BY FREDA MIKLIN
STAFF WRITER
In the last two issues of The Villager, we reported that $190,000 due to Arapahoe County from the Cherry Creek School District for 2023 was diverted to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office Foundation.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the intergovernmental agreement (IGA) under which the money was paid states clearly that the funds are intended to reimburse the Sheriff’s Office for part of its costs for providing school resource officers in Cherry Creek Schools in Centennial and unincorporated Arapahoe County.
It is also clear that the IGA requires all payments be made directly to the County, not a private foundation, regardless of its purpose. Still, the expectation under the IGA is that this money would be included by County finance staff in the Sheriff’s Office budget. It would then be spent using the County’s documented purchasing procedures, which include oversight by County finance department staff. As to the $190,000 diverted to the Foundation in 2023, that did not occur.
The Villager asked the Arapahoe County Board of County Commissioners how it planned to resolve the situation. We were directed to District Four Commissioner Leslie Summey, who told us that the BOCC “was given a list of what the funds were used for, but they (the Foundation) didn’t follow the County purchasing process. It is on our radar. We are going to be digging into it. We are just not there yet. We are going to figure out what to do as a board, whether we go back to the Cherry Creek School District because they didn’t write the check to the County as required by the IGA, or unravel the purchasing process utilized by the Foundation.”
Commissioner Summey was not able to say when the BOCC expected to act to either ask that the money be replaced by the school district or obtain verifiable evidence from the Foundation that it was spent consistent with County policy. She confirmed what we reported earlier, that when the Commissioners discovered the problem in 2024, after an additional $190,000 was diverted to the Foundation, that money was returned before it was spent and placed into the County budget as required.