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The Glenwood Springs Lions Club invited Colorado's State House District 57 candidates to their meeting to talk about their platforms and the most important issues in the district.
Redrawn in 2021, the district includes all of Pitkin and Garfield counties, as well as the portion of Eagle County in the Roaring Fork Valley and the I-70 corridor through Dotsero.
Lions Club members asked the candidates about education and affordable housing — big topics that both Elizabeth Velasco and Caleb Waller said voters have been focused on.
While they largely agreed on the issues, the two have different approaches to government.
Waller, who lives in Silt and is running as a Republican, favored a less-centralized approach.
“The problem that I'm seeing is that when we see greater regulations, greater government intervention, they tend to create greater restrictions and it holds people back from wanting to say, ‘let's dream, let's find the future,’” he said.
Velasco, a Democrat, said there’s lots that the state can do to help with local issues, but they need to be able to communicate and work with local governments.
“When we think about who we have as our representation, that matters, from our municipal level to the county to the state,” she said. “So, I think that we want leaders who are going to be able to collaborate and work together.”
For instance, Velasco mentioned that all of the municipalities and counties in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys, except Garfield County, had opted into Prop 123, designed to give local governments money, specifically for affordable housing.
Lions Club members told the two candidates that affordable housing was a key issue for them and their families. Both candidates agreed on the enormity of the problem, but had different approaches to tackling it.
Waller serves on Garfield County’s planning and zoning commission, and said private homeowners have a role to play.
“That's one of the biggest passions I have, is to say, ‘guys, we can in some ways control growth, but we also have to make sure that these people are able to do what they need to do on their property,’” he said. “And so that's a big one that I say…let's pull the government back a little bit and give people more freedom, as far as the growth.”
Velasco pointed to her track record working with local governments and organizations to bring some of the valleys’ solutions to the capitol.
“I am also working on a real estate transfer fee… that's a group of municipalities from ski towns asking for funding for affordable housing,” she said. “Also, I worked on rent control because in making mobile home parks, we're seeing increases of 20%, 30% from one year to the next and there's no cap.”
One member, a retired teacher and parent to a current teacher in the Roaring Fork School District, asked the candidates about education, and making sure that majority-minority districts get adequate support for their students’ needs.
Velasco is the first Mexican-born member of the legislature, and said she benefited from English as a second language (ESL) programs when she first moved to Colorado.
She said the legislature made big strides in fully funding Colorado schools this year, but they had more work to do.
“We continue to see achievement gaps between our different groups of kids,” she said. “So, you know, another thing we did… we saw that influx of migrants that happened the last couple of years. So we allocated special funding for schools that saw increased registration, with kids that have more needs.”
Velasco also said she’s hoping to prioritize teacher pay in the next legislative session. Colorado ranks in the bottom half of teacher salaries in the country, according to the National Education Association, at 29th in average salary. But, Colorado ranked dead last in the pay increases for teachers over the past four years.
As a young parent to seven kids, Waller said he’d like to push what he called “parent-driven education.”
“(It’s) where the parents are driving the kids’ education, whether or not they choose to put that kid in a charter school or whether they decide to homeschool that kid, or whether they decide to do some hybrid program where it's a half-homeschool, half-charter or a private schools option,” he said. “We need to move Colorado towards school choice.”
Waller said he believed school choice would empower English-learning families to find a good fit for their kids’ education, though it’s not clear from studies that access to voucher programs or charter schools improve outcomes for ESL students.
