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January 14, 2020

Boulder County Commissioners deliver 2020 State of the County address

Commissioner Deb Gardner named Chair; Commissioner Matt Jones named Vice-Chair of the Board of County Commissioners

(Boulder County, Colo. -- January 14, 2020) -- As part of the county’s annual “Reorganization” meeting today, the Boulder County Commissioners presented the State of the County address in video format and presided over the annual task of assigning board positions and appointing various heads of departments and county officials who serve at the pleasure of the board.

Commissioner Elise Jones, who has served as the Chair of the Board for the past year, opened the reorganization meeting by praising the hard-earned accomplishments and successes of the county in the prior year and thanked county employees for their continued commitment to the county's vision of "providing the best in public service."

The three commissioners then took turns talking about their priorities for the year ahead and announcing an internal restructuring of specific county functions to help create greater efficiencies in the delivery of county services and to give members of the public more “one-stop” service delivery by grouping similar functions together and streamlining related processes.

Statement by the Board of County Commissioners

Effective today, we are transitioning to a County Administrator model of government and appointing current Administrative Services Director, Jana Petersen, to this new role. This new structure is in line with the county's goals toward consolidating services and is in direct response to constituent requests for more and better coordinated planning and permitting services.

The decision to change our organizational structure was made to:

  • Give the public more “one-stop shopping” opportunities and allow residents to more easily conduct business with the county by grouping “like” services together;
  • Help modernize the organization by managing the operational needs of county departments more efficiently; and
  • Enable us, the county commissioners, to focus our attention on our strategic priorities and spend more time interacting with the community.

We believe this transition will help us to retain critical institutional knowledge throughout the organization and to better ensure the continuity of day-to-day administrative functions of county departments.

Overall, we believe this restructuring will lead to greater efficiencies in how we deliver services, create a more collaborative, team-based approach to public service, and reflect a more responsive public focus.

-Boulder County Board of Commissioners
Deb Gardner, Matt Jones, Elise Jones

Highlights of the internal restructuring include:

  • Grouping together similar planning and permitting services that currently exist in two separate departments - Land Use and Transportation - and moving them to a newly named Community Planning & Permitting Department.
  • Combining the Transportation Department's engineering, fleet, and road maintenance functions with other operational and structural services of the county, such as the Boulder County Recycling Center and Building Services, into a new Public Works Department.
  • Creating a new Office of Sustainability, Climate Action, & Resilience to keep the climate crisis at the forefront of the county's work.
  • Retaining the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Manager in the Commissioners’ Office in recognition of the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to be managed at the executive level of the organization.

New org chart showing County Commissioners and County Administrator

The recently revised 2020 Organizational Chart shows the relationship of the Boulder County Commissioners (BOCC), the newly appointed County Administrator, and the departments under the BOCC. (Click on image to open chart in a new tab.)

State of the County Video Snippets

To view Boulder County’s 2020 State of the County (SOTC) video, you can watch it in full, or in individual department sections:

An archive video of the County Reorganization meeting will be available on the county’s website by the end of today at: http://bouldercountyco.iqm2.com/Citizens/default.aspx. (The commissioners’ comments follow the 48-minute SOTC video or can be viewed directly here, along with comments from the newly appointed County Administrator, Jana Petersen.)

During the meeting, Commissioner Deb Gardner was named Chair of the three-person Board of County Commissioners while Commissioner Matt Jones assumed the role of Vice-Chair.

More about the Board of County Commissioners can be found on the county website at: bouldercounty.gov/bocc.

Boulder County Commissioners hearing room for State of the County Address

Three county commissioners sitting at dais