Lily Jones: I'm Lily Jones, and my special guest today is Stephen Arauza.
Steven Arauza: Hi, I'm Steven Arauza. I am the Democratic candidate for Garfield County Commissioner for District 3.
Jones: So what do you believe are the highest priorities for your constituents?
Arauza: That's a great question. There are many issues that the residents of Garfield County are facing, and I think that there's a lot of them are intersectional in nature.
One of the biggest problems that we're facing now is that we're in this crisis of affordable housing where people are struggling to find houses that are affordable on the market. I believe that this has to do with many intersecting issues such as the cost of living, stagnant wages, and the fact that the prices of homes through the market have far outpaced what people are able to afford, and wages are not always responsive to these increasing challenges in a time frame that is manageable for people.
So I am running because I'm concerned that we need to have representation for our workforce at all levels of government, but particularly on this Board of County Commissioners. So that the folks who are struggling to find a place, or maybe their rent’s going up, folks who are being displaced and having to deal with increasingly long commute times – you know – have somebody on this board of county commissioners who is coming directly from the workforce, who understands our lived experience, and who respects the challenges that they face.
Jones: Colorado has seen more intense wildfires in seasons that last longer than previous years. What are some of your priorities that will assist communities in dealing with such natural disasters?
Arauza: That's a great question. One of the reasons why I ultimately decided to enter this race has been my concern for the increased temperatures, the drought conditions, our diminishing water supplies – things that have to deal with our changing climate.
I think it's very important that we have elected officials who are willing to acknowledge and be proactive in response to the challenges faced by climate change. And I think that’s something I always look for when I'm assessing a candidate for my vote.
A lot of my professional background deals with these sorts of environmental impacts in addition to the work that I do on the state's Environmental Justice Advisory Board. My concerns are specifically for impacts on communities such as what we're witnessing now in the middle of this wildfire smoke that we were talking about earlier.
So, I think specifically what needs to be done is that we listen to our communities. And that we are smart about dealing with both the growth in our communities because that's very limited by our geography, but also mindful of folks' options for transportation so that people are able to egress if necessary.
We want to make sure that members of communities near and far are able to seek safety if need be. But we also need to just have folks who are willing to take meaningful actions to address this challenge that we face because these conditions are only becoming more extreme with every year. And it's important that we have elected officials who understand that problem and who are willing to be proactive about it.
Jones: Rural health care and its limits are looming concerns for many residents. What are some of your policies or partnerships that you believe would be beneficial to the current situation?
Arauza: Access to health care is something that's critical both to members of our workforce, to working families, to our senior communities – to folks throughout the region. And I think that it's very important that at all levels of government, we form partnerships that enable the expansion of access to health care. Be that by simply expanding transportation or by supporting programs that enable us or enable residents within the community to have access to the care that they need.
Garfield County, in particular, I think needs to be more collaborative, along with municipalities and partners in order to take the necessary steps to support the needs of our residents.
And that includes being able to support institutions like Mountain Family Health Centers, where we need to be able to make contributions as a county because – I'm actually a patient of theirs – it provides necessary services to folks who otherwise wouldn't be able to have access. So we should be paying into programs like that to expand access to our residents from east to west throughout the county. We also need to be willing to support regional efforts that are working to expand healthcare access.
It's not a problem that's limited to our jurisdictional boundaries so we need to be willing to participate alongside neighboring counties. And I think that a big part of that also includes supporting coalitions like the West Mountain Health Alliance. But really, we need to acknowledge that this is a problem faced by residents in the community regardless of where they live. The county needs to be willing to support programs and policies that expand that access to people because this is necessary infrastructure to support our communities.
Jones: I know we spoke about this a little bit earlier, but when it comes to housing, what are some solutions that you intend to encourage?
Arauza: That's a good question. This ties to the regional collaboration as well. Garfield County does not currently sit as a member of the West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition. And I think that that's a significant oversight. It's kind of an elephant in the room that's missing out on supporting their programs, which would benefit folks throughout the county, but also on providing input as members of the board to collaborate, again, on the needs for affordable housing throughout the entire region.
So it's not a problem that's limited to any particular municipality. I'm running in District 3 in Rifle, for example. Over 50 percent of the workforce there is commuting, at least as far as Basalt, for work. This was a study, I believe that's coming out from CLEAR that cites the figure.
But, the point here is that folks in Western Garfield County, in particular, they're supporting communities and economies throughout the entire region: Pitkin County, Eagle County, Mesa County. The folks who live in particularly District 3, but in Garfield County in general, because we're throughout the area need to have advocates on this board of county commissioners who are willing to recognize the importance of their contributions to our entire region. So that means looking at these big problems on a regional scale, collaborating and contributing to regional solutions, as well as supporting more of our local housing development.
So I think that one of the issues we've seen with our current board of county commissioners has been kind of a reluctance to support the development of affordable housing or to include things like inclusionary zoning laws. In the interest of preserving, I guess, more of a free market, it's more of an ideological choice than a practical one. And I believe that we need to support this workforce, that it's important to the entire region, and that again it comes from electing somebody with that lived experience.
I’ve been through the process of trying to find a home in Western Garfield County, and I know that it's only gotten more difficult from there. In fact, I believe that NBC recently published their homebuyers index that ranked Garfield County as the most difficult place to buy a home in the entire country.
Jones: Wow.
Arauza: Yeah, and this is a problem that I think that folks at all levels of government should be acknowledging and working to contribute. I don't think it does the residents a service if folks are electing to stay out of it or not to support the development of affordable housing, as well as the protection of renters for ideological purposes.
Jones: Our region is seeing a growing Latino community. How do you intend to represent them faithfully?
Arauza: I love that you've asked this question. Our region, as a Latino community that's north of 30 percent that is significantly higher in percentage than across the state. I look at this quite a bit in my work on the Environmental Justice Advisory Board.
I myself am a third-generation Mexican-American. It's very important to me that the lived experience of the Latino community is something that is understood at all levels of government.
I don't believe that we've ever had Latino representation on this board of county commissioners. And, I think it's something that is far overdue, especially considering that in just this year, it feels that the board of county commissioners has been engaging the Latino community in a way that erodes the trust of the community with the non-sanctuary resolution specifically that was brought by Mike Samson including, frankly, racist ideas and tropes.
This idea, this notion that I'm hesitant to even put into words, but presenting migrants as prone to criminality and disease. The fact that that is an official resolution on the books, I think speaks to the fact that there's no voice in the room to advocate for the humanity of a very marginalized population being recent migrants or the migrant population in general, or no one there to speak to what that lived experience is like.
So for me personally, I have folks of mixed immigration status in my family, had folks that were planning a trip to visit me, which I was really excited about. But then all of a sudden things were kind of thrown into the air. Their safety was not guaranteed when that resolution had passed. And the board of county commissioners has only doubled down in their support of bringing immigration and customs enforcement into the county by joining a Douglas County lawsuit that's attempting to increase that activity. So, I think that it's important that we authentically represent the Latino community. My lived experience is just one in a vast and beautiful diaspora of Latinidad that I'm happy to have here.
One of the reasons I was excited to move to Western Garfield County was because Rifle is north of 50 percent Latino, I believe. And I saw beautiful communities and cultures that I wanted my children to experience growing up.
I think that we need to acknowledge the importance of the Latino community, the challenges surrounding the non-sanctuary resolution, or people's differing citizenship status. But the main thing that I think we need to do is to rebuild the trust of this community. We need to provide language justice in county commissioner meetings so that folks who prefer Spanish as a first language are able to follow along and be involved.
There's a lot of trust that needs to be rebuilt. It's not as simple as just electing one person or the other. The county needs to be proactive in engaging the community and acknowledging the challenges that they face and their contributions. And then hopefully over, a period of time, encourage the community to be more involved in county decisions
Jones: What is one thing you believe that can be done to make communities safer?
Arauza: Coming from my background, which is a real working-class background. I was raised by a single mom in the small town of Katy, Texas. She had to commute into the city for work to try to keep a roof over our heads. And, she understood the importance of that house, of housing which really, I think, enabled my brother and myself to seek an education. We had stability at home and it really elevated our station in life. And that's something that was really formative to me.
So I think that what's important for safety in our communities is to encourage the development of resources. You know, people, and it's not every time, but people can often be pushed out of desperation to take actions that are maybe unsafe or detrimental to their community.
But if people are able to access resources that they need – housing being an important one – in addition to health care and child care, to try to address this increasing cost of living where we can. It's not something that you can just wave away, but if you provide resources and partnerships to people that enable them to get what they need, regardless of their language, their background, or their specific identity, that people can be more secure in their living situations and hopefully feel the benefit of safety.
Jones: How do you plan to promote community cooperation between opposing sides?
Arauza: I think a lot of people are tired of the hyper-partisanship that we see across the board in this country, particularly in a presidential election year. I mean, it starts it seems as soon as one election's over, they start talking about the next one and it can drive people away from one another in terms of members of the community.
I think it's really important that folks see the importance of these local government elections that have more of a direct effect on their day-to-day life and are able to see these candidates as approachable as members of the community trying to step up and do good. I think if we're able to sort of chip away at that partisanship at a local level by demonstrating good leadership, by being willing to say, accept the outcomes of elections and not buy into ideas that push people further away, that hopefully we're able to lead by example in that way.
Folks need to realize that there's a lot more that we have in common than the issues that we think divide us. And a lot of that, I think, could come from decision-making that is done at a government level that's publicly being made. The example that comes to mind is this controversy surrounding what's going on with our library district and the appointment of the board of trustees.
In my opinion, when the issue of banning certain books came up in our county, we should have been supportive of our library system. They provided very transparent and digestible information about this is why we're not able to simply pull books off of the shelves. This is our review process. This is how the process can be appealed.
And that was an opportunity to get behind the process and support the professionals who are being paid to do the work that they do. But rather than do that, these county commissioners decided to continue to support the division of, you know, ‘Well, this side is right and the institutions are wrong.’
And I think that that's a slippery slope that if you start to erode trust in something as simple as the library system then you welcome more divisive rhetoric into any institutions in the county. So I think that what we could do to try to cool the temperature is just to have a simple conversation with folks in the community.
Something like in the case of the library was the meeting that was held at the Ute Theater that tried to explain everything in a way that was accessible and to be able to hear folks representing all sides within the community. If we have more of that kind of community engagement, and we have more support of folks explaining these controversial decisions in a calm way, I think that we'd be able to try to lower the temperature, at least locally.
Jones: Again, this is something we already touched on just a little bit, but if you wanted to go deeper, what is a personal experience or a part of your lifestyle that can help you better serve these communities?
Arauza: I'm so glad you asked. So, as I mentioned at the top, one of the main motivations that I have to run for the Office of County Commissioner is to provide representation for our workforce.
We have folks working in construction and hospitality and food service, the commuters, as I mentioned, who are teaching our children, working in our hospitals, you know, working in our radio stations, the folks who have this position where we are, again, you know, competing for affordable housing. You know, we may have limited access to healthcare. We're spending our time commuting, working people.
It's very important to me because I see my entire family in that situation, but specifically the challenges my mom faced as a single mom of two kids. I have two sons of my own now, and it still fascinates me and it's sort of heartbreaking to think of the struggles that I have as a working parent. And to extrapolate that out to “What is it like? What was it like for my mom? What was it like for a very vulnerable person who's still working multiple jobs and just trying to provide for their family?”
I'm motivated to advocate for the needs of our workforce as well as to listen to our communities. My background is in my labor union. I'm an officer in the state employee union. I'm very excited about the work that we've accomplished just within the past few years on behalf of people who work hard for a living throughout the state.
And so bringing that labor experience and those values to the board of county commissioners is something I'm very excited to do because of the needs of our workforce and because, as I mentioned, the workforce contributes to this entire region.
In addition to that, we spoke specifically about Latino representation. I think that's very important to provide more of a humanizing element on a community that is been very politicized and marginalized. But also my professional background has been in oil and gas regulation for over a dozen years. You know, I've been working in the fields with my boots on, with flame-resistant clothing, with a gas meter out there alongside the workforce who again, you know, I'm trying to be an advocate for.
My work is in environmental regulation and spill response and cleanup. So being familiar with the environmental, the human, health, and climate costs of our continued dependence on the industry is something that I think is very important to have on this board of county commissioners. Literally, someone who understands how that field works.
Outside of work, what I do on the Environmental Justice Advisory Board is the other side of that coin to advocate for community voices to be present when decisions are being made. And I think that that makes me a well-rounded person, particularly to represent District 3, given that I have kind of expertise in those oil and gas operations and permitting decisions. As well as my background in bringing more community voices to the fore in those settings.
So, you know, there are a lot of different boxes that I realized I ticked off to make me one of the just a well-rounded representative of folks in Western Garfield County in particular, but throughout the county.
Jones: Yeah. Lots of moving pieces there. Is there anything else you want to discuss that we haven't touched on yet?
Arauza: That’s a great question. I really think that we could afford to delve a little more into the library issue and sort of what lessons come from there or what optics there are.
It's easy to play, I guess, Monday morning quarterback in that scenario, but I think it speaks to the need for a diversity of opinions and representation on this board of county commissioners. I think that when you have such a small board, you know, three folks making decisions across the entire county, that it becomes all the more important that you have kind of a marketplace of ideas in that setting. That you have different ideas represented, different backgrounds that truly represent your population, and that includes ideology.
I think what we saw with the backlash from the county commissioners to the folks who were raising their voices in support of our library system was a real look at the culture war aspect of it and the fact that we have three members of a board of county commissioners who see the county in a certain way, who are trying to preserve a very specific ideology and mindset that has a monopoly on that board currently.
So specifically, when the library had hosted an event that I thought was incredibly well-moderated and put together, that it provided time for folks, that people were being very cordial with one another, that it really could have been a bright spot and in kind of a dark controversy. The response that we had from the board of county commissioners was that “Well, those people were all from Carbondale and that's not what really represents Rifle.”
And I think that that is an outdated mindset. The reality of the situation is that folks from Parachute to Carbondale have more varied ideologies than what was being represented by our county commissioners or what they're attempting to preserve.
And that it's very important that we engage our community authentically, not just the folks who are able to be in the meeting at 8:00 a.m. on a Monday, but to be open to hearing and receiving community voices through different avenues and really respecting what people have to say. Not to come at it with your own preconceived notion of who truly represents a community. I think that that sort of thinking is outdated.
So we need to be open to the representation of folks who differ in political persuasions or opinions from your personal opinion as a member of this board. And I think that's one way to be able to lower the temperature as well. It's just to acknowledge the validity of other people's opinions. In many cases, that's another American citizen you're talking to, or at the very least a resident of the county who's deserving of your time and respect, especially as an elected official.
Jones: That is the end of our questions. Is there anything you want to tack on to the end of that? This time is all yours.
Arauza: Yeah, I'd like to thank you for your time. I really appreciate the work of KDNK in our community. It's really exciting just to be in this building right now seeing you at all the community events and following the news that's being reported from this building is something that I think brings a lot of value to our community.
I would like to tell people that, again, my name is Steven Arauza. I am the Democratic candidate for Garfield County Commissioner for District 3. I am a working dad in Rifle, and I am running to bring the perspective and lived experience of our working families to this board of county commissioners because I believe that Garfield County is best served when our representation is reflective of our whole community.
I think that there are many barriers to entry that keep a working person from taking on the task of running for office, particularly if you have young kids at home like I do. But that's what really motivates me is the need to represent our voices and to bring somebody into an elected position who has a background of sort of advocating for community voices.
The more voices we can have and participating in the process, I think the more representation that we can expect to have and that includes transparency and accountability.
So I'm very happy to be running for Garfield County Commissioner. I'm thrilled to have the Democratic nomination and I look forward to doing the work to earn your vote in November.
#GarfieldForAll #GarfieldParaTodos
