Boulder County approves three-way disaster-management agreement

Boulder County commissioners approved an agreement Aug. 4 bringing the cities of Boulder and Louisville into a joint Boulder Office of Disaster Management. The public record reviewed does not establish when the three-party arrangement legally takes effect.

The approved minutes show the agreement passed unanimously as part of a consent-agenda vote. The agreement in the county agenda packet establishes an interjurisdictional emergency-management agency under Colorado law and replaces earlier Boulder County-Boulder agreements governing the office. The packet does not include a completed effective-date provision, and no separate executed agreement or commencement action was located in the official records reviewed. The signature page dates Boulder’s signature July 28 and Louisville’s July 21, but those dates do not establish the legal start date.

The office will coordinate disaster preparedness, prevention, mitigation, response and recovery for the three jurisdictions. Its duties include maintaining emergency, public-warning and evacuation plans; coordinating training and exercises; administering alert and warning systems through the Boulder County Sheriff’s Communications Center; conducting recurring hazard and threat assessments; coordinating with volunteer disaster organizations; and providing initial recovery services while an emergency operations center is operating.

Governance will rest with the Boulder County administrator, Boulder’s city manager, Louisville’s city manager and the Boulder County sheriff. The director will be accountable to the sheriff for day-to-day administration and to the board for strategic direction and performance. The agreement says the board is the final authority when operational directions conflict.

Mike Chard is the current publicly identified director. Boulder ODM’s staff listing identifies him as director for the City of Boulder and Boulder County and says he has held the role since 2009. The records reviewed do not show a new appointment under the three-party agreement or identify a separate Louisville director.

Louisville will employ and fund two full-time disaster-management coordinators, provide their benefits and personnel costs, place them under the ODM director’s day-to-day operational supervision, and pay $75,000 annually toward office operations. After outside appropriations and Louisville’s contribution, Boulder County and Boulder will split remaining staffing and operating costs equally. The agreement does not set a final annual budget or specify those jurisdictions’ dollar shares.

For Boulder County and Boulder, the agreement formalizes and expands their existing joint office. Louisville becomes a full participating jurisdiction, with its emergency operations plan annex included in the office’s planning duties and its services defined through an annual work plan.

The arrangement could address coordination problems documented after the Marshall Fire, though the agreement does not say it was drafted in response to a particular report. The Marshall Fire operational after-action report documented challenges with evacuation communications and relationships among incident command, emergency operations centers and regional partners. A county improvement-plan update later identified ambiguity around delegation and multi-agency command, gaps in administrative roles and emergency-operations staffing, and a need for stronger dispatch and alert-and-warning coordination.

The agreement’s shared board, defined chain of authority, joint exercises, centralized warning-system responsibility and integration of Louisville staff are mechanisms that could address those gaps. The records reviewed do not establish whether the after-action corrective actions have been completed or how the new arrangement will be evaluated. The agreement calls for an annual work plan and budget assessment and a three-year review of whether Louisville’s coordinators should become Boulder County employees.