Officials receive pushback
Some oppose move to leave Tri-County Health Department
Douglas County commissioners heard pushback from residents Tuesday afternoon about their plan to separate from the Tri-County Health Department over its mask mandate.
It’s still unclear how much it might cost Douglas County to set up its own health department, or what the next steps are in separating. The county has been part of Tri-County for more than 50 years.
The health department’s board voted on July 8 to require residents of Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties to wear masks in indoor public spaces, and outdoor ones if it isn’t possible to stand six feet away from others. The order allows communities to opt out, which the three Douglas County commissioners said they would do.
A day after the health department board voted, the commissioners announced Douglas County would leave the threecounty arrangement.
A notice letter to Tri-County said Douglas County will leave on July 11, 2021, but Commissioner Roger Partridge said they might complete the transition sooner. Until they reach a new arrangement, Tri-County will provide services as usual.
Commissioner Lora Thomas asked for “grace” as the county navigates its next steps.
She said the commissioners decided to withdraw because the Tri-County Board of Health had decided to require masks, despite a recommendation from health department executive director
Dr. John Douglas that Douglas County be exempt. Two of the three board members representing Douglas County voted against the order, but one voted in favor, giving the wider mandate a 5-4 majority.
“What it told us was that the unelected board members were showing us they were willing to use their powers to force policies on Douglas County that weren’t even necessary,” she said.
Nine of 10 members of the public who spoke during Tuesday’s meeting disagreed with the commissioners on the mask issue, and seven others submitted written comments criticizing the decision. Mark Dawson, of Highlands Ranch, said he felt the commissioners had “politicized” a public health issue and placed residents at risk from the virus.
“I’m greatly disheartened,” he said. “It’s not an ‘I’ issue, but a ‘we’ issue.”
Commissioner Abe Laydon rejected allegations that the issue was political, and said the county had been moving toward starting its own health department for years, as its population grew.
“It’s not as much a divorce as an empty nest,” he said after the meeting.
Another resident who spoke, Glenn Harm, of Highlands Ranch, said he thought the commissioners should have conducted a full analysis of the cost of setting up their own health department, since they could opt the county out of the mask mandate.
“This should not have been the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.
Laydon said he thinks Douglas County can save money by eliminating duplication of services and cutting those that aren’t needed. State law requires all public health departments to provide services like controlling contagious diseases and collecting birth and death statistics, but other services can differ based on a county’s needs.
Douglas, the Tri-County executive director, was less confident that a separation would help anyone financially. The three counties each pay $7.10 per resident, with the rest of the department’s roughly $42 million budget coming from state and federal funds. The department could lose roughly a quarter of its budget if Douglas County decides to offer all services on its own, though Tri-County would be open to discussing contracts for certain services, he said.
If that happens, Tri-County might need to ask Adams and Arapahoe counties for more funding because central costs are no longer split three ways, and Douglas County also would have to pay for those services itself, Douglas said.
The department has roughly 380 employees, with some working in one county and some in programs for all three, like smoking prevention and responding to disease outbreaks, Douglas said. They’ll try to limit job losses, he said, but it’s too early to know how many employees could be laid off.
“It’s a complicated 50-year relationship that we’re figuring out how to unravel,” he said.
“It’s a complicated 50-year relationship that we’re figuring out how to unravel.”
Dr. John Douglas, Tri-County Health Dept. executive director