Estes Park Trail Gazette: When the Estes Park Town Board voted late last month to embrace a new policy to make trustee e-mails easily accessible to the public on the town’s website, we joined the community in applauding the effort.

It was an outstanding move toward transparency, similar to ones already in place by governments in Fort Collins, Loveland and Larimer County.

The decision, though, wasn’t popular with all the board members. In fact, Mayor Pro-Tem Wendy Koenig “opted out” of the program under a provision of the new policy. Trustee Bob Holcomb said, at the time, that he had some concerns and was the only dissenter in the 5-1 vote.

Holcomb, after taking some scathing heat from residents on Tuesday night over e-mails he sent to a member of a committee tasked with recommending a new Visit Estes Park board member, has announced that he, too, will be “opting out” of the program.

Holcomb, admitting that he was against the policy from the beginning, said his decision was based on the fact that he went from getting 1,100 e-mails three months before the policy went into effect to “zero” after it went into effect. He believed this is prohibiting his ability to make good decisions for citizens.

That now means that the only way the public can view the e-mails of Holcomb and Koenig is by making a Colorado Open Records Act request — the previous method used before the new policy was adopted.

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