PHOTO: Four members of the Archuleta County Public Health Department Transitional Advisory Committee discuss staffing and budget issues following the departure of three San Juan Basin Public Health presenters, on May 8, 2023.
Sitting in the Archuleta County Commissioners meeting room on Monday, May 8, the Archuleta County Public Health Department Transitional Advisory Committee heard that, later this week, a different specially-chosen committee will be interviewing ‘Transitional’ Executive Director candidates for the future Archuleta County Public Health Department. This new department will begin operations on January 1, 2024 when the public health district that has been serving Pagosa Springs for the past 70-plus years — San Juan Basin Public Health (SJBPH) — is dismantled next January.
The dismantling, and the need for a local executive director, has resulted from disagreements between the two counties served by SJBPH: Archuleta County and La Plata County.
Reportedly, the interview process will not be open to the public… but two members of the Transitional Advisory Committee will be allowed to observe the process.
The Transitional Advisory Committee has been meeting every Monday morning to help the Board of County Commissioners create a department that will meet the needs of the Pagosa community, based on available funding. The past several meetings have included lengthy presentations by SJBPH staff, explaining what public health programs they’ve been running and where the money comes from for those programs.
As with many government agencies, SJBPH seeks out federal and state grants to fund its operations, and some of the grants require a certain population or evidence of certain community risks.
Presumably, some of these same grants will be available to the new Archuleta County Public Health Department… but not all, due to the relatively small population: about 14,000 full-time residents.
We’ve heard that some public health programs will be feasible only if Archuleta County continues working collaboratively with La Plata County or other neighboring counties. It’s not clear if anyone has opened those negotiations.
Sitting in the room and listening to the presentations given to the Advisory Committee, I found myself feeling slightly depressed. The County Commissioners knew last summer that SJBPH was going to be dismantled, and that Archuleta County would be legally required to stand up its own public health department. But they already aware, last May, that the La Plata County commissioners were probably going to vote to disassemble SJBPH.
Here we are in May 2023, and the County has not yet hired an executive director, nor formed its governing Board of Health.
Speaking as an outside observer, I find it somewhat sad that SJBPH staff have presented several hours of fairly complex information, explaining nearly all of their programs and funding sources… and that our future executive director and our future Board of Health were not around to hear the presentations.
Presentations which, as I said, were informative… and complex.
It would appear that, by the time the Archuleta BOCC appoints an ‘interim’ executive director, SJBPH will be done with their presentations.
This is not to belittle the thoughtful and intelligent volunteers serving on the Transitional Advisory Committee, four of whom were present for the May 8 presentations about suicide; childhood mortality; tobacco cessation; the Public Health Improvement Plan; communications with the communities served; policy development and management; data use and limitations; and related funding sources.
My point is: San Juan Basin Public Health has been around for over 70 years, and we are apparently expecting a group of seven volunteers — the members of the Transitional Advisory Committee — to come to a reasonably thorough understanding of SJBPH’s $8 million budget… and its 100 employees… and a dizzying range of programs… including the administration of over 100,000 vaccine doses per year during the COVID crisis… visits with 600 new mothers… 600 food establishments inspected… 1,600 WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program clients served… 3,000 death certificates processed… and 6,600 bacterial water tests performed…
The Archuleta County Road & Bridge Department does a reasonably good job, in my opinion. Yes, they’ve been struggling with all the pot holes these past couple of years. But it seems to me the Road & Bridge tasks are not terribly complicated. Fix the holes; patch the asphalt; plow the snow; grade the gravel roads; apply the mag chloride. Not too complicated.
Sitting through the presentations by SJBPH, I sense a much more complex set of tasks for our future Health Department. A more difficult learning curve, no doubt.
As noted, San Juan Basin Public Health will continue to serve both counties through the end of 2023. Each county is providing information to guide the transition process, and you can find La Plata County’s overview here and Archuleta County’s overview here.
SJBPH staff create monthly reports for the existing Board of Health, which you can download from this website.
One of the more interesting charts, from the March 2023 staff report, looked like this:
We’re looking at the combined Onsite Wastewater Treatment System (OWTS) numbers for La Plata and Archuleta counties, for 2019 through March 2023. These installations are more commonly known as ‘septic systems’. As we can see, the number of new systems in 2020 and 2021 were generally higher than in 2019. But the numbers for 2022 and 2023 show a rather steep decline, especially during the second half of 2022, when the numbers were less than half the approvals from the previous three years.
We’ve seen other evidence, here in Pagosa Springs, for a slowdown in construction… one of the main economic drivers in the community.
Another economic driver? Government.