By Jon Huang
This October, the El Paso County Citizen Outreach Group hosted its annual Citizens College, a weeklong course to inform the public about county functions. Presentations included information about county government, public works and emergency management, county assessor, clerk and recorder, treasurer and human services. In addition, there were presentations from the Pikes Peak Workforce Center, El Paso County Public Health and the district attorney’s office. Participants also toured the jail and coroner’s office and took a stroll at Bear Creek Regional Park while learning about county parks and recreation.
On the first night, citizens put together a mock county budget to learn the difficulties of prioritizing the expansive needs of the county. Yearly, each department presents its budget proposals to the commission, which decides how much to fund each department. From the sheriff to parks, every department has a backlog of projects they are hoping to address, and each year the county compromises on what they believe are the most pressing priorities.
Citizens heard from El Paso Clerk and Recorder Steve Schleiker about how the security measures were employed for the election, how they successfully modified the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) workflow to decrease wait times, and how they were able to obtain a half-million-dollar government grant to help them digitize all of their records. As a custodian of public records, Schleiker has found old books and maps in the vault dating back to the 19th century, highlighting the following quote.
“Back in the day … they used to value and tax your dishes, your furniture, your jewelry, your animals. So back in 1898, the assessor’s office valued 1,500 jackasses. Today, I think that’s about 600,000 here in El Paso.”
Participants learned how the county’s Department of Human Services deals with low-income individuals and families, fielding about 270 encounters a day. Currently, 25% of county citizens are on Medicaid and 10% are on the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — the vast majority comprises working families. The DHS also supports about 7,000 people a month through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Family program, which provides financial support to families with little or no income. The county’s Child Protection Services, the largest by volume in the state, handled 23,000 hotline phone calls last year. Of them, the department performed 5,700 home visits, resulting in about 3,600 cases requiring substantial intervention. Of the services provided through DHS, undocumented immigrants only have access to Medicaid for medical emergencies and child welfare services.
Ever wonder about the roads in the count? Public Works Deputy Chief Engineer Jeff Manchester said the county maintains 4,442 miles of paved roads — the equivalent distance from Colorado Springs to Dublin, Ireland. Every two to three years, the department conducts a survey to determine road quality and identify problem areas. On average, untreated roads have an expected lifespan of 20 years. Manchester said a full road rehabilitation costs six to eight times more than preventive treatment. Hence, the county’s program prioritizes regular preventive maintenance on newer roads to help prolong their lifespan. The county’s current pavement condition index, which is a weighted measure of road quality, is 69 (fair) and has improved over the years. The five-year goal is 74 (satisfactory) under the current funding restrictions (for reference, above 80 is good). Despite the growth in recent years, improvement has been steady. The county won the 2023 Colorado Asphalt Pavement Association’s award for surface treatment.
Moving on to the El Paso County Parks and Recreation Department; the department manages 8,000 acres of parks and open space, including 144 miles of trails with a staff of 29 people. For residents who live in unincorporated El Paso County, the county’s noxious weed specialist will come out and advise them on weed mitigation.
Mitigation at the district attorney’s office is challenging. At the DA’s office, citizens learned about the challenges of working within state legislation while enforcing the law in their own communities. One challenging area is the office’s ability to deal with juvenile crime amid the statewide restriction on juvenile detentions beds, which currently limits the county’s bed limit to 27. Originally decreased in 2021 to funnel youth toward more community based intervention programs, 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said the decrease has also resulted in some juvenile offenders being prematurely released.
“It’s a revolving door. They might commit some really heinous, high-level offenses that would keep an adult in custody for months and months waiting trial, and these kids will be out in hours, sometimes,” Allen said. “It’s really not a good system. If you think about kids that are committing these types of violence offenses, they probably don’t come from the best home life so there’s not a good support system at home for them anyway. And these kids are going right back into that home life, into a situation that’s not going to serve them in a way that can keep them out of trouble.”
At the coroner’s office, participants met the staff, including Robb Stevenson, a death investigator who examines the body on the scene. When asked about the hardest part of the job, Stevenson mentioned infant cases, as well as the following. “When a body is decomposed, which is usually after like a 24-hour period … because of identification … smells, because of how you have to maneuver them to get them out, those sorts of things make them more difficult,” he said. “Then for me personally, it’s just cases that are very relatable to my own life experience. I had a son who was in the military, and then when I see a young person in the military get into a car accident, those are difficult emotionally to deal with.”
All in all, this course was an opportunity to engage with local elected officials, ask questions and learn how different parts of the county influence one another.
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