Brennen Kauffman
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
(TNS)
The Colorado Springs Fire Department is raising alarms that the city’s mental health response program could end next summer after losing funding from a state grant.
Thursday, during the City Council’s work session on the 2025 budget, the fire chief and deputy chief were questioned by the council about the precarious state of the city’s Community Response Team . The department heads said the program would have to shut down on July 1 without new funding to cover staffing.
“This was one of our most stable and viable grants, and in a very quick manner it became nonviable,” Deputy Fire Chief Tim de Leon said.
The Community Response Team has been running since 2014 to help address mental health issues in Colorado Springs . The program currently has four teams of three people made up of a police officer, a paramedic and a clinician.
The teams serve as first responders for calls about suicidal threats and people with repeated mental health crises. The teams can work with the subject of the call onsite, direct them to resources, or limit how much time they take up for other emergency responders.
The Police Department pays for the officers on each team, while the other two positions had been supported through a state grant.
Steve Johnson , administrator for the Fire Department’s Community and Public Health Division, said the state grant program that had previously funded the team shifted focus and would no longer support programs that included law enforcement responses. Johnson said the department found a different co-responder grant to cover the program through June 30 , but had nothing guaranteed beyond that.
“I am continuing to look for grant options, continuing to have conversations with people around the area. Any avenue we can I am trying to explore to keep moving that forward,” Johnson said.
Fire Department leaders told the council the program needed around $750,000 per year for the paramedics and clinicians. At least half of that amount would need to be secured to continue the teams through the second half of 2025.
The City council was unified in seeing the program as a success and a strong use of city funds. Council President Randy Helms said he and other councilmembers had asked in previous years to move that program into the general fund to stabilize it for the long term.
“Every year, we’ve tried to work with the Fire Department to emphasize just how important the CRT program is, with the concerns of it being grant-funded,” Helms said.
Councilmembers Nancy Henjum and Lynette Crow-Iverson said the program might be eligible for funding through the Regional Opioid Abatement Council .
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If the Community Response Teams shut down, the Fire Department said those calls would be added to the duties of firefighters and police officers.
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