In mostly rural, 800 square-mile wide San Miguel county, Green incumbent Art Goodtimes, 55, was re-elected County Commissioner in a partisan race, burying his Democratic opponent with 69% of the vote . A journalist, Latin teacher and performance poet, Goodtimes carried every precinct in the county, despite it being a mixed county politically, with the liberal mountain resort of Telluride in the east and the more conservative rural open lands and small towns in the west.
After the election Telluride Watch concluded, "Goodtimes.can plausibly claim a mandate. His election is notable not only for its size over a former (Democratic) County Commissioner, but also in that he is the only commissioner candidate in memory to win every precinct.
Protecting fast-growing Telluride from rapacious development was certainly a priority for Goodtimes. But so was representing ranchers and working class people in the rural communities of Norwood and Egnar (range spelled backwards), who often feel outvoted and misunderstood by the county's more populous, prosperous and liberal eastern side.
Towards this end, Goodtimes concentrated on removing 'one-size-fits-all' building codes, setting up specialized, less regulatory zone districts for the rural two-thirds of the county in their place. He also removed uniform building code (UBC) inspection requirements for the far western end, (where 100 people populate 400 square miles of the Colorado Plateau, but where 98 of them signed a petition to dump the UBC). In this way, Goodtimes combined grassroots democracy with effective, locally fitting regulation.
"I worked hard to prove to Democrats and Republicans alike that a Green candidate could support environmental regulations that made good sense, while getting rid of big government regulations that made no sense," said Goodtimes.
The result? Republicans, the dominant party in the state as a whole, didn't even run a candidate against Goodtimes, and several properties in conservative Norwood sprouted green-colored 'More Goodtimes' lawn signs alongside their Bush/Cheney ones. At the same time, Green presidential candidates Ralph Nader received 17% in San Miguel County, the highest county in the U.S
Environmental stewardship was another Green value Goodtimes campaigned upon. He pointed to his successfully championing a Purchase of Development Rights conservation easement program, which both preserved open space and protected local agricultural lands from encroaching development pressures. He and his fellow commissioners also received an award from the EPA for helping implement model High Alpine Water Quality Protection regulations, which the county commission conceived of together with the EPA.
Goodtimes insists on demonstrating that a sustainable economy, one of Greens Ten Key Values, has to be the goal of local businesses. In office, he's supported imposing impact fees on new development, believing "development should pay its own way". On a critical community ski expansion project, he negotiated significant off-site impact mitigations of r affordable housing and public transportation. He also lobbied hard for and achieved stringent eco-concessions from the local ski operator {Telluride Ski & Golf Co.} to fund a Fen Oversight Committee to hire one of the nation's leading experts on peat wetlands, and to include monitoring of ski run development in the eco-sensitive Prospect Basin expansion area. That process has resulted in relocation of one of the lifts and removal of one of the steep service roads in the interests of protecting 10,000 year old fens.
For his second term in office, Goodtimes hopes to concentrate on structural issues, like reshaping local county government around the concept of organic city-regions, bioregions, ecosystems and watersheds. He'd like to see "if we could structure a combined city-county government that could utilize the liberal homerule charter opportunities for municipalities that aren't open to Colorado counties. We have an active San Miguel Watershed group working on basin-wide issues. I'd like to extend that kind of bioregional approach to county governance as well."
Goodtimes hopes to become a regional and state voice for Green values, building upon his current role as officer in Colorado's statewide commissioner group and member of the National Association of Counties' Public Lands Steering Committee. Elected in 1996 as a Democrat, Goodtimes switched to Green in 1998 after a change in state law gave ballot status to minor parties. He's helped form a Green chapter in Telluride, helped start four others, and attended the 2000 Green convention as a Colorado delegate.
Source: Green Pages (http://www.greenpages.ws/)
