Richards, Frisch diverge on what it means to be mayor

City of Aspen voters will decide between two longtime locals for its new mayor in March in a race that was left wide open because of term limits for current Mayor Torre.

Rachel Richards and Katy Frisch are vying to lead the Aspen City Council for the next two years. It is a race between a career local public servant in Richards, and a first-time mayoral candidate in Frisch, both of whom have agreed on some of the issues facing the Aspen community but often differ on how to tackle them.

The next mayor will lead a council with potentially two new faces — six  candidates are running for two open seats, and four of the six are first-time candidates — and will oversee several upcoming decisions, including whether to move forward with an environmental impact statement for entrance to Aspen alternatives and how to transform the former city government building, Armory Hall, into a revitalized community gathering space.

The next mayoral term also will mark the first time Aspen has had a woman mayor since early 2007, when Helen Klanderud finished her final term.

With just three weeks to go until the March 4 election, Richards and Frisch are making their pitches to lead the city for the next two years.

Rachel Richards

Richards was first elected to public office in 1991, when she served her first term as an Aspen councilwoman at 29 years old. It jumpstarted a 30-year career in public office across the city and county.

Richards served two consecutive four-year terms as a councilwoman and one two-year term as mayor from 1999-2001. From 2007-2019, she served as a Pitkin County commissioner.

Richards was elected to city council one last time, in 2019, and in 2023 at the end of her term announced her retirement from public office.

But nearly two years after ending her tenure in public office, she decided to run again for mayor, citing what she said was indecision among the current council and a desire to address evolving issues facing the city of Aspen.

Richards pointed to potential changes at the national level that could trickle down to the city — like changes in environmental protections — and the growing housing crisis in the Roaring Fork Valley as issues she would like to address as mayor.

“There seem to be a lot of very important looming issues in front of our community, and some of these issues came down fairly recently at the national level. I think we need a strong council that is willing to stand up and protect (U.S.) Forest Service funding, work on the continued issues of climate change and other statewide issues or national issues that affect us,” she said. “I also think almost every business and entity, whether it’s the hospital, the city, or the county or schools, they’re all dealing with this sort of looming housing issue.

“I think both of those two issues point to the perspective that I bring to the mayor’s role, and that is dealing with the current short-term needs, and at the same time really looking down the road, looking at what do we need to be prepared for,” she added.

During her tenure in public office, Richards campaigned for several voter-approved taxes supporting open space, resort marketing and the health of local rivers and streams. She also threw significant support behind the Burlingame Ranch employee housing project and the Lumberyard affordable housing project at the city council table.

Now, with the first steps of the 300-unit housing project at the Lumberyard taking place, Richards wants to keep the project moving forward and ensure it accommodates longtime locals who are still looking for housing and may have been forced out of the upper valley because of rising housing costs.

Richards has long emphasized her desire to improve valleywide collaboration. If elected mayor, she said she would push to convene a housing summit to work with regional partners like Pitkin County, regional nonprofits, private sector businesses and more to look for innovative housing opportunities and partnerships.

Whoever is elected also will inherit a city council in which residents have overall low confidence. Of 449 Aspen residents surveyed in the fall, 22% rated confidence in city governance as good, 36% rated it fair and 32% rated it poor. One response said council was “asleep at the wheel,” a sentiment mirrored by other comments.

Richards said improving public confidence in the city council will require setting hard deadlines to make decisions instead of kicking cans down the road.

“We all, at times, want further information or clarification on something, but that shouldn’t just be a delay technique for not reaching decisions,” she said. “All these issues we’re talking about, they deserve action in a timely fashion.”

Some delays at the city level are the result of understaffing, she said. As mayor, she wants to oversee potentially adding more personnel and being proactive in planning for roles from which longtime employees will retire.

She suggested adding more personnel to the community development department to better streamline the building permit process on all fronts.

Richards also hopes to see the Armory Hall redevelopment project move forward as a community-oriented space. In January, the current city council directed city staff to move forward with an expedited land use review for the former city hall building, with a preference for a June or July 2026 construction date.

But the project needs further refining, she said.

“Will the food they can serve actually be affordable … if they’re paying market rents and competing for the same employees?” Richards said. “I love the concept, I think that’s what should happen, but I think we need to go out again and talk to the community a little more about it.”

While the city is facing several issues that Richards wants to help oversee, the entrance to Aspen is one that motivated her most to run again for mayor.

When she announced her intent to run for mayor in December, Richards cited the current council’s decision to not put a question on the November ballot about the use of Marolt-Thomas Open Space for bus lanes along a new alignment for Highway 82 as a motivator for her to run.

Richards is a proponent of the “preferred alternative,” a highway alignment that was identified through a 1998 record of decision, as the best solution for the entrance to Aspen. She is part of a coalition of citizens that gathered signatures to petition for a ballot question in March that asks voters to allow the Colorado Department of Transportation to use already-approved portions of the Marolt-Thomas Open Space as identified in the 1998 decision for new highway alignments.

The ballot question is called Referendum 2, and is one of two referendums about the entrance to Aspen. Richards opposes the other, Referendum 1, which asks voters to increase the threshold of votes required to change the use of city-owned open space from a simple majority to 60%. Richards has called the referendum undemocratic and said it is “full of unintended consequences.”

The city is now pursuing a new environmental impact statement, which would evaluate other entrance to Aspen alternatives. It would reopen the 1998 decision and look at the issue from a new perspective with updated purposes and needs for the project. CDOT and the Federal Highway Administration will have the final say on whether the city can reopen the ROD and pursue a new EIS.

Referendum 2 also allows CDOT to use portions of the open spaces that are identified in any future RODs. Richards said she supports building a second bridge to address evacuation needs.

“A lot of the sentiment (about the entrance to Aspen) is about wildfire safety, and a second is about controlling future traffic growth,” she said. “This is about a valley that is growing, that we have no control over its growth, that we pull 70% or more of our workforce from the downvalley side of the entrance and, for me, it is about supporting the mass transit system as one of the primary tools to manage future traffic growth.”

The preferred alternative, or what many refer to as the “straight shot,” proposes two one-way transit lanes and two bus lanes over a portion of the Marolt and Thomas open spaces. It is a transit solution, not a traffic solution, according to the city.

Implementing the preferred alternative would prioritize transit efficiency, Richards said.

To implement the changes she wants to see as mayor, Richards said she will treat the role as a full-time gig.

“I intend to work the mayor’s position full time,” Richards said. “This is not a part-time gig, it’s just too important and there’s too many issues to make it a part-time gig.”

The issues before the city are more complex than ever, she said.

Richards argued those issues require someone who has been in the seat before and has a history of accomplishments at a city and county level.

“These are more complex issues than ever before,” Richards said. “I really come back to experience as a number one thing, but also a history of cooperation and success and getting real results done, promises made and promises fulfilled.”

Katy Frisch

Where Richards sees a need for a mayor with decades of experience at the city council table, Frisch sees a need for a leader with fresh perspectives.

Frisch has lived in Aspen for over 20 years. She has never served on the city council, but it is not her first time running a campaign or sitting on an elected board.

She was elected to the Aspen School District Board of Education in 2019, and during her four-year term served as president of the board. While on the board, she oversaw the district’s reopening plans after COVID-19 pandemic closures, helped implement district-wide International Baccalaureate curriculum (ASD is now the only district in the state that offers a districtwide IB curriculum) and helped develop the district’s employee housing plan. She also supported her husband, former Aspen Councilman Adam Frisch, during his two bids for Colorado’s U.S. House District 3.

Frisch previously served as president and board member of the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club, and held positions on the boards of Aspen Public Radio, the ASD financial advisory board and the Roaring Fork Youth Orchestra.

The revived entrance to Aspen debate motivated Frisch to run for mayor, she said.

“I view this as elected community service,” she said. “Being a big believer in community service, and seeing what was going on with the conversation around the bridge and the entrance, I felt like I could make a difference, and running for mayor would be a good way to lend some of my skill sets to the community.”

Frisch said she does not see the role as a full-time position, but rather as an elected community member whose role is to help provide strategic vision for the city and talk to the community to manage the city responsibly.

One of her biggest priorities is addressing the aging Castle Creek Bridge and fixing it first and foremost.

“I think the best solution is that we fix the existing bridge and we have that as our primary ingress and egress out of town,” Frisch said. “Any entrance solution requires that bridge to be in place. That bridge is not going to last 15 years … so we have to replace it now.”

“To me, it’s simple. Then we can start talking about what are our objectives for the entrance and what other solutions are best to address,” she added.

Frisch opposes Referendum 2, the citizen-initiated referendum that asks voters to allow CDOT to use portions of the open spaces approved in the 1998 ROD, or any future RODs, for new highway alignments. She said she wants to maintain local control of the open spaces.

She is neutral on Referendum 1, she said, but rejected claims that it was undemocratic. But her main priority is fixing the Castle Creek Bridge and moving forward with a new EIS.

Since December, the city has taken steps to initiate a new EIS. The city paused some efforts for a new EIS until after the election — including a public outreach campaign and stakeholder engagement meeting — to avoid claims of election interference.

The stakeholder engagement and public outreach will be one of the most important steps in pursuing a new EIS. It will inform a new purpose and need statement that the city will pitch to CDOT and the Federal Highway Administration about why a new evaluation of the entrance to Aspen is needed. If the purpose and need have not changed since the 1998 decision, the agencies could deny the request to start a new EIS.

“I don’t know how you fix a problem without knowing what your objectives are, and what we’re trying to do,” Frisch said. “We have to recognize that we need to make people’s lives better. Traffic is an issue that impacts pretty much everyone, and it’s not pleasant, so let’s acknowledge that and see what we want to try and accomplish. If it is strictly fixing traffic and making more cars go through per hour, this current preferred alternative does not make that happen.”

The city council will need to approve of the city submitting its letter of intent for a new EIS process to CDOT and the FHWA, a vote that will likely happen in May or June.

“We worked on (the ROD) 30 years ago,” Frisch said. “It’s too backward-looking. We need to listen to the professionals and not the professional politicians about what our solutions are.”

But the entrance to Aspen is not the only issue that motivated Frisch to run. As mayor, Frisch wants to focus on developing the Armory into a local-focused community gathering space.

She sees the current conversations about the building going in the wrong direction. The most recent Armory designs include a mix of retail and food vendor spaces with a bar area and multiple community seating areas.

Frisch sees the Armory as a place to fill the need of a community gathering space for teenagers and seniors. But she doesn’t like the growing emphasis on a bar space, which she said will be inevitable if the city doesn’t reevaluate the business model of the building.

“I would like to see the Armory focused on a community gathering space. I don’t think it should be a giant beer hall,” she said. “So that’s where I think part of the conversation is going wrong now, and the reason it’s going to the giant beer hall is because it’s very clear that in order to meet the goal that the city has placed on the space of being operating-neutral — not necessarily profitable but not a subsidized space — you’re going to have to start selling alcohol and have a giant bar.”

“I don’t believe we need another giant bar in town … it’s not a zero-sum game, it’s not one or the other, but it’s the balance of making sure the space is community-serving” she added.

Frisch believes the city council needs someone to set a strategic vision for the rest of the council and the community.

According to the community survey conducted in the fall, 34% of respondents thought the city was generally acting in the best interest of the community.

“We can keep discourse civil and still disagree and still make progress on issues,” Frisch said. “I think that the council, historically, has been pretty bad at making life easier for people … we’re working against locals’ interests a lot of times by making things really complicated.”

She pointed to the city’s short-term rental permitting process and the demolition allotment program as two policies that are difficult for residents to navigate and may not still serve their initial intended purposes.

Frisch has experience as both a chief financial officer and chief executive officer, which she said will help guide strategic decision-making as mayor of Aspen. She lauded Richards’ long career in public service, but said it is time for new leadership in the city.

“I think that this is elected community service, this is not professional politics, and so I think it’s time that we have some fresh leadership perspectives,” Frisch said.

Ballots mailed soon

Ballots will be mailed to registered city of Aspen voters beginning Monday, Feb. 10. Eligible voters include anyone who has resided in the city of Aspen for at least 22 days preceding the election.

Residents who have not yet registered to vote can do so online at the Colorado secretary of state’s website, or in person, including on Election Day, at the Pitkin County Clerk and Recorder’s office at 530 E. Main St.

The election will take place Tuesday, March 4. Squirm Nights for the mayoral and council candidates will be held Wednesday, Feb. 19, and Wednesday, Feb. 26, respectively. The city council Squirm Night will take place at the Wheeler Opera House. Tickets are free, but must be reserved online in advance.