County’s $100 grand ensures Boys & Girls Club for Lakewood

JEFFERSON COUNTY – County Commissioners Tuesday topped off the fund-raising effort for a planned Boys & Girls Club at O’Connell Middle School, ensuring the organization will open its first Jeffco program in August.

Commissioners, by a 3-0 vote, approved a $100,000 contract for services with the club.

“The Boys & Girls Club is an investment in some of Jeffco’s most at-risk kids,” said Commissioner Faye Griffin. “By supporting them we can teach them life skills and help them stay out of trouble and out of our legal and Human Services system.”

Griffin said 90 percent of Boys & Girls Club participants either graduate from high school or earn a Graduate Equivalent Degree.

Commissioner Kathy Hartman said the county’s financial support should not be construed as a gift.

“Jefferson County is not making a grant, we are making a contract with the Boys & Girls Clubs for specific services relative to keeping youth out of the criminal justice system,” Hartman said. “But it is a special contract … and I felt this particular contract is a contract that deserved special attention because of the community effort , because it is the first and because it offers such promise for our youth.”

The vote beats by just three days a May 1st deadline to raise $350,000, a deadline set by an unidentified donor who last winter pledged a half-million dollars to the club, providing the community came up with the remainder of the club’s first-year operating costs of $850,000.

A flurry of fundraising followed, but the effort remained $100,000 short until Tuesday.

“To know that we will be opening this Boy’s and Girl’s Club in August after three years (of work) is exciting,” said George Valuck after Tuesday’s Board of County Commissioners meeting.

Valuck, executive director of Lakewood’s Alameda Gateway Community Association, is one of a handful of folks who have been working for three years to bring the youth organization into the county. District Attorney Scott Storey put together the group of business and community leaders who partnered to bring the club to Lakewood.

“I’m excited that we finally get a chance to do this,” Valuck said.

The group and Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver decided to put the program at O’Connell Middle School. O’Connell serves residents of east-central Lakewood, one of the city’s most economically challenged areas.

But the school wound up on a list of schools that were expected to close by as part of a Jeffco Schools’ cost-cutting measure.

In late January Storey, Valuck and a contingent of city officials successfully lobbied the school board to spare O’Connell. The clincher was the pending deal with Boys & Girls Clubs to use the facility for after-school programs designed to give kids an alternative to roaming the streets.

For $2 a year, youngsters can participate in club activities for 3 hours on school days and 5 hours a day in the summer.

And, as the focus turns to the future, Valuck said the fund-raising will continue, both to support the O’Connell program and to add others at sites across the county.

“This is only the start. There are over 2,200 homeless kids in Jeffco,” Valuck said. “I think we will see more open up in the county in the future.”

To donate, make checks payable to Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver, 2017 W. 9th Ave., Denver, Colo., 80204. Be sure to write “Jefferson County” on the check to ensure it goes to support the Jeffco program.