Northglenn residents packed a meeting Wednesday to voice their opposition, often tearfully, to a panel of city, county and state leaders over a Mental Health Transitional Living Home planned for an area near an elementary school, playgrounds and a church.

Some are so upset by the facility, they plan to move from Northglenn. “If this goes in, bye guys,” said one resident. 

“We are a city that is 7.7 square miles. You couldn’t find a bigger city to put it in? That is ridiculous!” said former City Council member Becky Brown. 

Northglenn resident Terry Erickson choked back tears and explained that she has worked with sex offenders during her career.

“It is a matter of time before one of these sex offenders will grab one of these children,” she said. As cheers and applause erupted, she added “How can you do that? How can the state allow it?”

Four-hundred people attended the nearly three-hour meeting and even more viewed it via livestream. 

Listening to the outcry were 17th Judicial Attorney Brian Mason, Northglenn Police Chief James May, representatives from the State Department of Human Services, state Rep. Jenny Willford and state Rep. Faith Winter.

Winter, who represents Northglenn as part of Adams County, was a co-sponsor of House Bill 22-1303 which, in 2022, directed the DHS and the Department of Healthcare Policy and Financing to create, develop or contract to add at least 125 additional beds at mental health residential facilities throughout the state for adults in need of ongoing supportive service.

The meeting was intended to allow residents to voice their frustrations, but it appeared that the state is moving forward with the plan to start moving patients into the facility starting in May. In an earlier interview with The Denver Gazette, Department of Human Services spokesman Mark Techmeyer said that the state does not foresee changes in these locations.

At the opening of the meeting, Perry May, deputy executive director of health facilities for the Department of Human Services, explained that 125 total beds will be placed throughout the state as part of the 2022 bill passed by the state legislature. He assured the room that “without these homes, those folks would be living in the community without 24/7 supervision and without potentially those clinical services.” 

When May mentioned that the state was trying to make the community safer, the audience interrupted him with jeers. “Put it in your community!” they yelled.

The 32-patient Northglenn facility would house dozens of registered sex offenders and mentally ill residents in a neighborhood near schools and a playground.

The Mental Health Transitional Living Home is comprised of two adjacent buildings at 11255 and 11275 Grant Drive in Northglenn.

At a Northglenn City Council meeting last week, town leaders maintained that the neighborhood, which is packed with families, is not the right place for such a facility.

The state counters that the program is necessary to relieve Colorado’s crowded mental health hospitals.

Directly across the street from the transitional facility is a row of public housing and an industrial events center. Their next door neighbors are Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church and one-story bungalows with Easter decorations surrounding them on the back side. 

The Mental Health Transitional Living Home will be run by a private contractor. The program is the first of its kind within Colorado’s behavioral health system, in which people who have been hospitalized in the state’s mental health hospitals will be supported as they transition back into the community. 

Amid outcry from parents, parishioners and businesses, the Colorado Office of Civil and Forensic Mental Health said the proposed facility complies with Northglenn’s city ordinances, which specify how close it can be to schools and parks.

This is the third location established as part of a plan to open facilities across the metro Denver area that will be used as a transition to less restrictive inpatient care for those with severe mental health conditions or substance abuse problems and sex offenders.

Already, a similar 12-bed home in Littleton opened last September, a six-bed facility began operating in Denver in November and an eight-bed home opened in Colorado Springs earlier this month.

Ten more are on the books, including three in Lakewood, two in Pueblo, one in Westminster, and another one each for Denver and Northglenn.

Wednesday night, a petition which protested the housing for sex offenders had garnered more than a thousand signatures. 

Of all of the planned transitional homes, the one which is the center of the controversy in Northglenn will house the most residents. That is a major concern for City Manager Heather Geyer.

She’s also frustrated with “the lack of transparency” from the state Department of Human Services, she said, adding city leaders found out about the proposal, not from the state agency itself, but from Northglenn police.

Geyer said that on Jan. 16, a Department of Human Services employee sent a request for information to a police department general inbox, where it sat for a few days.

She didn’t find out about the plan until a week later.

“They touted this program as innovative. But if it’s truly innovative, where is the collaboration with local government?” she said.

On March 12, Geyer sent letters to affected residents to let them know about their new neighbors.

According to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation website regarding recidivism, research indicates that, nationally, approximately 5% to 20% of adult sex offenders reoffend sexually over time. Still, the CBI advises that the “re-offending rate is based on known information and is likely an underestimate due to underreporting.”

Of the dozens of residents who spoke at the super-charged meeting, only one woman reminded people that the patients would be wearing mandatory ankle monitors and under an intensive probation and parole program.

“You absolutely have no compassion for people who suffer from mental health and have no place go go. It’s embarrassing!” She was booed.