Photo courtesy unsplash.com and Joshua J Woroniecki
Ark Valley Voice asked, what questions do you, our readers and local voters, have for the candidates running for local office? Amy Eckstein responded to our request on Instagram with the following questions:
What is your impression of the housing climate in Buena Vista? How can it be fixed? What is and is not working right now?
What are the candidates’ views on seasonal, in-town camping as a temporary workforce solution? If in favor, how would you make it happen?
To get our readers the answers they deserve, Ark Valley Voice reached out to the Buena Vista Board of Trustee candidates for their response to Eckstein’s questions on housing. We also asked that they provide biographical information to introduce themselves to readers and voters ahead of the April 2 election.
Part I of this Engaged Elections coverage included responses from Michal ‘Micha’ Rosenoer, Andy Matkovich, and Devin Rowe. These responses were published in the order in which they were received. These are the remaining responses to those questions:
Thomas Brown
Thomas Brown is running for a seat on the Buena Vista Board of Trustees.
Thomas Brown is a fifth-generation Coloradan. He is a grandson of miners, with a steelworker father and a social worker mother. His wife is an aspiring artist and they have two adult children and a grandchild. They are avid hikers, skiers, campers, and 4-wheel drive enthusiasts and have been working to convert their town lot to its once native grassland.
Brown is an Army veteran and member of Buena Vista’s local American Legion Post. He graduated from Colorado State University Pueblo with Bachelor of Science Degrees in Geography and Anthropology. His experience includes leading a multi-agency, congressionally-mandated Director of National Intelligence prisoner of war, missing in action, and hostage and recovery analytic division.
He has provided counter-narcotics intelligence support to the Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Houston Police Departments, founded Shavano Intelligence Systems (a consulting business), served as senior advisor of Charles County, Maryland’s Department of Public Health, served in Maryland’s Medical Reserve Corps during the COVID-19 pandemic, worked for three years as a substitute teacher, served on the BV Planning and Zoning Commission and the Chaffee County Transportation Boards, and is Vice Chair of Colorado’s Veterans Community Living Centers Commission.
He also served as Vice Chair of the Calvert County Environmental Commission and Nuisance Abatement Hearing Board in Maryland.
What is your impression of the housing climate in Buena Vista? How can it be fixed? What is and is not working right now?
“According to the Chaffee County Housing Authority, housing production in Buena Vista has not kept pace with housing demand. Homeownership is out of reach for the vast majority of Buena Vista residents, and finding a place to rent is very difficult in all areas of the town. The Housing Authority estimates that Buena Vista would need at least 330 new homes and/or rental units over the next three years to keep up with current projected population growth.
Buena Vista has shown progress in assisting developers to enhance affordable housing opportunities through the Carbonate Street and other proposed developments. When completed, these projects will result in a considerable increase in more affordable and attainable homes.
How can Buena Vista housing needs be fixed?
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- Increase short-term rental (STR) annual application fees and establish a new per-night STR fee. These fees should be directed to affordable and attainable housing programs throughout the Town.
- Educate residents on the use of Department of Agriculture, Veterans Administration, and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation to reduce down payment costs for first-time home buyers.
- Encourage using smart government inclusionary deed-restricted development requirements and incentivize developers who propose to build more economical and attainable multi-family units.
- Seek out and obtain Federal and State Government rental and homeowner assistance grants to help reduce the shortage of affordable homes and long-term rental units.
- Rental assistance could also include low-income senior housing and childcare support and possibly a subsidized independent or assisted senior living facility.
- Leverage the skill and expertise of residents within the Chaffee County Housing Authority, the Chaffee Housing Trust, and the Economic Development Corporation to obtain housing assistance and greater access to any available grant dollars.
- Market and promote new year-round business opportunities throughout the town to increase employee wages and expand the commercial tax base.
- Develop a collaborative public-private partnership with local businesses to foster new temporary or permanent housing opportunities and concepts for their employees.”
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What are your views on seasonal, in-town camping as a temporary workforce solution? If in favor, how would you make it happen?
“As stated publicly, I support seasonal in-town workforce camping. The town’s seasonal workforce represents a significant economic driver for the tourist-based economy. Local businesses and town government should work cooperatively as partners to help ensure seasonal workforce employees have an opportunity to live, work, and play in a safe, healthy, environment within Buena Vista. Having seasonal workforce camping in town enhances the local environment by reducing camping on nearby public lands, lowers employee commuting costs, and encourages a return to work in Buena Vista, thereby reducing business costs in recruiting and employee retention.
On April 5, 2023, the Buena Vista Planning and Zoning Commission held a public hearing on a draft ordinance regarding temporary seasonal camping in the Highway-Commercial (H-C) Zone District. Various questions were raised by the Commissioners to Town Staff specific to egress, fire safety, 24-hour access to bathrooms, and contact in the proposed H-C zone. The hearing was continued until Town staff can further define the verbiage of requirements and restrictions with the code update. The motion was passed unanimously. Note, seasonal work force camping is approved in the Buena Vista Light-Industrial (I-1) Zone region.
Since I am a Planning and Zoning Commissioner and the above hearing remains continued, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further on this H-C seasonal camping hearing. Or to provide thoughts or recommendations on any workforce seasonal camping options in the Town. Such statements could be perceived as biased until the continued public hearing on this matter is closed.
I do encourage residents, business owners, and seasonal workforce employees to reach out to Town staff and elected officials to provide their ideas, concepts, and thoughts about seasonal in-town camping options and opportunities throughout Buena Vista.”
Andrew Rice
Incumbent Andrew Rice was appointed to his seat on the Buena Vista Board of Trustees in 2023. Photo by Carly Winchell
Andrew Rice and his wife and moved to Chaffee County 15 years ago and say that at first, they had to “bring our jobs with us”. Rice has worked for nearly 25 years as a civil engineer with a focus on drinking water and wastewater treatment. He has been a private sector consulting engineer, but he currently works for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reviewing and inspecting drinking water treatment facilities throughout the state.
“Over the course of my career, I’ve had the privilege of working with many municipalities in Colorado on projects related to water infrastructure (i.e., treatment plants, pipelines, master planning, etc.). I have seen both the fruits of proactive planning and the pains of reactive responses to infrastructure and growth needs,” explained Rice.
He has been a Trustee on the Board since June 2023 and believes his background as an engineer could continue to be helpful for the Board of Trustees as they navigate a season of growth pressure in Buena Vista.
What is your impression of the housing climate in Buena Vista? How can it be fixed? What is and is not working right now?
“We seem to have an oversupply of short-term rentals and a paucity of long-term rentals in our community. This was not the case when we moved here 15 years ago.
A friend recently lamented to me that his lease was coming up and he needed to find a new place to live. At the time, he could find three long-term rental options for a two-bedroom house in the Buena Vista area. In the few miles surrounding Buena Vista, there were 161 short-term rental (STR) options listed on Airbnb.com. In my opinion, this is a clear picture of the disparity and inequity in housing options for our community.
STRs generate an economic benefit, and I am not in favor of disallowing them. However, I think there is an intrinsic unfairness underlying the STR market.
We have a system that incentivizes (or subsidizes) the use of residential property for commercial use. In my opinion STRs provide accommodations for customers, not residents, and thereby are a commercial enterprise. STRs serve the same tourist market that a hotel does but the hotel pays commercial property tax whereas the STR only pays residential property tax. Commercial property tax rates are approximately 5 times more than residential property tax. This is effectively a tax break for STRs and incentivizes the purchase and operation of STRs.
If there was a way to ‘level the playing field’ with equal tax rates for equivalent commercial uses, I believe the rental market would trend toward a more equitable balance providing greater opportunity for those in need of renting long-term housing. Additionally, the tax revenue generated by fairly taxing STR properties could be used to support other various affordable housing endeavors currently in progress or under consideration.”
What are your views on seasonal, in-town camping as a temporary workforce solution? If in favor, how would you make it happen?
“We have to think creatively to provide more flexibility for seasonal housing. Many rafting companies have utilized camping as a way to meet their employee housing needs so it’s been proven as a viable solution for that type of business. The rafting company camping model has been around for 20 years or more.
In-town camping raises a few questions however: where would it occur, how would we provide water, sewer and trash services (who would pay for those services), what would the adjacent property owners think of such use, would the zoning of the proposed properties be consistent with the use, what type of insurance would the property owner need to carry, what unintended consequences would arise as result of a campground in town, how would we ensure that it was used as workforce housing and not tourist housing… these are a few that come to mind.
I think we would need to make sure that many obvious (and not so obvious) questions were addressed at the outset. And we would need to make certain we’d have input from all stakeholders, residents, and property owners in the community.”
Maggie Huyck
Candidate Maggie Huyck is running for a seat on the Buena Vista Board of Trustees.
Margaret ‘Maggie’ Huyck was born in Denver, raised in Austin, and now calls Buena Vista home. She lived in Buena Vista previously from late 2007 to late 2010. When she had the opportunity to move back in 2022, she took it.
Her grandparents moved to Buena Vista in 2000, and Huyck was a camper at Young Life’s Frontier Ranch in 2001. She and her husband currently work at the Eddyline Taproom.
Huyck volunteers with the Buena Vista Event Cooperative (BVEC) as the Vice Chair on the Board of Directors and enjoys spending time walking around town with her dog Pepper.
“As a resident who has had the pleasure of watching Buena Vista grow over the last 24 years, I would like to bring my unique perspective to the Board of Trustees for our future growth and sustainability. My motivation comes from a place of public service, firmly believing that, if we can, we should. I am in a position to offer my time to help this community and would like to do so by bringing a voice to the table that encompasses all walks of life,” explained Huyck.
She hopes to bring “a spirit of curiosity and problem solving” to the Buena Vista Board of Trustees.
What is your impression of the housing climate in Buena Vista? How can it be fixed? What is and is not working right now?
“I think we all can agree that the housing climate is currently favoring visitors, where it should be supporting our residents. We have such a wide variety of people coming through and staying in our town that we can’t look to traditional means to solve this problem.
In the midst of our town’s culture shift into more of a tourist town than we have ever been, we are also seeing the same struggles that the nation is seeing with real estate. We cannot afford to be reactive anymore, but proactive for how we want this change to look like.
It will take many solutions to fix this problem. We need to continue protecting what we can in terms of resources for future growth, but find housing solutions now. This includes workforce housing, housing for our aging population, and our seasonal employees.
In working with grant funding and partnerships we could possibly look at cooperative housing to help fill some of these needs sooner versus later. That is just one of many possible solutions to bring to the table. I would also like to explore incentives for local homeowners that have secondary properties in town that they turn from STR to long-term rentals for residents.
Our current BoT have worked hard to make changes that will benefit us now, but we also need to look seven generations into the future. The Water Allocation Policy and Carbonate Street development are a good place to start, and I hope to help bring additional ideas to work towards a solution. I would like to see us work with developers who want to be in our town for more than a return on their investment, but for the investment in our town and our people.”
What are your views on seasonal, in-town camping as a temporary workforce solution? If in favor, how would you make it happen?
“We are currently seeing this, although it isn’t really talked about. I would like to see us look into a place where we can offer safe van camping in the summer as our service industry is bolstered by the seasonal workforce that joins us. Right now they are moving around, finding the safest places they can, but, if we are to offer solutions, we need to get creative.
I would look at using town land to create cooperative-run spaces that could start providing our seasonal workforce solutions now. We have plenty of business owners who are trying to solve the issue on their own, and I would like to see us work together instead of putting it on our business owners and local employees to figure it out. We would want to look at solutions that will provide us all with positive impacts, which can be tricky to do.
I think if our residents knew that there is someone on the BoT that is fighting for all of us to have the best quality of life, we can all work towards a solution a little bit quicker. I understand that we want this town to be accessible to all, and that will be my driving influence in ideas and decision-making.”
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