This is the second in a series the Estes Valley Voice is publishing on the individuals who serve as Estes Park Town Trustees. The first featured Trustee Mark Igel.
Listen to story on EVV Podcast here:
“When you’re all done and you’re sitting on the back porch having a beer with friends, and they are talking about what I did during my term in office, what do I want them to say?” said Town of Estes Park Trustee Frank Lancaster in an interview on January 23.
The “legacy projects” he’d like to be remembered for include addressing transportation issues, securing affordable, attainable workforce housing, and protecting wildlife. Not, that he “cut back on the number of pencils the town used,” for example, he said.
“Keep your focus on those big projects that 20 years from now, people will look back and say, you made a difference, the community is better because of it,” he said.
He brings a wealth of professional experience to his perspectives and actions while serving on Town Board. For 18 years, he was the Larimer County manager, working with the staff and boards of each of the communities, including Estes Park. In 2012, he was hired as Town Administrator locally, retiring in 2019.
“I was approached by a couple people on the board to see if I would apply” to fill the seat vacated by the sudden death of Trustee Scott Webermeier in March 2023. Webermeier also served as mayor pro tem, a position currently held by Trustee Marie Cenac.
“I had always said there’s no way I’d want to be an elected official,” said Lancaster. “I liked being on the staff side, the professional side. But they said they really wanted somebody who could hit the ground running.” Lancaster was appointed to fill the seat held by Webermeier in May of 2023. In 2024, he ran for Town Board and was elected to a four-year term. He has no plans to run again in 2028.
“That’ll be five years on the board,” he said. That’s enough.”
Lancaster believes Town Board is a policy governing entity, not micro-managers for what Town staff were hired to do. He is a senior advisor to the International City/County Management Association, working with boards all over the country. “It’s a mentorship role,” he said; one in which he has seen all kinds of boards, including dysfunctional ones, that get “caught in the weeds.”
“They would like to tell staff what to do, or tell them how to do it,” he said. “I don’t believe that’s appropriate; it doesn’t fit with policy governance (which is) based on a lot of research about what makes a high functioning board, which is what I want us to be.
“Sometimes there’s this feeling that, well, if I’m elected, I must understand it all. … (but Trustees are) there to represent the people and set the policy in the overall direction, not the day-to-day stuff,” he said.
This subject was included in his book, “Navigating Rough Waters: Anecdotes, Quips, Quotes and Musings of a Local Government Manager. ” In it, he combines his past management experiences with that of working as a river rafting guide, which he did for a while after graduating from Colorado State University with a degree in horticulture.
Lancaster is a Colorado native and grew up in Wheatridge. After his time as a rafting guide, he worked as a Larimer County forester, running the weed district which led to a position in solid waste management for the county.
“In the mid-1980s, the landfill had problems,” he said. After 10 years in that position, Lancaster went on to get his MBA in public management before becoming the Larimer County Manager. Lancaster is also a CSU Master Gardener, providing advice about horticulture issues to local landowners and property managers.
Specific projects he would like to work on during his tenure as Trustee include moving the post office and revitalizing Cleave Street.
“There could be more quaint stores (along Cleave Street and in the space where the post office is now), more reasons to come up in the winter,” said Lancaster. He said the downtown corridor is a destination in itself, not just a way to get to Rocky Mountain National Park.
Another big priority is flood and fire mitigation; “the insurance issue is huge, he said. “what’s going to happen if we can’t get a generational shift in ownership because they can’t get insurance or a loan because of the flood risk, people forget about disasters so quickly. If you look at the flood (in 2013), you look at the fires (in 2020) for one year, maybe two years afterwards, it’s ‘we’ve got to do something.’”
But when it turns out to be very expensive or a disruption to downtown, the public begins to waffle on mitigation efforts, he said.
“Then three years from now, we have a flood, and your business is taken out, it’s ‘why didn’t you do anything? You knew this was going to happen, yet you did nothing,’’ said Lancaster.
Workforce housing is another big priority for Lancaster, but he is concerned about the push-back on new developments because they increase density on a piece of land.
“Density and affordability are inextricable from each other, he said. “The economics just aren’t there. But I understand you’ve got people who’ve retired, and they’ve made their money. They want to have their house, and they don’t want to see density somewhere else. You can’t live on a one-acre lot for one family and have it cost the same as a quarter acre lot with multifamily housing on it.”
He is also very interested in the new state law about ADUs, which takes effect after June 30 of this year. This law mandates accessory dwelling units cannot be prohibited by certain jurisdictions. The City of Fort Collins just implemented a program for this, he said.
“It doesn’t have to be a separate (building), I like the ones that are like basement apartments or apartments above a garage. It helps both families out if you own a house and you can rent the basement apartment to help with your mortgage.”
Lancaster and his wife, Jill, live in Estes Park and have two children and two grandchildren.
Listen to story on the EVV Podcast here:
“Securing affordable, attainable workforce housing.” And where might those be? Please define ‘AFFORDABLE.’ Are the $1945 – $2595 range of the Prospector apartment rents ‘affordable’? True, there are more apartments available now that workers can ‘attain’ as long as they pay through the nose for them.
“Protecting wildlife.” How exactly? If-most likely “when”-the Trustees approve the annexation and the development of the undeveloped 43-acre Deer Ridge parcel above the Elkhorn Lodge, how will that be “protecting wildlife?” A big FAIL of the EV Land Trust in not securing a conservation easement on this property over the past decades!
How will the Fish Hatchery project be “protecting wildlife?” How will the potential development of 179 Stanley Circle Dr. be “protecting wildlife?” What specifically did you and your staff do to “protect wildlife” during your tenure as Town Administrator?
Credit where it is due – the truly unexpected vote denying the 860 S St. Vrain rezoning. Though I am wondering – “What’s the catch?”