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2021 Arapahoe County Annual Report

Whether they’ve been here for a couple months or their entire life, Arapahoe County residents realize that their community provides the best of everything Colorado has to offer. From babies to boomers and beyond, our residents put down roots, raise families, start and run businesses, and embrace the endless opportunities and amenities that make Colorado so unique.

As the beating heart of local and regional government, the County is here for our neighbors on their best days—and their worst. For more than two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged our community in myriad ways—and Arapahoe County has responded. From securing personal protective equipment and standing up testing and vaccination sites, to allocating business grants and distributing food and housing assistance, the County consistently provided critical services and information, helping residents and businesses alike recover from unprecedented setbacks.

The County faced another curveball in 2021 when Douglas County, and later Adams County, announced their intention to abandon the 55-year public health partnership with the Tri-County Health Department, which forced Arapahoe County to establish our own public health department by Jan. 1, 2023. This unfolded during another transition—as recent State legislation will require the County to split the multi-county 18th Judicial District by 2025—and amid lingering questions about how to address the County’s aging infrastructure (especially the detention center), which remain unresolved but cannot be remedied within current budget constraints.

Amid these many challenges, the County also achieved many successes in 2021. We helped residents and businesses recover from the pandemic, increased access to government services, improved outcomes for our most vulnerable groups, maintained our infrastructure, provided new recreational and outdoor experiences, ran secure elections, expanded regional partnerships and collaboration, and supported economic recovery. Many of these efforts would not have been possible without the one-time funding received from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which helped financially weather the pandemic and deliver needed services without negatively impacting the budget.

Recognizing the need to chart a new course that aligns with our financial situation, the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), created a new Strategic Plan that will help the County preserve our quality of life, whether urban, suburban or rural, on our roads or on our trails, at home or at work. By celebrating, protecting and connecting our many diverse assets, and by executing fiscally responsible policies that are mindful of our history and anticipate our future, Arapahoe County reached new levels of success in 2021 and remains the place we’re proud to call home.

— The Board of County Commissioners

A Year in the Life of Arapahoe County

One way we gauge our effectiveness is via Align Arapahoe, our framework for performance assessments that measures:

The examples below illustrate how the County is achieving our goals across all departments.

Sustaining and Improving

Quality of Life

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Small Business Relief Grants

Small businesses are vital to our local economy and form the commercial and cultural essence of our communities. When they had to shut their doors, Arapahoe County was there, helping 112 businesses such as Dig Deep with nearly $4.5 million in relief-grant funding to enable them to stabilize and reopen.

Getting Back to Work

Arapahoe/Douglas Works! (ADW!) career centers provided job searching resources, online workshops, and trainings to more than 140,000 community members. Some needed to brush up on skills, while others found a job on their own through the ADW! database of more than 10,000 active jobs. More than 11,500 job seekers worked directly with career specialists to secure a new employment opportunity. Individuals who used ADW! services secured an average annual salary of $49,992, which is $3,405 more in annual earnings than the median income of all other hires in the region.

Giving Everyone a Safe Place to Call Home

The County finalized 85 adoptions of children from foster care through our Collaborative Foster Care and Adoption program, which also provides families training and support. And our Child and Adult Protective Services (CAPS) program helped our clients find safe and secure home environments during a time when family stability has rarely been more chaotic. In 2021, 80.8% of children involved in this program remained safely at home or in the home of their relatives or kin; 461 children were served in foster, group or congregate care; and 527 children were served in relative care.

Addressing Multigenerational Poverty

The Family Navigator program—part of our Two-Generation (2Gen) Approach—helps address the multilayered needs of families experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of becoming homeless. By determining the best options for attaining safe and stable housing, and identifying other supports, we’re seeking to eradicate generational poverty by fostering economic, emotional and physical health. In 2021, these efforts served 381 households, helping virtually all of them achieve temporary, transitional, and/or permanent housing within three months of their first contacts with human services.

Sheriff’s Office Expands Mental Health Resources

Every year, the Sheriff's Office receives hundreds of calls involving a mental health crisis. But some calls don’t always require a response from a deputy. The ACSO’s Behavioral Health Response Program identifies when such calls can be more easily defused by a trained (and unarmed) civilian mental health co-responder. Last year, the Sheriff's Office hired its first three full-time licensed mental health crisis workers, or "co-responders," who are paired with deputies to address calls that involve people with mental illness or who are experiencing mental trauma. The co-responders' job is to help de-escalate the situation and get the people involved the services they need. By engaging with people who may otherwise be intimidated by a uniformed deputy, these professionals are helping keep volatile situations from turning tragic.

Guiding the County Through Explosive Growth

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Preserving Open Spaces into Perpetuity

In 2021, Arapahoe County voters approved the permanent reauthorization of the Open Space Sales and Use Tax, which will enable us to maintain, expand and improve our range of Open Spaces assets and amenities for generations to come. Through the lifetime of the program, Open Spaces has distributed more than $277 million—via our Grants and Shareback programs—to local cities, towns and special districts to support park, trail and open space improvements across the County, from the rural Eastern Plains to the densely populated City of Aurora. The County also updated the Open Spaces Master Plan, culminating a yearlong process of extensive community input, research, and program analysis that establishes priorities for this funding for the next decade and beyond.

Rental Assistance for Vulnerable Populations

One of the most widespread and devastating impacts of the pandemic was residents experiencing deep rental and mortgage debt and the resulting fear of eviction and loss of basic housing stability. Arapahoe County’s initial distributions of emergency rental assistance moved three times faster than the national average, reaching a peak of nearly $1 million in a single month. A total of 1,071 households received nearly $7.3 million in critical funding– saving them from possible eviction, utility shutoffs, and food insecurity.

Making Housing More Affordable and Attainable

The County leverages state and federal partnerships to make it easier for low- and middle-income people to be able to live within the County. In the 2021, Arapahoe County administered $1,140,434 in Community Development Block Grants to provide housing assistance and energy efficiency repairs, financing more than 385 units of affordable housing via HOME Investment Partnership Funds.

Making Capital Investments

The Quincy Avenue/Gun Club intersection became one of our more visible infrastructure projects in 2021. The County worked with E-470 and the City of Aurora and invested $12.8 million in this innovative intersection, which improves traffic flow in this rapidly growing area. We also funded nearly $4 million across the County in new underpasses improving trail access and safety; upgraded playgrounds and expanded athletic fields; new multimodal trails for bike, pedestrian, and equestrian use; stream restoration and native habitat conservation; and new parks offering an urban oasis. Finally, the Board authorized staff to begin designing a capital project to address the most significant issues within our detention facility–including medical capacity and support services–providing time to address the long-term needs within the facility.

Responsible Oil and Gas Regulations

The County approved new oil and gas regulations in 2021, concluding a two-year process with extensive public outreach. These guidelines address key safety, traffic and quality of life considerations, including light, noise, odor and visual mitigation and traffic effects, balancing resident concerns and industry operations.

Delivering Water Where it’s Needed Most

The Watkins/Bennett Area Vision Study is examining growth opportunities for the eastern area, which will grow by between 6,700 and 32,800 new residents over the next 20 years. The County also secured funding for a water supply study that will help articulate opportunities without compromising expectations around water delivery and use.

Planning for Future Infrastructure Needs

The County adopted the 2040 Transportation Master Plan after nearly two years of work—including extensive public feedback—forecasting the area’s transportation needs and charting necessary improvements to minimize congestion, achieve shorter response times for first responders, and guide future growth.

Balancing the Budget

The increasing pressure for expenditure increases due to growing County workloads, without equivalent increases in revenue, makes balancing the operating budget a challenge. But the effects of the pandemic didn’t stop the County’s 2021 budget from being structurally balanced, a demonstration of our enduring commitment to fiscal responsibility.

Property taxes are the County’s largest source of revenue even though Arapahoe County’s mill levy has long been the lowest in the metro area. This creates a smaller pool from which to draw revenue even in robust economies, and 2021’s was uneven at best. The residential market saw significant increases in residential permits in 2021, though a slight flattening is projected for 2022.

The nonresidential construction market has not fared as well, declining by 4.8% in 2021 and by 9.4% in 2020. The strain on governmental budgets has also pushed public construction lower.

The Treasurer’s Office successfully collected and distributed more than $1.3 billion to more than 450 different entities. They also continued to work with businesses that needed assistance with paying their taxes, by setting up payment plans for collection of current and prior year taxes owing.

The actual value of area property increased 7.7% in the past year, to $120.5 billion. Taxable assessed value increased 7.5%, to $13.1 billion. Because the County’s revenues are growth-constrained, the General Fund for 2021 grew by $19 million, to $234.9 million, and is expected to remain relatively flat in 2022.

2021 Events

Being Together Again

The County began returning to in-person events in 2021, helping people get out of the house and gather for fun runs, holiday celebrations, family-focused activities, and other community-centric activities.

Leveraging a Newly Inspired and Engaged Community

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Meeting Our Residents Where They Live

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Arapahoe County conducted more than two dozen virtual town halls to update the public about the latest COVID-19 conditions, outline next steps, and answer questions. Virtual engagement options were expanded to increase access to business meetings and study sessions, meet with commissioners, learn about new infrastructure projects, and provide feedback about how they’d like to see the County address multiple issues.

Getting Out the Vote

The County’s Elections Division provided secure access to the ballot box for Arapahoe County’s 425,800-plus eligible voters. In 2021, the team worked with 19 different coordinating entities to create ballots containing the measures and candidates in their specific communities, processing more than 159,000 ballots for the Coordinated Election. Results were confirmed in a risk-limiting audit conducted after the election and certified by representatives from the County’s Democratic and Republican parties.

From Community Gardens to Urban Ranchers

In 2021, our 4-H program was nationally recognized for demonstrating leadership in innovative programming throughout the pandemic, working tirelessly to design engaging and creative online youth programs such as virtual baking classes and Urban Ranchers Camps. Arapahoe County’s CSU Extension Master Gardner program teaches residents young and old about the benefits of healthy eating and how to grow their own food, growing 6,533 pounds of produce for donation to local food banks.

A Record-Breaking County Fair

Following a one-year hiatus, the 115th Arapahoe County Fair came back stronger than ever and provided residents with much-needed family fun. A record-breaking 36,854 attendees—10,000 more than the previous record—turned out to enjoy festivities including 4-H youth livestock competitions, Western heritage experiences, to carnival rides, fireworks, concerts, a Mexican rodeo, and more.

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Responsive and Approachable Government

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Thanking Veterans With Better Service Options

Arapahoe County is home to the second-largest veteran population in Colorado, with more than 40,000 residents. To better meet our community needs, the County opened a second Veterans Services Office location in Aurora providing direct navigation services. This partnership with Adams County and the City of Aurora helped us serve a total of 1,381 County veterans by appointment, helped another 10,639 veterans or their family members on informational phone calls, and filed more than 500 new benefit claims, producing more than $2.7 million in favorable benefit claims for our local veterans.

Digitizing Service Delivery

Building upon the pandemic-related migration to virtual services, in 2021 the County expanded virtual service offerings. Among the highlights:

  • Our IT Department worked with Public Works and Development to build a new electronic permit system that makes it easier to apply for building, zoning and land use permits by allowing staff to process the applications more efficiently and cost effectively for the County and the applicants. Early results show a reduction of staff processing time of 30%.
  • The Motor Vehicle Division processed more than 190,000 appointment-only customer transactions at our Aurora, Littleton, and Centennial branch offices, resulting in average wait times of 15 minutes and average transaction times of 10 minutes. Customers can also skip the trip to renew their registration and plates entirely, as nearly 84,000 customer transactions were processed in 2021 using self-service renewal kiosks located at area King Soopers grocery stores.
  • Our Assessor’s Office pioneered QR codes on our Notices of Value (NOV) in 2021, making it easier for taxpayers to locate and review their records.

Reimagining Workforce Needs

Human Resources, Information Technology, and Fleet and Facilities Management departments adjusted on the fly, creating work environments that have sustained post-pandemic. Information Technology ensured that employees had the appropriate tools to collaborate with colleagues and continue to deliver services. Fleet and Facilities Management began conducting studies of County spaces to determine whether and how to consolidate facilities and offices. And Human Resources intensified hiring efforts with extensive recruitment and sign-on incentives. The department also expanded Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and initiatives that will help the County attract deeper, broader and more diverse pools of applicants.

Coroner Exceeds Performance Metrics

The Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office is one of only four coroner’s offices in Colorado to be nationally accredited by the National Association of Medical Examiners, which holds our office to high standards for medicolegal death investigation and autopsy performance. This was especially relevant in 2021, as fatality rates from accidents, homicides, and suicides rose faster than population increase indicators over 2020.

Collaborating to End Opioid Addiction

In 2021, the County helped lead negotiations between local governments and the state to determine how best to share more than $400 million in settlement funds from major drug manufacturers and distributors. As a result, local governments–including Arapahoe County–will be able to direct more than 80% of the funds, ensuring that local communities determine the best ways to combat opioid addiction and provide better treatment options.

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For more information visit www.arapahoegov.com

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