Grand Junction City Council is considering changes to how the unsheltered resource center is run after an incident in which a number of people were arrested for drug-related charges on the property.
The discussion, which occurred at a workshop Monday, followed an incident Sept. 25 in which eight people were arrested at or near the resource center after reports of drug use in the area.
Council Member Cody Kennedy said based on information City Council has received about the incident, it might be time to stop funding the resource center.
Kennedy said if the resource center were not being worked on by the city, he guessed council would be working with City Attorney John Shaver to get it declared a nuisance property.
“I supported this thing wholeheartedly,” Kennedy said. “I was excited to do something good for folks in that downtown area and provide some additional resources, but from what I’m hearing and what I’m learning, people that are trying to recover, get away from drugs are steering clear from going down there.”
According to police documents, a detective with the Western Colorado Drug Task Force saw people smoking marijuana and “controlled substances” at the resource center.
Charges resulting from the incident included public use of marijuana, obstruction, possession of a controlled substance, failure to appear in court and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to police documents.
None of the charges in the incident were for violence or rose to the level of felonies.
City staff has proposed to include $415,800 in the city’s 2025 budget to fund operations at the resource center, which opened in January at 261 Ute Ave. as a place where unsheltered and other vulnerable people can receive services during the day.
“I am very much against giving them additional money to continue doing what they’re doing at this point,” Kennedy said. “It concerns me that we’re funding, sorry, a crack house in the middle of Grand Junction.”
Mayor Abe Herman disagreed with Kennedy’s characterization of the resource center.
“With our mid-year check-in, we had 30-some thousand services rendered, we have hundreds of people per day in it,” Herman said. “When we chose to fund this with the $900,000 and set this thing up, if somebody had asked you then, ‘do you think at some point there might be some drug use arrests on this property,’ would you have said no?”
Herman continued, “It’s part and parcel with dealing with a certain population, and that doesn’t mean that it’s 100% of the population, so I think having eight drug-related arrests out of all of the visits and all of the services rendered, like let’s just keep perspective that that’s not that entire population.
“And it’s not to say there don’t need to be significant improvements made to how it’s run, and it can’t be tightened up.”
Herman asked if it would be fair to take the services offered by the resource center away from a large segment of Grand Junction’s population that is struggling, the vast majority of which is not participating in criminal activity.
“I think perspective is important,” Herman said. “I think we don’t be reactionary on these kinds of things, we need to think about how we start to move the needle.”
Council Member Anna Stout pointed out that when the city has had other challenging properties, they have put those properties on what amounts to a performance plan to improve things.
Stout also said closing the center would “disperse the problem.”
“I don’t think we’re at the point where we’ve given that, set that expectation with a fair warning and worked with them to try to mitigate the issues, which is what it sounds like we’re doing now so I’m not yet supportive of an immediate closure,” Stout said. “And the reason I’m not is they go somewhere. What do we do if we close those doors, we end up with a problem that spreads out, that we don’t have a concentrated place, and partners that we can work with to try to figure those things out?”
Council Member Scott Beilfuss said he spends a lot of time at the resource center, and the center does a lot of good, but the center probably needs to move.
Community Development Director Tamra Allen said city staff haven’t figured out how a move or a change in model would work, and so haven’t included funds in the proposed 2025 budget for those things.
