Four vying for two Snowmass council seats | News

In this election, four candidates are vying for two open seats on the Village of Snowmass Town Council. Incumbent Tom Friedstein is seeking a second term on the council, while Cecily DeAngelo, Art Burrows and Debbie Alcorta are running to fill the seat vacated by term-limited Councilwoman Alyssa Schenk who is running for mayor.

The four candidates generally agree that workforce housing is one of the biggest issues the city needs to continue to address, but they have different opinions on how to address it. The two candidates with the most votes will join the council, which has several major development bids ahead.

Bids for the Ullrhof mountain restaurant, the Aspen Skiing Company Divide housing project, the Snowmass Center land acquisition and the Little Red Schoolhouse redevelopment have entered a quasi-judicial process in which sitting council members will serve as judges on the projects.

They will also have to make decisions on the Draw site, an $86 million, 79-unit workforce housing complex for which voters will be asked to authorize spending through Ballot Question 2D. Regardless of whether 2D fails, the City Council will have to decide how to move forward with the city’s largest workforce rental housing development in 25 years.

Debbie Alcorta

Debbie Alcorta has lived in the Roaring Fork Valley for 30 years and currently works for the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority helping employees access affordable housing.

She said housing is the biggest issue facing Snowmass residents, but she doesn’t support the 2D issue because of the $86 million price tag.

“I think the biggest problem is housing, by far, and the only way to solve it is to move forward,” she said. “We need to choose what we are going to do and start doing it. We cannot continue to delay with special meetings, sessions, PUDs. We just need to move forward.”

Although she has not served on the council before, she said she is open to learning about the process while listening to community input. Her first-term priorities will be building housing, addressing transit issues and improving child care in the village.

“I would like to be a voice for our entire community, not just second home owners, not just people who come here on vacation, I would like to have a voice for the working person,” she said. “I work two jobs myself, I belong to this community and I would like to see things move forward.”

Alcorta wants the city to scale back the Draw site and take advantage of housing opportunities behind the Snowmass Center and Snowmass Mall.

But she also supports the “development-neutral” housing projects that the current City Council has discussed. She supports minimizing building footprint in Snowmass by renovating existing buildings to provide more affordable housing.

Art Burrows

Art Burroughs lived in the Roaring Fork Valley for 45 years, 20 of which in the village of Snowmass. He has volunteered to work on trail systems from New Castle to Snowmass and is a board member of the Roaring Fork Mountain Bike Association.

After 20 years of living in Snowmass, he decided to run for City Council to address workforce housing and public infrastructure in the village. He is the only council member of the four running in this election who supports Ballot Question 2D.

“We have people who commute more than three hours a day and work in management-level and professional jobs, and we know that our city will function much better if we have people living in our community,” he said. “We have limited time to build anything because of the cost and availability of live sites.”

He would like to see the city’s private sector also prioritize workforce housing. He said whatever facilities are built, there must be enough housing on site for employees. He said the city needs to take “a stronger approach to ensure that large developers take responsibility for the consequences.”

But he also said the city should slow down development to minimize construction fatigue, which is affecting the quality of life for Snowmass residents.

“We can’t completely stop all development, but I think now is the right time for us to slow things down and figure out what the balance is and how best to create a livable village for its permanent residents. said Burroughs.

If elected, he will work to further develop the Little Red School, which is currently underway, and support more projects to improve childcare in the village.

Cecily DeAngelo

Cecily DeAngelo was born and raised in Snowmass Village. Before returning to the Roaring Fork Valley in 2018, she owned a small business in Boulder and is now the executive director of Roaring Fork Safe Passages, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing vehicle-wildlife collisions in the Roaring Fork Valley.

As a council member, she will prioritize advocating for local families through projects such as renovating the Little Red Schoolhouse and making Snowmass a sustainable community.

DeAngelo said she would also prioritize housing for employees but did not support Ballot Question 2D. She said the design for the Draw site is currently too large for the site and believes it should be scaled down while the city prioritizes housing behind Snowmass Center.

“We are moving to a point where Snowmass Village will be the largest developer and we will be driving the biggest changes in construction in the City of Snowmass. That being said, I think it is incredibly important that we continually refer to the comprehensive plan and remain consistent with the rural nature of our village,” she said. “There is no doubt that we need to build more workforce housing, but we need to make sure it is well planned.”

She called the city’s 2018 comprehensive plan an important guiding document in her work as a council member. She said it would be important to continue to refer to the document to minimize construction fatigue.

“As we embark on many projects under the auspices of the city, we need to be incredibly thoughtful, reference the comprehensive plan with constituents and ensure that for both businesses and residents here, as we implement we build on these plans in which we respect and consider the daily lives of the people who live here,” she said.

As a council member, DeAngelo said she would advocate for families with young children, including prioritizing housing for essential workers such as educators at Little Red Schoolhouse to ensure the city can retain early childhood educators.

She also wants to close a gap in infant care that currently doesn’t exist in Snowmass.

Tom Friedstein

Tom Friedstein was first elected to the City Council in 2020 after serving on the city’s Planning Commission for five years. He chaired the planning commission for two of his five years of service and ultimately decided to run in 2020 to have decision-making power on city issues rather than just an advisory role as a commissioner.

Friedstein is an architect, and his experience gives him a unique perspective on the city’s development, he said. It is this experience that motivates him to oppose the Draw website project in its current version. During months of council meetings on the project, he argued that the current project was too big for his limited site and called on city officials to cut the project in half and abandon plans for an underground parking garage.

The proposed project is a two-story workforce housing complex with two levels of underground parking on land northwest of Snowmass Town Hall.

“This place is physically very challenging, it’s steep, it’s narrow… and I just know from experience that it doesn’t work and to make it bigger would be terrible,” he said. “If this was our last site, I might reconsider my decision, but it’s not.”

As the city worked through the Draw PUD, some of the land behind the Snowmass Center became available for purchase. The city is currently negotiating to purchase land to build workforce housing. Friedstein said the city should scale back the Drow site plan and compensate for losses at Snowmass Center, where he said the site is more conducive to development.

He proposed reducing the drawing area to one tower without underground parking. He opposes the 2D ballot question.

During his second term, Friedstein will prioritize development of a new transit center at the Snowmass Mall. Over the past few months, the City Council has renewed conversations about building a two-level transit center at the Snowmass Mall. Mall owner Romero Group said construction of the transit center will make way for the mall’s redevelopment and construction of 22 units of employee housing, another reason Friedstein supports the transit center. He supports moving forward with small workforce housing developments scattered throughout the village.

He also hopes to continue working on the renovation of the Little Red Schoolhouse, which he has been eyeing for several months as a board member.