About 10% of the $1 million Douglas County received as a payout after the sale of the Denver Broncos could go to improve mental health in schools — or other youth support that teen advisers may advocate for.
Commissioner Abe Laydon said some young people expressed desire for a “dedicated mental health space” in schools.
“The concept is very simple: If you have a broken arm, you go to the nurse’s office. If you have a tough mental health day, you have a space where you can go and get better,” Laydon said at a recent meeting.
Local youth were tapped for input as officials weighed how to distribute the county’s slice of revenue triggered by the 2022 sale of the Broncos. The county’s payout stems from a tax plan in metro Denver that helped build Mile High Stadium, now called Empower Field at Mile High.
After teens expressed their preferences, Douglas County officials routed the funding to support a long list of youth activities programs.
But about $110,000 of the funding remains unallocated, and county officials have said they’ll spend the money on mental health programming since their youth advisers identified that topic as their top priority.
That could look like a space for peer support, where older students mentor younger students, talking peer to peer about mental health struggles, Laydon said as an example. Such spaces sometimes offer iPads or therapy dogs and can help people decompress, he added.
A couple organizations have inquired about the funding, according to county staff, who discussed other options with the county commissioners.
At the meeting, commissioners did not decide where the money should go. Instead, they threw the question back to their teen advisers for more discussion.
As one of seven counties in the Metropolitan Football Stadium District, Douglas County was awarded the funds that, legally, must be used for youth activities programs, according to the county.
The district is a government body that was created for the purpose of planning, acquiring land and constructing Mile High Stadium. It was authorized to collect a sales tax of one-tenth of 1% throughout the district’s area from 2001 through 2011.
The recent funding for youth activities comes from the $4.65 billion sale of the Denver Broncos to the Walton-Penner Group, which resulted in a $41 million refund to the seven counties and 40 municipalities that helped fund the stadium.
The funds were to be shared with Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson counties and the cities and towns within them. Douglas County received about $940,000.
From organizations seeking a piece of the Broncos sale funding in Douglas, the county received 45 grant requests that totaled about $1.8 million. That means the youth advisers and county officials had to figure out how to whittle the size of the requested funding down by about half.
Where money has gone so far
Made up of young people, the Douglas County Youth Commission advises the county’s elected leaders on matters pertaining to youth and teens.
Out of the 45 grant requests, 31 youth activity programs won funding. Some of those include:
• A “Save Teen Lives – Teen Crash Avoidance” program from the South Metro Safety Foundation
• Therapy camp for families with disabilities, a program from Colorado Institute of Developmental Pediatrics Inc., also called Adam’s Camp
• And mental health training from an organization called Happy Crew.
For a full list of programs that received funding, see the county’s webpage at tinyurl.com/DouglasBroncosFunds.
The youth commission and Douglas County Youth Initiative reviewed the proposals and recommended about $830,000 in funding, leaving about $110,000 remaining.
County commissioners presented the checks during a meeting in late January.
Looking forward
County officials had announced in January that the remaining money would “be retained for future investments in innovative mental health programming.”
At the meeting of county officials in April, George Teal, one of the county’s other two elected leaders, said he wanted to hear from the youth commission again about how to spend the funding. He also noted that the county leaders can still make the final decision on what to spend on.
The timeline for deciding how to spend the money isn’t clear.
“Important to note that there is no deadline imposed by The Stadium District for the expenditure of the funds,” a county spokesperson told the Douglas County News-Press.