A County to Come Home To

Dear Editor,

Before ballots arrive in early October, I want to say why I am running for county commissioner and what I would do.

Christine and I raised our five children here, all graduates of Telluride High School. Like many young people, they are finding it harder than it should be to move back to their hometown. As a community, we have not lost our way. But we have lost ground. I want San Miguel County to be a place people can come home to, not just visit.

We ran two retail businesses in Telluride for two decades. I served nine years on the school board, including as president, and am now vice chair of the hospital district board. I spent more than a decade working in behavioral health and health care, and in 2018 helped lead the countywide mental health measure that now funds more than $1 million a year in care.

My values are simple. If you work hard here, you should be able to build a life here. Neighbors look out for one another. Every person counts. Treat every tax dollar as if it came out of a neighbor's wallet. And we should leave this place better than we found it. We owe that to whoever comes next. Most of our neighbors share those values, whatever box they checked when they registered to vote.

Housing comes first. Some people say we should stop building. Stopping does not lower rent. The county has new tools to speed the review of qualifying housing projects, and state law provides tax exemptions that can lower construction costs for qualifying affordable housing. I would use every available tool to get homes built that our workers and neighbors can afford.

We cannot keep depending on one employer and two busy seasons. Steady visitors in spring and fall mean steady paychecks in April and November. The county can help local organizations that bring science, education and arts programs here do more in our shoulder seasons.

The county should be disciplined about spending, focusing first on what we need and can afford. Growth should pay its way. New development should bear its fair share of the added costs it creates for roads, water, emergency services and housing. When it does not, those costs land on taxpayers or get pushed down the highway to the west end, which has too often absorbed the impacts of growth elsewhere. It deserves the benefits of growth, not just the costs, and its farms and ranches deserve to stay working.

Housing, jobs and services are connected, and none of them stops at a town line. We already work together in places, but too often we still work in silos. I would advocate for the county, towns and districts to agree on shared goals, starting with housing: what success looks like, what comes first and how we measure progress. Then each can do its part, and we check our progress together. It is a full-time job, and a big part of that job will be doing the patient work of building relationships and turning shared goals into results.

Good government means listening first, bringing people together and following through. Listening means meeting people where they are, including those who cannot make a meeting at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday, and asking what they need before deciding what they get. And every neighbor, whatever language they speak, should be able to call for help, see a doctor or send a child to school without fear.

I am not running to manage decline. I am running to keep what makes this a place worth coming home to and to make sure whoever comes next can still find a way in. I would rather spend the next four years working to keep that door open than explain to my kids why I let it close.

If you have a question, call or text me at 970-708-1012. I will answer, today and as your commissioner.

Sincerely,

Paul Reich