Mindy Leary, Gilpin County. On August 20, 2019, the Gilpin County Board of County Commissioners met at the Gilpin County Courthouse for their regular meeting and discussed the treasurer report, financial statements audit, strategic improvements requests and Xcel Energy’s Wildfire Mitigation Program.

County treasurer and public trustee, Mary Lorenz, approached the table to present the first quarter of 2019 as the public trustee and then as treasurer, she presented the First Half of 2019. Foreclosures are at a low which is good news, remarked Commissioner Gail Watson.

“The bottom line looks good (on the semi-annual report),” said Chair Linda Isenhart. Commissioner Ron Engels moved to accept the reports, Watson seconded and all were in favor.

Finance Director, Clorinda Smith, Jim Hinkle and Chris Parker, CPA, approached the table and presented the 2018 Audit of the Annual Financial Statements. Parker said, “I’m pleased to report we found no transactions that the city entered into during the year which lacked authoritative guidance. We had no disagreements and we encountered no difficulties.” Watson moved to accept the 2018 financial statements and all were in favor.

Watson expressed confusion as to why strategic improvements would be requested now versus during end-of-the-year budget requests. Business Analyst Cindy Carter responded, “There’s a lot of implementation that has to take place with the companies that we’re working with to do a lot of the back-end work before implementing and training for next year.” 

Included in the strategic improvements request was approval for permit application and document management. Stephen Strohminger, community development department director, elucidated on the permit application improvement and how a resident could submit building permits and plans from anywhere with internet access. “Driveway permits could be automated,” said Strohminger. 

Automating permit applications would include the ability to take online payments. Commissioner Ron Engels asked if we would be passing on the convenience fee to the customer by implementing credit card payments. Strohminger responded in the affirmative. Watson made a motion conditional upon revisiting for Engels’ concerns and all were in favor.

Document Management Improvements center on digitizing county documents. Information First was chosen based on financial sustainability for the county and the ability to host it on the county’s server. In-house versus cloud management appeals to Engels but he expressed the need for a “very robust backup system in case of hardware failure.” 

Carter expressed another advantage of the document management software in being able to formulate workflows such as documentation for a meeting. The packets for the meetings would have the proper security and would be accessible to the commissioners for review. Watson made a motion and all were in favor.  

Xcel Energy representatives, Preston Gibson and Kirk Scheitler, then presented Xcel’s Wildfire Mitigation Program for Gilpin County. It was pointed out that the number of households at high risk in Colorado are estimated at 366,200. Also, there are about 2,200 miles of transmission pipeline, 1,150 of which are in the wildfire risk zone. 

Gibson said, “We have a lot of concern about that as a company, about whether we might be caught up in a wildfire with our equipment, that we might exacerbate a wildfire with our equipment, or could even potentially start a wildfire with our equipment.” The purpose of the presentation is to address that and minimize any safety issues.   

Isenhart asked, “Do you work with our emergency director in Gilpin County?” Scheitler responded, “One of the main components of this is how do we work with our communities? How do we start building that partnership? What plans are in place with the county already and how to integrate those? That’s what we’re just starting to do.”

Isenhart mentioned that half of the county is served by United Power and that she had heard of no outreach from them. Watson replied that United Power contracted with Asplundh to mitigate their power lines, about 3-4 years ago. Watson expressed her gratitude to Excel and mentioned how Gilpin County has been paying 50 percent of the residents’ costs in creating defensible spaces.   

(Originally published in the August 29, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)