WOODY CREEK — The six candidates vying for three contested seats on the Pitkin County Board of Commissioners met here last night to debate their views on urban growth and employee housing in the greater county, along with other issues.
The two-hour forum was held at the Woody Creek Community Center with an audience of about 30 that included Biff, a cat who lives there and at the tavern next door.
A civil discussion that displayed mostly slim policy differences between the candidates, it opened with a stiff-arm from current District 3 Commissioner Michael Owsley against his opponent Shellie Roy for what he called her “distortions” of her public record and his own.
Roy, from whom Owsley won his seat in 2004, has distributed a flyer saying Owsley, a Woody Creek resident, “has done little and says nothing except when Woody Creek is affected” and stating she helped get Smuggler Mountain designated as open space. She repeated the latter assertion in her opening remarks.
“Let’s set the record straight,” Owsley shot back. “Smuggler became open space while I was in office, not Shellie. Shellie was the broker of the property. She took those years that she was in office, those years of executive sessions, those years of confidential information, and flipped it to the other side. For her to try to get credit for Smuggler is just ridiculous. It just won’t fly.”
After leaving office, Roy ran advertisements for her nascent real estate career that implied her experience as a commissioner and work on the local land-use code while in office would make her a more effective broker.
She split with Owsley and the other candidates, supporting affordable housing to be built outside the urban growth boundary. Noting that Aspen and Basalt are tamping down construction within their own borders, she said commissioners would have to consider responsibly building outside of the boundary in order to sustain working people.
“If we are going to have another generation,” she said, “we have to open up that conversation again.”
Bruce Anderson, who is challenging incumbent Jack Hatfield for the 4th District (and who is the only male candidate who does not wear a mustache) said employee housing should be built on or near the places lower-income people work. He suggested building teacher housing on the parking lot of Aspen High School.
“The critical jobs need housing for critical people,” he said. “But who is going to be the one that says a teacher is more important than a sheriff’s deputy, is more important than a firefighter — you can’t go there. So what we have to do is develop the housing and develop it close to where those jobs are.”
Anderson and Hatfield, whose district includes Snowmass Village and the Snowmass and Capitol Creek valleys, differed slightly on the two county ballot initiatives facing voters this fall — a proposed sales tax funding water quality in local rivers and streams and a mill levy going to road and bridge improvements. Anderson threw his support behind both, while Hatfield said he was undecided on whether the road measure is immediately necessary for the county.
Biologist and water expert Dee Malone and Emma Caucus chair George Newman, who are fighting for the 5th District seat being vacated by Dorothea Farris, both gave strong support for preserving the rural and agricultural character of their district and the county. The 5th District includes Emma, the Crystal River Valley and the upper Fryingpan River Valley.
Newman called for “smart growth” to meet the valley’s housing crunch while Malone said “to sprawl out beyond the urban growth boundary destroys the very thing that makes our quality of life so good.”
On the issue most directly affecting the Woody Creekers in the audience — the limited bus access to Woody Creek and the suspension of it during the off-seasons — all six candidates agreed it should be expanded. But none offered a specific solution.
Newman floated the idea of implementing some sort of van service from Woody Creek to the intercept lot. Hatfield suggested the Woody Creek Caucus deliver a letter on the issue to the Roaring Fork Transit Authority (RFTA). Malone said she would lobby RFTA to increase service if elected.
andrew@aspendailynews.com
Comments
2010 annual budgets in PitCo
KNCB Moore
Bad economic times require budget reviews of all the PitCo govnt
money managers. What amount of pubic spending/borrowing can the
community afford and sustain ? Budgets were being drafted even as Woody Creek Creatures met. The lack of attention to priorities, resoutces and priorities means that Pitkin County will muddle through its next fiscal year and that all the candidates supporting this muddling.