Political Hobbyist - the origin story - how to embrace an insult
The inside scoop is here.
It was a dark and stormy nope
The mist parted and dark figures could try again Karen
Once upon a time yikes no.
OK, If you’ve read my about page (thank you, there will be a pop quiz later) you might have noticed that at the bottom I say I will provide the lowdown on the political hobbyist part of this site’s name. It originated during the 2017 election season. Since all the research on the non-incumbent 2023 candidates has been accomplished this seems like the perfect time to bend your ear or is it your eye, and share the origin story.
Let’s take the Wayback Machine to that 2017 city council election. There were 14 candidates on the ballot. As with this year’s election, I worked with Vicky Uhland and Grant Swift, but also Seth White. Four of us working to gather information about the candidates to share on Nextdoor.
I’ll fill you in on all the details but let’s jump right to the origin, surprisingly it came from a letter to the editor. Ta Da!
Playground bullies, acrimony, nasty rhetoric? Heavens to Murgatroyd. Hilarious! I couldn’t let that go unanswered, could I? No, no I could not. My letter to the editor in response.
For your enjoyment the 2017 eclipse
Joel Kowsky/NASA
and my imaginary fainting couch
ABOUT THAT 38 PAGE DOCUMENT
We divided the 14 candidates between the four of us and wrote a series of fact-checks using information obtained from their websites and campaign literature. We assessed each other’s work to ensure neutrality regardless of our opinions about the candidates.
In case you want to verify its neutrality here it is in all its glory, as edited by the Word Woman herself, Vicky Uhland. We were quite proud of the work we did.
MORE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR PROVIDE BACKGROUND
These letters were stashed in a “2017 election” folder (yes I save stuff) As I struggled with how to tell this story I discovered a couple of letters filled in a lot of details about what was going on in real-time.
Of course, I have a pic of the truck.
After Dave’s November letter Doug Conarroe memorably coined the title “Lafayette Association of United Political Hobbyists”. What else could I do but get five buttons made? We had discussed purple capes in the past when we considered being the Comp Plan Crusaders but that’s a story for another day!
BACK TO 2017 - WHO WON
Councilors Behanna and Reyna were re-elected, as was Councilor Merrily Mazza who ran in the same election.
Jamie Harkins was elected and later served as mayor.
JD Mangat came in fifth. When Councilor Reyna resigned he was appointed by the council to fill the seat. He ran again in 2019 winning his seat, is currently our mayor, and running for re-election this year.
None of the Trumbo slate were elected.
However, Brian Wong successfully ran in 2019 and again in 2021 and is our current mayor pro-tem.
Richard Welty applied to fill a vacant seat on the council in February 2019 when Mayor Christine Berg stepped down before the end of her term. The council selected former city councilor and mayor Caroline Cutler. He is currently one of the applicants for the vacant council seat open due to the unexpected passing of Councilor Briggs. I’ll have more info about that in my next post.
MY NASTY RHETORIC AND BULLYING FOR YOUR EXAMINATION
To be totally transparent about what else I did during that election I am sharing what I think ticked Dave off. I’ve never been able to point to anything else from that time. I did have the temerity to call him nice. Twice. While as a group we wrote totally neutral fact-checks, I wrote an observation piece based on what I was seeing at the time coupled with a bit of a history lesson. The rest of that “self appointed gang of political hobbyists” had nothing to do with this piece. As is my way, it’s wordy but I believed that there were some things going on that needed a bit of sunshine. Below is the exact piece I posted on Nextdoor with no editing.
Please note this was written in 2017 so some of the comments no longer apply and the links don’t work. The Chamber of Commerce moved out of City Hall during the tenure of City Administrator Fritz Sprague and is now located on Baseline, although Vicki Trumbo is still the Executive Director, and Pat Gross is still on the board. Roger Caruso no longer works for the city and Dana Kusjanovic is no longer a planning commissioner. Richard Welty is now the President of the Chamber Board. (Chase Ryant, the son of current council candidate Eric Ryant, is Vice President.)
Your local city watchdog checking in on the elections. In case you haven’t heard, the next council will be hiring a new city administrator so this is a seriously important election. With 14 people running ( Ashley Neumann withdrew) how does one sort through them?
Well we have a few groups, or slates of candidates, that have formed.
One group is saying they are progressive and diverse, this group is Mayor Pro Tem Gustavo Reyna, Councilor Chelsea Behanna, Lafayette Urban Renewal Authority member Jamie Harkins and former member of the Lafayette Youth Advisory Commission JD Mangat.
There are two candidates focused on combating fracking who seem to have joined forces at least for meet and greets, they are Cliff Smedley and Andrew O’Connor.
The third one, a group of four, was a bit hard to figure out at first. Why are these people banding together? What’s the common thread between these four people? One is Allen Bishop, a local business owner. Second is Richard Welty a former business owner and currently on the board of the Chamber of Commerce. Third is Brian Wong chair of the Planning Commission. Fourth is Dana Kusjanovic also a Planning Commissioner and a developer in Old Town.
As I so often do, I went in search of documents. I filed a request to get the petitions all candidates for city council must file in order to be on the ballot. These petitions are public record. Candidates are required to have 25 signatures of registered Lafayette voters. That’s when I saw the common thread. Bingo! It’s the Chamber of Commerce. Interesting.
Time to share more history with you.
If you occasionally read my posts you might know that back in the mid to late 1990’s and the 2000’s my late husband Toby and I were very active in city and council watching, as well as advocating for various issues such as managed growth, open space, ethics in government, and a whole host of other things going on in Lafayette at that time. We published a weekly e-newsletter for 6 years trying to inform citizens of what was going on in town and how they could make their voices heard.
But prior to that, like many of you who are commenting on Nextdoor, it took time to understand what was going on in town and figure out the players.
The local newspaper at the time was The Lafayette News owned by Percy Conarroe. It was THE place to find out what was happening. In 1996 a 24 hour Perkins Restaurant was proposed on South Boulder Rd. There was a lot of push back from the neighborhood directly behind this location as the residents would be pretty heavily impacted by this business. The majority of the council ended up voting against it. (Eventually, we got an urgent care center and doctor’s offices in that location) However then Councilor Dave Trumbo voted in favor. This prompted my hubby to write to the paper. He said he thought that Mr. Trumbo had a conflict of interest because his wife, Vicki Trumbo was the director of the Chamber of Commerce and that Mr. Trumbo consistently voted on the side of businesses. He said Mr. Trumbo should be voted out in the next election.
This set off a firestorm! A former mayor wrote to the paper and defended the Trumbos telling everyone what nice people they were and how much they had done for the city and saying “real leaders don't roll over and say yes to every whiner that comes to a city council meeting.” Percy Conarroe wrote an editorial lambasting the “activists” who wanted to protect their neighborhood and saying more power to the Trumbo duo.
Here’s the thing, of course the Trumbos are nice people. Dave was our pharmacist for years, and Vicki helped us when they owned Highway Drug on Public Rd. before she took on the Chamber director’s job (Dave and I waved at each other at the candidate forum last night). And yes, they had done a lot for the city at that time, and they still do. But that wasn't the point. The point was the connection between a member of the council and the Chamber of Commerce that represented some in the business community. It seemed too cozy.
This was the beginning of a few things for Toby and me. One was watching the interaction between the chamber and the city and the other was the creation of “camps”.
As time passed it was clear that from a philosophical angle we would be on the opposing side to the Trumbos and as nice as they were, we had a very different vision for our city. This played out in public over the years as new issues presented themselves and old issues re-surfaced, such as managed growth. Mr. Trumbo was on the City Council when the citizens took action and attempted to put some controls on our growth by creating our Managed Growth Amendment in 1995. That council was against the amendment. The authors of the amendment told me Mr. Trumbo was their most vehement critic.
I can’t remember a single time we were on the same side. In fact if I see any candidate for council endorsed by someone named Trumbo I know who not to vote for. Thanks Dave!
At one point a deal was struck between the city and the chamber. At that time the chamber was located in the Starkey building on Public Rd. A switch occurred and the chamber moved into City Hall and the city gained use of the Starkey Building. In case you are not aware when you walk into City Hall, the chamber headquarters are right across from the council chambers.
Now I’m a big supporter of our local businesses as you have no doubt seen from my many posts letting you know what’s coming to town, the benefits of shopping local and asking you what you might like to see here. And I know the Chamber of Commerce does good work promoting their members as well as managing some great events in our town. But does that mean I want it inside my City Hall? Nah, there’s that cozy thing again. There needs to be a separation of some sort between government and business. While the chamber has small businesses as members there are some big developers as well, McStain, Markel, Etkin Johnson to name a few. The chamber’s job is to support their members.
A quote from the 2017 Community Profile document which can be found on the city website and the chamber’s site
“‘The City of Lafayette is the most cooperative city we have encountered in the Denver area’ David Johnson, President of Etkin Johnson Group”
From the Etkin Johnson Group’s site
“Etkin Johnson Real Estate Partners is actively engaged in the development, acquisition, ownership and management of income-producing real estate across Colorado’s Front Range. Our portfolio of office, hotel and industrial holdings totals nearly 5 million square feet with values in excess of one-half billion dollars.”
Talking about cozy, one other connection of which you might be unaware, Roger Caruso Lafayette’s Economic Development Director is also a member of the Chamber Board.
Even other Chambers of Commerce seem to have taken note of this relationship. Ms. Trumbo told the City Council in a presentation she did at a council meeting last year, “I know from talking to other chambers that they envy the kind of relationship that we have in Lafayette with city staff, with council and with the chamber, we don't ever want to take that for granted.”
When I got those candidates petitions and saw the Trumbos, along with some chamber board members and staff, had signed for Bishop, Kusjanovic, Welty and Wong I knew exactly what the connection was between them and I didn’t need any Spidey sense to tell me who not to vote for in this election!
What we’ve got here is a Chamber of Commerce inside City Hall, a top city employee on their board and the President of the Chamber Board Pat Gross, recently appointed to the Lafayette Urban Renewal Authority. Last year the Chamber of Commerce got a place on the City Council agenda so that current council candidate Allen Bishop could tell them about his business. I’ve never seen that done before. In the Oct 11th Daily Camera there is a letter from Dave Trumbo in which he asks voters to reject the three council members running for reelection and asks them to vote for his four candidates. One seat is open on the council this year due to Councilor Wiesley being term limited.
In Mr. Trumbo’s letter he writes that this is an important election. Finally something on which we agree, but from different sides of the fence. It’s the vision thing for sure. Examine his hand picked candidates carefully and beware of claims to support open space and managed growth. It’s highly unlikely to get elected in Lafayette without proclaiming support for those issues. Those in the know understand that.
Folks who are knowledgeable about our Managed Growth Amendment (count me as one of them, I wrote a history about it you can find over in the documents section) also know that it’s all about the building permit numbers not the percentage of growth.
In his recent analysis of the rate of growth in Lafayette, City Administrator Gary Klaphake shows that between 2013 and 2017 it was 1.79%.
Support for a 3% growth rate that we are hearing from some of these candidates illustrates a lack of knowledge and/or an attempt to jump on a bandwagon that was created by city staff in the last few months when they made the case that the city is honoring the growth amendment because it capped the growth rate at 3%. The percentage of growth has never been a part of any discussions related to the amendment that I have ever heard in the past and I have heard many.
A handful of things to consider:
The Planning Commission holds quasi-judicial hearings for all development projects that comes before them as does the City Council. The Commissioners and City Council must act as impartial judges and consider only that which is presented by staff, the applicant, and members of the public who come forward to testify, bringing concerns and questions to the commission and council. During a July 2017 quasi-judicial hearing Planning Commissioner Dana Kusjanovic called members of the public who come to testify on issues of importance to them, protesters.
I wrote a post about it if you would like more details.
https://oldtownlafayette.nextdoor.com/news_feed/?post=60867310
At the League of Women’s Voters forum last night in answer to a question related to traffic, Ms. Kusjanovic proposed her idea that 120th should be widened. However that plan has been in the works for years. City Administrator Gary Klaphake told the Planning Commission about it during an arterial transportation planning presentation in Jan 2016. Yesterday I posted about a public open house to solicit input on the plan.
https://oldtownlafayette.nextdoor.com/news_feed/?post=66555683
Mr. Bishop says on his website that this slate of candidates, Ms. Kusjanovic, Mr. Welty and Mr. Wong are “like minded” people. Mr. Bishop is using sustainability as part of his platform while driving a Hummer around town.
On his website he says “Erie has projections of exceeding Lafayette by 100% reaching 60,000 by 2025. Broomfield and Louisville are also expected to continue to grow through the next decade. Unfortunately Lafayette does not enjoy that prospect.”
The bottom line is candidates Bishop, Kusjanovic, Welty and Wong are working as a slate, according to Mr. Bishop because they are “like minded” people. Mr. Trumbo is asking the voters to put them on the city council as a voting block.
Choose your candidates carefully, the future direction of our city is at stake here.
Four votes on our council is the majority. Four votes makes things happen and four votes pick the next City Administrator.
Which side are you on? What’s your vision? Because that’s what this election is about.
A master class in local political history. Keeping the facts straight!
Bravo Karen 👏