50 Years at Foothills Gateway: Larimer County Supports the IDD Community

May 05, 2022

50 Years at Foothills Gateway: Larimer County Supports the IDD Community

Diana Foland spent 30 years at Foothills Gateway, serving in several different capacities within the Administrative Division.  She ended her tenure with the organization as our Chief Administrative Officer but, today, looks back at her time as the Public Relations & Resources Coordinator when she and her team put together Foothills Gateway’s first ballot initiative and campaign in the hopes of gaining more funding and improving services for people with disabilities in Larimer County.

Foothills Gateway provides a vast array of services to people with IDD and their families, and all of those services are free to those who need them. When asked how this is possible, it is easy to sum it up by saying our services are funded with federal, state, and local dollars.  While most of the funding for Foothills Gateway’s services and supports comes from federal and state funds, there is a significant amount that comes from the local community through a property tax known as a “mill levy”. “How does Foothills Gateway qualify for this mill levy?”, you might ask.  Way back in 1963 when the Colorado State Legislature was setting up the Community Centered Board (CCB) system as a way to partner with local, private organizations to provide services and supports to individuals with developmental disabilities, they decided to include in the statute a provision where each CCB could petition their local community for additional funding of up to one (1) mill through the mill levy process.  Please understand that 1 mill is not one million dollars, but rather a small percent of money based on the assessed value of a property.

This is where our Foothills Gateway history lesson begins!  In 2000, the Foothills Gateway Board of Directors voted to approach the Larimer County Commissioners about putting an issue on the November ballot asking citizens to approve a tax in the amount of one (1) mill that would go to the Community Centered Board (Foothills Gateway) to assist in its mission of serving people with IDD.  The County Commissioners agreed that this was a worthy cause but wanted to confirm that Foothills Gateway already had a certain level of support and asked us to verify community support by obtaining signatures via a petition process before referring the issue to the election.  At this point, Foothills Gateway also filed to become a 501 (h), allowing the organization to participate in campaign efforts tied to this initiative.  This was accomplished in the summer of 2000, and the issue was placed on the November ballot as issue 1A.  To drum up support for this initiative, we decided to use photos of a few individuals who received services on yard signs, one of them being a really well-known individual in the community at the time (Barney), hoping people would know what the issue was about and vote in favor of 1A.  Unfortunately, it failed by a margin of approximately of 10%.  We were heartbroken and could not understand the failure, as it seemed everyone we knew was in support of the issue.

Back to the drawing board we went.  After more research and surveying, we discovered several factors that may have contributed to this initial failure. 1) Perhaps we were asking for too much money; 2) we thought most Larimer County residents knew about Foothills Gateway, but they did not; and 3) having a ballot issue asking for more taxes during a presidential election year probably was not such a good plan.  The Board of Directors decided that we should try again and, luckily, were once again placed as issue 1A on the 2001 November ballot. This time we would ask for ¾ of a mill (which in 2001 came to about $12 per average property owner or the cost of a movie for two people) and we would make a major push to get the information out to everyone.  Our mantra became – “where there is a gathering of five or more people, we want to be there, telling our story.”  We changed the ballot language to include the name of Foothills Gateway so people would know who, and what, the funding was supporting.  We also changed the marketing materials and slogan to reflect that people with disabilities are not just faceless, nameless citizens.  They are our family, friends, and neighbors. The yard signs and posters showed just a white outline of several people, with the slogan – “Don’t forget them!”  We contacted every service club we could find and scheduled presentations to their members at their weekly meetings.  We made presentations to local church groups and presented in their Sunday services.  We had booths and parade floats in all the local events like New West Fest, and the Corn Roast Festival.  And we even had staff and volunteers stand on major street corners during the election season with signs and life-sized cutouts of the people outline, which was on our marketing materials, encouraging people to vote yes on 1A.

And this time, it worked!  Foothills Gateway won the issue by a slight margin and was able to begin bringing in additional funding the very next year.  The mill levy will stay in place as long as Foothills Gateway remains a CCB.  Today, the mill levy continues to bring in annual funding that is used for a number of needed services, including: job skills training, community employment support, expanded respite services, crisis support services, expanded transportation services in Larimer County, expanded access to mental health services,  internet technology improvements for individuals/families/service providers, Housing Choice Voucher program to provide affordable housing options to individuals with disabilities, children and family programs, and quality measures for case management services.  It is a very long list of valuable services, and we continue to be very thankful to the Larimer County community for this support of our mission.

While this was a short period in Foothills Gateway’s history, the success of the mill levy campaign proved to be a very significant factor in our ability to provide quality services and supports, allowing us to go above and beyond what can be provided using only federal and state funds.