Wellington election: Where the mayoral candidates stand on water, public safety and more
Wellington voters can go in three distinct directions for the town’s next mayor.
Ashley Macdonald has served six years on the Board of Trustees and is touting her experience as the town prepares to break ground on a pair of complex infrastructure projects. Wyatt Schwendeman-Curtis wants to take his local government involvement to the next level after serving on two local commissions and looking for creative solutions to Wellington’s infrastructure challenges. And Calar Chaussee, a self-described “regular guy” rather than a politician, wants to draw on his 25 years spent in Wellington to lead the town and represent its values.
Voters will elect a new mayor April 5 for a four-year term. Current Mayor Troy Hamman isn't running for reelection.
The Coloradoan interviewed each mayoral candidate and asked them to fill out a brief questionnaire. The questionnaire answers will be posted here in the coming week.
Two topics came up in conversations with all three candidates: Wellington’s population growth and its water troubles. The town’s population has grown rapidly in the last 10 years, from about 6,300 people in 2010 to over 11,000 in 2020. It’s expected to reach about 24,000 by 2040, though a reduction in building permits due to water treatment capacity issues has slowed recent growth. The mayoral candidates all said the growth presents both challenges and opportunities.
The water conversation issue has been top-of-mind in Wellington for years. The town increased its water base rate to $66 last year and its sewer base rate to $31 this year to accommodate increased water costs and growing demand for water service.
Here’s what you need to know about each candidate.
Calar Chaussee
Chaussee has lived in Wellington since he was 9 years old, so he’s seen a lot of mayors come and go. He never dreamed of running for the position himself until a few months ago.
“The main reason I decided to run is I saw the people that were running, and I wasn't satisfied with who they were,” he said. “So I wanted to take action on my own and put my name in the hat.”
Chaussee said he’s observed developers taking advantage of the town, leaving Wellington ill-equipped to pay for its water infrastructure needs because developers hadn’t been paying their fair share. He said the current board has made progress in reversing that cycle and being more transparent.
Chaussee wants to continue that progress. His top priorities are responsible management of Wellington’s budget, improving public safety by pursuing an independent police department, and promoting responsible growth by attracting businesses and ensuring that development pays its way.
The town could attract businesses through continued updates to the land use code or potential revisions to local fire codes that can present challenges for business owners, he said.
“It's a sticky situation, to say the least, on how to attract businesses and get them to want to come to town, but at the same time, not pushing them away” because of the town’s water treatment capacity issues, he said. “We need to be a little more straightforward and honest with them.”
Chaussee added that he’d like to see Wellington work more closely with Larimer County on long-range planning for development near town limits. He suggested an intergovernmental agreement to address the eventual need for utilities and other services. An agreement could also present an opportunity to “really hone in on the identity that we want as a town” and set a manageable pace for growth, he said.
In terms of budgeting, he said the town should focus on needs rather than wants. He views an independent police department as a need, along with diversification of the town’s water resources. He views a town recreation center as a want — not to say it wouldn’t be a benefit to the community, he said, but he thinks residents should be aware of the financial constraints that could make it difficult to build in the short-term.
“Nobody's going to lower the water bills — anybody who says that is definitely lying,” Chaussee said. “All we can do is try to maintain and ease increases at the current moment. And the best way we can do that is just really digging into the budget.”
The town currently contracts with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office for police services, which Chaussee said has left the town with an inadequate police presence. He said he thinks it’s time for the town to invest in a department of its own to address issues like drug use and theft.
“I understand that there is a huge upfront cost to be able to facilitate a police department when it comes to equipment, training facility and things of that nature,” he said. “But it is a bridge that we're going to need to cross sooner rather than later.”
Chaussee said his faith, blue-collar employment and lack of political background set him apart from the other candidates. He’s a volunteer youth pastor at a church in Fort Collins and works at an automotive shop. He also runs a small welding business.
“I'm just a regular guy who really loves Wellington and wants to see it prosper,” he said. “That’s who I am. I'm not here to put on a show or give canned answers. I'm just here to do everything I can for Wellington.”
Ashley Macdonald
Macdonald first got involved with Wellington government about 10 years ago because she wanted to see a vacant lot near her home turned into a park — cue the Leslie Knope comparisons.
She started attending trustee meetings and pushing for the project, but she didn’t get a lot of traction at first. She recalls a then-trustee telling her, “If you want to see it get built, you should run for election.”
She did, of course. Today, Wellington Community Park is approaching its six-year anniversary — about the same amount of time Macdonald has spent on the Board of Trustees collectively since 2014.
Macdonald now has her sights set on the mayor position, in part because the Board of Trustees is about to lose two experienced members. Two other incumbent trustees are running in a field of eight candidates for three open positions.
“We are embarking on some really big capital projects that are going to drive the future of Wellington,” Macdonald said. “Between the water treatment plant and wastewater treatment plant, the high school opening and the dump coming to town, there are a lot of really big projects that are very complicated. … Just trying to provide some continuity with the future board, I think, is really important for strengthening Wellington in the next 20 years.”
Macdonald said her top priorities as mayor would be to keep capital projects on schedule and support trustees in their passion projects. She said her contextual knowledge will prove useful as the town finalizes and monitors contracts for its new water and wastewater treatment plants. The board will need to make sure the contracts are executed on schedules without any unexpected changes, she said.
The water planning process has been challenging, and a board decision to hit pause on contract negotiations for the new facilities initially felt like a mistake, Macdonald said. But she said she’s proud of the board’s current plans because they took a long-range approach instead of a stop-gap to meet water needs in the short-term.
Macdonald said she’s confident Wellington’s resolution of the problem will emerge as “a template to follow” for other communities looking to wrangle water rate and capital infrastructure issues.
“Once our plants are online, everybody else is just going to be starting to figure out how to address their issues,” she said.
Once the water projects are wrapped up, Macdonald would want to focus on the planning process for a new town recreation center. She said she’d focus on those priorities over creating an independent police department for Wellington, because she doesn’t think the local need justifies the cost of building a new department from the ground up just yet.
Macdonald’s vision for the community is to preserve Wellington’s small-town feel. She wants Wellington to remain a place where neighbors know each other by name and residents work together to better their community.
Much of her track record in local government is related to that vision: She was part of the push for Poudre School District to build its new middle/high school in Wellington rather than a more southern location. She said the board’s successful campaign for the school helped inspire her to pursue her master’s degree in public administration.
But her proudest moment came out of the pandemic. She said she received a commendation letter signed by all the community’s faith-based organizations, thanking her for leadership she provided for logistics such as food, personal protective equipment and mail during the early stages of the pandemic.
“I really enjoyed the opportunity to bring a group of passionate people together to accomplish a common goal,” she said.
Wyatt Schwendeman-Curtis
Schwendeman-Curtis moved to Wellington about three years ago, and it didn’t take him long to get involved in the community.
He joined the Community Activities Commission and became the chair and treasurer, leading the town’s coordination of its Fourth of July parade, Easter egg hunt, Christmas tree lighting ceremony and other events. Joining a Resident Roundtable Commission for wastewater issues last year inspired him to run for mayor. He got to know town staff and trustees as the commission met for four marathon work sessions to come up with recommendations for reducing the town’s wastewater fee increase.
The roundtable’s recommendation helped lower the fee increase from upward of $30-$40 to $10.37, Schwendeman-Curtis said. The fee increase will help cover the cost of a new water treatment plant that is projected to accommodate population growth in the coming decades.
“I have a focus on policy, so that's always been my passion,” Schwendeman-Curtis said. “I went to school for it. And I think I'm going be able to help drive some creative policy ideas.”
Infrastructure and growth are the two issues at top-of-mind for Schwendeman-Curtis. For infrastructure, his priorities would be:
Monitoring the construction timelines for the town’s new water treatment and wastewater treatment plants
Working to decrease residents’ water bills by applying for grants and considering a temporary transfer of administrative fees from the town’s sewer and water fund to the General Fund
Working with Colorado Department of Transportation on traffic safety solutions at the Colorado Highway 1 curve, near the site of Wellington’s new middle-high school, and the town’s bridges over Interstate 25
Improving sidewalks, increasing trails and pursuing trail connections between Wellington and Fort Collins
Schwendeman-Curtis said he'd want to get the town's water and wastewater expenses under control before pursuing a dedicated police department for the town. However, he thinks the conversation about creating a police department should start now so the trustees know what to expect when they're ready to move forward with it.
Schwendeman-Curtis also wants to make sure Wellington’s population growth is accompanied by growth in the town’s business community. That includes the east side of the interstate, he added, noting that eastern residents often feel disconnected from the town because there are few restaurants, convenience stores and shopping options close by.
Wellington’s population is at the cusp of the threshold needed to attract more businesses, he said, and the town can build on that opportunity by providing business incentives to bring more restaurants and retail to the area.
He said he’d particularly like to see options for buying clothes and home goods in Wellington. The idea is to build up Wellington’s sales tax base and reduce the amount of money flowing out of the town and into Fort Collins.
“We need to make sure we're creating more sales tax revenue so that we can increase our general fund, so we're not having to stress about future projects and put that burden on the taxpayers,” Schwendeman-Curtis said.
Schwendeman-Curtis would also like the town to make more use of citizen roundtables, which he said could increase community ownership of decision-making while also decreasing the cost of outside consultants. The town could use consultants to check roundtables’ work rather than employing them for full project design, he suggested.
The three key words of Schwendeman-Curtis’s campaign are community, responsibility and ingenuity. He said the concept of community is his top priority, so he’ll be looking for a wide range of resident input if he’s elected.
“I want to make sure that, no matter what, I leave Wellington in a better spot than when I came into it,” he said. “The (current) board has been doing a really good job these last four years, and I think it's been very difficult for them with what they were handed. But I think we have a lot of a lot of opportunities these next four years.”
Jacy Marmaduke covers government accountability for the Coloradoan. Follow her on Twitter @jacymarmaduke. Support her work and that of other Coloradoan journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Wellington election 2022: Meet the 3 mayoral candidates
