Community Options is a non-profit organization that serves people with developmental disabilities and receives funding through Medicaid. But Community Options is struggling to keep up with what it must now pay its employees as Colorado’s minimum wage requirements soar.
“We’re rapidly depleting our fund balance which we have built up over 45 years,” said Tom Turner, the executive director of Community Options. “And we’re also making a lot of programmatic changes. We’ve closed one of our group homes. We’ve closed some other residential settings to try and deal with this.”
Turner adds, “This trajectory is not sustainable. Absolutely.”