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Kathy Chandler-Henry had to be persuaded to be considered for a spot on the Eagle County Board of Commissioners. It seems to have worked out.

Chandler-Henry, an Eagle native and lifelong Democrat, was on the party’s vacancy committee to seek a replacement for Commissioner Jon Stavney when he announced his resignation in 2013. Stavney had been re-elected to his seat in 2012 but had resigned to accept the role as the town manager of Eagle.

Chandler-Henry had been running a business doing facilitation and strategic planning and had done a lot of work with the commissioners and other county staff, so she was familiar with people in the county building and what was going on in the county government.

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At one point in the process, she was asked by a few people, including her daughter, why she hadn’t put her name in for consideration as the next commissioner, and thought, essentially, “Why not?”

Chandler-Henry had thought about running for office in the past, but the thought of campaigning was daunting.

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Applying for the job through the party replacement process might be “a way to kind of take a baby step in,” she thought.

It turned out that applying for the job was harder than she thought. The application committee had its own hard questions, but ultimately selected her over a half-dozen other candidates.

“It was more like a really good job interview than trying to convince people to vote for you,” she recalled.

Hitting the ground running

Since she’d been involved in strategic planning with the county and commissioners, Chandler-Henry said she felt like she was able to hit the ground running in a way. Still, public office is one of those jobs you don’t truly understand until you’re in it.

But there weren’t too many surprises in those first days in office.

“I think I thought it would be a lot more contentious — I think I thought there would be a lot more people upset about things,” she said. “And what I found is that people care about things, and they’re approaching commissioners in terms of ‘Let’s fix this; let’s do this better.”

Chandler-Henry’s first big decision involved a project at Wolcott that would have essentially created a new town there. Years in the process, reviewing the project required hours of reading meeting minutes and listening to recordings of those meetings.

That project never came to pass and was replaced roughly a decade later with a scaled-down project that’s still in the approval process.

Over the years there were a handful of projects that turned out to have plenty of public opposition, some of which ended up in court. Perhaps the most contentious of those was the Tree Farm project in El Jebel. That project, approved in 2017, was appealed in court by residents, but those appeals were ultimately rejected in both district court and by the Colorado Court of Appeals. The Colorado Supreme Court in 2021 of that decision.

The Tree Farm fight reminded Chandler-Henry of the fight over the proposed Adam’s Rib ski area.

“People really did not like the developer,” she said. “That played a part in the room full of angry people,” she said.

Similarly, Cordillera residents at several levels appealed a commissioners’ approval of the All Points North addiction treatment center at the former Lodge at Cordillera site.

That the county prevailed in those legal battles points to the county playing by the rules in its decisions, Chandler-Henry said. That doesn’t stop people bringing legal actions, “but it means we usually prevail,” she said.

‘People caring loudly’

Chandler-Henry said controversy doesn’t bother her much. She recalled that someone once told her, “It’s just people caring loudly.”

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, people were upset because they cared about the same things, she said.

Caring about the community is what’s kept Chandler-Henry in the job, which she calls the “best job in the world.” And she most likely could have kept the job for another term.

The commissioners in 2021 asked voters to extend their term limits from two to three terms in office. That question passed handily, and Chandler-Henry said she agrees that commissioners should be allowed that third term, for several reasons. But she said at the time she wouldn’t seek that third term.

Having been appointed to serve most of Stavney’s term, and having been elected to two of her own will put her in office for not quite 12 years. That “meets the spirit” of the ballot initiative, she said.

And, she added, she’s confident that her replacement, incoming Commissioner Tom Boyd, will do a fine job.

Looking back over her time in office, Chandler-Henry is proud of the work that’s been done on the Eagle Valley Trail, but somewhat annoyed that the last 7.5 miles of the 63-mile project is turning into such a challenge.

“It’s unbelievable that it’s so hard to finish that last little piece, but it’s so expensive,” she said. “It’s just very difficult. But it’ll get done, and what a thing that’s going to be. We want to have a ride from Breckenridge to Aspen and stop along the way, have a multi-day ride and celebrate that trail.”

Chandler-Henry noted that the section from Eagle to Horn Ranch is well-used now. “There’s always somebody out on an e-bike or pushing a stroller or going for a walk or training on their road bike,” she said.

Chandler-Henry also points with pride to the level of cooperation between communities and agencies she sees in the county.

She noted that when federal officials came in during the 2018 Lake Christine fire, those officials were there to ensure there were open communication lines between local agencies. Those federal officials were somewhat surprised to see those communication lines open and operating, she said.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with me,” she said, giving full credit to county emergency manager Birch Barron, but adding that’s something to be proud of.

Collaboration as a superpower

But, noting that county officials are fond of saying “collaboration is our superpower,” Chandler-Henry said she’d like to see more collaborative efforts in the coming years, from housing to combining the valley’s three independent fire districts.

Chandler-Henry is also proud of efforts to preserve what’s left of the county’s agricultural land. She noted that the county, in collaboration with Pitkin and Garfield counties, has closed on a deal to purchase 4,500 acres at the base of Cottonwood Pass.

Chandler-Henry noted that the county’s new Department of Natural Resources is building relationships with the agricultural community.

“It’s small, but, it’s sort of our heart,” she said.

Then there’s housing, of course, something that will continue to require partnerships with the public and private sectors.

“We certainly haven’t cracked the housing nut,” she said.

While a lot has worked, the West Eagle project in Eagle recently fell through.

Even with that, “I’m excited about the work that we’ve done to preserve local housing like the down payment assistance programs, the cash buyer assistance programs,” and other programs, she said. Those programs are essential “because we can’t build our way out” of the valley’s housing problems.

While Chandler-Henry’s time in office is coming to an end, she isn’t done with public service. She’s going to stay on the Colorado River District’s Board of Directors as it works to preserve the water right associated with the Shoshone Dam. She’ll also continue to serve on the Bureau of Land Management’s Resource Advisory ߣÏÈÉú. There’s also the potential of an appointment to the governor’s Water Quality Control Commission.

But there will also be time for skiing, hiking and bike riding.

“All those things why we live here,” she said.