Coroner Discussion

[Matthew Canaga]

Mr. Kefalas,

        I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to you and to hopefully arrange a time to meet in the coming weeks. My name is Matt Canaga and I work for Dr. Wilkerson as his Chief Deputy Coroner. I have spoken with you briefly in the past but hoped we could sit to give you an inside look at some proposals we will be presenting at the upcoming 2022 budget meetings. This is my first round as the Chief Deputy Coroner and I have several ideas but feel I should get a better understanding of what the county commissioners must consider when looking at these proposals. Would this be a possibility sir? 

Thank you for your time. 

Matthew Canaga

Chief Investigator / Chief Deputy Coroner

Larimer County Coroner's Office

1600 Prospect Park Way, Suite 101

Fort Collins, CO 80525

(970) 498-6161

[John Kefalas]

Hello Mathew,

Please accept my apologies for this delayed response to your request, and I am more than willing to meet with you to learn more about how your Coroner's Office works and some of the challenges you are likely facing these days. Can you clarify what you mean by an "inside look" because my experience with the budget process has been that individual commissioners do not necessarily  meet directly with department heads to discuss budget proposals that will be submitted as part of the process. As you know, program proposals are submitted for consideration in the developing 2022 county budget,and our budget team scrutinizes everything very carefully before presenting to the BCC for our approval or denial of budget requests. Let me know what you think and thank you for your important work, https://www.larimer.org/BudgetExplorer.

	John Kefalas County Commissioner, District 1
	Commissioners' Office 200 W Oak St | 2nd Floor PO Box 1190, Fort Collins, CO 80522-1190 W: (970) 498-7001 Cell:  (720) 254-7598 jkef...@larimer.org | www.larimer.org

[Matthew Canaga]

Thank you John. I am wrapping up for the day but will shoot you a response tomorrow. I appreciate your willingness to help me understand this system. 

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[Matthew Canaga]

John,

       Thank you for clarifying the process on your end. I am new to this process and am trying to get more clarity on how the county leadership views budgetary decisions. Full disclosure is that I want to understand how decisions are made at that level and hope to get a glimpse of questions / concerns the leadership may have with proposed budgetary issues prior to the proposals being submitted. Due to the sometimes convoluted and confusing world of pathologists and death investigations, I do not want to waste the time of county leadership with proposals that have no legs to stand on. I also hope to give a more detailed picture to the leadership on our needs and why we are making these requests. I respect your time and am completely fine going through the budgetary proposal process but figured it couldn't hurt to reach out to see if there was more I could (or should) be doing. Thank you for your time sir. 

[Matthew Canaga]

I completely understand John. I will be meeting with her in the coming weeks to discuss this as well. Thank you for your time. 

On Sun, Aug 1, 2021 at 7:15 PM John Kefalas <kefa...@co.larimer.co.us> wrote:

I will follow up with Linda Hoffmann and get her perspective on your request and protocols. There is no waste of time for county leadership and our process is that our budget folks and county manager vet the budget proposals very carefully before presenting to us and if any further explanations of coroner requests is needed, they will inquire and provide the BCC with  that information. Thank you for your public service Mathew.