The president of Longmont’s OUR Center board is raising concerns over the actions of two City Council members who she says called her and sent her emails urging her to stop the nonprofit from seeking funding from a county program that serves the city’s homeless.

Julia Rush, the board president, has reached out to Mayor Brian Bagley, the county’s purchasing division and Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty to inform them of her fears that Councilmembers Polly Christensen and Joan Peck were threatening Outreach United Resource, or OUR, Center with a shutoff of future city funding if it applied for 2020 funding from Homeless Solutions for Boulder County.

Bagley said Friday that when he heard from Rush earlier this week, “my initial reaction was one of shock and disbelief, shortly followed thereafter by disappointment and disgust.”

At issue is an Oct. 24 telephone call Rush said she received from Peck and two Oct. 24 emails Rush received from Christensen, then the city’s mayor pro tem, urging the OUR Center not to compete with HOPE, the Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement agency, for funding to provide navigation services to Longmont homeless people through the county’s coordinated entry program.

Rush wrote Bagley that Peck “called me to request that I oppose the OUR Center board’s decision” to respond to the county’s requests for proposals for the navigation services program.

“This was before that decision was final in our organization, and before it was made public. Ms. Peck was agitated and somewhat angry, and appeared to be repeating information from a third party speaking in the background of the phone call,” Rush wrote.

“(Peck) introduced herself as a member of City Council,” Rush wrote. “She stated that she was meeting with HOPE, on a monthly basis with two other council members, to address navigation, and she told me that she wanted OUR Center to ‘stay out of it.’ I asked her to send me a letter with her concerns, but I did not engage in a conversation with her beyond that.”

Peck, who was re-elected on Nov. 5 to her at-large seat, on Friday denied she told Rush she wanted the OUR Center to “stay out of it.”

“That’s not right,” Peck said, although she said she did oppose the idea of the OUR Center making a proposal.

Peck said she called Rush after having “heard a rumor” the OUR Center was considering applying for navigation program funding. Peck wondered why that was, since the Center announced earlier this year it wouldn’t continue offering navigation services.

Peck said her concern was, “Why would you submit a proposal when you just pulled out of it?”

Peck declined Friday to say who told her of the center’s potential application.

Rush also sent Bagley emails she said she received from Christensen through the council member’s private account, not her official city account, later that same day.

“I recently heard that the OUR Center is being politically pressured to reverse its decision of this summer,” Christensen wrote, “and apply to the RFP for Longmont homelessness navigation services in competition with HOPE.”

Christensen noted in that email, which she asked Rush to pass along to the OUR Center board, that the OUR Center announced earlier this year it would no longer provide certain coordinated-entry navigation services through the county coalition, which includes representatives of Longmont, Boulder and Boulder County.

“We have all accepted that decision, knowing that HOPE would continue the fine job they have done with also providing navigation,” Christensen wrote Rush.

That decision also was noted in the OUR Center’s application for other city funding in 2020, Christensen wrote. She continued, stating the city’s Housing and Human Services Advisory Board still is reviewing the application. The board is tasked with recommending human services funding to City Council.

For the OUR Center board “to change its decision now because of political pressure” and to apply for funding for the navigation program “will strain the OUR Center’s credibility on many fronts. It would seem wiser to continue on the path your board chose many months ago and not appear to be in a state of indecision,” Christensen wrote Rush.

Rush said that while the OUR Center had decided to proceed with its application for funding from the county program, the center had not yet announced that at the point she heard from Peck and Christensen, and that she did not know what “political pressure” to which Christensen was referring.

The OUR Center eventually withdrew its application because it discovered it also would have been required to provide shelter services on top of helping homeless clients navigate the process of identifying and getting other services they might need.

Rush said the center’s decision to withdraw its application was not the result of Peck and Christensen’s actions.

But she noted that Christensen also wrote in her first email that for the last six years, the councilwoman has “served on City Council, Boulder County Consortium of Cities, and Housing and Human Services Advisory Board.”

Although Christensen used her private account to send that email, she signed it “Respectfully, Pauline Christensen Longmont City Council Mayor Pro Tem”.

In a second Oct. 24 email to Rush, Christensen wrote that “Joan (Peck) and I have the same concerns. Because Joan is running for office, she does not think it useful for her to send you additional correspondence.”

Christensen wrote that “as private citizens,” she and Peck “meet with HOPE monthly to try and find solutions for homelessness. That is why I am corresponding with you using my private email.”

Rush wrote Bagley that she thought Christensen’s initial email included a deliberate reference to Christensen’s involvement in OUR Center funding requests to the city, in a paragraph before her request the board reverse its position on navigation services with Boulder County.

“That feels like inappropriate political pressure, despite her assertion in her second email that she was acting as a private citizen,” Rush said.

Christensen said Friday that while she is the Council liaison to the Housing and Human Services Advisory Board, she doesn’t have a vote on that panel.

She said she emailed Rush to “express my concern.”

As for using her private email account to communicate with Rush, Christensen said: “That was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do that.”

On Thursday, Rush emailed her concerns to Boulder County DA Dougherty.

“I first reached out to Mayor Bagley, because it was apparent to me that there were conflict of interest and transparency issues with some City Council members. But, frankly, I’m losing sleep wondering if these councilwomen are going to use their power to pull our City of Longmont funding because we decided to put a funding request in for Boulder County in competition with an organization that they support privately,” Rush said.

She wrote Dougherty that the OUR Center has requested a total of $293,800 from Longmont and “there has never been an issue with our funding requests before, and in fact, the city has increased our funding every year.”

Rush, an attorney, wrote the legality of the communications she got from Peck and Christensen aren’t in her area of expertise.

“But I know enough to realize that this kind of political pressure is in no way appropriate,” Rush wrote. “I don’t want to embroil the OUR Center in a political battle with City Council, but we can’t ignore this behavior.“

Rush said Friday that Dougherty emailed her that he would follow up and get back to her with information about what her next steps might be.

District Attorney’s spokeswoman Shannon Carbone in a Friday email said Dougherty had received Rush’s email but the office still is evaluating whether the alleged conduct could be criminal.

“This does not feel like a fair playing field,” in the city’s grants consideration process, Rush said Friday. “It doesn’t feel like transparency.”

Bagley said Friday the issue appears to involve an alleged “abuse of power and abuse of public trust” — something he said “we’ve got to address as the Council together.”

Earlier this week, Bagley copied at least one other Council member, Tim Waters on the emails he received from Rush, including the emails Christensen sent Rush.

“It’s disappointing,” Waters said Friday. He had written Bagley on Wednesday that what he saw in that string of emails was “serious and wrong.”

“… The exchange between Council members Christensen, Peck, and OUR Center board member(s) appears to violate Colorado’s sunshine law, parameters for the use of personal email accounts to conduct City of Longmont related business, confuses roles and responsibilities of these Council members as elected officials with their interests as private citizens, misrepresents a position of the City Council, and directly interferes with, corrupting, the City of Longmont’s procurement process.

Waters added that “as troubling and disappointing as it is to me to contemplate the consequences of exposing this behavior,” he believed those aware of it had no other ethical option than to expose it.

Waters wrote that he hoped Peck and Christensen would admit their actions if confronted and apologize to the public, other Council members, city staff and the OUR Center board and staff members.

“If Council members Christensen and Peck decline to disclose this scenario, then those of us with knowledge of this situation owe it to the community to do so.”