 and to tonight's candidate forum. Before we begin, I want to invite our Spanish-speaking community members to click the button at the bottom of your Zoom screen to choose the Spanish option to hear the forum in that language. We will wait just a moment for our forum interpreter, Rosa Bell, to translate what I've just said, switch over to the Spanish Language Channel, and then we'll begin. Muchas gracias y muy bienvenidos. Welcome to the Boulder County Commissioners, Districts One and Two Candidate Forum, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Boulder County. My name is Elizabeth Crowe. I'm a proud member of the League, and I'm pleased to serve as moderator for tonight's forum. On behalf of the League, we want to acknowledge and honor the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Yut tribes and their ancestral territory in which we live. We acknowledge that the Indigenous peoples from these and other Native nations who currently call Boulder home on this day, which many people celebrate as Indigenous Peoples' Day and every day. The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan political organization. In 2020, we're celebrating 100 years of encouraging informed and active participation in government and influencing public policy through education and advocacy on a wide range of issues. To remain nonpartisan, League never supports or opposes political candidates or parties. According to FCC policy, candidate forums must be broadcast in their entirety, except by media reporting on events. Candidates or their staff are asked not to record the forum. However, it will be made available online for public viewing through Election Day. Board of County Commissioners consists of three individuals elected to serve four-year terms as leaders of the Boulder County government. All three commissioners are elected at large by the voters of Boulder County and represent the county as a whole, but a candidate must live within their specific district. District one candidates could be from the Northern Boulder County region, including Longmont, Lyons, and Allens Park. District two candidates can be from Western Boulder County, including the city of Boulder, Netherlands, Jamestown, and Ward. The format for tonight's forum will be as follows. Each candidate will have one minute for an opening statement. We will then begin with questions which have been submitted electronically online to the League or by League members. Questions have been reviewed by our League of Women Voters Volunteers screeners and will be addressed to all candidates rather than directing a question to a particular candidate. We will try to ask the questions to as many questions as time permits. Each candidate will have up to one minute or 90 seconds to answer the question. As the moderator, I will announce the time allowed to answer the questions and our timekeeper will help you keep on track. In my apologies, I mixed up the geographic locations of districts one and district two. Thank you all for correcting me. Tonight's forum participants include in ballot order, Let's start with opening statements and we'll begin with you, Candidate Cochin. You have one minute. Please go ahead when you're ready. I'm an educator. I have taught from preschool to graduate level college. I was chosen as a finalist for the impact on education award. I earned a PhD, my dissertation being on, it was one of the first on the home literary environment and to make the connection from that to reading achievement. I was elected vice president of the teacher's association and I wrote for the daily camera on the editorial page. I am co-author with Janet McCabe of the baby swim book, the founder of the shower scene, a sustainable business for which I have earned a patent. I was a liaison down at the legislature to Democrats and Republicans and through that I conceived and coordinated a bipartisan gathering from the outcome of which was the first handicapped children's education act. I have lived from the plains to the peaks in a mobile home to a solar home my husband and I built. Thank you and Candidate Levy, you're next. Thank you for providing this opportunity for voters to meet the candidates. I'm an attorney by training and have been an advocate for most of my adult life. I fought for progressive policies at the community, county and state level for the past 30 years. As a land use attorney I helped protect our mountain backdrop from development. As a member of Boulder County's parks and open space advisory committee I helped preserve thousands of acres of open space and as a community activist I advocated against suburban sprawl and for good government. I represented house districts 13 in the state legislature for four terms. I passed legislation on renewable energy, criminal justice reform, civil rights and more. Most recently I was executive director of a non-profit organization where I worked to advance health equity and economic security for low-income Coloradans. I'm ready to lead our wonderful county to bring energy, vision and leadership to the fight against climate change for affordable housing, ending childhood poverty and racial and ethnic inclusiveness. Thank you. Candidate Luchemine. Buenas noches, buenas tardes a todos y gracias por participar con nosotros. Thank you to the Boulder County League of Women Voters and the other organizations that brought us all together this evening. My name is Martha Luchemine. I am running for district two, Boulder County Commissioner and wanted to just share a teensy bit about us tonight, but this conversation is so important when we talk about local elections so I'm sure we'll get to that later on in the questions. My background is in banking, finance, mortgage, real estate, teaching and consulting. I have been in and out of Boulder County since 1992 working on addressing issues of equity, of racial inequity, of financial and economic justice issues and climate and so I am going to continue doing that work in a new role as your Boulder County Commissioner district two with your help and your vote and your support. So the bigger message tonight is to make sure that everybody participates and everybody votes so thanks for tuning in this evening. Thank you candidate Crowder. Well thanks again for pulling us all together and creating this opportunity to say what we have to say to the good folks that might be listening or follow us on YouTube. So I'm a little different in that I believe in servant government and servant political figures so if I'm elected to be your Boulder County Commissioner I'll be holding town hall meetings at times that are convenient for you so I can listen to what you have to say and what policies and programs you're interested in having the county provide and then once I'm informed with that information I'll do everything I can to make sure that your wishes not only are heard but are acted on. As to experience well you know I'm 76 years old I've been on the planet quite a while. I was the head of big finance department for a large quasi-public organization in Houston and managed all the financial administration for that organization so I'm well versed in governmental accounting and I've got a big old magnifying glass that I'll use to drill right down into those numbers. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Now we'll go to the questions. Please continue to watch our timekeeper who will give you a signal at 15 seconds and stop. If you are mid-sentence when your time is up please promptly finish that sentence and we can move on to the next candidate. For the first question we will start with candidate Levy. The question is what plans do you have to help us all decrease the rate of COVID-19 infections? What do you think is needed to prevent another surge in Boulder County? We'll give everyone one minute to answer this question and again you may start candidate Levy. Yeah thank you and that's probably the most important thing on people's minds right now because COVID-19 has affected our ability to be with our loved ones. It's affected our ability to earn a living in our chosen profession. It's affected our ability to go about our daily lives. Public health is the number one tool that we have. Wearing masks, staying socially distant, but public health is controlled by the Boulder County Public Health Department and so I think the most important thing is for people to pay attention to what our experts are telling us and follow their directions. Understand that nobody likes to wear a mask. Nobody wants to be separated from their loved ones or not go to the movies but we do this because we care for one another and so I think my most important message and I'm distracted by the sign is to listen to what the health experts have to say because they're going to lead us through this this pandemic to the other side. Thank you and same question to you candidate Lochimine. Great thank you for the question. COVID-19 is on everybody's mind not just here locally not just here nationally but also from a global perspective and so the question was around how what would be some of the methods to decrease and I think there's a couple different pieces part of what Claire's talking about is the public health. To me what this has brought to light that needs to be a discussion is really about the piece of health care and coming to the root of the issues to decrease the spread we need to find out why people aren't getting tested why people aren't getting access to the information. I'm still seeing questions and still hear questions on the campaign trail online asking where can people get tested so that tells me and from a county commissioner role what do we need to be doing to not just provide other languages of information but also make it very clear and make it accessible and easy simple for our neighbors through outboard or county to get the information and of course once we get to vaccine etc to really be doing that same thing. There's a big piece of education and outreach and information about the information that we need to be following regarding the guidelines. Thank you candidate Crowder. Well just Friday the World Health Organization announced that they don't feel that lockdowns are appropriate in fact had they known more about the disease they would not have recommended them in the first place. So I'm one who believes in the common sense of the common man and I believe that if we provide information to the people who live here in Bolver County they can make good judgments themselves. We don't really need an authoritarian type regime that tries to lock down the whole economy and cause these deaths of despair where people commit suicide and drug overdoses and you know the families break up because of loss of income and loss of jobs and worse yet loss of whole businesses. So I think we need to take a pretty balanced approach to this that is truly informed by all the science and not just the opinions of people in the local health department at Boulder County. So just think about it folks can you make up your own mind. Thank you and candidate Cochin. I follow the I read a lot of science magazines and from them I have learned that the best thing we can do is what we've been doing which is the socially distancing probably the hardest thing we're doing but staying away from other people I could go into the science of that but I'm not going to here I don't have enough time. The second thing is what we originally were told wash your hands don't touch your face. So following those three guidelines are still the biggest things we can do. I also believe being an educator that we have to get kids back to school. I tutor I volunteer tutor a student who has all kinds of challenges and being out of school is has been terrible for him. There are many kids like this person throughout we need to get them back in. I think our public school system here is doing that and doing it safely. I also wish that the health department did less of giving us the counts every day in the newspaper. I read them it's like okay we've added one to the hospital etc. I wish they had given us more information like the what the where the what do we need to do now where what is what is the science telling us you know I can't see a sign sorry you are out of time because I don't know where it is I'm not seeing it okay I'm sorry Sergio maybe or Mandy could we chat yeah to just help out there thank you Mandy appreciate that thank you for all your your answers for the third or the second question rather we will start with candidate Lochimine and the question is with climate change continuing nearly unabated what will you do to mitigate fire danger and beetle kill which becomes kindling for wildfires particularly in our foothills and let's do one minute for this response as well sure yeah thank you for the question so part of my work around climate it has been in a lot of different places through my lifetime but more recently was connected to the flood of 2013 and working as a resiliency specialist after that and I had the great opportunity and of working with our local office of emergency management and that does fall under the realm of county commissioners as far as what our wildfire mitigation that's part of how we address climate change but I've also heard out on the campaign trail working and listening with folks is the question of how we can support community members who are in our mountain communities or in communities that are are closer to as if you don't know that Boulder County does have areas that are lined up right next to our national forest and we also had aging adults as an example who really just need some support and they need the help and so we have different faith community groups we have different service groups and organizations all over Boulder County so an idea of how do we support that would be to find some folks who can physically are able to go and help do some of that to mitigate costs but also to prepare families so there's different creative ways that we can get involved with wildfire mitigation thank you and candidate Crowder same question please sure um well I'm not an environmental scientist and I'm not an expert in forestry management but I do know that our own national forest service has told us that the old policy of not thinning forests not managing our forests appropriately is one of the principle causes of the wildfires we're seeing now and beetle kill would be another manifestation of that so in terms of what do we do to mitigate natural disasters forest fires they happen every year all over the United States I think the best thing we can do is manage our forests a little better that's an expensive proposition so if the people in Boulder County want to spend money on wildfire mitigation by managing the forest better just come tell me if I'm elected county commissioner I'll listen to you I'll take that right up the top and we'll start working with the other two county commissioners to see if we can make that happen really there's not a whole lot we can individually do about climate change since most of the pollution now comes from India and China about all I can do to really mitigate climate change is stop breathing something that some folks would recommend thank you and candidate Cochin your next please well I live this I've spent two summers of my life clearing about 3000 trees from our property up here in the mountains so I know this very well the first thing is that the main cause here is a lot of unburnt dry tinder that needs to be cleaned out we have had the Colorado State Forest Service in here they've marked trees a huge number of trees have to be removed currently they actually give some subsidies to landowners because having an army and take an army to come in and clean out all these trees the county also gives support for this they provide stations where we can take our slash where we can take our logs they've given an awful lot they have sent out good information on what we can do how they can help groups joined together up here of people who have this problem called wildlife partners and they help each other and neighbors so clearing out the underbrush is the first and major thing we can do thank you candidate Levy yeah thank you you know it's such an important issue because wildfire danger threatens everybody and our forests are under stress they're under stress because of drought because of high temperatures and and that provided an environment that allowed the beetles to come in and cause immense amount of damage I agree with Mr. Crowder about the need for thinning we have not done good forest management I also agree with Cindy Cochin about the value of slash yards the state of Colorado had a wonderful program for a while in which they provided grants to neighborhood organizations to homeowner associations to put together wildfire mitigation plans and provided some expertise to those or to those entities so that they could do wildfire thinning on their own property because most of this land although we do have a lot of national forest it is on private land too and so people can't bear that expense themselves they do need some grant money to help them thin to chip and to haul the byproduct away thank you for the third question we'll start with candidate Crowder with the high cost of living and the high cost of housing in most of Boulder County what are your plans to create and support affordable housing especially for people with disabilities older adults and hospitality workers and let's do one minute for this response as well okay well housing is right in the middle of my wheelhouse I've been involved in the housing industry now oh gosh for about 50 years and when I use the term affordable housing I use it a little differently than I think it's used commonly because to me affordable housing is housing that people people sometimes making barely more than the minimum wage could afford to buy not to rent and so what I would try to do is encourage the development of houses that people can buy and that can include some activity on the part of the county by changing zoning ordinances and maybe changing even building codes right now the county has three places where you can develop for manufactured housing meaning homes that come back come out on flatbed trucks and are put on permanent foundations look just like everybody else's homes those homes or else go for FHA financing long term and people can start building wealth and just instead of paying rent thank you thank you candidate coach and same question well having worked in a lot with people with disabilities we have group homes for these people and as James just said getting the codes building codes so that we can get people in these houses I know families and parents say they've had a lot of trouble finding places for their their adult children to live in these group homes because of code restrictions that drives up the cost of that housing also I am interested in building affordable housing and I think the way to do that is gathering our local architects our realtors gathering our builders together and say hey we don't have a lot of land you go find a place maybe there's a house that needs to be torn down come to us with a plan and let's see if we can help you with those building codes so that we might be able to get places built quicker right now from start to the end of the building process takes forever thank you candidate levy same question please yeah thank you I think affordable housing is probably the issue that comes up the most when I talk to voters because it's frustrating when you know those who aren't already living here you know their children want to come home they were raised here and they want to come home and live here and they can't afford to do it affordable housing is not just about building more it's about preserving some of the housing that we already have that's naturally affordable manufactured housing communities mobile home parks are some of the best source of affordable housing because it is a home that you own and I think I hope that the county can play a very strong role in protecting those communities and in helping helping the residents of those communities buy them from the owner when the owner is interested in selling and thanks to a new law that's possible I also think that the boulder county housing authority perhaps needs to have more tools so that they can help communities develop housing that's suitable to the residents that want to live in those communities and to the workers that are looking to live in boulder county thank you and candidate lochamine the question I think that I've heard the most too just from talking with the voters over the last 23 months on this campaign trail the conversation ends up somewhere around housing and for candidate carters correct there's this disconnect between affordable housing and what that means but in my wheelhouse of housing being in the industry from a mortgage perspective real estate perspective we're talking about in general typically we're talking about government funded some type of a thistle community land trust etc that is an option that I think the county needs to continue to put pressure on with our regional housing plan and we can also look at some of the other opportunities that inevitably start opening up other inventory which just means it creates other open doors for housing when we look at different types of seasonal housing is something that we really need to look at to support our agricultural communities here in boulder county as well as our aging adults in our mountain communities who have asked for some housing similar to what's being done in netherland so we need to just continue pushing for more options and creative options in housing thank you so for the next question the league has invited a representative from the local NAACP boulder county chapter to directly ask their submitted foreign question in here to represent the NAACP is cherry rose anderson we will give 90 seconds for the response and we will start this question with candidate co-chair so mandy and cherry rose whenever you're ready please go ahead and ask the question hi thank you elizabeth for inviting me to be part of this tonight and thank you to all of the candidates for being here again my name is cherry rose anderson with the boulder county NAACP our question tonight is that although the cultural responsiveness and inclusion advisory committee at the county has the county has adopted that roadmap in 2016 the inclusion advisory committee's roadmap the county has recently taken some actions that are not aligned with this roadmap such as hiring within the sheriff's department a former officer who violated city of boulder department policies and his treatment of zade at consent a black student and possibly possible inequitable access to county services for black homeless community members if elected will you commit to and extending the inclusivity roadmap to ensure equitable county hiring decisions and program service perhaps providing compensation for committee members for their efforts or other ideas thank you and again we'll start with you candidate co-chair of course that has been in place it has been successful i think there are different aspects of that plan in terms of hiring how we be inclusive how we can look deeper into the the hard to define systematic racism that we have heard described and it's it's really hard to put your finger on i have asked very good friends people of color i said tell me i want to know and it's real hard for them to put it into words however i think that can be done and i think those of us who come from the dominant culture we really want to know and are seeking that information so i would love to see that commission really get their heads together um not commission but for that program get their heads together with many many different people of this community i have been an equity trainer i have led sessions on it i know that there are many different aspects besides skin color that equity deals with and they are often overlooked and this commission on inclusivity needs to address all of their concerns um i do believe that we can do stuff i can believe it can be done this year but it's going to take you know as we often say it'll take several generations to heal some of the hurts that people feel it's not going to be done overnight but you got to start somewhere i think you also have to start with a positive added question i'm sorry you're out of time i still don't see the sign so i'm sorry sorry if we go over i'll just try to politely let you know wave at me because i don't see the uh mandy sign gotcha okay uh same question for you candidate levy go ahead please yeah thank you thank you for the question and i'm really glad that the n double acp of boulder county um was able to be here tonight and and pose that question um absolutely i i would support the extension of of the roadmap um i think work on equity um diversity inclusion is never finished it's something that has to be ongoing work and it has to be continuously updated um as situations change as we learn more about the circumstances in our community and i think i hope that all of us is on a journey of learning and discovery um about um you know what has happened in the past and what is still ongoing so i i think that the work um of the equity task force is very important i strongly support continuing it one thing that i would like to see done um is is a public discussion of the history of boulder county of the history of racial exclusion covenants of um of financing practices that excluded people of color from living in this community you know just so we understand um how this community came to look the way it is because i think one one thing that's very important about um moving forward and making progress is really understanding what has led us to um to where we are today i don't think we can um we can surface and and come to you know reconciliation if that's possible without really understanding what has happened in the past thank you candidate lochimin same question of equity and racial equity is really important so i i'm also glad that the n of a cp took some time tonight to one pose a question but then also to participate in this dialogue with us i have spent the last really my last 28 years or so in and out of boulder county working specifically on issues of uh gaps of financial wealth for communities of color specifically latino community specifically modeling with spanish speakers working for boulder county housing as a volunteer workforce boulder county as a spanish language instructor to make sure that families in our own community have access whether they're docket families itan users or recipients etc that is just a part of the work that i've been doing in my background in all careers including as a school teacher creating curriculum for spanish for spanish speakers working on professional development to give our own teachers here locally the ability to talk about the history of the gaps in financial wealth the systems that have been created that are still existent here in boulder county it's the same work that we've been doing as cultural brokers since predatory lending reviews that i've done for the state specifically targeting aging adults in our own region our community as well as my longest spanish speaking families the same data that we pulled from the flood recovery that the state asked what happened to vulnerable populations and so we have history we have data i've sat on the boulder county latino task force and many other different groups that have brought the history forward and so yes absolutely count on me as your champion to continue the work but bringing it out to a broader sector of our community and our 330 thousand residents thank you and candidate crowded hope you're on mute candidate crowded gosh you missed the best part there you go i'm proud that i live in a country that was founded on the very aspirational principle we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and i remember the early civil rights legislation in the eisenhower administration i participated in a few marches in the 60s even though i have a different skin tone and i and i would say that we've done a pretty good job as a country now in our evolution towards the ideal which is where skin tone gender even gender identity really shouldn't be considered in any hiring practice in any housing policy and in fact the current law is that you can't discriminate on the basis of any of those things being a lender i'm highly regulated you know i'm not allowed to besides i like to make a buck so i don't care what color a person's skin is if they need to get a mortgage so i would say the most important consideration for me is less enforce the heck out of those laws and if i'm elected to be a county commissioner my job as a steward of your taxpayer dollars is to make sure that the candidate i hire for a particular position is the most qualified candidate for that position irregardless of their color gender or any other consideration that we might have so that would be my position on the subject when i say i'm really proud to be an american because of all of this thank you all for that question and thank you again to cherry rose yes thanks cherry so the next question uh we will start with candidate levy it is this given the health harms and dangers of fracking what do you propose to curb the fracking or eliminate it in boulder county particularly in eastern county and let's do 90 seconds for this question as well oh god it's awfully hard to answer these very complex um questions in 60 seconds so um yes there are health um uh harmful health effects of fracking there are harmful environmental effects of fracking i don't think it's possible to frack without releasing methane gas um fracking involves all sorts of you know a cocktail of chemicals that are injected into the ground there's noise there's vibration there are lights bright lights so it's um it's it's harmful to people who live in the area and it's harmful to our environment um boulder county thanks to senate bill 181 now has the authority to um to regulate very strictly uh the location and extent of oil and gas development and boulder county's in the process of adopting those regulations and um if they aren't um the toughest regulations we can have i will certainly be open to revisiting them to make sure that they are um you know because the people of boulder county expect us to protect their health they expect us to protect the environment they expect us to protect their property values from the harmful effects of not only oil and gas development but any kind of land use that might threaten their their health their environment their property values um on the question of banning i know that that's um something that people would really like to have the county do um i'm going to defer to the county attorney as to whether senate bill 181 actually gave us the authority to do that thank you candidate loachemine the question of fracking so we just had a conversation uh last week um together with several different community organizations and and so i'm going to share a couple of the similar comments one i do believe is a county commissioner that i have a will have a responsibility to protect all of the 330 000 residents in boulder county and that will include the issue of oil and gas development that scientifically it is show it is showing and we're seeing more studies from our local folks that are doing amazing research about what those effects can be on air our water our community and our health etc and so that is my prime responsibility i have participated in a lot of the community conversations discussions the hearings the extension of the moratorium that clarity talked about a little bit the ability now with senate bill 1981 for us to have local regulation and i believe that our current commissioners are doing their due diligence and putting in a lot of work with staff and policy teams to create the most stringent policies and so my um my hope is that at the end of december this year that we will have new policies based on 181 to do to to take care of that issue but i will work towards no new oil and gas development in the future and i also want to make sure that we as i've asked in all of those conversations and hearing rooms in the past that we need to really look at climate justice and the pre-planning of how we're going to include everybody in our community in our renewable energy and the works and jobs ahead thank you candidate Crowder here we go well in all things i think we should seek balance so i'm not one that won't put anybody's health at risk i wouldn't um and and again as your servant i'm going to listen to what you have to say and try to implement the policies you'd like to see established i do think however that the balance requires the consideration of balance requires that we look at the loss of revenue that would occur to the county the county gets a significant amount of income from severance taxes which is taxes that are collected on the oil and gas produced here not only that but there are property taxes and sales taxes and all kinds of tax revenue that accrued at the county and to the cities in this area not to say the job so if we regulate that's one thing if we ban or we over-regulate to the point that we kill the golden goose then we lose all that revenues which means your property taxes are growing up and even if you're a renter you'll suffer the consequence because you pay those property taxes so let's find some balance let's be real let's understand that these wells you know where the fracking occurs is two miles below and through solid rock and uh even the latest studies that i've read from the CU professor whose name escapes me at the moment you know he also mentions the herds of cattle up and grueling well unfortunately cattle produce gas and that gas is the same sort of gas that's produced and if it leaks in fracking operations so let's have a little balance thank you thank you and candidate cochin go ahead please regarding fracking um as long as i can remember i heard about the lawsuits against these oil companies and inevitably it ends up in an appeal there's something else that happens so it goes back to a lawsuit and we've been going in this vicious circle for quite a long time so i don't believe lawsuits are the answer number one number two i do believe that senate bill 181 which clare and marty have alluded to and which just is barely a year off the presses is excellent it does have lots of provisions for regulation of methane many of the big oil companies have said yes they can do this yes they can do it and be financially um liquid in doing this that it's a good thing for them that they're not going to lose money on this so i do believe that fracking can be done relatively safely because we still use oil and gas each person on this panel probably has used some today in one form or another and so we need it so we can't can't stop you know pointing we need to stop pointing our finger at everybody else the other thing i'd like to say about oil and gas and energy is that handling this begins at home during covid we learned that being homebodies we use less products less gas we emit it a lot less so i think as long as we reduce our demand oil companies will reduce their supply thank you all for your answers to that question and now we'll start the next question with candidate lochimine and it is how will you advocate to bring more county services including transportation services to the mountain residents to meet them where they are and let's do one minute for this question sure yes and i have had the opportunity to go and meet some different folks in our mountain communities um not just during the campaign trail but also through work and flood recovery and so here we are again in covid in a situation where we're really disconnected in different areas of our communities and the conversation around housing i believe is connected to the issue of transportation and they both come up in in those conversations and so really the the good news is boulder county does have a lot of different resources around transportation they're more more than i had even heard of and seen and part of that goes right back to where i was maybe 20 minutes ago around the conversation of outreach and education and information and how do we really make sure that folks one we have local contracts for any new initiatives that are coming up to help and support our mountain communities around transportation because that helps us locally and our local small businesses as well as connecting these services that we do have including the volunteers that we have all around the county thank you candidate crowded well i i had the good fortune to be invited to a listening session with an organization called high country alliance and it was very interesting to me because there is a sense that boulder county is underserving the mountain communities and we weren't speaking so much of rural plains communities but the mountain communities and not only housing and transportation but they were overburdening those communities with building codes regulations making it difficult for people to repair their homes trying to impose a one-size-fits all building code when things that might be appropriate in the county and maybe could be justified pv require photovoltaic requirements for instance might be a nice thing but they had cost and maybe the maybe the people that live in the mountains would prefer to just build less expensively to repair their homes after the floods and the fires and things like that so i'd say it's more a question of let's get government out of the way and let's listen to what people tell us they would like to have thank you and candidate coach in your next please well i live in the mountains so i know what this is about um i have told i have also talked to my neighbors we have often wondered there's several things we can do we've often wondered why can't we get a shuttle up here twice a day over on um gold hill they do that and that was worked out pretty darn well i think the county could even play a role in this because there's different types of um regional businesses um government offices that need to get together and i think the county could bring them together for example i've often gone down to work when i worked at boulder high i'd see this great big school bus with five kids in it and then i'd see people driving to work often they lived a few blocks from the school now i know that the school districts has you know guidelines about who can ride the school buses and the businesses are worried about legalities about can they provide a shuttle but i think that some of these we need to start thinking about and working through because the school bus goes down in the morning maybe some workers who are going down to work in that same part of town could take the school bus down maybe we could come up with some guidelines to make that work right now we don't even try um shuttle which and i'm sorry you're out of time i'm sorry i'm still not seeing anything that's okay thank you and candidate levy your next please yeah thank you so um i met with a number of organizations and groups of people up in the mountains and um what what i hear most often is that they they do feel that their needs really aren't heard and a lot of it is around services um i i too met with the the high country alliance and heard many of the issues that mr krauter heard i met with the peak to peak housing and human services alliance and followed up with some of the some of the the representatives of nonprofit organizations that sit on that alliance about how we can better bring services to people in the mountains because we have a population that is very diverse in terms of age in terms of income level and um and they need services as they age i think the key is to appreciate the scale you know that we we don't need to have a big building and and a lot of staff and personnel what we need to do is maybe have a hub in allen's park in netherland where where services could be provided we need to draw on the nonprofits that are already working in the county in the mountain areas as well thank you very much i think we have time for one last question um and we'll start with candidate krauter for this one the question is what steps are you taking or would you take to make sure everyone's voice is heard when making decisions as a boulder county commissioner if elected and let's do one minute for this question okay well in my opening statement i said one of the things that i would do would be have town halls i mean how are we going to listen to people if we only make meetings available at 10 o'clock in the morning i'm going to be in the community i'm going to be there at dinnertime i'll talk to people in blitzfield superior lafayette netherland i would hope to have a town hall once a quarter in every single one of our you know communities in boulder county so i can hear what people want so like i said from the start i'm not all about top down government i'm not about an autocracy i'm about people telling me what to do so i can be their servant thank you candidate cochin one minute please i love this question um because i firmly believe that we do need to be more bottom up i was shocked the other day when i was talking to some neighbors and some of the older guys said hey did you know the commissioners used to come up here every several months to see what we needed and i said really i was kind of stunned at that so this is a culture that the commissioners had in the past and i think it's kind of gotten lost at least it's not done to the level it had been done before i would get out there um as james said i would be out on the planes i would solicit people to come in they're not going to come in unless we go get them a little tiny notice in the newspaper doesn't do it for me it has to be um an aggressive effort on the commissioners to hear from the constituents we have to go everywhere in this county and it's a big county but that's what we have to do i would also see that we increase the number of commissioners from three to five there's just not enough man hours women hours with three commissioners thank you candidate levy yeah thank you um i i think you're going to hear a common theme from all of us which is that we have to get out of the courthouse and we have to go to to meet people where they are and that's true for the mountains it's true for the eastern plains it's true for longmont you know people can't always come to boulder they shouldn't be expected to come to boulder to the courthouse uh in the middle of the day when they're working when they they have families they have jobs and and and school duties and things like that to attend to so i do think we have to make more of an effort to get out into the community but um if people feel that they're not being heard um you know the the best solution to that is to listen uh and i i think often um you know maybe maybe the commissioners you know drive towards a solution um and and they don't take community voices enough uh in mind and um i've been in positions for decades where um you know where i've sat in hearings and i have heard some of the most amazing brilliant things from ordinary people who um you know who don't typically find themselves in those environments thank you and candidate lochemin these questions feel like they're getting bigger and bigger um and in the same short amount of time and and i say that because a lot of my background in my work has been around really to me what this question is is about community engagement and i beg to differ that a town hall is the way to get to community and i say that as a i consider myself pretty typical voter i've never ran for office before now and the town hall was not something that i would have been attracted to interested or frankly probably even heard about and so i think it takes this piece of how do we get not just physically out of the courthouse although that's really important and i know current commissioners that do go out and and i know that some meetings have been hosted at the naiwat grange and other places so i think that they're there that is happening i would like to expand that i'd like to broaden that we have a responsibility in the county commissioners office to address our other language um speakers around the county that's one piece of language access and then also the piece of really meeting people in different formats whether it's social media whether it's these types of forums and we're going to have an opportunity after covet to feel figure out how do we do hybrid of in person and online opportunities to mix with folks thank you all for answering those questions and thanks to all the folks who submitted questions to the league in order for us to to have so many to choose from now we'll go ahead to closing statements and for closing statements you'll have another one minute and we'll go in reverse ballot order and we'll start with candidate crowder who is running for a district to go ahead candidate crowder thank you well i really appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts with everyone and again my main issues are you know i want good governance i want good accountable governance i want housing that people can afford to buy i want our roads to be maintained in a way that you can safely get to your jobs your schools take your kids to soccer practice things like that and i also want to make sure that we rigorously enforce our laws having to do with the rights of everyone in this country our civil rights as they're called and nowadays being styled as inclusivity um i'd like to bring to bear a lifetime of experience and government administration find the places where there are leakages i want to make sure that the citizens in this county have their voices heard and i'll be out there in every community listening and this is not me telling you what i think this is you telling me what you think and i believe in town halls basic form of government thank you thank you and next we'll have candidate lochamine who is also running for district two commissioner go ahead please great thank you i want to thank everybody for participating and anybody who's still online after an hour at the end of their day thank you for uh for participating with us i want to invite you to visit my website because clearly in 60 seconds we haven't answered all of them it's martha m rta2020.org the bigger message for me yes i want you to find out about me as a candidate yes i want you to know my leadership style yes i want you to know about why community is so important to me and why representing district two is a accumulation of my life's work of commitment to work with folks but i also want to make sure that we don't miss out on the conversation tonight about how important this local election is this is our opportunity to vote for those in our community who are not yet able to vote and that's our lgbt community it's our immigrant brothers and sisters it's our black brothers and sisters it's everybody who's been overlooked this is an election that is about our women's bodies this is our election about our choices and the way that we move forward and truly the ballot at the foundation is where local decisions matter so thank you to the league for bringing us together tonight thank you and next candidate levy yeah thank you thank you for the opportunity to appear at this forum you know it's times like these that really illustrate the most fundamental role of government and that is to keep us healthy and secure in our communities and to protect the most vulnerable among us and doing that requires foresight and planning it requires dedication to detail and collaborating at all levels of government and with the private sector and non-profit organizations i know how to do those things and will work as hard as i can to deliver vital services efficiently and fairly to all county residents as i have campaigned what i have heard most consistently is that people want to know they're being heard they want to know that their needs and concerns matter to the county commissioners i intend to listen to learn and to make decisions that take into account what matters most of people now and for generations into the future you know i know i can't please everyone all of the time but i hope that people feel i listened and respected their views thank you thank you and candidate levy is running for district one commission as is candidate cochin please go ahead please visit my website cochin2020.com because i could not cover all of the stuff that's covered there so i do invite you all to go there all of my lifetime i have volunteered and through all those endeavors i think i've gained a little bit of wisdom at least i hope that i'm a very open-minded person and that has led me to valuing the bipartisan approach i believe in doing your research and bringing others in when you don't know the answer and then questioning them and questioning yourself and thinking i'm a creative problem solver i've lived equity i've become an equity trainer i've led restorative justice in the past 10 years i strongly believe that we need five commissioners not three in order that we have the time to serve this large county and to go out away from that courthouse and seek all people's opinions i am a balanced open-minded determined seeker and i believe in finding the win-win in every problem thank you very much and on behalf of the league of women voters i would like to thank all of our candidates not only for your participation in tonight's forum but also for your participation in the democratic process we know that running for office and serving as an elected official if elected is hard work and we really appreciate your efforts thank you to our league candidate forum volunteers josephine porter peggy leach carolin elliott our operations director mandy nukku and sergio angelis with longmont public media gracias to our interpreter rosa bell rice and finally thanks to the boulder county voters for participating tonight as viewers it's up to all of us to make sure we respect and work to protect our democratic processes too many people have suffered and succeeded in the struggle to win these rights for us not to use them it starts with being an informed and active voter to check out other important issues affecting our community check out our league voter information website vote 411.org for all the election information you need this forum will be rebroadcast on longmont public media's channel eight and will also appear on the league's youtube channel look for links on the league's website at lwbbc.org or our facebook page and finally the league of women voters of boulder county works throughout the year to help empower voters and defend democracy if you want to lend your time and skills to encourage civic engagement for all people in a non-partisan manner please join us all the information you need is on our website thank you again to everyone and have a great evening