Mindy Leary, Gilpin County. On March 3, 2020, the Gilpin County Board of County Commissioners met at the Gilpin County Courthouse for their regular meeting. Commissioners Gail Watson, Linda Isenhart and Ron Engels were in attendance. Highlights include a discussion of the jail population, a liquor tasting application and a letter from CC4CA to the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. 

Division Chief Sean Wheeler and Sheriff Kevin Armstrong met with the board to discuss jail population. Wheeler and Armstrong spoke of different drug treatments for inmates which would require “the housing of the drugs for detoxification, full-time possible medical staff and even the potential of a caseworker. Ninety-five percent of our inmates go through some sort of drug protocol but the state is forcing us to do the work, to purchase the drugs, to hire the caseworker, etc.”

Isenhart said, “It sounds important but it sounds like a big dollar amount too, but I guess we don’t know.” 

Armstrong said, “I think there has to be a collaborative effort to be able to help these people. We all know that drug abuse has underlying issues; could be mental health issues or other that they use that as a self-medication to get through the day. How do we conquer that? How do we fix that?”

Isenhart said, “There’s that Rhode Island project on Youtube that gave people the immediate treatment they needed in jail but also segued into a halfway house and they would get training and some of the success stories were amazing.”

County Manager Abel Montoya said, “The best way to tackle this is to create a criminal justice committee that would include the judges, district attorney, sheriff’s office, and also mental health services.”

“We need to be partnering with other jurisdictions to help these people with the treatments they need to fulfill some of these legislative mandates,” said Armstrong, before remarks on how most of the Gilpin jail population are from elsewhere.

Last month, the board adopted a new resolution expanding the amount of liquor tastings from 24 dates per to 156 dates per year. The state of Colorado allows approximately 300 but Gilpin kept it at about half.

Immediately Mid-County Liquors took them up on it. A new application was submitted, with $100 fee, for additional tastings this year. Deputy Clerk Sharon Cate said, “All is in good order. They run a very good, clean business. We have no concerns with them at all.” The board approved the application.

Finally, CC4CA presented a letter they wrote to the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality in which they objected revisions to the NEPA rules. Jamie Harkins, CC4CA President and Mayor of the City of Lafayette wrote, “Colorado Communities for Climate Action is writing in support of preserving current regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act and objects to the Council on Environmental Quality’s proposal to revise these rules.”

The letter continues, “Yet the new proposal appears to be specifically designed to exclude climate change considerations when evaluating the environmental impacts of federal projects.” 

Harkins explains that while CC4CA supports reasonable updating and streamlining of processes and decision-making, they do not warrant eliminating the impacts of climate disruption. 

(Originally published in the March 12, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)