Mesa County is moving three units that were previously under the management of different departments into its natural resources department.
Those changes include noxious weed and pest management moving from the road and bridge department, parks and open space management moving from the facilities department, and the trail crew moving from the public health department.
The natural resources department has not historically been its own standing department, County Administrator Todd Hollenbeck said, and has focused on legislative issues and long-term planning.
“We’ve always had natural resources to some degree, certainly not to the level that we’re ramping that up to,” Hollenbeck said. “But when you start looking at our number of like services that could better coordinate, not be so siloed, share resources, just maximize staff, equipment, those types of things, this is what we started looking at as we started to work through some of the challenges not only with the budget but also just some of the challenges we’re seeing as a county.”
Those challenges include things like zebra mussels, Japanese beetles, federal and state land use plans, and legislative issues.
County External Affairs Director Stephanie Reecy said it makes sense for the department dealing with the long-range land use plans to also oversee the boots on the ground.
Hollenbeck said the changes aren’t adding more staff, just moving people to different departments.
Natural Resources Director Amber Swasey said the exact nature of the department’s purview is still being defined and will be refined in the coming years.
Hollenbeck said a lot of the funding for work the trail crew has been performing on federal lands is going away, so it makes sense to have the crew focus more on county-related projects through public works or other departments.
County Administrator Todd Hollenbeck was selected for the role in August 2024 by the Mesa County Commissioners. He succeeds Pete Baier.
“I think we have a great opportunity to expand that role to local, state, and municipality-type services, and I think it can benefit all of us,” Hollenbeck said.
As an example of the broadening scope of duties the county would like to use, Swasey highlighted the trail crew more for restoration and fire mitigation work.
“All of those departments, parks, weed and pest, they have extensive knowledge and background, and there’s ways we would like to expand that other that what we’re currently focused on,” Hollenbeck said.
Swasey said the departments being under one umbrella will allow them to communicate and collaborate more. She gave as an example that a crew could perform weed and pest mitigation on a parcel of land, only to have a fire crew come in later and do more mitigation that blows up the whole area.
“Just so we’re not having to create more work for ourselves,” Swasey said.
Swasey noted the is a lot of overlap in the type of work performed by the three groups. They will also be able to share equipment, which can be pricey.
“All use chainsaws, all use seeders, all use mowers and those kinds of things,” Swasey said.
It will also allow the county to put more resources toward specific projects, Swasey said.
One of the pieces of the county’s strategic plan is eliminating silos, Swasey said, and this move will hopefully do that.
“We’ve got parks, we’ve got open spaces, we’ve got right of ways, we’ve got county facilities. All of these take an immense amount of manpower to manage, and this is going to help us make that job easier and help our departments communicate better, to create a better product for our community,” Swasey said.
