“These issues matter to me because they are personal”

Guest Commentary for Gunnison Country Times, September 12, 2024

Two of the most common questions I’ve been asked in my first term as Gunnison County Commissioner for District 1 include, “What does a County Commissioner even do?” and “Why in the world would you want to do this?”

The answer to the first question is more than I can detail in 800 words, though I’ll try to cover a few bases in what follows. But I also want to share a little about what drives me to do this work.

The short answer is I’ve always been more motivated by a sense of purpose than pursuing a particular job or career, and the services counties provide are connected to some of my most formative childhood experiences. 

My parents divorced when I was young. I visited food banks with my mom and still remember the shame I felt when we payed with food stamps at the grocery store. I was fortunate to have the stability of my childhood home part of the week with my dad, but in the immediate fallout of the divorce, “home” with my mom included a rotation of staying with friends or relatives. For a time, it also included an abandoned house on my uncle’s property. It had plumbing and electricity, but my mom had to maneuver the kitchen on joists because the floor was falling in. I remember watching the stars from the car window when we’d make the 90-minute drive to my school. 

Experiences like these have influenced what I’ve prioritized in my first term as a commissioner. As a mom, I know the struggle of accessing quality and affordable early childhood education in our community. Workforce housing remains one of our most pressing issues – not just here, but across the state. And as enhanced public benefits from the pandemic have tapered off, more people than ever rely on resources like the Gunnison Country Food Pantry. These issues matter to me because they’re personal. 

Housing remains one of the biggest challenges in our community, and I couldn’t be more proud of the work we’ve done in this space. Local governments used pandemic ARPA funding in very different ways, but our BOCC directed every dollar of the $8.1 million we received to the Sawtooth workforce housing development by Fred Field Center. After voters approved our ballot question in 2022 to support expanded allowable uses for Local Marketing District revenues, we allocated another $1 million to the project. 

These capital investments allowed us to keep rent lower for all 50 units, which serve people in the 80-120 AMI range. When the debt service is paid off, it will generate more than $500K per year that Gunnison County can reinvest into issues like workforce housing. I’m not aware of any other community that has leveraged ARPA funding to create this kind of sustainable revenue for future needs. 

The County has also made progress toward our proposed 250+ unit Whetstone housing development just south of Crested Butte. When the state issued $28 million in the first round of its Transformational Affordable Housing grant program in 2023, Gunnison County received $10 million. That’s more than ⅓ of what was awarded across the entire state. Last week, the US Department of Transportation awarded us a $15.2 million Safe Streets for All grant that will fund safety improvements along Highway 135, including a roundabout with safe pedestrian access for Whetstone. This has been a critical infrastructure piece for the project to move forward with the support of the Town of Crested Butte and utility extension.

These projects are in addition to the 76 Paintbrush apartment units – 67 of which are deed-restricted – we’ve facilitated in Gunnison. We continue to work with community partners to preserve workforce housing in vulnerable developments like Country Meadows mobile home park. And, we recently acquired a 15-acre parcel just north of Gunnison to plan for future housing needs. 

We also need systematic, statewide improvements to better serve our children. In my capacity serving on the state’s Child Fatality Review Team, I see some of the most devastating things that happen to kids in Colorado. In addition to making policy recommendations, I bring this context to my work on the state’s Child Welfare Allocation Committee, which is responsible for determining the formula that distributes child welfare resources to counties across the state. When I realized the formula disadvantages counties like ours that do more prevention work, I started a workgroup to evaluate how the values that have historically informed our allocation model need to change.

These are just a few of the issues I’ve worked on that impact how people in our community experience day to day life – and I would invite people to visit my website to learn more about other work I’ve done on the opioid crisis, early childhood education, plans for short-term rental licensing and regulation, cheatgrass and habitat restoration, and advocacy for protections on the Crystal River (to name a few). 

It’s been an honor serving Gunnison County these past four years, and I hope to earn the support of our community to continue doing so.