Dear Editor,

The Peak to Peak Housing and Human Services Alliance (P2PHHSA) is a group of organizations, agencies, and community members who meet to identify and address the need for equitable access to services, programming, and funding to positively address housing and human service issues of western Boulder County (the mountains). The Alliance provides the advocacy and coordination needed for the western third of Boulder County to represent residents' human service and basic needs support.

For over a decade, the P2PHHSA has worked with the help of a support contractor funded by a grant for Boulder County. We recently learned that our grant was not renewed for 2025, and there is no parent organization to absorb the cost of this service and ensure its continuation. P2PHHSA leadership is working on a solution to move forward until funding can be restored down the road.

The work provided by our contracted coordinator, Katrina Harms, has enabled our community to have representation with Boulder County and a larger regional table and to provide a relied-upon voice for the residents of our region. Over the years it has been a positive move toward equitable access to the programs and services the rest of the country enjoys. With Katrina’s help, progress has been made in housing, transportation, physical and mental health resources, and funding to provide local staffing to coordinate residents' access to Boulder County departments and programs through the P2PHHSA Human Services Fair in Nederland. Maintaining this hard-fought access, connections, and contact point for county departments has been vital to the mountain regions' well-being and vitality.

 Programs funded and operating on a county level are not always easily accessible to many mountain residents. Often, mountain folks are the ones experiencing problems with access - and they are the ones that need it the most. The work has always been about voicing the barriers present and advocating for real and equitable access to programs and services.

Katrina Harms has been a vital part of many key gains for our community. She has worked as part of the collaborations that address identified needs for his part of Boulder County, including the Mountain Rides transportation service and advocacy for establishing

the mountain offices of Clinica and Mental Health Partners. Katrina has also facilitated our vaccine and mental health clinics.

We thank Boulder County for its support in prior years, and hope that funding can be restored for this vital service to mountain residents of Boulder County. And we express our heartfelt thanks to our coordinator Katrina Harms, for a decade of selfless service to those in need in our community.

Tom Mahowald & Annette Treufeldt-Franck

P2PHHSA Chair and Vice Chair