CARRIE WARREN-GULLY | About her role
What does a county commissioner do exactly?
Carrie Warren-Gully has served as your county commissioner in District 1 of Arapahoe County since her election in 2020. Elected as Chairwoman of the board, she is responsible for the efficient flow of meetings, helps plan our annual budget, provides guidance to our first responders, and ensures that our elections and ballots are accessible and safe. Learn more about a commissioner’s role and Carrie’s progress in her first term below!
ARAPAHOE BY THE NUMBERS
What the Job Entails
Carrie Warren-Gully’s role as your county commissioner is to be a champion for you, your family, and our Colorado way of life. Arapahoe County is growing rapidly and will over-take Denver as the largest County in Colorado by 2030.
This means that we need commissioners like Carrie who know how to do more with the resources Arapahoe already has on-hand without punishing families as the cost of living continues to grow.
Our COVID Recovery
Investing for Innovation & Impact
The American Rescue Act delivered more than $100 million dollars to Arapahoe county for which Carrie Warren-Gully has been responsible for evaluating and ensuring proper implementation across all of Arapahoe County. Her goals for our recovery budgets have been focused on creating tangible impacts for our families today, along with infrastructure improvements to prepare Arapahoe County for tomorrow.
Carrie has focused on investing in our children’s future, reducing the impact of the global health crisis on our most vulnerable populations like the elderly who could face homelessness if they lost access to social programs, as well as the unhoused populations in Arapahoe county who are fighting for stability.
Learn more about how Carrie and her colleagues have fought to reduce homelessness in Arapahoe County and consider our response to this key issue one of the most important issues facing our future here.
Defend our Open Spaces
Part of what makes Arapahoe County so unique is our vibrant combination of urban centers, suburban communities, rural families, and expansive open space land. Careful stewardship of all three is an important balance to strike in all of our priority-setting across our budgets, permitting, and policy-making. Carrie is one of two commissioners on the Arapahoe County Budget Committee and has worked to ensure that we have dedicated budgets for our county’s open spaces without impacting our General Fund. This stewardship will ensure that our community has the resources it needs to preserve the quality of our open spaces and make sure areas like our Highline Canal Conservancy remain shining jewels in Arapahoe County’s mission of sustainability.
Commissioner Warren-Gully also headed up the popular 1A Ballot Issue in 2021 which made certain that a portion of our sales tax will be used to support and maintain our public parks and trails. However Carrie is just getting started. Her priorities heading into next term include working to enact the strongest clean air initiatives in Colorado to defend our home and protect our environment from pollutants.
Support our Local Economy
Supporting our local economy means recognizing that the small business owners and their skilled staff are the backbone of our community. During COVID, Carrie fought tirelessly to ensure they had the funding and infrastructure to be safe and ready to re-open their doors. Carrie even traveled to Washington, DC to meet with our legislators, and even the US Army Corps of Engineers to help ensure swift support of our local businesses and to help the county update and enhance our existing streets, bridges, and tunnels.
While many of our citizens have made it through the hardest moments of our COVID recovery, Carrie has fought to ensure families have the resources they need to build the life they dream of for their families. Through programs kickstarted by Commissioner Warren-Gully, over 140,000 Arapahoe county citizens have received job training, counselling, and job search support in just the past few years.
Modernize our First Responders
When Douglas and Adams Counties withdrew from our tri-county health department which had been sucessfully supporting our community for over 50 years, Carrie knew that we had to move fast to protect the health services of Arapahoe County. Working with her fellow commissioners, Commissioner Warren-Gully enacted a brand new health department in under a year — complete with community education, a public health board, and over 150 brand new employees to support our health services county-wide.
This has proven to be a key opportunity for modernization and growth under Carrie’s thoughtful leadership. Programs like our new Co-Responders Unit, developed in partnership with our County Sherriff’s department, aims to connect our police with trained mental health professionals during certain emergency responses. This program has helped prevent incident escalation and instead ensure access to crucial social services and support programs to our most vulnerable citizens.
Reduce Homelessness
Reduction in homelessness in a rapidly expanding community like ours is a critical issue driven by many complex issues ranging from a lack of social programs, insufficient mental health treatment options, poor housing accessibility, and unfair barriers to entry into job and apprenticeship training programs. Any honest plan to reduce homelessness must address the reasons people become unhoused, and the failures in our social safety net which do not adequately support our vulnerable populations. However, Arapahoe County cannot face these challenges on our own. We need highly collaborative leaders like Carrie who can reach out to other city, state, and non-profit organizations to most effectively reduce homelessness.
While the path out of homelessness can look different for everyone, Carrie has already begun to help affect change in Arapahoe County with the support of other city, state and non-profit peers. From rent assistance that has kept thousands of Arapahoe families in their homes, to Arapahoe County’s new GOALS program which provides a multi-generational approach to education, employment assistance, job training, childcare services, and access to guaranteed secure housing for up to a year while families stabilize and begin to thrive.
Expand Attainable Housing
Careful, prudent growth in Arapahoe County is important to defending our way of life in Colorado. While it’s true that we can’t “build our way out of a housing crisis,” access to reasonably-priced, quality housing in Arapahoe County ranks among the most common concerns brought up to Carrie when she is meeting her fellow neighbors. How we rise to meet these needs will have lasting impacts on our community, and across Colorado, for the next hundred years.
Much of the pricing of new home units in Colorado are driven by high costs to obtain and maintain permitting. Commissioner Warren-Gully has worked to modernize our permitting process with national best practices and modern IT to help ensure the quality of applications for new housing services, while reducing headaches, bureaucracy, and costs for everyone involved from the builder to the home buyer.
In addition, access to more types of housing from smaller square-footage starter homes to planned developments with guaranteed affordable housing units for families in need are well on their way to construction in Arapahoe as a result of Carrie’s efforts. But we’ve got more work to do and Carrie’s counting on your support to make sure we can build the Arapahoe County we deserve.
Develop a Diverse Leadership
At the most fundamental level, Carrie recognizes her role as commissioner in Arapahoe County to be about connecting with and supporting the families and professionals that call Arapahoe County home. Our vibrant community is made up of exceptional Latino, African American, LGBTQIA+, and women voices that are crucial for driving our future forward together.
Part of our competitive advantage, and a core reason for our community’s growth, is our embrace of the fact that when we work together, we go further, faster. Carrie’s place on our Board of Commissioners means that as the 18+ committees, boards, and civil service programs are filled and maintained, that they look like us — all of us — and that they have our best interests in mind in everything that they do.
Are you one of those voices? If so, reach out and let Carrie know how you can help right here!