CUPITMUSIC

If you’ve taken an animal to a veterinarian in Colorado recently, you know that medical care for pets isn’t cheap. Even a routine checkup for vaccines, heartworm prevention, and diet recommendations can cost a couple of hundred dollars, and any medical procedure starts at $1,000 and can reach $10,000 quickly.

A ballot measure could help or at least help prevent care from getting more expensive. Proposition 129 would create a master’s degree program to train a new level of care provider between technicians and doctors – a veterinary professional associate or VPA – who could perform surgeries, provide care, and perform other important tasks.

Most veterinarians work hard to keep their prices affordable, but the Denver Dumb Friends League – one of the most trusted animal shelters in the state — and Colorado State University  – our agricultural higher education hub – have teamed up to find ways to keep prices down.

The Dumb Friends League knows first-hand how many animals get surrendered or euthanized every year because a life-saving procedure is too expensive or an animal’s quality of life has deteriorated too far and the surgery would cost thousands of dollars to repair ligaments or remove bone spurs.

Colorado State University runs the state’s largest veterinarian college and is fighting to keep the state supplied with enough doctorates of veterinarian medicine to meet demand.

But Colorado is a pet-loving state, and there is a shortage of vets.

So the Dumb Friends League brought us Proposition 129. It changes state law and directs the State Board of Veterinary Medicine to create a licensing process for a two-year master’s program for veterinary professional associates. And CSU has drafted up a proposal to implement the master’s program.

These VPAs once licensed by the state will be able to perform almost all of the same duties as a doctor of veterinary medicine under the doctor’s supervision.

The language of the ballot measure limits the VPA’s work to what they were trained in school to do and what the licensed veterinarian assigns them to perform. The state board will create credentialing requirements for schools, and we urge them not to allow programs to be primarily conducted online. Physician assistants for human care — a master’s degree program — spend long hours in clinical care seeing patients and getting hands-on experience diagnosing and developing treatment plans. VPAs must get the same hands-on training with animals.

There will be a licensing test and required ongoing professional development.

We understand the concern from veterinarians across the state that this change could lead to substandard care. No one wants hurriedly trained employees working with animals. Large vet chains, including some who have donated money to help put this on the ballot, may abuse these new employees setting up teams of VPAs working under the supervision of a single veterinarian who doesn’t have time to ensure quality of care. There is no guarantee that any savings realized by hiring fewer doctorates in veterinary care would be passed along to pet owners.

The issue is being framed by the American Veterinary Medical Association — which opposes the measure — as a choice between substandard care and the status quo.

But for many Coloradans today the status quo is prohibitively expensive and the choice often is not seeking any medical care for their animals. The risk of poorly trained VPAs or large chain veterinary hospitals abusing the intent of the law is worth the potential outcome of more Colorado pets receiving medical care when needed because it is readily available and more affordable.

Just as humans seek care from PAs who received master’s degrees, so too pets should be able to get care from VPAs with master’s degrees.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Mayor Mike Johnston has a plan to infuse our tax dollars into the housing crisis to help build affordable housing in a city that has become all but unobtainable for middle-class Coloradans.

But we have to agree with Denver city council members who expressed grave concerns about the plan to raise Denver’s sales tax to fund a new venture into affordable housing for the city.

“I will support it going to the voters but we have to be honest; good intentions exist but the clarity and specificity doesn’t,” Councilwoman Jamie Torres said this month while casting her vote to help place it on the ballot in November.

Denver voters should not approve this dedicated sales-tax increase, at least not without a more thoroughly vetted plan. Johnston does have a vision that he spent an hour sharing with The Post editorial board, but the Affordable Denver Fund needs more scrutiny than it has received in the weeks since Johnston first unveiled the proposal.

If voters approve the $100 million-a-year increase in sales tax, it will be up to Denver City Council to approve spending plans. In other words, this is a tax-first, get-the-details-later approach that has resulted in mixed success for city voters in the past.

For example, Denver’s preschool program was a smashing success that has helped thousands of kids access quality early childhood education since 2006. The Educate Denver sales tax is getting scholarship money into the hands of seniors graduating from Denver high schools but has amassed a $30 million fund. The fund has not moved to reduce its sales tax rate of 0.08%.

Denver needs more affordable housing – particularly housing for Denverites who are making less than $60,000 a year. These middle-class and low-income Coloradans are falling through the cracks. They can’t qualify for subsidized housing through Section 8 (Housing Choice Vouchers) or Denver’s many public housing units but also struggle to afford market-rate rents.

But the city needs a concrete plan to make a dent in the housing crisis, especially given that this 0.5% sales tax would be in place for the next 40 years. Johnston should go back to the drawing board and come up with a proposal that provides voters with more details for how $100 million a year will create affordable housing in Denver. As it’s written now, the ballot language says the money will be used to: increase “production, preservation, financing, acquisition, conversion, (and) subsidies” for housing deemed affordable for those making less than 80% of the area median income. It also could be used for a homebuyer assistance program for those making less than 120% of the area median income. Those income targets feel right, but the “First Year Plan” for how to actually spend the money will be created by the manager of finance and the Department of Housing Stability sometime between the November election and Jan. 30, 2025. Voters need that plan now to judge whether this is a good idea.

We do like many of Johnston’s ideas, especially his plan to emphasize the acquisition of existing affordable housing in Denver, either through direct purchase or the purchase of an easement, to protect it forever from becoming new luxury housing. Johnston understands the housing market and wants to leverage the tax to dollars with other state and federal funding to build new units, preserve existing units, help first-time homebuyers escape the rental market, and help renters on the verge of eviction.

In the meantime, Johnston should select one key initiative in his proposal, find existing funding, and run a pilot program to demonstrate how his Affordable Denver Fund will work on a $100 million-a-year budget. Then build a “First Year Plan” around that success. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Denver didn’t become unaffordable overnight. It’s OK if the mayor doesn’t solve this problem in his four-year term in office.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.