Photo: A meal in the Pagosa Senior Center Dining Room, April 2024. Photo by Jeff Laydon/Pagosa Photography.
As mentioned yesterday in Part One, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) discussed funding options for the Pagosa Senior Center at their October 15 work session.
Both the County and Town governments have been supporting the Senior Center with funding and discounts. In the case of the County government, the 2024 funding amounted to $280,000, as part of a total Senior Center budget of about $812,000.
Most senior centers in Colorado are operated as county government departments. The Pagosa Senior Center, however, is administered by an independent 501c3 nonprofit — Archuleta Seniors Inc. — with its own board of directors. Recently, ASI has been faced with rising costs and diminishing grant resources, and this past summer approached the BOCC, asking that the Senior Center employees be converted from ASI employees to Archuleta County employees, with salaries and benefits commensurate with similar County employees.
At the October 15 work session, the BOCC discussed a sample Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) from Summit County.
Attorney Weaver noted that Colorado counties are authorized to operate senior centers, but are not required to do so.
This is different from Public Health departments, for example, which each county must maintain, and which are required by law to be overseen by an ‘independent’ Board of Health. (Although here in Archuleta County, two County commissioners sit on the five-person Board of Health.)
The sample MOU suggested a “hybrid” Senior Center management — whereby the Center’s staff would be County employees, but administration and grant-seeking would be handled by ASI. Archuleta County would write the paychecks, but ASI would hire and fire the employees.
Attorney Weaver perceived a potential conflict with such an arrangement.
“It kind of reminds me a little bit of Dispatch,” he said, “To me, the way Dispatch is organized, to me, is a hot mess.”
The Combined Dispatch office in Pagosa Springs handles 911 calls for several agencies, including the Archuleta Sheriff, the Pagosa Police Department, Emergency Medical Services, Pagosa Fire Protection District, and Pagosa Springs Medical Center. For many years, Dispatch was a County department, but about 10 years ago, Dispatch formed its own board of directors representing all the agencies, to make hiring and financial decisions.
Whether the “hot mess” that attorney Weaver perceives at Dispatch is the result of “too many cooks spoiling the broth” or whether its chronic staffing shortages are the result of other causes, is not clear to me. Lately, the County has proposed the idea of bringing Combined Dispatch under the direction of County Sheriff Mike LeRoux.
The Combined Dispatch budget has grown by nearly 40% since 2022, from $1.1 million to an estimated $1.5 million for 2025.
Inflation? Government excess? An explosion of 911 calls?
But we’re talking today about the Pagosa Senior Center, and the possibility that Archuleta County will “adopt” the Center staff as official County employees.
A possible sticking point to this arrangement, said attorney Weaver, involves County government paying the salaries of employees that are specified and hired by an independent nonprofit board of directors and its executive director. This is actually similar to the arrangement the County has with the Archuleta Public Health Department, which is governed by, and has its executive director chosen by, a (nominally independent) Board of Health, but the employees are County employees.
But no such arrangement is specified for senior centers. So, if the BOCC is going to pay the employee salaries, then the County government ought to be able to do the hiring and firing. Right?
The sample MOU, however, suggested that hiring and firing would be done through “mutual agreement” between ASI and the County.
Attorney Weaver:
“That’s wonderful if everyone agrees. What happens if ASI, their board, and the Board of County Commissioners don’t agree?” Weaver asked.
He saw a similar problem in the hiring and firing of the Executive Director position.
“Boards don’t always see eye to eye,” he said.
“Been there, done that,” said Commissioner Ron Maez.
Commissioner Brown asked if Senior Center employees — if they were County employees — would be able to file liability claims against the County, and attorney Weaver supposed they would be.
The BOCC then discussed the impact of ten new employees on the County Human Resources Department.
“Not that this wouldn’t work, it just needs to be fleshed out a little more,” Weaver said.
I was left with the impression the BOCC was seriously entertaining the idea of taking on the Senior Center staff as County employees, but still had concerns about the sample MOU that needed to be “fleshed out”.
Looking at the draft 2025 County Budget (which is available online, here) it appears that the BOCC has included a ‘placeholder’ allocation for the Senior Center to match last year’s allocation: $280,000.
This may be sufficient to keep the Center open next year, if all other funding sources remain available.