The Garfield County Board of County Commissioners has been staunchly Republican since 2010, with the same three leaders at the helm: John Martin, Mike Samson, and Tom Jankovsky. While the county has chosen Republican candidates for fourteen years, Democratic challengers have come close to beating these incumbent candidates, trailing by just a few hundred votes in 2020 and 2022.
Martin, who was first elected in 1996, announced in January that he would not run for reelection again, leaving his seat open on the board for the first time in 28 years.
Republican Perry Will and Democrat Caitlin Carey, both of New Castle, are running for the District 2 seat. Both would be stepping into the role after holding positions in other public offices in the region.
Carey was elected to New Castle Town Council in 2022. Will was appointed to House District 57 in 2019, won as an incumbent in 2020, but lost to Democrat Elizabeth Velasco of Glenwood Springs in 2022. However, he was quickly appointed to the Senate District 5 position after Carbondale’s Bob Rankin, also a Republican, stepped down.
While the two candidates differ ideologically on many issues important to Garfield County voters, they agree on some tactics to address common problems in unaffiliated areas between Carbondale and Parachute.
Oil & Gas
Oil and natural gas production are often touted as some of the biggest economic forces in Garfield County.
According to Data USA, mining and extraction jobs were some of the highest-paid positions in the county in 2022; however, only 1.36% of employed residents held jobs in mining, quarrying, or oil and gas extraction. Employment has steadily declined in Garfield County’s mining and extraction industry since 2013.
At an election forum in Glenwood Springs on Sept. 26 hosted by the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, KMTS, and the Glenwood Springs Chamber Resort Association, the candidates responded to questions on how they would buoy the economy given declining revenues from oil and gas.
Carey said she supports a transition to more renewable energy sources and sees the remediation industry, where crews clean and plug oil wells to prevent environmental damage, as a source of future jobs.
“The great thing about the remediation industry is that it takes the same skill set,” Carey said. “It takes the same workforce, which means our employees have an opportunity to move into a more stable job.”
A recent report from Carbon Tracker Initiative found that 27,000 active wells in Colorado are not profitable enough to cover the cost of remediation and are at risk of being abandoned.
Will said he was an “all of the above energy person,” and supports a transition to renewable energy without excessive regulation.
“What I've seen at the legislature is that, (they) put too many time frames on those things,” Will said. “It's going to happen. It’s going to happen naturally.”
In an interview with Aspen Public Radio, Will also expressed concerns that solar and wind industries do not have the infrastructure to support the state’s power grid at this time.
Both candidates have emphasized a need to further diversify Garfield County’s economy.
Immigration
In November 2023, over 80 new immigrants, mostly from Venezuela, were discovered living at a boat ramp in unincorporated Garfield County near the border of the town of Carbondale.
The municipality funded a temporary shelter with a state grant and local donations. However, when Carbondale town staff approached Garfield County requesting collaboration and funding support, commissioners refused and signed a resolution establishing itself as a “non-sanctuary county.”
The designation seeks to clarify the county’s position on illegal immigration, however, it does not change any existing policies.
Republican Perry Will agreed with the commissioners’ decision while acknowledging it “doesn’t mean much.”
“We can't be everything to everybody,” Will said. “Humanitarian-wise — I get it, but I do support the commissioners on that decision because we can't be saying, ‘Hey! Come! We're welcoming.’ We don't have the services. We don't have the money to do that. We don't.”
In its request to commissioners, Carbondale town staff said without funding a shelter, the county would still have to cope with unhoused immigrants camping on public land, which could become a costly law enforcement and environmental issue.
Will agreed that the county could see costs associated with a lack of shelter space, but conceded that “it’s a federal issue, and we don’t have any control over that.”
In contrast, Carey said the decision to become a non-sanctuary county was “an unnecessary, divisive move.”
In an interview with Aspen Public Radio, Carey said Garfield County could have collaborated with Carbondale Mayor Ben Bohmfalk on a solution.
“Without getting too historical, we all came here for hope at some point, and I don't want us to ever lose sight of that,” Carey said. “It may not be that we can take as many folks as we would like to, but we need to also keep in mind that we came here for hope.”
Affordable Housing
Garfield County was rated the most difficult county in the U.S. to buy a home in NBC News’ Home Buyer Index in May 2024, citing competition as the leading difficulty.
Homes are not staying on the market long, and local government officials between Aspen and Parachute are scrambling to build and convert more affordable and attainable housing.
Democrat Caitlin Carey, if elected as a commissioner for Garfield County District 2, says she would encourage the board to join the West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition.
Municipalities between Aspen and Glenwood Springs, as well as Pitkin and Eagle counties, financially contribute to the collaborative, which collects data on local housing trends and is piloting a program to deed-restrict existing units. Garfield County is not a member, and Carey wants to encourage commissioners to collaborate with this regional organization.
“We need to take that research and put it into practice,” Carey said at the election forum in Glenwood Springs. “We need to continue to work with other organizations like Habitat (for Humanity) who have been doing it. We need to work with our developers and … ask for affordable units.”
She added that the problem is too great for one organization or government to address.
Republican Perry Will also wants to take a collaborative approach to this problem, working with Pitkin and Eagle counties, however, he was more reserved about joining the West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition, saying he needed to know more about the organization first.
His approach to addressing a lack of affordable and attainable housing in Garfield County remains focused on the local economy. In an interview with Aspen Public Radio, Will said good-paying jobs can make the existing housing stock more accessible.
“The best way to serve and to help affordable housing is to have good paying jobs,” Will said. “We can't just rely on tourism. We can't rely on just oil and gas, etc — a diverse workforce, a diverse amount of jobs.”
Child Care
Forty-nine percent of children under the age of 5 years old were not being served by a licensed child care facility between Glenwood Springs, El Jebel, and Carbondale in 2023, according to data from Confluence Early Childhood Education Coalition (CECE). Between New Castle and Parachute, 75% of children 5 years old and younger did not have spots.
Child care access in Garfield County worsened between 2022 and 2023 with licensed facilities losing capacity.
In a phone call with Aspen Public Radio, Democrat Caitlin Carey said she would try to convene government officials between Aspen and Parachute monthly to discuss regional solutions to local housing and child care deficits.
“We need to talk with our municipalities and everything in between — our organizations, our school districts, our large employers, especially about how we can come together to find some locations to do some child care up and down the valley,” Carey said.
She clarified that the identified locations would not necessarily be government-subsidized. However, Carey lauded a project in Glenwood Springs that leveraged state, city, and nonprofit funding to build more child care capacity.
Perry shares many of Carey’s opinions and ideas for tackling the region’s child care crisis, saying local employers can do more to develop child care access, boosting its potential local workforce.
“I think the businesses can do it,” Will said. “I'm not sure how. There are ways to incentivize employers doing that, but I think that's huge.”
He also sees opportunities to deregulate child care licensing requirements to make setting up home child care centers easier.
“I'm big on getting rid of red tape,” Will said. “Obviously not to put any child in danger, of course, but some of it we've overregulated to death. So, I think there's some ways that we can probably make it easier to do child care.”
Confluence Early Childhood Education Coalition (CECE) has identified several municipal regulations that could be adjusted to make home child care easier. They’re advocating for a regional public funding stream to establish more child care facilities.
Book Banning
Citizen-led interest groups are circulating petitions related to the Garfield County Public Library District.
One unnamed effort led by Trish O’Grady is trying to get the library board to restrict access to a growing list of books it has deemed inappropriate for children. Garfield County commissioners have been largely supportive of this effort.
Protect Our Garfield County Libraries is circulating a competing petition to reestablish the independence of the library board’s appointment process since Garfield County commissioners got involved and rejected the board’s pick for an open seat last year.
When asked his stance on the issue in Glenwood Springs last month, Republican Perry Will said, “I'm not for banning books. I am for protecting children.”
He said age-appropriate material should be on a higher shelf, similar to how movies are rated as inappropriate for children under 13 or 17.
Democrat Caitlin Carey’s response in Glenwood Springs was focused on how Garfield County addressed the controversy, condemning the leaders’ approach, as commissioners used harsh language to describe the books in question.
“Your words matter,” Carey said. “So when you call something that someone else may enjoy reading ‘filth,’ then you are just passing judgment on someone that you know nothing about, and I do not agree with that. Secondly, I think that by not taking the time to sit down and hash out a decision (with the library board) or a working agreement, it was inappropriate.”
She added that she wants her son to look at age-appropriate material, but she believes it’s her responsibility to monitor what he reads as a parent.
