Estes Park Trail Gazette: After months of trying to address the shortcomings of a tax-payer funded organization, Visit Estes Park, I find that I have failed to do it in a way that wouldn’t embarrass anyone. My only recourse is to bring the issues in question to those who have the ultimate responsibility and ability to address them. Having clearly failed to encourage the leadership of VEP to address what most would agree are legitimate and necessary concerns, I am here to give public testimony on my involvement as a Town appointed Board Member elected by the Local Marketing District Board (Visit Estes Park) to serve as the Secretary/Treasurer to the Board. The issues I have come up against are now becoming more about me rather than the dirty little secrets of Visit Estes Park. Clearly, this is NOT about me when you review the information I am presenting. It is about a publicly funded organization and its operation.

This last year I was encouraged by several people to apply for the LMD Board once again because of some of the issues that the last year had exposed. They felt I could help bring solutions to the table and was a good candidate that could work well within a team. I received letters of reference from a former Mayor, to Board Chairs to major business owners. I was appointed 1/1/2017 and by 1/7/2017, I was villainized by most of the LMD Board due to the public release of the infamous “This is Crap” email sent to Mayor Jirsa by Trustee Holcomb. I don’t regret making that email public because it was wrong in so many ways, I was sickened.

Was Trustee Holcomb really conspiring with the top LMD Board Members to replace Trustee Walker? Did my fellow Board Members really ask Trustee Holcomb to create that email? Who knows but them? Although I only made the email public and informed the entire LMD Board of the existence of the email, I was forced to endure a threat of legal action by the LMD Board Chair Kruger and the legal department. I was then chastised in the Board room and then months later told that legal had determined there was no Sunshine Law violation – just the potential.

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