GILPIN COUNTY — Budgets and accessibility were the principal topics of conversation at the Cookies with Commissioners meeting on September 14 at the Community Center. The commissioners explained the upcoming budget process and answered questions about accessing County documents.

The meeting started with a short video about developing the County budget, which is a state-mandated fiscal plan for the coming fiscal year. The commissioners also handed out a sheet which contained pie charts of the revenue and expenses for fiscal year 2026.

The budget season that started in July will include a series of meetings in October and November that are open to the public. Commissioner Susan Berumen used the term “priority-based budgeting” to describe the budget process, where needs and asks by departments are ranked in priority order to determine which department requests are accepted.

Commissioner Sandy Hollingsworth spoke about the County reserves that are set aside for emergencies or for acquisitions, primarily for water rights. Hollingsworth acknowledged that the County had intentionally spent reserve money over the last several years on deferred maintenance that was intended for capital improvements. She said that they are caught up now and that going forward the focus will be on regular maintenance.

 During the questions and answers section of the meeting, the issue of accessibility of commissioner meetings and county government documents was brought up.

County Manager Ray Rears spoke about the impact of Colorado’s digital accessibility legislation that took effect July 1, 2025. This legislation requires all state and local government entities to provide digital documents in formats that are fully accessible to all individuals with disabilities. The term for this conversion into different formats is called digital remediation.

Rears stated that because of the costs and penalties associated with publishing documents that are not in compliance with the new law, the County had to withhold publishing the majority of the meeting documents online. Remediation software is available to handle the task, but it requires human interaction.

Hollingsworth said that the County can print out all the documents for the commissioner meetings and work sessions for anyone who wants to come to the Courthouse to pick them up, but printouts sometimes run into hundreds of pages. A request would need to be made to the County Manager's office prior to the meeting.

The other issue of accessibility regarding non-meeting government documents involved submitting a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request. Hollingsworth noted requests should be as specific as possible, since only the first hour of County employee time is free.

Holding commissioner meetings at night again was also brought up. The extra costs involved, the difficulty of getting in-person participation, and the length of meetings involving complex issues were cited by the commissioners as reasons to maintain daytime meetings.

Berumen said that the Cookies with Commissioners meetings were an attempt to hold evening meetings to hear directly from constituents in a setting that allowed for extended conversations. Further, the public can attend board meetings virtually, and recordings of the board meetings are available online.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Gilpin County Board of County Commissioners will be on September 22 at the County Courthouse at 9 a.m.