Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada’s Guide to City vs. County Services (Engage Jeffco Crossover)

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 46

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We team up with the Engage Jeffco podcast to explain the similarities, differences and partnerships between the City of Arvada and Jefferson County. Johnny Hart and Carly Moore from Jefferson County Public Affairs help explain who runs what, who pays for it, and how the City and the County collaborate on roads, human services, and more. 

In this episode: 

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Visit us at arvadaco.gov/podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Welcome And Crossover Setup

SPEAKER_01

Hello and welcome to Inside Arvada, the official podcast of the City of Arvada. I'm Sean Starr, one of your hosts. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. And we have a special crossover edition with our friends from Engage Jeff Co. It's a monthly podcast hosted by Johnny Hart and Carly Moore from Jefferson County Public Affairs. So we had them on to talk about all things county related. We want to make sure you subscribe or encourage you to subscribe to their podcast in Engage Jeff Co. where you can stay up to date on all the latest happenings at the county and engagement opportunities and things going on. And as always, I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Patterson. Hi, Katie.

Meet Johnny And Carly

SPEAKER_03

Hey Sean. Yeah, great episode with Johnny and Carly today. We're really just diving into kind of county and city 101. What are the differences between the county and city, our services, what are some of the similarities, and how do our organizations work together? Hi, Johnny and Carly. Thank you so much for joining us on this special crossover edition of our Inside Our Vata podcast. And so can you just start off? Tell us a little bit about yourselves and what you do at the county.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, thanks for having us. I'm Johnny Hart, and I just completed my third year at the county in public affairs, and I am a proud CSU grad. Sean should know. Go Rams. Go Rams. Before this job, I worked in broadcast media for 10 years. And then 10 years before that, I was kicking around newspapers. And I am one half of the Engage Jeff Co podcast. So Carly is our news team member, and you can talk about yourself.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, thanks, Johnny. And thanks, Katie and Sean, for having us. I'm fairly new to Jefferson County. I've just completed my third month at Jeff Co. And uh before that I was also in broadcast media for 10 years. Uh morning, TV news, really all across the state, Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Denver. And now my alarm goes off a lot later now. So uh happy to be here. Thanks for the invite, guys.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. Well, we're happy to have you. Um and this is a crossover episode, so we're gonna share this. Yeah, tell us about yourselves. Through your guys' feed, too. So we'll introduce ourselves uh to your audience as well, and maybe some of our our audience who may have forgotten kind of what we do for the city. And so I'm our uh vibrant community and neighborhoods uh communications manager, and so I provide communication support for our parks, our trails, open space, golf courses, Majestic View Nature Center, our festivals and our arts and culture. So really all the fun things that the City of Arvada does, I get to support with uh communications engagement and outreach.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and unlike Sean, I get all the tough stuff. Um so I'm Katie Patterson, I'm our infrastructure communications manager for so it's a very similar role, um, but for all things, think transportation, construction, roads, traffic, um, and then utilities. So that's our water, wastewater, stormwater, and waste hauling programs that are kind of in my realm of things. And I'm poo-pooing it, but I really love what I do. I love talking about infrastructure and I love nerding out and learning from engineers and um getting to help take what is really complex information a lot of the times from an engineer brain and help kind of make it more digestible for a general audience.

SPEAKER_04

Aaron Powell Oh, really interesting. Thanks for sharing, guys.

County Structure And Commissioners

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And um you mentioned how long you've been at the county. I've been at the city of Arvada about a little bit over three years. And before that, I was actually with Jefferson County Public Affairs for about a year and a half. So it's good to cross paths with y'all again and former coworkers. Right, that's true. I was on my way out, uh, you were on your way in. So uh we talked about doing this for a while now, so I'm so glad we're making it happen. So um let's begin by uh helping our listeners kind of understand our organizations, how they're similar and maybe how they're different. And so starting with the county first, going at the very top of the org chart there, we have what three elected county commissioners that um are elected by the you know citizens of Jefferson County, and what there's three districts that they represent, similar to the City of Arvada. And so just help us understand kind of the format of the county and how it's structured.

SPEAKER_04

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, so there are three districts, like you said, in Jefferson County. So there are three commissioners. So Commissioner Kerr really kind of covers Wheat Ridge, parts of Golden, Evergreen, parts of Lakewood. Commissioner Dahlkemper has Littleton, Morrison, Conifer, parts of Lakewood. And then, of course, Commissioner Zenzinger is the Commissioner for Arvada here. She also covers parts of Westminster. So she actually lives in Arvada currently. She's twice elected to Arvada City Council, was also mayor pro tem for a bit, also a state legislator, and now is a Jefferson County Commissioner for District 1.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I just wanted to like cover a little bit of what the commissioners actually do. They act as our governing body for the county, basically, and they all serve four-year terms and they're staggered. Um and they enact policies like um establishing property property tax and um the adoption of the budget, and they also oversee land use cases. And um they adopt ordinances like local laws for unincorporated areas of the county, too. So those affect people who aren't in municipalities like you guys. So um what are some of the differences and similarities to Orvada from Jefferson County?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so uh the City of Arvada has seven elected city council members. We have four districts, um, and then we have two at-large elected city council members, so they cover, you know, they represent the entire city, and then we also have a mayor, so that's our seven-member city council. Uh we also have um the uh three appointees by the city uh by the city council. It's the city manager, the city attorney, and the judge. And the city manager is uh Don Wick. We had him on a show that we can link in our show notes previously, and he really is like the CEO of the city, and he takes the strategic direction of city council, the elected city council, and ensures that uh you know staff and directors who work for the city are able to be successful in carrying out that strategic direction for staff like for us and Katie who are working kind of everyday folks there at um at City Hall. And so there are some you know similarities, not as many elected positions for the city as there are for the county, right? There's several other elected positions.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, there are a bunch of other elected officials if you want me to get into it. Sure. Uh the assessor, clerk and recorder, district attorney, the sheriff, the coroner, treasurer, and surveyor, and a bunch of other appointed ones as well, like the library and public health. So definitely um there's a position for every department. Yeah.

Arvada Government And Leadership

SPEAKER_03

There's a bunch of people. Yeah. Yeah. More elected for sure than yeah, because those are the only ones that the seven. Yeah. Um, like clerk, those types of positions are all um just regular hiring processes for our city. Yeah. Um and then another one that I think often has some misconceptions around it is how each of our organizations are and the services we provide are funded. So tell us a little bit about the county and the county's primary tax base.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, the county's biggest funding source is property tax. And um, those bills just went out in January. And so a lot of people are probably opening that in their mailbox right now. The assessor um with Jefferson County actually determines how much your property is worth. And then the county treasurer, because kind of like the county banker and handles all the funds. Johnny knows the details of all that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so um about 27 cents on the dollar actually comes back to the county um collected by the treasurer. Um, but most of the rest of that goes out to municipalities, um, special districts, um, the school district, and um, I think it's yeah, 46% goes to school district. Um special districts get 23%, and cities like Arvada get 3%. Um, and there's 1% for urban renewal.

SPEAKER_03

So okay. And then um at the city side, we're mostly sales tax. And so we get the property tax you mentioned. I had it written as four dollars and thirty-one cents on every thousand dollars. So divide that by to get to a one dollar comparison, uh, it'd be a little, it's like four cents, isn't it? Uh less than a cent. For sales tax? No, for property tax.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think the the easy way to remember it is the average home value in Arvada is like six hundred thousand dollars. And and so the city, when it comes back on that property tax, gets about$150 of that property tax comes back to the city of Arvada.

SPEAKER_03

Aaron Powell Okay. That's helpful. Um, because it is significantly less. We are uh substantially more sales tax, sales and use tax funded organization. Um, and our sales and use tax in Arvada is uh 3.46 percent or like three cents on every dollar, basically.

unknown

Aaron Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And then we get you know we get a lot of revenue also from or funding from like service fees and permit fees and that sort of thing. And we can link to some resources in our show notes of where our entire budget and revenue streams come from and where it actually goes out to as well.

SPEAKER_03

Aaron Powell Yeah. Similar to what we talked about with Chris Gray recently, utilities is separately funded. Everybody pays a utility bill, and that comes there are no taxes on your utilities.

SPEAKER_02

I like the sneaky plug. That's good. Go check it out.

Who’s Elected At The County

SPEAKER_03

We recently had our own. Um and then some people pay into like metro districts and um HOAs potentially that are also um metro districts do have intergovernmental agreements, they're approved by city council, um, and then you pay a set of taxes to your metro district. If you live in one, a lot of people don't live in a metro district. Umas, though, lots of people live in, those are their own kind of separate, not taxed entities that may have like a fee you pay that's just kind of managed by your neighborhood management organization.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah. So a lot of folks might not know the differences between what services the county provides as opposed to here at the municipal level and the city level. So help us understand what are the key services the county provides.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So some countywide services, which of course includes unincorporated and includes all the cities that are part of Jefferson County, the county jail, the public health human services departments, the clerk and recorder for motor vehicle. If you know you got to register your car, you'll probably come to one of the county DMVs, also elections. The county runs all elections, whether you know you're electing an Arvada City Council member, that's all still run through the Jefferson County elections office. Of course, the coroner, assessor, treasurer, and city clerks are all kind of countywide things. So that incorporates Arvada, Lakewood, everything else. Everybody can all come to the Jefferson County offices uh in regard to those.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I think we're gonna probably talk about it a little bit later too, but there's some services that are similar to the city services, um, like snow removal and public safety. But um the county maintains the county roads, basically. Um there's some intergovernmental agreements between cities and the in the county, but um and they like police the unincorporated areas too.

SPEAKER_01

So unincorporated. Help folks understand what that means for people or listeners who may not be so familiar with that term.

Taxes And How Services Are Funded

SPEAKER_02

Aaron Powell Yeah. So so uh basically the incorporated parts of the county are the parts of the county that are governed by local municipalities. So like Arvada is 38.9 square miles. We looked it up today, um governed by the city. But on unincorporated areas are just um the areas that aren't don't have a local municipality. So 650 square miles of the county is just the county, and that's about 84 percent.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. So that's a lot of roads that you all have to take care of.

SPEAKER_04

A lot of policing, anything outside of the city limits is considered unincorporated JEFCO, and that's under the county jurisdiction. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03

And sometimes like Arvada is funny because there are like these pockets within Arvada that are unincorporated. And I don't know how common that is across the county. I imagine it's somewhat common. Um, but just in the ways that the city has like annexed in further, particularly that west. Um, but like I think last year the county was repaving Quaker out on like the west part of town because it's technically an unincorporated like Leiden town out there. Um, but then like you get to some of the intersections, and we ended up collaborating between the county's pavement program and our pavement program because it didn't make sense to like stop and go and things like that.

SPEAKER_04

So there's Yeah, I just spoke to our road road and bridge department today about about that, about Quaker. Like every 200 feet, it changes jurisdiction. So they just have an intergovernmental agreement that, all right, we'll just plow it today, you guys can plow it next time. Also with paving and things. They talked about Quaker 52nd as well, and it a lot of other roads are part of that agreement. That you know, they're not going to pick up their plows for 200 feet and then start plowing again. So everybody's a team around here, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

No, that's your snow. That's our snow.

SPEAKER_03

And then some of our services, too, uh that we've kind of talked about, you know, uh up to this point. But within the city limits, we do drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, waste hauling services, um, all of our roads, we, you know, maintain, plow, traffic signals, those sorts of things. Um we also have state highways that are C dot, right, through the city. So those are diff managed differently by the state, not the county or the city. Um parks, two golf courses, not all of the golf courses.

SPEAKER_00

Right, there's one that's special district.

SPEAKER_03

Um the Majestic View Nature Center, athletic fields, uh, and then our community and economic development planning and um housing building permitting folks.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So a lot of a lot of crossover, but it kind of just depends on where you're at on the map, right? If you're within city limits or not, and it's gonna be determined whether you're served by the city or the county. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_02

And let me plug our website because we just want to through a redesign and I want people to go see our beautiful new website. But if you want to look for more um of our services that we provide, like through human services or you know, public uh health, you can go to www.jefco I'm sorry, yeah. Jeffco.us slash 101.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, nice. We love a 101. Yeah. Uh okay. And then we talked a little bit about unincorporated Jefferson County, and there are times when that might confuse people and who they should reach out to, who do I go to? So it's a great plug for Jeff Co.us slash 101.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. What about for the city? What's the best way that residents can get a hold of you guys?

SPEAKER_01

So the the best way is through our online portal called Ask Arvada. And um, I know sometimes going through an online portal and feels like not so personal, and you have to go there and you create your profile and it you just want to like call or email someone directly. But honestly, Ask Arvada is the way to go. It's the best and most efficient way to get directly in contact with the right person rather than calling around and getting sent to another line or emailing around, getting your email forwarded. If you go through Ask Arvada, there's a whole drop-down of like, you know, what is your issue or your topic, and then that means it gets routed directly to the correct person in the correct department. And you know, we get those every day. And so it's ArvadaCo.gov slash askarvada. You could literally just Google Ask Arvada, and that's the best way for folks to get in touch with anyone with the the city. Feedback, we call it a lot of times it's you know problems or complaints, but we we get occasional um compliments about our services through Ask Arvada.

SPEAKER_03

Uh report real problems too. Yeah, like there's a pothole on my road or you know, things like that too. Sign down, all that stuff is like gonna be the routed the best place the fastest that way. Um I will say that utilities does have their own phone line because that's um one of our biggest direct-to-customer service providers. Um, and so you can call them at 720-898-7070 um Monday through Fridays, regular business hours, 8 to 5.

Services: Countywide Vs. City

SPEAKER_01

And then, yeah, we have a line specifically for animal management too, right? And so we have um kind of business hours line. If you have an issue with a dog on the loose or something like that off-leash, you can call 720-898-60850, or if it's like urgent or after hours, you can call 303-980-7300. So maybe you don't need to go through Ascarvada if you have like, you know, an off-leash pet running around your neighborhood or something like that. And so we have an animal management team that's part of our police department um within the city. So we are I wanted to plug Ascarvada one more time in that we're doing uh an upgrade to it here in the next couple weeks. And so uh our users of that system will notice some upgrades kind of slowly rolled out over the year. Um, but you will have to go in and create a new profile for the new Ascarbata. So you might get thrown off a little bit at first. But it's it's a great system, and like I said, most efficient best way to get your concerns addressed by the city. That's great. Yeah. Um Yeah, I mean, so what are the best ways for folks to stay engaged with the county, stay up to date about what is going on, the latest news, community engagement opportunities? I'd imagine there's some newsletters, some social media. How can folks stay up to date with the phone? Thanks so much for asking, Sean. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Of course, there's always the County Commissioner meetings most Tuesdays at 9 a.m. Um you don't have to be there in person if you don't want to. You can listen to it on your commute via WebEx. Also, I want to plug our uh Jeff CO Commissioner Town Hall February 19th at 6 p.m. It's on Zoom. Everything's completely on Zoom, so again, you can just log on from wherever you are, listen in, and uh there's a way now that you can record your question for the commissioners, kind of like leave them a voicemail, basically, and then we'll play those, most of them, during the town hall, and people can ask their questions. If you live in the city limits of Arvada, if you live outside the city limits, wherever you live uh in Jefferson County, you can take part in the town hall.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I'm excited about the voicemail thing too. So it's um what is it again? It's Speaker. Speakpipe. Yeah, there we go.

SPEAKER_04

It's on our website, jeffco.us slash town hall, and you'll get linked right to it.

SPEAKER_02

And then like you said, you alluded to it, uh, we have the Engage Jeff Co podcast and the Engage Jeff Co newsletter. The newsletter comes out um every third Thursday um every month. And same with uh the podcast. We maybe trying to do a little bit more with the podcast, but the newsletter is at least once a month. And you get a bunch of news from Arvada, from all the other different cities in the area, a bunch of organizations that um you know are important to Jeff CO residents. So um if you want to check that, uh check that out, it's uh ww.jeffco.us slash eight oh five. Um and then we also have 30 boards, more than 30 boards in commission um to people can volunteer for, and then departments like open space, parking s parks in open space and human services all always asking for volunteers. So just hit us up on the website and you can find some of those opportunities.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, if you're thinking there at home, I could do this better. Well, hey, go ahead and uh go ahead and apply for one of those boards and commissions. We'd love to have you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

Unincorporated Areas Explained

SPEAKER_03

Very cool. And uh pretty similar on our end of things with uh obviously this podcast. Ours is called Inside Our Vada for engaged Jeff Co listeners. Um and we try to be as thorough as we can on our website with having, if you Google something, we hope that our website pops up if it's a city service or program. And that's ArvadaCo.gov. We have a bi-weekly e-newsletter called Arvada News. And so that comes out every other Friday. The Arvada Report is our bi-monthly print publication. Print is not dead, it's very popular publication. And so that has news from you know all across the city. Obviously, it's a little bit less timely in that it's every two months. Social media, we use our Facebook and Instagram accounts quite a bit. And city council meetings are every Tuesday evening at 6 p.m.

SPEAKER_02

Hit up the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners meeting in the morning and then we're going to be able to do that. There you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Make a whole civic day of it. Yeah. Tuesdays. Okay, so before we go, what else? What haven't we covered, everybody? I'm sure there's more. What do you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_04

Well, you know, I spoke to our director of human services today as well about just how they uh in here in JEFCO work with the city of Arvada, and she mentioned that the City of Arvada is great partners when it comes to human services and sheltering those uh who don't uh have a roof over their head, and there's an intergovernmental agreement with that as well, and they provide motels for people when it's you know below freezing and uh below 10 degrees, they uh Arvada and other faith community members just open up their doors or prepare meals or something. So even though we talked about a lot about how we're different, there's a lot that we also work together on. And um yeah, our director of human services really said that our VAT is a great partner and it's a uh good, ongoing partnership to have. So that was nice to hear.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, such a complex uh problem that the whole region is is trying to solve. No one has an easy answer to it. So you need those collaborative partnerships and pooling resources to really make a difference. One misconception I know that we've discussed about clearing up is we talked so many different services that the county provides. Jefferson County Public Schools is not part of Jefferson County. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02

No, it's their own entity, and they um they get a as we talked about with the property tax, they get their own funding there too. So yeah, same name, but uh they are not a part of county government. Jefferson County government.

SPEAKER_04

Right. The schools are inside the borders, but it's a different organization. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Any misconceptions about Arvada that you that come across that you're frequently fielding questions about or what's in the uh water tower?

SPEAKER_02

Is it water Is there water in the water tower? Not anymore. No.

SPEAKER_03

I think they maybe did fill it in so that it was like stable, like it's been stabilized somehow, but it's not in use or anything. No, yeah. Yeah. Decommissioned in like the 80s or 70s.

Road, Snow, And Joint Agreements

SPEAKER_01

Right, yeah, 70s um by our Arvada Urban Renewal Authority actually took upon the project to restore it and um yeah, just did an awesome job of restoring not only the water tower, but this whole old town Arvada area over the last couple decades. And um we'll have to share some photos maybe through show notes or you know, with your listeners about what this area used to look like because it's shocking going back 20, 30 years. Um another plug from previous podcasts. We had the old director of Aura on as a uh a guest in uh Marine Fair, and she provided just some really interesting stories about just the incredible work that the urban development or urban renewal has done throughout the community. So shout out to Aura.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. It seems like there's a lot of podcast episodes that people need to go and catch up on. Or if they they probably have already listened to it if they're listening to it.

SPEAKER_04

But our engaged Jeff CO with the treasurer.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. It just came out um a week ago. So um it came out with the January episode of Engage Jeff Cho newsletter. And um I kind of wanted to see. We started the podcast about a year ago to engage our residents, our constituents where they are, which is uh you know, in podcasts. Like people listen on their commute. That's why we framed it as a 20-minute conversation. So someone who has an average commute from Jeff Go to maybe Denver can listen to one episode a month. Um I think it's just kind of an interesting new way that um entities are reaching out to you know their constituents. Why why did y'all get into the podcast game?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I would say it's um similar, right? Like we want to be on we want to be where people are, which is really like that means being on every channel, right? Like we want to try and catch everybody where they are. For some people, that might be our print newspaper, and for other people, that may be a podcast on their commute. Um, and so that was definitely part of it. And then for me personally, I really like was drawn to the slightly longer form that you can um, you know, you don't have to go watch a whole two and a half hour council meeting, um, but you maybe can get a little bit more than you can get out of like a two-minute read or a social media post or even a web page. Um, like you can do a lot of good communication in the written form, but there's just something about both humanizing the people doing the work and um putting some more context that really is hard to explain otherwise.

SPEAKER_02

Aaron Powell Yeah, there's so many great people that go unseen, both in McCounty and in the city that do all the hard work. We get the easy job, you know. We show up and talk into a microphone. So like that's kind of the reason why we started Engage Jeff Cos to actually give those people their due. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I mean, anytime you can make it just more accessible or easier to get information about what's going on, that was kind of our one of our original intents, right? Is you know, throw the podcast on, like you said, commute to work or maybe walking the dog or doing the dishes or whatever it may be. And so and yeah, Kitty said it really well. Just kind of being able to go past this sort of short snippets on social media or headlines and be able to have a kind of more in-depth conversation is a big draw for why I think we started it. So well, before we let you go, we do trivia now. We used to do a lightning round and that kind of got a little stale, so we do trivia. Um got three questions here.

SPEAKER_03

And only Sean has looked these up by also down our answers. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02

We wanted to, but we couldn't.

SPEAKER_01

Um I will say if you know the answer right away, let's make sure the other two can try and guess and make a fool of themselves. No, I'm just kidding. Um question number one. Uh where was the first traffic light installed in Jefferson County?

SPEAKER_02

Oh my. That's what I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_03

I was like, I'm pretty sure that might be right because it was the first paved road. Yeah. Well, I guess I don't know if that was in the whole county.

City Services And State Highways

SPEAKER_01

Uh but yeah, first traffic light there at uh Old Wads and Grandview here in Old Town, Arvada on October 15th, 1941. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

There we go. Wow.

SPEAKER_01

All right, question number two. How many incorporated towns or cities are located within Jefferson County, either entirely or even just partially?

SPEAKER_04

I looked at the map today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Twelve-ish?

SPEAKER_04

No, it's gonna be more than twelve. I did look at the map today, but I didn't count them up. I would have thought it would have been like 50.

SPEAKER_01

No, it's 12. Can you name them?

SPEAKER_04

Probably.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, let's see.

SPEAKER_04

Okay. Lakewood, Arvada, Wheat Ridge. Um There's a smidge of superior in there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, there is. Very good.

SPEAKER_04

Um Morrison. Conifer.

SPEAKER_01

Conifer's unincorporated, but you're doing great.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, so it doesn't count as a city or town. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Golden.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Umar.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

Littleton.

SPEAKER_01

Littleton.

SPEAKER_02

How many is that?

SPEAKER_03

Eight.

SPEAKER_01

You're missing uh two. And I'm not shocked that you haven't gotten them.

SPEAKER_03

I feel like I was thinking of one. Westminster.

SPEAKER_01

In our Westminster. Do we say our Mountain View?

SPEAKER_03

No.

SPEAKER_01

There's a little town called Mountain View. No, I didn't know that. Um Edgewater. Edgewater. Edgewater.

SPEAKER_03

Isn't it Evergreen?

SPEAKER_01

Evergreen. So the unincorporated areas that you might think are towns are like Aspen or Aspen. Aspen Park, Bergen Park, Buffalo Creek, Conifer, Evergreen, Genesee, Idledale, Indian Hills, Kittridge, Pine, those are all like towns, but there's no official town government. And so guess who has to do all the services for the Jefferson County? Exactly.

SPEAKER_03

Wow. I totally would have thought most of those were incorporated in some way.

SPEAKER_01

Some of those, you know, Buffalo Creek and Kittridge, Pine, if you've never been up kind of that 285 corridor there, they're really cool to check out.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

All right. Final question here. Which is older, Jefferson County or the city of Arvada?

SPEAKER_04

Jefferson County. Because Jefferson County was a county before Colorado was even a state.

SPEAKER_02

I wasn't sure if like maybe Arvada had started before Colorado was a state too, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_01

According to what I could find, you're right. The county was established in 1861 along with 16 other counties before the state was even established there. Arvada was platted or like mapped, didn't come incorporated, but in 1870. You knew that too. I know you knew that. Nine years after the county, Arvada was platted and then incorporated in 1904.

SPEAKER_03

1875 is the or 1876 is the state, because it's 150 this year.

Where To Get Help And Report Issues

SPEAKER_01

All right. Well, thank you so much, Johnny and Carly. This was great. This is our first ever cross silver episode, so I think it went really well. Appreciate you coming on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Thanks for inviting us. And and we hope uh you guys gained some of our engaged Jeff Co listeners, and we hope um some of your listeners come over to Engage Jeff Co too.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. Like and subscribe. Yes. That's the kids say. Like and subscribe.

SPEAKER_00

Smash that subscribe button. Smash it. Yeah. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_03

As a reminder, we love to hear from you all our listeners. You can text us with the link at the top of the show notes or email us at podcast at arvata.org. We love your feedback on this episode, any questions you might have, or any other episode ideas you'd like to learn more about. And for news and events coming up soon, uh I will do a couple infrastructure things as usual. So the work um for the sewer line replacement on Sheridan, um, kind of between 68th and 76th there, um, has been going on for really the last year. It's been a really big project and they are almost done. 76th, 76th is open now, 76th Avenue is open, and the trail should be open soon. If it's not already, they just have to pour the concrete to get that trail restored because the sewer line did go right next to the trail. Uh, and most of the side streets and lanes should be open soon. And additionally, back in on January 20th, the um city council agreed to the city's recommendation not to construct the underpass portion of the West 72nd widening project due to some really considerable cost escalations that uh the city kind of got new cost figures on in uh mid-late December. And so a difficult decision that the city had to make there. And there's a community meeting um just a couple days ago on February 2nd that shared more information. And so our timing was just a little off with the podcast on this information, but there is information online, so we'll link to all of that information in the show notes.

Stay Engaged: Meetings, Town Halls, Boards

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and coming up here uh at the end of the month is Arvada Winterfest on February 28th from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Old Town, Arvada. This is the Arvada Festival Commission's annual multicultural celebration featuring a variety of interactive performances and traditions. And to learn more about that event, visit ArvadaCo.gov slash winterfest. And as we mentioned last time, the best way to stay up to date on all things happening throughout Arvada is to subscribe to the Visitor Center's email newsletter at our visitarvata.org. Gene Gordon does a great job with that newsletter where you can find out all the things happening throughout Arvada, such as a chocolate affair, which is coming up on Saturday, February 7th. That's the Ralston House Annual Fundraiser here in Old Town from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. That's a great fundraiser and also a cool opportunity to just kind of stroll around Old Town and uh taste a whole bunch of different kinds of chocolates, all for good cause. So um visit Ralstonhouse.org slash events to learn more about that, and visit Arvada.org to uh learn about more events and subscribe to that newsletter. Thank you to our guests today, Johnny Hart and Carly Moore from Jefferson County. Be sure to listen to our next episode with Deputy City Manager Allie Scheck, who, as Katie mentioned, will be joining us to talk about the West 72nd Avenue Project. Today's podcast was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services, and today's fun fact is that Golden is the county seat for Jefferson County, and it was actually once the territorial capital of federally recognized Colorado Territory before it was a state. But then once Colorado became a state in 1876, Denver became the capital.