Traffic backs up on McLain Flats Road just north of Aspen one morning last week as commuters seek a faster way into the city than Highway 82 and its usual congestion. The entrance to Aspen and upper-valley traffic problems have emerged as issues in the recent mayor’s race, won by Rachel Richards, and also the city council race, which is under way.
After none of the six candidates running for two open Aspen City Council seats garnered enough votes to win outright in the March 4 election, the four top vote-getters advanced to an April 1 runoff.
Mail-in ballots have been received and can be dropped off at the ballot box in front of Aspen City Hall, 427 Rio Grande Place. Early voting is underway at City Hall as well. Call 970-429-2686 or visit aspen.gov/1431/2025-Municipal-Election for voting information.
Christine Benedetti, John Doyle, Emily Kolbe and Torre received enough votes to advance. Doyle is seeking a second term on council. Torre is term-limited in his mayoral seat and decided to run for council. Benedetti and Kolbe are first-time council candidates.
The top two vote-getters on April 1 will join incoming mayor Rachel Richards at the council table. The new electeds will be sworn in on April 8.
They will join the city alongside several new leaders — city attorney, deputy city manager, utilities director and more. In addition to Richards, the table where they will sit includes Sam Rose and Bill Guth. All five will soon be working to select a new city manager, a process estimated to take six to nine months, following the recent resignation of Sara Ott.
The new council members also will need to work on the way forward with the entrance to Aspen dilemma, including determining whether the city should ask the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration to conduct a new environmental impact statement regarding a possible solution.
In this story, each candidate explained their reasons for running and what they would prioritize in a four-year term.
Aspen City Council candidate Christine Benedetti celebrates on election night nearly three weeks ago. One of the stated reasons she is seeking office is to advocate for affordable child care in Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley.
Christine Benedetti
Benedetti moved to Aspen nearly 20 years ago. In her almost two decades in the Roaring Fork Valley, she has served on several boards and commissions, including the Wheeler Opera House Board, the Aspen Historical Society board, the Early Learning Center board and the Aspen Planning and Zoning Commission. She was also a founding member of the Next Generation Advisory Commission.
While she has never been an elected official, it is her experience as a community representative on these boards that she said makes her stand out from the other candidates. Also, as a parent of young children, she said a voice for families is missing at the council table.
“I was not seeing anyone at the council table making decisions through the perspective from which I think I can offer, which is a parent of young kids, a professional who works at least one job, if not more, someone who’s served in a number of roles in the community on nonprofit boards, for-profit boards,” Benedetti said. “I think I have a perspective that taps into a lot of different parts of the community and I wanted to offer that to Aspen.”
Benedetti wants to prioritize expanding access to child care in Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley in a first term on council.
She said while the city’s .45% sales tax that partially funds the city’s Kids First program that helps families find and afford child care has given the community a leg up in improving access, more could be done to support families as costs for care continue to increase.
“Child care is one of these things that, if you don’t have kids, you don’t really worry about it. Once you’re out of having kids that are zero to five (years old), then you have moved on beyond it, and so it’s a very short, super intense time that is really quite stressful on families and parents,” Benedetti said. “But it impacts people a lot further than just those families with young kids. There’s turnover in the workforce because people can’t find child care, or they can’t afford it, so it’s also an economic issue, it’s a labor issue, and the benefits of just putting kids in quality, consistent child care has benefits decades long down the road.”
She also wants to focus on expanding affordable, accessible “third spaces” to foster community. She pointed to the Armory Hall redevelopment project as one opportunity to prioritize community spaces, but said more should be done to expand access for community members.
“We are losing those (third spaces), and I’d love to see some policy incentive and general support around trying to increase those in Aspen, because I think that when you lose those community spaces, your sense of community starts to erode a little bit,” Benedetti said. “We can try to do something about that from a government perspective.”
Benedetti did not support Referendum 2 during the March election, in which voters gave a thumbs-up for the Colorado Department of Transportation to potentially use Marolt Open Space for a new Highway 82 alignment serving Aspen.
Benedetti said she would follow the will of the voters, “and to me what that says is that people want decisions and they want movement on the entrance to Aspen.”
She is concerned about the timeline of a new environmental impact statement on the entrance and how changes at the federal government level may impact the process. If CDOT and the Federal Highway Administration approve of the city’s possible pursuit of a new EIS, a two-year process would begin.
Benedetti supports reevaluating the 1998 Record of Decision on the entrance question. The existing ROD favors a “preferred alternative” or “straight shot” using the open space to realign the highway toward a new Castle Creek Bridge that would connect with Aspen’s Main Street. She prefers that to starting over and pursuing a new record of decision.
“I would rather see us engage in something that is aiming toward solutions,” she said.
Aspen City Councilman John Doyle takes in the atmosphere at Aspen City Hall on election night nearly three weeks ago. A vocal advocate for environmental policy, Doyle was elected to his first term in 2021.
John Doyle
Doyle is running for a second four-year term as city councilman. He was first elected to council in 2021, and decided to run at the time to advocate for his views on the environment and because of the controversial outcome of the 2019 election in which city voters narrowly approved private development near the base of Lift 1 at Aspen Mountain.
He is running again to continue the work he started in the past four years.
“I’d really like to be part of a council that actually does get the entrance to Aspen actually moving, and I think right now, especially with the airport redevelopment being on the books soon, I see no reason why we couldn’t coordinate our entrance and the airport redevelopment,” Doyle said.
Doyle sits on the boards of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency, Colorado Association of Ski Towns, Colorado Municipal League, Nordic Council, Pitkin County Board of Health, Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority and the Ruedi Water and Power Authority.
He said in a second term he would like to join the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority board to work on improving mobility to the valley, especially as the city council works to address the entrance to Aspen.
In his first term, Doyle has been part of the council that has moved forward efforts to pursue a new EIS for the entrance. The council will determine in the summer if it wants to ask CDOT and the FHWA to start a new EIS. The two agencies will have the final say in whether the city can move forward.
Doyle said “there’s still more conversations to be had with CDOT” before the council decides to pursue a new EIS.
“I would like to work with them as closely as we can to find a solution that has as much community buy-in as possible,” he said.
The new council configuration also will be looking to hire a new city manager to replace Sara Ott, whose last day was Feb. 28. Doyle wants to find “a more lasting fit” for a new city manager. Ott was in the role for six years.
“I would like to have somebody come here and stay here longer than the average (city manager tenure) of about five to six years,” Doyle said. “I do want to pick someone who I think is going to be truly committed to this community.”
If elected to a second term, Doyle said he would want to continue his work on the APCHA board to reevaluate the housing authority’s rightsizing program, address the pace and scale of development and redevelopment in town and work on managing growth in town in sustainable ways.
“Everybody wants economic growth, and you can’t blame them. But at the same time, our planet is a finite space, this valley is a finite space, and, can we stop growth? No, but can we manage it? I think we can manage it and manage it better,” he said. “I think Aspen has done an amazing job of finding the government tools to address growth.”
He pointed to the city’s demolition allotment program as a successful tool in addressing the boom in growth the city saw during and after the COVID pandemic.
Emily Kolbe speaks with voters at Aspen City Hall on election night nearly three weeks ago. A first-time city council candidate, Kolbe says she wants to advocate for local businesses and their concerns.
Emily Kolbe
Kolbe is a longtime local resident and co-owner of Brunelleschi’s restaurant in Aspen.
She said her experience as a business owner would bring a new perspective to the council table, especially as someone who has been in the industry and knows what struggles local businesses are facing in town.
“I really believe in supporting our local businesses and talking with them and working with them about what are the elements that will make business easier for them,” Kolbe said. “It’s challenging to compete with chains … and really deep pockets that are coming into those communities, so how can we ease the burden of leadership and business operations? And if that is from assisting with their employees transportation, if that is assisting with recycling programs … what it’s about is meeting them where they are as opposed to asking them to change for us.”
Local businesses are facing challenges with employee retention, rent and cost of goods, Kolbe said. As a council member, she wants to work closely with local businesses to help them stay affordable and profitable.
Kolbe was the only council candidate that supported Referendum 1 in the March election. The ballot item, which was designed to increase the difficulty of CDOT’s use of Marolt Open Space for entrance to Aspen solutions, asked voters to increase the vote threshold required to change the use of city-owned open space from a simple majority to 60%. The referendum failed by 700 votes.
Despite her support for the referendum, she said she would not seek additional protections for city open space than what is already in place.
“We could do more to protect more, and that’s where my personal vote came in,” Kolbe said. “But as a council member, that was not what the will of the community was, so that is a different component. So no, I’m not going to carry my singular personal issue into this.”
She also opposed Referendum 2, which voters narrowly approved, giving CDOT the authority to use portions of the Marolt Open Space as identified in the 1998 ROD or in any future record of decision for new highway alignments.
The city is in the process of compiling information that, if the city council approves, will be sent to CDOT and the Federal Highway Administration to request reopening the 1998 ROD and conducting a new environmental impact statement. Kolbe supports reopening the ROD and pursuing a new EIS.
“As many people know, I was not a supporter of Referendum 2, but I certainly know how to work well with people whom I have had previous disagreements with, and the community decided,” she said. “So you look forward to make the best decisions utilizing the best information, and that’s where the EIS comes in.”
If elected, Kolbe also would join a council that will hire a new city manager. She said she would look for someone who understands the community and can collaborate well with the council.
“There certainly are the nuts and bolts of the job, being able to run a large business, a large-scale business and manage a city,” Kolbe said. “But then there are elements of a character that are super important in developing a team, to empower the team to do good work, and it’s that collaborative spirit that is very important for this city manager.
“To have someone who can listen well and take that information back to a team and inspire people to work hard and move forward decisively and bring forth quality information, I think that’s a great sign of a leader,” she added.
Torre campaigns on Main Street on election day nearly three weeks ago. He currently is serving as mayor but was term-limited from seeking reelection to that post. He says one reason he decided to run for city council is to improve the dialogue between city government and local residents.
Torre
Torre, who is term-limited in his mayoral seat, is running his 12th municipal campaign in Aspen. He has served as mayor for the past six years.
“I think my biggest role will be that person with history and experience, somebody with an understanding of the issues and beyond that, somebody who represents a very moderate position on most items and really looks to represent the community on those issues,” he said.
He chose to run for a seat on the city council to continue the work he has done, especially on environmental, housing and transit initiatives. Torre also said he wanted to run “make sure the community had a choice of good representatives.”
“And I believe myself to be a good representative of Aspen,” he said.
Torre is the only candidate who participated in the city’s last city manager search that garnered 64 applicants and ended in Ott’s hire in 2019. As mayor, he has helped direct next steps in the city’s current search for a new city manager since Ott’s last day on Feb. 28.
The city will conduct another nationwide search for a new city manager, and aims to hire a new candidate in six to nine months. Torre said he knows what qualities do and do not work in a city manager in Aspen and wants to be part of the search for a new leader.
“What I’m looking for, and what I think suits best, is a city manager that communicates with and supports the community, communicates with and supports the city council,” he said. “I think I can be a real help in that search, just by having prior experience, and being able to identify where you look for the different qualities that a city manager ought to have.”
Torre touted his work supporting the city’s compost program, electrification initiatives and plastic bag ban and wants to continue implementing policies that protect the environment. In a recent council meeting, he proposed reducing plastic to-go products used in city restaurants.
He also proposed creating an electric bike commuter program, partnering with a local bike shop to provide commuter bike subsidies for residents to incentivize electric bike usage over cars.
Torre served his first term on city council in 2003 after running unsuccessfully for mayor in 2001. He ran again unsuccessfully for mayor in 2007 but was reelected to another city council term in 2009. He was out of office for six years between 2013 and 2019, then returned to public office as mayor in 2019. He has held the role ever since, including during the pandemic years.
“I’ve done a lot, but there’s still more to do, and most of these issues, they don’t go away,” Torre said. “You keep working on them, you make them better, you get your community to a balanced state if you can.”
While he is proud of his accomplishments in his numerous council terms, he said one regret he had was not prioritizing community gatherings after the pandemic. He said it might have impacted the community’s trust in city governance.
A community survey conducted in the fall found the community has low confidence in Aspen government.
“I think that we could bolster the trust in government by having more community, not just outreach on issues, but just open dialogues and open conversations,” Torre said. “If that’s town hall meetings, or if that’s neighborhood meetings, I would really like to participate in organizing more of that community dialogue, and I think that would go a long way.”
