that serves La Plata and Archuleta counties. But over here in Pagosa Springs, our county commissioners convened a “Health District Investigative Committee” to look at the viability of, and possible justifications for, getting a divorce from San Juan Basin Public Health and creating an independent Archuleta County public health department.
Following the delivery of the investigative committee’s report, however, the Archuleta County commissioners — Alvin Schaaf, Ronnie Maez and Warren Brown — determined that the time is not right for filing for divorce, and instead gave indications that an effort will be made to improve communications between SJBPH and Archuleta County. Modest changes to the SJBPH Board of Health bylaws are also being suggested by the Archuleta commissioners.
At a Thursday meeting of the Board of Health, it appeared that certain La Plata County commissioners are in favor of dissolving SJBPH as a joint operation, citing “irreconcilable differences”.
According to a certain graph shared by SJBPH on their website, around a quarter of the population in La PLata County — 23% — has declined the COVID vaccinations, and nearly one third of the residents in Archuleta County — 31% — have done the same. The rest, in both counties, have submitted to at least one inoculation. So, then, maybe a slight difference between the two county populations?
The differences get magnified, however, when the two counties get around to choosing their county commissioners. Looking at the map below, where shades of red show the predominance of registered Republican voters, and blue tones indicate a predominance of registered Democrats, we can understand why the La Plata County commissioners are typically Democrats, and Archuleta County commissioners are nearly always Republicans. (In both counties, however, the largest group of voters are registered “Unaffiliated”.)
Here in Archuleta County, the Democratic Party rarely fields a candidate for any County office… and in La Plata County, in 2020, the Republican Party failed to field a county commissioner candidate for either open seat.
Which is to say, the elected leadership in the two counties may present a much starker political divide that we find among the taxpayers themselves.
La Plata County commissioner Marsha Porter-Norton, a Democrat, argued her perspective during last week’s Board of Health meeting.
“The (public health) district is many years old, but there does come a time when I think we have to, in a transparent and an honest way, say how is this marriage is working. Because it is a marriage made by the two boards of county commissioners. You all do fabulous work. But at the end of the day, both of the county commissions have to decide if we’re going to stay in this district. It’s frankly very challenging for La Plata County right now…
“We have to ask ourselves as leaders: How long are we going to let that continue? Every marriage is imperfect, but are we going to stay married and say, ‘We’re going to work on it, we believe in being in this together and we believe in the principles of public health and basic things that public health puts forth, such as vaccines, such as masks?’ These things have thrown a giant wedge in our ability to sometimes have a unified front.”
The simple political fact is, many citizens in both counties have, during the COVID crisis, rejected the “basic things that public health puts forth” such as vaccines, such as masks, such as enforced business lock-downs, in both counties. Meanwhile, SJBPH policies have been — in my humble opinion — totally focused on those same “basic things”… with no support for alternative health approaches such as nutrition, lifestyle, vitamin and mineral supplements, and so on. While a majority of the people SJBPH serves have agreed to get at least one COVID vaccination, a significant minority in both communities have rejected that approach to public health.
Readers might note that, during this editorial series, I’ve been using the term “COVID crisis” rather than “COVID pandemic”, because so much of the stress and conflict has been around political beliefs… concerning the medical-pharmaceutical-public health industry, and around alleged violations of constitutional rights.
On Friday, we received a press release from the Executive Committee of the SJBPH Board of Health that included the following statements:
On Thursday, April 28th, the SJBPH Board of Health met in a work session. The goal of this work session was to come together as a unified Board to present recommendations for the future of San Juan Basin Public Health on how to best serve the constituents of La Plata County and Archuleta County. No decisions were made in this work session.
The Board of Health will create a report outlining the recommendations and provide it to the County Commissioners of both counties. The Boards of County Commissioners will be making the decisions respective to their communities…
You can read the full press release here.
We note, here, that “no decisions were made in this work session.” Any decisions to leave or dissolve the District must come from the two Boards of County Commissioners, not from the Board of Health, and any such transition process must extend over a period of at least one year, according to Colorado law.
At the moment, I see no compelling evidence that the Archuleta County commissioners want to proceed with dissolving the joint district. At Thursday’s Board of Health meeting, two Archuleta County representatives indicated a similar perspective.
Here’s Dr. Jon Bruss, one of the appointed Board of Health members from Archuleta County:
“Splitting has its own headaches, and it’s going to have some major headaches. I really am concerned about the citizens of Archuleta County because I think – no matter all the good intentions we have – they are going to be left probably in a disadvantage from a public health standpoint for many years…”
And here’s Archuleta County Commissioner Warren Brown, who attended the meeting but does not currently serve on the Board of Health:
“As far as the financing goes and funding, that is certainly one of my big concerns… I think that this can be costly. We would have to hire staff to staff this, at least to some degree. I’m sure that we would contract some services out. But I think as a responsibility to the taxpayer, the cost is certainly on my mind… I think the county would have an obligation to limit the negative impact this could have. How that works out in the end, I just don’t have an idea at this point.”
“I’ve said this all along: If staying with San Juan Basin Health is what’s best for our county, then that’s what we should do, and we should take an active part in improving our working relationship with San Juan Basin Health…”