Larimer County commissioners race pairs up 2 longtime leaders, John Kefalas and Justin Smith

Larimer County voters will decide this November if the board of county commissioners will remain entirely made up of Democrats or if a Republican should hold one of the seats.

Incumbent John Kefalas is running for re-election to the board’s District 1 seat against current Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith, who is term limited as sheriff.

While the candidates do run for seats in specific districts, they are elected at large by the entire county. The board is the main policymaking body in the county.

Kefalas told the Coloradoan “if the voters rehire” him for a second term, he’d like to continue work on several projects, from the county’s Climate Smart Initiative to affordable housing.

“My way of doing things has always been a ‘we’ kind of thing, not ‘me,’ “ Kefalas said. “The way we solve complex problems is by working together, collaborating and creating that synergy, leveraging our resources.”

Smith said that after 30 years with the county — 20 in leadership roles and 12 as the elected sheriff — he’s ready to take his experience to the board of commissioners and provide a different perspective.

“If I win this race, I’m not going to be in the majority to make things happen, but I can be a voice that says, ‘Have we thought about this in this different perspective?'“ Smith said.

Here's a look at the race through the lens of a few timely issues:

Affordable housing

Smith said a lot of factors play into creating and sustaining affordable housing, including development costs, water access and access to good jobs. Recent uses of the county’s portion of American Rescue Plan Act funds have gone toward some affordable housing efforts — like helping residents to purchase Parklane Mobile Home Park — but those federal funds won’t last forever and the county helping to create affordable housing in this way isn’t sustainable, Smith said.

The county’s role isn’t to create jobs or affordable housing, he said; “government’s role is better fit to make sure we’re not creating burdens to that.”

Smith said the commissioners can help make development more affordable by being cautious about implementing any new regulations in the land use code.

Commissioners may not have the power to drive a lot of the decisions around affordable housing, but they can drive the conversations, Smith said.

Kefalas said the county’s new housing and sustainability manager is in the process of reviewing eight recommendations that came from an external housing needs study, and action items will be presented from that report.

Moving forward, Kefalas said he’d like to strengthen the county’s partnerships with community groups who do the housing work on the ground, like Housing Catalyst. The county receives tax-exempt bonds from the state every year, which Kefalas said they often award to affordable housing initiatives.

“We’re not in the business of building housing, but we are in the business of collaborating, working with public and private partners,” Kefalas said.

Other factors also impact housing affordability, including water resources, Kefalas said. He has initiated the development of a county water master plan, which will look at water quality and resources.

“The goal there is to develop a water master plan that would integrate and work closely with our land use decisions and land use plan,” Kefalas said. “I think that's something we need to be very mindful about.”

Colorado 2022 election voting guide: Top races, ballot issues impacting Larimer County voters

Air quality

Kefalas said the county has been doing a lot to address the region’s air quality concerns.

The county hired someone in the public health department to focus on air quality, and in January 2023 that person will be equipped with an infrared camera that will be used to detect emission leaks at oil and gas sites — much like the leak detected at the Prospect Energy site in the county, which the state ultimately shut down.

More:Here's how Larimer County health officials want to fight ozone pollution on a local level

“We were instrumental in the cease and desist order regarding the leaks in the storage tanks at the Prospect Energy (site),” Kefalas said. “It was really because of us pushing the Air Pollution Control Division to ultimately see that there’s a pattern of violations and it was impacting public health.”

Larimer County already has some of the state's strictest oil and gas regulations, which the commissioners recently passed.

Kefalas said the commissioners will soon develop action steps as part of the Climate Smart Initiative — now referred to as Climate Smart Future Ready — which will provide strategies for a sustainable Larimer County moving forward.

The bulk of the pollutants in Larimer County comes from transportation, so he’d like the commissioners to look at improving local and regional multimodal transportation to help lower vehicle emissions.

“We can’t just look at this in silos, it’s a big picture,” Kefalas said. “Oil and gas is part of it, but a lot of it is transportation.”

Smith said the county needs to be cautious to not “put oil and gas in the crosshairs as the enemy.”

It’s important to ensure production sites are meeting current standards, but restricting oil and gas production in Larimer County, where the regulations are strict, pushes production to other places where restrictions may be more lax and production may be dirtier, Smith said, not to mention the county’s loss in revenue from scaring off potential oil and gas producers.

“If we put all of our focus on trying to shut down the oil and gas industry or make it so hard that we're going to see those wells disappear, the unintended consequences is fuel prices will go up because as supply goes down, demand stays the same or goes up, the prices are gonna go up,” Smith said.

Air quality is impacted by a lot of things, and transportation is the major contributor in Larimer County, Smith said. Looking at transportation infrastructure — including expanding and repairing county roads and working with municipalities to coordinate road construction to reduce traffic and idling — can do a lot to reduce pollution and improve air quality, Smith said.

Criminal justice services

The Larimer County Jail expansion is almost complete, and expansion of Community Justice Alternatives facilities — including community corrections — is ongoing. Now the county is looking for ways to expand the county’s justice center — a needed expansion to maintain public safety expectations as the county grows, both candidates agree.

Multiple options are being considered by the county as of this fall, from expanding the current justice center to building an entirely new building.

Smith said all options present financial challenges, and if the county needs to go to the voters for funding, it will have to do a lot of community engagement to explain why this is such an important community need. Smith added that there is a sense of prioritizing public safety in the community as crime in general is rising.

“People are starting to recognize that community safety isn’t something that happens without a lot of intentional effort,” Smith said.

As someone who was working for the county in 1997 when it opened the current justice center, Smith said it’s important to look ahead to what the county will need 20 years from now.

“It’s not just a matter of building new courtrooms, it’s looking at what those needs are and how we operate justice in the future,” Smith said.

Kefalas said this is an opportunity to expand other judicial services as well. The proposed options for the justice center expansion include separate courtrooms and areas for family court.

Larimer County is already “light years ahead of other places” when it comes to diversion programs and alternatives to incarceration. But as someone who voted to fund the Larimer County Jail expansion project, Kefalas said criminal justice options across the spectrum are important to maintain at the highest level.

“For the people who need to be incarcerated because they pose a threat to public safety, they should be in jail,” Kefalas said, but when it comes to people who are dealing with mental health or substance abuse, they “don’t necessarily need to be in jail.”

More:Larimer County to expand criminal justice services to meet demand from population growth

The Coloradoan asked both candidates questions about gun violence, election integrity and reproductive rights after receiving input from readers on issues they'd like candidates to address. Here are some of Smith's and Kefalas' answers.

Gun violence

Kefalas named a few areas the commissioners can focus on to address concerns about gun violence in the community:

• Continue to support the Larimer County Juvenile Gun Safety Coalition, which aims to reduce unsafe access to firearms and prevent teen suicide.

• Support gun safety laws like the red flag law locally and at the state level.

• Engage with the community to determine other local actions the board can take.

Smith said violent crimes of all types are rising, not just gun violence, “and to focus on the firearm is missing the issue.”

Smith said he’d like to see commissioners speak up to the legislature about state lawmakers reducing criminal penalties, something he says the commissioners have not pushed back on despite law enforcement telling the commissioners about the negative impacts of these changes.

Election integrity

Neither Kefalas nor Smith questions the results of the 2020 election — nationally or locally.

Reproductive rights

Kefalas said he supports the state legislature protecting reproductive rights through the Reproductive Health Equity Act after the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Roe v. Wade.

“I support the freedom for a woman to make her own decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion,” Kefalas said. “I also support investment in resources and information to prevent unplanned pregnancies.”

Smith said the issue isn’t settled, so people should be respectful in their discussions and understand there are a variety of opinions.

“On both sides what I hear is ‘we need to respect rights,’ and I think both sides are being sincere in that,” Smith said.

Campaign funding

As of the end of July, Smith has outraised Kefalas by more than double. Kefalas has raised $21,797 compared with Smith’s $48,661, largely thanks to a $17,500 contribution from the Larimer County Republican Party.

The Larimer County Democrats have not contributed to Kefalas’s campaign, according to campaign finance records.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Larimer County commissioner race pairs up John Kefalas, Justin Smith