The four candidates running for Basalt Town Council weighed in on local issues during a candidate forum Monday night.
Affordability, especially housing affordability, was a recurring theme.
Elyse Hottel has dealt with the issue personally. She said she stepped away from the council after her first term in 2024 because her housing situation became uncertain.
“I was living in affordable housing, and I was going to have too high an income to stay there,” Hottel said. “And yet, I didn't feel like I could find anything in the community at a market rate that I could afford, because I’m just a normal working person.”
Hottel said her experiences motivated her to help launch the West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition, a nonprofit addressing housing affordability from Aspen to Parachute. She’s most recently been working as the interim director of local hunger relief organization LIFT-UP.
Incumbent council member Angela Anderson favors a number of “development neutral” housing solutions, asserting there are alternatives to the instinct to “build our way out of it.”
Anderson said she’s been working to loosen restrictions on accessory dwelling units.
“I think that we need to work with HOAs in the neighborhoods that don't allow ADUs and offer some sort of incentives to come around to allowing people to add them,” Anderson said.
She also suggested the town create a down payment assistance fund.
“If we offered qualified buyers a $50,000 low-interest loan, repaid at sale, we could get 20 families into homes,” Anderson said. “And then we could do it again and again and again.”
Benjamin Fierstein is an engineer who has served on Basalt’s Planning & Zoning Board for the past three years. He now wants to join the Town Council.
“I've got people that I work with who are smart, intelligent people that make too much money for affordable housing,” Fierstein said. “But don't make enough to be able to afford to even rent in our community, or the neighboring community or the neighboring community after that.”
Fierstein said his wife stopped working to raise their two kids because of another affordability issue — childcare.
“And she was a mental health provider here in the valley as well,” he said. “So you're taking one incredible resource to fund another resource that's limited.”
Another candidate, Greg Shaffran, was born and raised in the Roaring Fork Valley.
He works with Mountain Rescue Aspen and got personally involved with the Town of Basalt when it was looking for a company to operate the Stott’s Mill childcare facility.
“I was on the phone calling providers being like, ‘Hey, I've got a place. Would you take it over? Would you bring childcare here?’ I thought it was so important to have that in the community,” Shaffran said.
Shaffran thanked Hottel for fighting to make that development a daycare center during her first term. The facility opened in September 2024 and is operated by Blue Lake Preschool.
Shaffran also stressed his experience volunteering with elder communities, saying they also deserved more attention.
“I used to be involved with the senior center. I did Meals on Wheels, delivering meals,” Shaffran said. “So I kind of see in our community, there's kind of both ends of the spectrum that aren't taken care of well enough.”
Incumbent councilor Anderson expressed excitement about a newly-approved tax district, suggesting Basalt use the revenue to subsidize infant care or incentivize in-home daycare.
The candidates were also asked about the urgency of climate change, a topic that often isn’t included in political forums.
“The snow in the resort is the reason why we exist here,” Fierstein said.
He said Basalt has a small impact on global temperatures, but there’s more leaders can do to help people thrive there.
Shaffran and Anderson both emphasized the importance of making the community more resilient to wildfire.
Hottel said the community needed to double down on climate policy, and should expand access to composting.
“I did work for the City of Boulder and the sustainability division for three years,” Hottel said. “They had a universal waste policy, and everything that could possibly be recycled or reused was. Our landfill is stretched, so whatever we could do to incorporate a policy like that.”
The four candidates are competing for three open seats. Each seat has a four-year term.
Election Day is Tuesday, April 7.
