Estes Park Town Trustee Cindy Younglund announced she would be stepping down from her position as Trustee during the Board’s meeting on Tuesday. Younglund said she would be leaving her role for “family reasons,” and wanted her seat to appear on the ballot in the April 7 municipal election.
Younglund is currently serving her second term on the Board, with two years remaining. She did not provide additional reasons for leaving her role. Her last meeting as a Trustee will be Tuesday, March 24.
Younglund’s resignation means there will be four open Town Board seats in the upcoming election. Mayor Pro Tem Marie Cenac is term-limited and ineligible to continue serving on the Board. Incumbent Trustees Kirby Hazelton and Bill Brown are eligible for a second term and have both announced their reelection bid.
The candidate who receives the fourth-highest number of votes will take over Younglund’s seat and finish out the remaining two years of her term.
Hazelton, Brown, Cenac, Younglund, and Mayor Gary Hall encouraged residents to run for the Town Board during the meeting.
To run for Trustee, residents of the Town of Estes Park must have lived inside Town limits for at least 12 consecutive months immediately preceding the election and file nomination forms signed by 10 eligible Town residents no later than Jan. 26 at 5 p.m.
Residents will receive their ballots on Mar. 16. This is also the last day to register to vote in the election. Ballots are due by 7 p.m. on Apr. 7.
Click here for more election information, or contact the Town Clerk’s office at 970-577-4777 or click here to email the Clerk’s office. To register to vote, click here.
Other business
During Tuesday’s meeting, despite some debate, the Town Board approved 6E lodging tax funding for the EVICS Family Resource Center to continue providing childcare tuition assistance to families in the Estes Valley. EVICS has been receiving 6E funding since 2023, and the 2026 Annual Funding Plan, approved by the Board, allocates $300,000 for the program.
The proposal outlined how the childcare tuition assistance program is structured and managed, not whether or not it continues. Since 2006, EVICS has provided tuition assistance. In 2026, the Town and EVICS will work toward a standardized framework for tuition assistance, tied directly to the Town’s 6E funding requirements.
Trustees also approved an ordinance that would amend part of the Municipal Code to ensure that Town fines and penalties never exceed those allowed by Colorado state law. This change follows the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that a 2021 state law reducing penalties for minor state offenses also implicitly caps municipal penalties for the same conduct.
Instead of rewriting the Municipal Code, this ordinance would incorporate state law, so if a Town penalty would be higher than Colorado state law allows, it will be automatically reduced to the state’s legal maximum.
In a separate action, the Board approved reserving Town-owned property at the northwest corner of East Elkhorn Avenue and Park Lane for the construction of the Kahuna Memorial Wildlife Safety Park. The Art Center of Estes Park is the fiscal sponsor of the Kahuna Memorial project.
The purpose of the project is to increase awareness of how to observe wildlife safely. The project is named after an enormous elk with a distinctive antler rack that died in Moraine Park in 2022.
The Board previously approved a one-year reservation of the site for the memorial’s construction, but organizers failed to meet their fundraising goals, and the reservation expired, necessitating a new request from the Kahuna Memorial Project team.
Elizabeth Clark, a spokesperson for the Kahuna Memorial project, assured the Trustees that the organizers are prepared to meet the fundraising goals and bring the project to completion.