Colorado Springs considers agreement with El Paso County for homeless camp cleanups
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- In a few weeks, the City Council expects to vote on whether to grant a request from El Paso County to clean homeless camps within a mile outside the city limits, on county-owned property.
Peter Wysocki, city planning director, said that the county approached the city several months ago about entering into an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) regarding the matter.
"The county doesn't have a staff dedicated to camp cleanups as the city does," he told the Council during a work session this week. "And the county has more pressing code enforcement issues because it has a larger area to cover."
Wysocki said that he believes most homeless camps -- particularly the biggest and the messiest -- are along the city-county line and would be more quickly and efficiently cleaned up by the city's Quality of Life team in the Neighborhood Services Department.
"If there's a large camp on the city-county line, we can only clean what's in our jurisdiction," he explained. "But it's still a mess on the county side, and people who live around it or see it don't realize or understand where lines start and end. I think if we address homeless camps near the city limits and within, I think that generally reduces or alleviates the number of camps in general."
Wysocki said that the city would prioritize cleanups in the proposed area, and be reimbursed by the county for costs incurred.
"And then, the camps that are out of sight and out of view, that nobody knows are there except the police or us, those are the ones we’ll tackle when we have more time or are more caught-up," said Mitch Hammes, Neighborhood Services director.
Hammes added that he currently has 11 people dedicated to camp cleanups, but he also has two open positions -- which led Councilman Dave Donelson to wonder if the city has the necessary resources to handle a heavier workload.
"I don’t think we can clean up all the sites that we have now," Donelson said. "I think we have a backlog of sites. Collaboration is great, but do we even have the staff to do this, and is it going to slow down the cleaning up of homeless camps inside the city?"
When Donelson asked how many more workers Hammes would need to ensure that his staff can meet city and county cleanup demands, Hammes replied: "We need as many as we can get, until we know what we’re dealing with. We won't know until we actually start doing it."
Councilmen Brian Risley and David Leinweber said that they like the proposed agreement.
"I agree with the idea of local governments cooperating, which is something our new mayor has said is important to him," Risley stated. "My only caution is that what we’ve seen happen, is when a cleanup is conducted, these folks just tend to move someplace else and set up shop again. So, I hope we can find a way to intervene with some of the critical issues that they’re dealing with that’s causing the homelessness to begin with, and then also be mindful that when a camp is cleaned up, often times it moves folks onto private property and to other places where the problem persists."
Leinweber said that the problem affects other communities besides those along the city-county line.
"When it rains, it washes a lot of trash from those camps down Fountain Creek," he said. "I’ve walked the banks along the creek in Fountain and it’s horrific how much of our trash from homeless camps is laced along their banks. It’s a pretty significant problem."
However, other Council members said that they still have more questions, or need more details, about the proposal.
"I just think it needs a little more work," said Councilwoman Yolanda Avila. "It just seems like it’s lopsided, and the city is bearing most of the burden. I want to see what more the county can do."
Councilwoman Nancy Henjum said that the impact on people experiencing homelessness should be considered.
"There are different reasons why people are camping, and the enforcement on putting people potentially in jail, or fining them, when they literally don’t have any other place to go," she said. "So, we can’t look at this situation in isolation."
Henjum also said that she'd like the Council to have a meeting with county commissioners specifically on the matter.
If both governments approve the IGA, Wysocki said, it's possible that the county would assess how much it costs to reimburse the city and decide whether hiring its own dedicated cleanup staff might be better.
He added that Parks & Recreation will rely on newly-created park ranger positions to watch for homeless camps and report them to Neighborhood Services.
"It's unclear if they'll have the authority to issue the 24-hour notices to vacate a camp," Wysocki said.
The city is making the filling of the two Quality of Life vacancies a priority by exempting them from the current hiring freeze established because of a decline in sales tax revenue; many departments face budget cuts next year because of the slumping local economy.
