At the Mancos Town Board meeting Jan. 8, the five trustees unanimously agreed to approve the town’s adoption of a crisis intervention program that had been under county control.
In that same motion, the trustees agreed to donate $10,000 to it.
“Mancos needs it,” said Mancos Town Administrator Heather Alvarez. “If we’ve got to keep a countywide program just for the benefit of people in Mancos, we will.”
That program, the Community Intervention Program, sends a behavioral health clinician and an EMT to noncriminal calls in lieu of law enforcement – think substance abuse or behavioral health crises.
As of Dec. 11, the CIP team had responded to 2,460 calls since it started two years ago.
Mancos Town Marshal Justen Goodall, who had the initial idea to start the program, said it takes a load off law enforcement time-wise and liability-wise.
“Law Enforcement is liable civilly and criminally when responding to and interacting with a subject in crisis,” Goodall said in an email. “If an officer uses deadly force instead of deescalation, they can be prosecuted criminally, and the individual officer and department sued civilly.”
That’s where the need for the Community Intervention Program comes in: “It allows for mental health clinicians to work with the subject in crisis and law enforcement is there for scene safety only,” Goodall said.
From the program’s official start in May 2022, then, it has operated as a collaboration.
Axis Health Systems has provided behavioral health clinicians; Cortez Fire Protection District, EMTs. The county’s three municipalities – Cortez, Mancos and Dolores – provided funding – $177,000, $32,000, and $18,500, respectively – at the start, to support it.
At the same time, the county assumed the role as its fiscal agent and paid $292,000 in ARPA funds.
“The county did not provide any additional funding,” said Montezuma County Public Information Officer Vicki Shaffer in an email.
And so even though it was almost entirely grant-funded, the program was set to end on Dec. 31, as the county didn’t re-up its contracts with Cortez Fire and Axis Health.
“The county never intended to run the program indefinitely,” Shaffer said.
The program began under the county’s Office of Emergency Management, and switched to the Public Health Department in 2023, Shaffer said.
“The purpose of the Public Health Department is education and prevention, not response. The Community Intervention Program does not fit within those goals. Likewise, it did not fit within Emergency Management, whose purview includes planning for and mitigation of disasters,” Shaffer said.
Additionally, Montezuma County Commissioner Jim Candelaria said it’s hard to quantify the success of a program like this one since much of the information and data detailing it is confidential.
What’s more, the program is outside the county’s statutory requirements, which are things it must fund, Candelaria said.
“We gave it a shot, now we’re passing it on,” said Candelaria. “As funding dwindles, we have to evaluate what we can and cannot do.”
And so the county worked with Mancos and passed over all the program’s equipment – namely the Mercedes van – to help in the transition.
“It’d be really hard to do this without that,” said Mancos Mayor Cindy Simpson of the equipment when the town agreed to take over the program at its board meeting.
As it stands, the program is fully funded through July 1.
The SouthWest Opioid Response District awarded the program $77,548 of opioid settlement dollars, which covers the cost of Cortez Fire’s EMTs.
Behavioral Health Administration money that Axis reallocated will cover the cost of its behavioral health clinicians through June 20, said Haley Leonard-Saunders, Axis Health System’s public information officer. She has worked on CIP from its start.
Alvarez said they’re also in the process of setting up an online donation platform, and, Leonard-Saunders said they’ve identified 18 possible funding sources.
All things considered, Alvarez said, “I’m not sure it’ll cost the town anything.”
And if it does, in the MOU’s Alvarez used her “administrative discretion” to sign at year’s end to save the program, Mancos has an “out” in the event it can’t come up with funding for the latter part of the year.
“Just want you to know you’re not trapped by the fact that I went rogue and signed some MOU’s at the end of December,” Alvarez said with a laugh at the board meeting.
But the departments involved – Axis Health, Cortez Fire and the town of Mancos – are confident they’re eligible for grants that’ll keep the program going in a town that, pre-audit, is working with $2,082,979 in 2025, compared with the county’s preaudited budget of $26,079,052.
“Our budget is nothing to write home about,” Alvarez said.
Yet, when she heard the program might be discontinued at year’s end, “I said, what do I need to do to keep it going.”
“We scrambled to save it,” Alvarez said.
Shaffer said the only cost to the county in covering this program was “the time of those working on the program.”
Nobody in Mancos will be billing the program for their administrative time, Goodall said.
When the program started and was put under the county’s Office of Emergency Management, Emergency Manager Jim Spratlen oversaw it and “did not bill CIP for his hours,” Shaffer said.
That’s because, when Spratlen oversaw it, American Rescue Plan Act money funded the program, she said.
In 2023, when Public Health took over the program, it was grant-funded, and Health Director Bobbi Lock and Assistant Director Laurel Shafer billed CIP for their time.
For the year, they charged $16,593 and $11,375, respectively.
“Health department employee salaries were not increased to oversee the program,” Shaffer wrote in an email. “Some hours were billed to the CIP.”
The Public Health Department got an additional $26,609 to cover indirect costs, which is “a set amount … in a grant that the administration of that grant can charge to the grant to cover costs that are not specified in the grant,” Shaffer said in an email. “These costs include items that are the cost of doing business – phones, lights, office supplies.”
The Public Health Department declined to talk with The Journal for this article, saying they could speak only with the county’s public information officer.
Of the calls the Community Intervention Program has responded to, only 5% came from Mancos.
The bulk – 81% – came from Cortez.
So when the county was first talking about not re-upping contracts to continue the program, the city considered taking it over.
“I don’t really want to get into it. There were several reasons, but we decided it wasn’t a good idea to take it on,” said Cortez City Manager Drew Sanders.
In Dolores, which accounts for 3% of the calls, Town Manager Leigh Reeves said they’ll “find a way to help out.”
“We definitely have a need for mental health services,” Reeves said.
Commissioner Candelaria cited staggering statistics in a speech at the Community Intervention Program’s kickoff on May 2, 2022.
During the pandemic, there was an:
- 11.8% increase in welfare checks.
- 25% increase in hospital and ER admissions for substance-related visits.
- 21.5% increase in suicide dispatch.
- 74% increase in calls relating to overdoses.
- 8.7% increase in diagnostic evaluation Cortez integrated health walk-ins.
Plus, in Montezuma County, there were 11 suicides in 2022. In 2023 and 2024, there were 12 each year, according to County Coroner George Deavers.
“The number of behavioral health-related things increased after the pandemic,” said Leonard-Saunders at Axis. “Law enforcement was under a lot of pressure in how they responded and were not trained in that way,”
“Rather than being defeated, the county is engaging our changing environment by collaborating with our local partners to enhance emergency response to the behavioral health crisis,” Candelaria said in 2022 at the Community Intervention Program’s start.
Cortez Fire Battalion Chief Rick Spencer said the program goes beyond responding to a person’s immediate need; the program also has provided people resources, like food, transportation to doctor’s appointments or even help finding housing.
Roughly 80% of the Cortez Fire’s responses are EMS-related, and of that, 90% involve an intoxicated person, Spencer said.
“The CIP team isn’t a case management-based program. It’s an immediate need, resource guidance kind of thing,” said Spencer. “It’s very successful.”
The Sheriff’s Office also depends on the program.
“We call CIP several times a week,” said Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin. “We can’t do without something like this.”
An interventionist that travels around the state and nation named Marlyce Bowdish echoed Nowlin’s point.
“I was just in court in Cortez yesterday,” said Bowdish. “Every single case was substance abuse and mental health-related. Every single case.”
“My friend from Denver next to me asked if it was a special drug court and I said no, it’s Cortez.”
Bowdish said that in a rural place like Montezuma County, issues often are related to drugs or mental health.
“It’s important to respond in a way that’s helpful and not hurtful,” said Bowdish. “That saves lives.”
When police get involved, Bowdish said, “the outcome can be punitive and not helpful, or can escalate to a point where it never needs to go.”
“There needs to be a mental health professional there to advocate for intervention. If there isn’t, the police will write a citation and walk out the door. Meanwhile the drug use and mental health problems continue,” Bowdish said.
“We just keep coming back to the citizens. They use it and need it, and every first responder I’ve talked to supports it,” Alvarez said.
To be sure, even though Mancos is now the fiscal agent, the Community Intervention Program will still respond to noncriminal calls across the 2,040 square miles of Montezuma County.
Plus, it will still be based in Cortez at Fire Station 3 and run as-is, since its current M.O. is “gold standard,” Alvarez said.
And since it’s funded for the next six months, the town has time to figure out “how to move,” Alvarez said.
“What we historically do at the town is, we will take on and assume ownership for projects. We did that for the farmers market, the creative district,” said Alvarez. “The farmers market is still going, and the creative district is great.”
In essence, Alvarez said Mancos works with citizens and groups for a three- to five-year period. After that time is up, “we’ll kick you out of the nest and you’re on your own.”
“That’s what we’re looking at potentially doing here,” said Alvarez. “Ultimately the goal is to make the program sustainable so it can run on its own.”
