Town Board and County Commissioners Consider Options for Sheriff’s Office IGA

During the joint Town and County Meeting August 13, Town of Lake City staff and Hinsdale County Commissioners’ final item on the meeting’s agenda was to begin negotiations for an Inter-departmental Government Agreement (IGA).
Mayor Roberts began the conversation explaining that the former IGA between these entities remained unclear in terms of language used because it had been amended and patched together out of old IGAs, and that it was possibly necessary to ‘wipe the slate clean’ and ‘start from scratch.’
Town Manager Lex Mulhall said, “that’s really the first question. Why spend the money on the IGA? Is he [Sheriff Denim Starnes] going to sign an IGA?”
Mulhall was referencing an article written by correspondent Gianna Morena in the July 25 issue of Silver World that stated:
‘Starnes is frank about the lack of manpower putting long-term planning on the back burner behind more immediate concerns. Nevertheless, he points to modernizing operations and reestablishing a presence in the more remote parts of Hinsdale County, which he feels have been neglected, as areas he hopes to address.
One way to narrow his office’s focus may be to allow HCSO’s contract for law enforcement services with the Town of Lake City to expire in December. “I’m going to be either lauded or hated for what I decide to do with this contract. But the longer I think about this, the more and more I’m becoming convinced that the Town of Lake City needs to have its own marshal’s office so that the sheriff’s office can actually do its job out in the county.” [said Starnes.]
Incorporated towns in Colorado have a statutory duty to provide police service. While many sheriffs provide municipal services under contract, they are not obligated to do so. The administrative and financial costs to the town for standing up its own police force would be substantial.’
Starnes was not present at the August 13 meeting,
(nor was Commissioner Greg Levine, who had attended the meeting earlier but needed to leave mid-meeting), and Mulhall said, “without the Sheriff being here…we can have our attorneys work on details such as liability language in there, what the costs potentially would be in 2026 and beyond, but what we really need to do is circle back, get the Sheriff in a room in a mutual understanding between all boards, that is really key at first, so maybe we need to wait until that happens before we dig into this.”
County Administrator Sandy Hines said, “I think we all know for many years, that idea of the Town potentially looking at another way has come up over and over. I think it’s possible that Sheriff Starnes may have heard those conversations or may have heard over time alternate ideas. But nothing official has happened.”
Mayor Roberts said, “why I want to talk about this while we’re all together, there has been some muddy water over this but I want to make it clear, the trustees did not wake up one day and say ‘we’re cancelling the IGA’ or anything like that.”
Commissioner Kristie Borchers said, “I think one of the first things we need to hammer out is that there is a difference in legal opinion between the Town and County attorneys regarding what a County is required to provide a town with law enforcement. I think that would be first on our list, because that then drives the money. Also, I wanted to bring up this idea of one person assigned to the Town. The reason that came up was a way to evaluate costs, only. That was Sheriff Kambish, he thought that was the way to figure out costs, but maybe its not. The idea is, how is it equitable to split what the Sheriff is doing within the Town as opposed to what he does in the County. Even though that is how it is written, I think we just tend to think that we have to sign it for three years, and it happens again and again. Now we have a couple months. I think now you have this opportunity where our attorneys can collaborate and we can come up with a better agreement. The IGA has been cobbled together for so long, now it’s time to think about best practice models and come up with something better. ”
Town Attorney Dan Krob spoke up, saying, “I just wanted to say a couple of things. You guys are all there doing public service, you’re all there for the community, whether that’s people in unincorporated Hinsdale County, or in the Town of Lake City, you’re all there on the same team. Like Commissioner Borchers said, that IGA has probably been hacked together over longer than I’ve been practicing law. I do think you would all benefit to sit down and figure out what exactly you want and what your priorities are. It might be time to wipe the slate clean and start with a new IGA if you guys want to do that. I’ve seen a lot of collaboration between you [two boards]. which is one of the reasons I enjoy being down there, and we can make this work easy and simple. There’s been enough rumors flying around that I think it would be beneficial to sit down with the Sheriff and find out what is his position, what does he want to do, and go from there.”