The Boulder Chamber hosted a candidate debate on Thursday between the Democratic primary frontrunners for Boulder County Commissioner, Elaina Shively and Ashley Stolzmann. Current Commissioner Matt Jones is not seeking a second term.
The primary election is June 28 and voters have until Monday to change or withdraw their affiliation if they wish to vote in a different party’s primary election.
Below is a transcription, edited for clarity and brevity, of their debate.
Opening remarks
Elaina Shively: My name is Elaina Shively. I'm running for county commissioner. I'm born and raised in Boulder County. I now live in Lafayette with my husband who's a nurse at Boulder Community Hospital. We have two kids, they are five and nine and in elementary school.
After law school, I became a public defender. I now do program development for the county. Eight years ago, I was hired to implement restorative justice and alternatives that help improve our outcomes in the criminal justice system.
If there are two issues I care about every day, it is public safety and our environment. Those things broach everything that we are all talking about. Those are places where I have special expertise in terms of working with mental health, substance use disorders and managing change in a collaborative way, so that it's sustainable and effective and we get the outcomes. We should be held accountable at the county and through our leadership for those outcomes.
Boulder County is beautiful and we have protected this space for a reason, and we need to continue to do so and deal with our challenges. The climate emergency is upon us. I am terrified. When I think about oil and gas development, I think about us. I think about our economic vitality, about our public safety, our health, and about everybody else.
I think about what we can do together to meet these challenges. I have been here my entire life. I think we are still talking about a lot of the rhetoric we've been talking about since I was a little girl. We need to dive in and get to action, and that's where I could help. I'm a leader who bridges. I'm not a politician, but I love policy. I've done legislative work. I'm excited about the administrative roles. I've done that and I do that for the county.
Ashley Stolzmann: I'm Ashley Stolzmann. I'm a candidate for county commissioner and I'm currently the mayor of the city of Louisville. Back on Dec. 30, in east county, we had a terrible climate disaster come through our community and it was something that I never thought could happen in suburban Colorado. About 10% of the community was devastated in just a blink of an eye.
Because of that experience, I learned so much about the things that we really need to take urgent action on, addressing our disaster response and preparedness. It really brought me to throw my hat in the ring to run for county commissioner.
The good news is I've been a public official in Boulder County since 2013. I've been working really diligently on transportation issues, which are critical issues that face our communities. I've been working on adding more affordable housing to the community and taking climate action is my passion.
My experience as a local elected official has really brought regional collaboration to the forefront. I was elected by the 58-member governments around regions of Denver, Boulder, Longmont and all the way down to Castle Rock to serve as the chairperson of the Denver Regional Council of Governments. Why that matters to all of you is those relationships are how we bring outside funding into our county. That's how we solve problems on a larger scale.
We really need partnerships to be able to advance our systems and all of our problems. That's how we'll be more prepared for the next climate disaster. That's how we solve the problems with housing. That's how we'll work on the problems around climate.
I'm ready to go on day one as a prepared leader to start fighting for causes all around Boulder County that are near and dear to my heart. I'm really, truly driven to make life better for people.
What are your key transportation priorities for Boulder County? What challenges do you see in addressing those priorities, and what are some of the solutions that you have in mind to address those challenges?
Stolzmann: Reducing transportation emissions is something critical that we have to do urgently in the next 10 years. We have to fix the issues with our public transit system. Right now, we are in a very adversarial role with our transportation district and fighting over money that's sitting in a bank. We're not spending it on services for the community.
Capital is getting more expensive every day and the people need the services now. We have to resolve these conflicts and actually jump into action. Our communities have spoken. There are many, many plans that have been studied and restudied, so a very high priority of mine is actually implementing some of the community’s decisions.
Shively: As somebody who's new to politics, it's easy from the outside to say, it feels like transportation and mobility has been stagnant. We need new leadership, and we need effective leadership. We can work together and collaborate to move the needle on this issue that is so important for workplace development and for greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Priorities for me are also around public safety and our cyclist safety.
Our county transportation sales tax is going to expire in 2024. There are various scenarios being proposed to maintain funding for critical infrastructure and transportation. What do you hope to see happen in light of this expiring sales tax?
Shively: There are a lot of competing initiatives right now on sales tax because we're asking a lot of people all at once. How we use (taxes) and what we use them for can't be taken in a silo because we have a lot of different things that we're looking at. Right now the county commissioners are planning on seeking public input, which is an important part of the process both as to this and other funding sources. There's also opportunities for that outside money in federal grants.
Stolzmann: The commissioners are studying a variety of options from renewing the tax, having it serve the places that it serves now, all the way to a very big tax increase. Name a project you've heard of in transportation and that's the high one. I think that the high amount is too high for the community to be able to absorb it. We're already at a very high sales tax rate, it's very expensive to live here, and people are really under a lot of pressure with all of the inflationary issues that are going on. I think that (the higher tax) would be too far, but I do think renewing the tax is a fantastic idea.
Do you think that homelessness should be criminalized?
Shively: No, I don't think homelessness should be criminalized. I think that we can't criminalize a group of people. I've worked with public safety. Criminalizing behavior is different. If somebody has not broken a law and then, no, they cannot be a criminal.
Now, if we're talking about the camping ban that the city of Boulder has, I have challenges with how you're expecting our law enforcement to enforce that. What we have right now, the status quo is not working. We can't continue to try the same thing over and over again. Some of the challenges I hear from business owners, from people who are experiencing crime, and different places where it feels like there are encampments all around you and maybe people don't want to come to your business anymore.
We need to think about that with empathy for the folks who are experiencing homelessness and direct action to expand our holistic services. I do support additional efforts to help people out of homelessness. Our unhoused population most often struggles with mental health and substance abuse disorders and we need to help them. We know that there's some resistance and some shortages.
I have run a mental health diversion program, the first in the state. I helped implement it with help and collaboration from the Sheriff's office and the jail and community services.
The last piece I would say is that I work with families right now who are on the brink of homelessness. There's a piece of this about preventing future homelessness. I've had clients experiencing homelessness. I have worked and talked to them. I've talked to people who are living outside right now. We need to chip away at this from all aspects.
Stolzmann: I don't think that we should criminalize homelessness. We have many problems and we're not addressing them with the existing services that we're providing right now. I am very proud of our county. We're taking a housing first strategy, but it's literally not working and we're not providing the services and resources people need. It's very self-evident. We have to do more to meet people where they are.
Community members that need services are being shuttled around from community to community or are expected to be able to go. We need regional collaboration. You can't just keep shuttling people around and pushing problems off on each other by criminalizing something in one area and pushing it to another.
We need collective solutions. We need to work together on these things. We see such a shortage of housing and housing is related to homelessness. We can't expect that one solution works for every type of person. We need different strategies to help people in different circumstances.They're not all the same.
We're seeing tremendous issues with drug use and overdose. That's incredibly complicated. I opposed this war on drugs approach that the state has chosen to take. I think criminalizing people that have a small amount of drugs on their person and putting them in jail for that will lead to further problems.
I think we need to actually start working on solutions with the community to get people treatment and help, and to really reduce the amount of illegal substances that are coming into the community. The two intersect closely, and I hope to work on them together.
Closing statements
Stolzmann: I'm really interested in serving the community and learning more about the needs that you all have. Right now, I'm really called to action with disaster response and recovery, preparedness and planning. We have to do more to keep this from happening in other parts of the county. We have to make sure our evacuation routes are strong. We have to make sure that we have response systems in place so that we can minimize the loss of life and minimize the damages to people's structures and the property.
I'm currently working on that. I will continue working on that. But I really would have a much more effective job in doing that if I was your county commissioner. The county is responsible for so much of the budgetary authority over that whole section of your life.
Taking climate action is a passion of mine and has been, we have to reduce our emissions. This will help us keep from having these types of wildfires if we can get it under control. There is a lot of work to be done in this area. There is not anything I work on that I don't think about how it intersects with climate. Climate will impact Boulder County if we don't take action. I think that my focus on that is very, very strong and will help our community into the future.
Everyone knows right now that our transportation issues are not being addressed. So I am committed to you as my years of work on the Denver Regional Council of Governments to bring outside money into our community to address some of the deficiencies that we have long identified.
Shively: Boulder County is made up of multiple municipalities and unincorporated areas. What we know when we live here is that our communities are not all the same. We have different development and social service needs that need to be worked on collaboratively, both with municipalities, with partners and with county leadership. County governance is a different beast. It's a beast I've been trying to tackle for eight years and I'm excited to continue to serve because we do need some reform and some more innovation.
I'm endorsed by both of the county commissioners who will continue to serve in those roles. They want to work with me in that role. I would compliment them well with my background. We need to build resiliency. We need to do better on disaster relief. We can do that if we listen and work together. A lot of what I talk about today is that the method can get in the way of mission.
I am not afraid to lean into conflict. I'm also not afraid to try to work, to resolve it. The health of our young people who are committing suicide at extremely high rates, increases in substance use disorder, folks who don't feel safe in our community and different challenges are going to continue to plague us, and I have the expertise and the balance to bring people together and bridge it and get that work done.
