Roger Baker, County Manager.     The Tuesday meeting of the Board of County Commissioners was (as is often the case) somewhat at cross purposes with the lengthy work session that followed. Though many of the items on the regular agenda were routine, a couple of them involved expenditures that were unanticipated and unbudgeted.

The Commissioners have expressed keen interest, for example, in moving ahead with developing better broadband internet service throughout the County. One of the means for doing that is to demonstrate to the federal government that we are, essentially, underserved in internet coverage, but a Federal Communications Commission map came out recently that showed the County is in relatively good shape.

The mechanism for challenging that finding is complicated, and outside the knowledge base of any County employee—so that means contracting with someone to prepare the challenge. A broadband consultant who has worked with both Gilpin and Clear Creek County recently is willing to do the work, but it will cost another $1,325. Not a large amount—but not something for which we had budgeted.

Another expenditure was deferred pending better information, but there’s no doubt the County will end up spending more for election computers this year.

County Clerk and Recorder Colleen Stewart was present to explain that the laptop computers currently utilized during the elections are no longer supported by the state’s election infrastructure and can no longer be used. She is repurposing a couple of laptops used in other operations of her office, but still needs four new ones, at a cost of nearly $2,400—again, not a large sum, but not one for which the County had budgeted.

It would be nice if the state would step forward and cover the costs of such upgrades, of course, but that’s probably not going to happen. So Colleen and the Commissioners are looking at other options to at least keep that cost down, possibly by utilizing some underused desktop computers.

There also was an interesting discussion about the County’s preparation of a Cost Allocation Plan for the first time; this is something that (again) was prepared by a consultant, but at least it will pay an immediate dividend. The cost of preparing that plan was about $4,000, but the County will get back about $35,000 in additional reimbursement from the state, mostly in Human Services costs.

But both of these are relatively minor, as compared with the large sums being discussed with the Finance and Human Resource Departments during the work session that followed the meeting.

Here, too, much of the subject matter was routine—changes to the employee handbook, suggested revisions to the 2015 holiday schedule.

But the underlying issue was the continuing budget struggle the County is facing, and how we are being squeezed between flat salaries (which are reducing both the number and quality of applicants the County is getting for new job openings) and the ever-increasing costs of insuring those employees.

The total cost for medical insurance for the County’s employees this year is almost $1.7 million, and the amount keeps rising every year, just as it has for every employer. That’s a real problem, and something that the County is going to have to address soon in order to maintain basic services, much less the programs that enrich our lives like the Library and Community Center.

And though it’s only August, the Commissioners are already looking ahead to the budget cycle; a sort of opening session with all the County Department Heads and Elected Officials will be held after the next Commissioners’ meeting, August 19.

That should be REALLY interesting…