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Ducks, turtles float for funds |
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Written by administrator
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Wednesday, 01 July 2009 |
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Barbara Lawlor
NEDERLAND
At 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon, a bag of big ducks and bag of about 400 plucky little green turtles were emptied into middle Boulder Creek. The entry took place just before the highway bridge in the middle of town. The release was a quiet event, as most of the spectators were gathered at the weir bridge at the Barker Reservoir inlet, waiting to see their entries arrive.
The white water frothed against the creek shores. The big ducks bobbed determinedly down the middle of the creek while the smaller, less goal-oriented turtles spun and meandered, going with the flow. Some of them got mired in the branches that had been caught off shore. Some of them lolly-gagged in the eddies behind rocks. Most of them paddled valiantly for the dam.
A group of men in wading boots and long poled nets made their way into the springmelt water hurtling towards the concrete dam, the spillover roaring into the reservoir. Spectators lined up along the shore, all eyes looking west, upstream.
The Nederland Turtle Float, sponsored by and benefiting the Over the Rainbow Pre-school has become an annual event during the Nederland Arts Festival. Each turtle floater is numbered and when the critters are collected they are put into a plastic pool and plucked out, the lucky winners getting to choose one of the 30 great prizes donated by local businesses. Local turtle float announcer Dave Felkley kept the eager crowd entertained.
The ducks represent local businesses who do not win prizes but revel in the knowledge they have good fast-duck picking sense. The business winners were Back Country Pizza, Dog House Video, Wild Mountain Smokehouse and Brewery, Eco Ditty and Shining Star Restaurant.
About 350 people bought a turtle and had a chance to win an Eldora season pass, an oil change, a golden ticket for a carousel ride, and a bunch of other great prizes.
Before the float finished and the fans left, one lone turtle was seen headed upstream in a strange current occurrence. There’s just no telling what will happen in a turtle float. 
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 01 July 2009 )
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Local management of Gilpin Public Health eliminated |
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Written by administrator
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Wednesday, 01 July 2009 |
Lynn Hirshman
GILPIN COUNTY
At about 10:30 a.m. on June 30, management of the Gilpin County Public Health Department was transferred to Jefferson County Public Health (JCPH), and long-time, popular Gilpin Public Health Director Jennifer Lavely was replaced by JCPH’s Executive Director, Dr. Mark Johnson.
Although proposed as a cost-saving measure at last fall’s budget hearings, according to Commissioner Forrest Whitman, the new arrangement will not save any money for the County and will almost certainly add to the expenses for the department.
The approved expenditures for 2009 for the Public Health Department total $199,814, including $50,000 for “contract labor."
The proposed cost of the contract with Jefferson County, according to the Intergovernmental Agreement approved on June 30, will cost the County an amount “not to exceed $110,000” for Public Health Nursing Services and another amount “not to exceed $97,000 for Environmental Health Services. for a total of $207,000. The word “nurse,” however, has been removed from the description of the new position, which will be “Coordinator of Community Health Services.” The duties of this position closely resemble the duties of the present Director of Public Health. In other words, another layer of management has been superimposed on what existed up to now.
The Commissioners unanimously passed Resolution 9-18, a “Joint resolution restructuring the Gilpin County Public Health Agency by creation of the position of Contract Director of the Gilpin County Public Health Agency and eliminating the employed position of Director of Public Health.”
The final clause of this Resolution reads: “This Resolution constitutes the final decision of the Board of County Commissioners with respect to the administrative appeal by the current employed Director of Public Health, seeking reversal of the decision to eliminate the position of employed Director of Public Health.”
Commissioner Schmalz expressed himself as “hesitant” to vote for such a huge change in the department, but Commissioner Whitman, after assuring Schmalz that his hesitation was “appropriate,” reminded him that “We can change this if we don’t like it.” Despite his doubts, Schmalz voted along with the other Commissioners to create the new position.
The new Director, Dr. Mark Johnson, was present at the meeting.
Discussed during budget hearings
Commissioner Whitman said: “‘Outsourcing’ this department came up and was discussed at some length during budget hearings last October. In all of those very long meetings we were talking of how to get the most bang for the buck in a tightening budget situation. Jeanne [Commissioner Nicholson] had been to many meetings etc. where ‘outsourcing’ was discussed and liked it a lot.”
He also mentioned that “Gilpin ‘outsourced’ its public health department to Boulder County for many years "before we hired our own in- house director.” Left out was the fact that Boulder County handled Gilpin’s public health long ago – in the 1970s, before gaming provided the County with enough funds to handle the program in-house.
Not opposed to outsourcing
Lavely, who has been charged with being opposed to outsourcing, has indicated that her department already outsources a number of the programs they offer. The Department partners with the Mountain Family Health Clinic in Black Hawk for public health nursing services, which include immunizations, visits to seniors and the homebound, Eagles’ Nest, etc. Their medical director, Dr. Mark Sanazaro, was the health director for the Department.
The Department also contracts with Clear Creek County to provide WIC (Women, Infants and Children) services on-site in Gilpin County. Previously, mothers of young children had to go to Boulder or Idaho Springs to obtain WIC services.
The effect of SB-194
In July 2008, SB-194 was enacted to modernize and standardize public health services across the state. The only explicit direction in the bill was that by July 2009, there should be a Local Board of Health, a Director, a Medical Director, and the creation of a Public Health Agency. At that time, the first three were already in place; the Public Health Agency was created by ordinance on July 22, 2008. In other words, the Department has been in complete compliance.
Meetings are taking place state-wide to standardize and improve public health service delivery across the board. According to Lavely, the State Board of Health and the State Department of Public Health and Environment have been “very forthcoming in stating that this is a process that is going to take three to five years.” This is a three-phase process, she emphasized, with the first phase being the creation of the four required features of a department. “Clear Creek County,” she pointed out, “had to hire a Public Health Director.” For a number of places across the state, this was “a big thing to have happen, because it really was a structural change. But we were already there.” There are four acceptable models for a local public health agency; Gilpin County’s current organization fits completely into Option 2.
With the State now entering Phase Two of the process, Lavely has been appointed to a state-wide committee of about ten to help the planning process. This appointment, she stressed, is not affected by her losing her job. This committee will develop recommendations to give to the State Department of Public Health in December.
She is very clear that “another message that has been made repeatedly from the State is ‘hold your horses; don’t do anything right now; we don’t know where we’re going; please maintain.’ ”
An “administrative heist”?
One of the areas being discussed is cooperation across county lines, where previously service delivery has been constrained by county boundaries. “Public health surmounts those boundaries pretty readily,” Lavely says. “There is a finite amount of money in this state available to us, so it makes sense for us to reconsider the way we’ve been doing things. I am a big proponent of regionalizing public health delivery. But I have learned that ‘regionalizing’ means something different to me than what has happened here. We have always had a regionalized approach to public health, by having contractual arrangements with our neighboring counties. It’s a way to maximize the finite dollars.”
“But this,” she said, “is more of an administrative heist. There are a number of ways in which this could have happened, one of which would have been including me; I’m the hired expert.” This transition has been developed and planned “very secretively,” she added.
A brief history
Asked how long this transition to the new model of service has been planned, Lavely replied “I have no idea.” She was officially told of her termination as Director on June 5. She had heard rumors a week or so earlier. She gave a brief history of her understanding of the process:
A meeting took place on November 17, for which Lavely received the agenda the day before. She was to meet with County Manager Roger Baker, Commissioner Nicholson, Dr. Johnson of JCPH, and some of his administrative staff. The meeting, according to Lavely, did not address the agenda at all; rather, it dealt with all the services that could be provided by Jefferson County. “Naturally,” she said, “they met with some resistance from me….It was simply not a good idea.” Jefferson County, she pointed out, has over half a million people and “they are not overstaffed.” Meanwhile, Gilpin County was already “doing all the things they said they could offer us.”
That was the last Lavely heard about the issue until Baker told her about another meeting, about regionalization, to take place on February 20. He had, she said, “been tasked with going outside with contractual arrangements with neighboring counties to take over this department.” He had approached Boulder, Clear Creek and Jefferson Counties. Boulder and Clear Creek showed no interest. “Jefferson County took the bait,” she said.
This February meeting included Nicholson, Baker, and “a few administrative members from Jefferson County.” Lavely was told that if she attended that meeting she would be fired. That was the last she heard about the transition. Although there is some talk at the County about this transition being well-publicized, Lavely notes that she has read minutes from every Commissioners’ meeting and Board of Health meeting since July 2008, and “there is zero mention of reorganization.”
Whitman says, Lavely responds
Lavely’s response to Whitman’s assertion that the transition was “discussed at some length during budget hearings last October,” is that her memory of the meeting included plans for her hiring an environmental health professional; further, that when she asked for the minutes of that meeting, she was told that the BOCC does not keep minutes of budget hearings.
Whitman also commented that “The advantages to using Jeffco are obvious. They have a big department with many specialists in all the areas we use.” Lavely notes that these specialists “are available to us currently. And I am a specialist. I have a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Yale.”
“Any one-person department,” Whitman says, “as ours has been for four years now, will always be at a disadvantage in this increasingly complex field.” “I agree!” says Lavely. “They [the commissioners] have continued to blockade any effort to fill the actual positions that have been left vacant.” Further, “it really hasn’t been a one-person department for four years….It’s two departments, Environmental Health and Public Health.”
Whitman: “We’re required to have an overall public health assessment of all aspects of health in the whole county. That’s a big order, and if we don’t do it right we’re legally at risk.” Lavely: “I did the public health assessment, and it’s a task that is generally carried out by a department of 60 to 70 people. I did that single-handedly. Commissioner Nicholson continued to say that my work products were wrong, so I wrote five different community health assessments. I personally interviewed 132 people in the county, and wrote each of them a thank-you letter. I collected over 350 surveys from community members that ended up being socio-demographically representative of the community as a whole. I am published nationally in creating community health assessments. The job has been done. We are leading the field.”
Whitman is also concerned about lawsuits: “Lawsuits about public health stuff keep cropping up. That’s why we could never consider spraying a tree for beetles….A big department like Jeffco is able to keep the legal eye out in some ways we hardly can.”
Lavely is not quite sure why Whitman is anxious. “I would be concerned about a public health department that needs to have someone with legal expertise, because they should be doing their job….If this is implicit of legislative interpretation and legal action, my sub-focus for my master’s degree in public health was in health policy.”
A previous Gilpin Public Health Department director commented that “Gilpin County has a County Attorney. If I ever had a legal issue, or a threat of a lawsuit, I just called Jim Petrock and he took care of it. That’s his job.”
The bottom line
“I am the hired expert, and they have failed to listen to me.” Jennifer Lavely says that: “what happens in rural areas a lot is that there’s a big idea around local control, and that can be interpreted in many different ways.” One false way to look at it, she thinks, is to view our county – and her department – as so rural as not to want to see changes. “I’ve never seen more true grit and heart than what I’ve seen around our county. We want to be treated with dignity and respect.”
“What’s happening to me is between me and the Commissioners. But I have a profound concern for what’s going on in the community. I am concerned about this kind of decision-making and the effect it will have on the community…. I hope they are making the right decision on behalf of the community because, after all, that’s why they were elected.”
Lavely has no definite future plans, though she hopes to remain in the community, and would like to continue working in public health.
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