John Scarffe, Gilpin County. The Gilpin County Board of County Commissioners heard a report from the Gilpin Ambulance Authority during a regular meeting at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 2019, at the Gilpin County Courthouse. During a work session following the brief meeting, the Board received an update from the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and discussed a proposal to bring network connectivity into County office locations via a radio and receivers.

Gilpin Ambulance Authority Manager Brandon Daruna submitted a report to the Board regarding ambulance licensure inspections. The inspection for 2019 was performed on five units of the Gilpin Ambulance Authority on December 18, 2018, and the Black Hawk Fire Department and the Timberline Fire Department.

The vehicles, which are all four-wheel drive, were inspected by fleet technicians from the Black Hawk City Shops and were found to be in mechanically safe operating condition. “Ambulance staffing of the Gilpin Ambulance Authority is adequate and in-line with the standards of the ambulance industry and the Advanced Life Support designations,” Daruna wrote in a memo to the Board.

Authority employees function under the medical direction of Dr. Peter Vellman, M.D., from Centura Health, St. Anthony Central Hospital in Lakewood. Denver Metropolitan Medical Protocols are used as guidelines for pre-hospital care with updates and revised medication lists.

An update was scheduled for January 2019, according to the memo.

“Controlled drugs and narcotics are closely monitored and accounted for.”
The 2020 inspection will take place in December 2019, or earlier for newly acquired vehicles, according to the memo. “All vehicles are certified through December 31, 2019.

During the work session, CDOT Officials Paul Jesaitis and Aaron Greco explained that a ballot initiative for repaving failed that would have increased revenue, but overall, revenue hasn’t increased since the gas tax was raised in 1991, so they are hoping the legislature will give CDOT much needed revenue.

CDOT is still poor but trying to get what they can accomplished. CDOT is working on a central I-70 project and has replaced 50 of the worst bridges by bonding the projects up front. “Some of those bridges were downright bad,” he said. “The worst of the worst are taken care of.”

Through the federal Faster Bridge Program, CDOT was able to do enough work on the bridge at I-70 at the bottom of Floyd Hill to hold it together for another five or ten years. “Now we do have to hold it together for five years and hope we can get some funding,” he said.

CDOT still has $100 million to replace that bridge, but it will cost $550 million, and 80 percent of funding goes to maintain the system, so that amount doesn’t exist. CDOT has some really big needs and has about $3 billion in projects, and every year they don’t get funding they get further behind.

In March, CDOT will begin a large project on the westbound lane of I-70. A project team has been studying a proposal to build an express lane on a 12-mile stretch of westbound I-70 in the mountains between Empire Junction and the Veterans Memorial Tunnel, similar to the I-70 Mountain Express Lane, according to the CDOT website. Construction is planned to begin in late spring or summer 2019, assuming funding is identified, according to the website.

The project proposes adding a 12-mile tolled westbound peak-period shoulder lane between the Veterans Memorial Tunnels, mile point 243, and the U.S. Highway 40 and I-70 interchange (exit 232). Paul Jesaitis said he was glad that was funded.

Board Chair Linda Isenhart asked if CDOT will have another opportunity to put funds for repaving on the ballot. Greco said that the new governor hasn’t put a plan in place yet, but key legislators are working behind the scenes. The problem is that the governor has signaled he doesn’t want to do anything that doesn’t have revenue behind it.

“I think there are some folks who are working very hard to bring new funding into the picture,” Greco said. They are working on enterprise mechanisms, such as tollways, with which the funds go back into the highways.

They are working on creative ideas and have a working group on that now, Greco said. “We’re keeping abreast of all that and would be happy to share information. Old and new legislators are trying to find transportation solutions.”

You’re seeing more and more electric cars on the road, so they don’t pay a gas tax. That’s a logical place to start to create a long-term revenue source. You would get a monthly credit statement.

Greco said they have done this in California and Oregon and treat roads like any other utility. If Congress could include something like that, it could be the way transportation is funded in the future. Some folks love it and some don’t.

Privacy concerns are always there, but technology is changing around us every day. “We have smart apps that monitor security systems and it’s a whole network we’re learning to exist in,” Greco said.

A speaker said no one uses the toll lanes, but you can purchase data that tracks cell phones of people who go through the lanes, and they have improved traffic a lot. He can measure the speeds of the vehicles, and it’s a very powerful tool for engineers to identify where traffic isn’t moving.

CDOT has a bottle neck reduction project to figure out why things aren’t working. They have a robust program going after spots, and they try to do two per year.

CDOT gets money from a lot of different sources, but $550 million per year comes from the Federal Government and roughly 1/3rd from the federal gas tax along with the Faster Bridge funds. “That’s how we’ve been able to do some projects,” he said.

Maintaining our system, bridges, walls, tunnels, signals, surface treatment are about $150 million below what they need, so every asset has been quantified in terms of conditions. CDOT has a thousand buildings and $755 million of asset management.

About $500 million goes to just those two categories, including fixing pot holes. The wall replaced budget for thousands of walls is $5 million per year, which is not near enough money. On top of the $755 million, CDOT has about $200 million of pass through money to organizations like the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG).

It costs $150 to $200 million replacing signal controllers with advanced controllers. New technology has allowed CDOT to connect signals on Belleview Avenue in Denver with new controllers. The controllers talk to each other, and the computer decides the best cycle time to move the traffic.

During a special event, the computer will make adjustments. “After you add it all up, we’re left with $80 million a year for capacity projects. One capacity project would be widening Highway 6.

“That doesn’t do much for us to add capacity. CDOT is spending $300 million for a project on Highway 470 right now. Douglas County is assisting in providing funding for the project, he said.

People don’t want toll lanes, but CDOT has to do something to get some revenue. When presented the options at public meetings, 80 percent preferred toll. “It’s just a staggering need. It’s not like we won’t listen. The best thing to do is to say, ‘Hey CDOT,’ we want something done, and we’re willing to help pay for it.”

Commissioner Ron Engles asked if someone comes up and writes a check to widen Highway 6, how would that fit into their priorities. Bald said they have a Transportation Planning Group, which reviews applications and decides based on all the applications which ones will be funded.

CDOT has Highway 6 in Clear Creek Canyon closed for rock fall work. Years ago the rock would come down and they didn’t have a problem. “Clear Creek is one of those canyons we have to keep working on or a rock will come down and hurt somebody,” he said.

Next year CDOT will close Highway 6 from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. to replace lighting in all the tunnels Commissioner Gail Watson said it’s a struggle between the Post Office, which wants her box located in a specific place, and CDOT, because they leave a berm in front of her mail box.

CDOT has 10 employees in Gilpin County in the winter and doesn’t have time to get out and shovel people’s mail boxes. He will ask if there is a way to keep from piling up snow around a mail box. “If you have a list of things, send it on, and the crew may already be aware of them,” he said.

Tobias Tonelli with Teryx, Inc., presented a proposal to bring network connectivity into County office locations via a radio and receivers. Currently, Gilpin County connects each separate building back to the Courthouse using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), a network that utilizes a standard internet connection to network through the firewalls at multiple locations via an encrypted tunnel.

The firewalls utilize internet connectivity provided by the two Internet Service Providers (ISP), a third party vendor that charges a monthly fee to provide internet connectivity, according to a memo to the Board. Each location must pay a monthly charge for internet connectivity.

Due to the recent installation of a Fiber internet connection at the Justice Center, the County can utilize the 100 x 100 speeds to expand the network to the Recreation Center, the Barn and Public Health utilizing Gilpin owned equipment to create a Wide Area Network WAN), a way of connecting multiple buildings, departments or offices across distances, according to the memo.

The goal of this project is to bring the network connectivity of as many Gilpin County locations as possible. In phase one, Teryx recommended that networking equipment be purchased and installed in the dispatch server room that would manage the wireless radios and the routing of data between the Justice Center (main hub) and the satellite buildings of the Recreation Center, Barn and Public Health.

“Teryx would then install a radio and antenna on the tower outside the Justice Center to ‘beam’ an internet connection south to receivers at each location. The upfront one-time cost for implementing Phase One is estimated at about $5,000.”

Once connectivity was established and tested, Gilpin County would no longer be required to pay for the monthly Internet costs charged by the ISPs. Phase One would result in a savings of $355 per month or $4,260 per year.

Phase Two is an optional solution when the Public Health and Human Services offices are relocated to Highway119. “Rather than paying for the installation and monthly cost of a new internet connection, we recommend installing a separate radio and antenna on the Justice Center tower,” Tonelli wrote.

This radio and antenna would “beam” the internet connection north to the new Health and Human Services building. With the radio equipment installed on the tower, it would be feasible to also connect the other County buildings north of the Justice Center, including Public Works and the Library, at a minimal one-time hardware and installation cost.

Phase Two would result in a savings of $300 per month or $3,600 per year. Tonelli said it was always his vision to replace the IPS and take out the middle man for security. Isenhart said she likes having it controlled throughout the County.

Watson said she is concerned about the redundancy and is nervous that they would be putting all the County buildings on a microwave. Tonelli said they have two ISPs in the County, and the locations have coaxial cable. If fiber goes down, they have redundancy currently.

Engels said that it makes sense that phase two is a new project. It really is phase one and then the rehabilitation of the new building. Tonelli said that let’s implement phase one and make sure it works. With the building being moved, do public health in phase one and then when it moves he’ll take the radio up there.

County Manager Abel Montoya said they will bring this back in April when they have everything lined up. Isenhart said, “I think it’s pretty exciting, some things we’ve been thinking about for a long time.”

(Originally published in the February 14, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)