All is not well in Federal Heights.
For months, public safety unions in this small suburban Adams County city of 14,000 have clashed with the city manager’s office as Federal Heights’ elected leaders have been paralyzed in trying to find a solution to the dispute.
In January, the city’s police officers and firefighters in City Manager Jacquie Halburnt, claiming there’d been a breakdown in communication over requests for staffing and equipment upgrades for their departments. Three months later, the city sacked the police and fire chiefs, announcing the decision late on a Friday.
And now there have been mounting calls from the community for Halburnt, along with the city attorney, to be put on paid leave. But those have stalled after the City Council was unable to make up its mind on what to do over several meetings last month.
At one of those meetings, which was packed with residents taking to the microphone during a public comment period, Mayor Linda Montoya said she was to be mayor following an executive session that yielded no decision on the city manager’s fate.
All of the drama in this working-class community — wedged between Westminster and Thornton and less than 2 square miles in size — has longtime resident Jim Fenimore, 70, feeling despondent. And he’s not the only one.
“They’re frustrated, they’re completely disheartened about it — they have no confidence in the city,” he said of the dozens of fellow Federal Heights residents who have shown up at council meetings this year. “They’ve lost hope.”
Federal Heights Cmdr. Jason Schlenker, who until recently served as president of the police department’s union, said the trouble started last fall. An officer was injured when a squad car was rammed by a suspect who exchanged gunfire with police.
The late-September confrontation prompted the already-strained police department to request more support from the city manager’s office, Schlenker said. And crime reports in Federal Heights accelerated across several categories from 2024 to 2025, , with a nearly 21% jump in domestic violence cases and a whopping 82% leap in sexual assaults over that time.
“We were just asking for more resources and more officers,” Schlenker said, hoping to pump up the patrol officer headcount from 17 to 22. “She just ignored us.”
In January’s no-confidence vote, the unions for both the fire and police departments wrote in a statement that communication between first responders and the council “was strictly prohibited by the city manager.” Requests to boost staff or update safety equipment “were intentionally prolonged or simply never communicated to the City Council,” the joint statement said.
Attempts to communicate with the council or mayor about the requests, the statement read, were “met with the threat of retaliation.”
Manager disputes underfunding claims
Halburnt has been , working as the city’s top administrative official. She declined to grant an interview to The Denver Post for this story.
In a written response to emailed questions, she said she was “unaware of requested resources that haven’t been provided to the Police and Fire Departments.”
She cited in the police department’s budget recent funding to pay for four new police officers, at a cost of $560,000; the purchase of three new Chevy Tahoe police vehicles, for $300,000; and improved lighting and additional carports at the police building, also for $300,000.
On the fire side, Halburnt wrote that this year’s budget calls for a new fire marshal and two new fire trucks at a cost of more than $2.5 million total. The budget also sets aside $375,000 for a new ambulance, she said.
“The additional police and fire personnel were budgeted out of the city’s reserve fund,” Halburnt wrote. That will work for a few years, she added, but isn’t sustainable in the long run without “offsetting revenue.”
Overall, she wrote, “things are stable and we continue to operate and grow.”
“I, and the mayor and City Council, have always been supportive of the police and fire departments,” she wrote. “They play a vital role in the safety and well-being of the city, providing essential emergency response and protecting lives and property.”
Halburnt wouldn’t comment on why Police Chief Robert Grado and Fire Chief Marc Mahoney were let go early last month. Attempts last week to reach several members of the council, including the mayor, were unsuccessful.
Adams County District Attorney Brian Mason says he doesn’t see the stability in the city’s emergency services departments that Halburnt insists is there.
“I’m concerned about public safety in Federal Heights,” he said in an interview with The Post. “I’m concerned about stability in the police department in Federal Heights.”
Grado, who was chief for nearly 2 ½ years, showed “exceptional leadership,” Mason said, especially in the wake of a failure by the Federal Heights Police Department to investigate serious felony cases over a four-year period, including sexual assaults on children, shootings and suspicious deaths.
Mason’s office produced a 30-page report on the shortcomings at the police department in late 2023.
“He helped to turn that department around,” Mason said of Grado’s efforts over the last couple of years to address the backlog. “My concern now is that there’s going to be backtracking. I don’t understand why (Grado) is not there anymore.”
Former police chief files complaint over firing
Deputy Chief Karl Ballard was appointed as interim police chief following Grado’s departure, while Finance Director Tim Weitzman was tasked with overseeing operations at the Federal Heights Fire Department, according to an internal email obtained by The Post.
The former police chief told The Post that he filed a complaint letter over his termination, which he described as “unfair.”
“It has been devastating to my family financially,” Grado said of his dismissal. “I have had a lot of success in Federal Heights. It was a very troubled department when I arrived.”
Grado served for 12 years on the Regional Transportation District’s police force, five of those years as chief, before . Earlier, he was an officer with the Monument Police Department for 20 years.
Ken Murphy, who served on the Federal Heights council for nine years, said fortifying employment at the police department is critical to maintaining public safety in the city.
“The more presence of police you see, crime will go down,” he said. “If we had the right staffing and the right equipment, these guys could do their job.”
Murphy, who is married to the mayor, said he was on the council when Halburnt joined the city 14 years ago.
“Which was a big mistake,” he said of her hiring by the council.
Murphy, 67, speculated that much of the council was “afraid” of the city manager, explaining its unwillingness to place her on administrative leave. In the meantime, he said, he worries about what is happening to the civic soul of Federal Heights as the controversy drags on.
“From the outside looking in, it looks like a dictatorship,” he said. “No city should ever be ruled by one person.”
The business of Federal Heights will continue as usual on Tuesday, with the gaveling in of the next council meeting. , as of Friday, was a fiber-optic agreement, a sewer manhole lining project, and the appointment of a planning and zoning commissioner.
There was no mention of the city manager and her employment status.
