Longmont City Council on Tuesday agreed to for a third time support the COVID-19 Recovery Center, or CRC.
The CRC was created as a place to house individuals experiencing homelessness who contracted COVID-19, giving them a safe place to recover. Later the facility was opened to include infected individuals who have the potential to spread the virus to at-risk individuals within their households, according to staff report to council.
The intergovernmental agreement with the city of Boulder and Boulder County was first signed in April. Since then, the facility has moved to a new location at Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church at 3585 Stanford Court in Boulder.
The amendment approved by council on Tuesday also will allow other counties to utilize up to 10 of the 60 beds in the CRC, with Boulder County remaining the primary user, according to the staff report.
Neighboring counties can house COVID-19 positive residents in the CRC for a fee of $110 per resident per day. Other counties also are responsible for transportating people to and from the facility, according to the staff report.
Boulder County allocated a significant portion of its federal CARES funds to the CRC, allowing it to run well into 2021 with officials estimating a need remaining through the summer. It is estimated it costs $100,000 a month to run the facility, with Longmont agreeing to cover 30% of the operational costs.
“Longmont has designated $70,000 of its CDBG-CV (Community Development Block Grant-Coronavirus) funding towards this project, which will still be available for use in 2021. Actual operating costs have been lower than projected, plus the census was low for several months in 2020,” the report to council states.
The resolution to amend the intergovernmental agreement was passed unanimously without discussion as part of council’s consent agenda.
