Dave Barnes, local entrepreneur and longtime Steamboat Springs resident, has entered the race for the at-large seat on the Steamboat Springs City Council. 

With a platform centered on fiscal responsibility, affordable housing with transparency and well-planned community growth, Barnes, whose campaign slogan is “a better way forward,” aims to bring practical experience and a fresh voice to city leadership.

Originally from the East Coast, Barnes discovered Steamboat in the late 1990s, wintering here in 1997-98, moving here full-time in 2002 and working as the first snowboard guide at Steamboat Powdercats.

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He met his wife at the Tugboat Grill & Pub and lived in North Routt before buying and subsequently moving into the historic F.M. Light house downtown. He now works at The Group Real Estate. 

Like fellow at-large candidate Kim Haggarty, Barnes initially intended to run for the District 1 seat held by incumbent Gail Garey, but opted instead for the at-large seat, noting that Garey is already facing “a good candidate” in Kelly Phillips. 

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Housing transparency and ‘thoughtful growth’

The most prominent issues on Barnes’ platform revolve around thoughtful community growth and ensuring transparency in housing management practices. 

He expressed frustration with the handling of existing large development projects like Sunlight Crossing and Anglers, as well as the theoretical — and contentious — Brown Ranch development. 

“While I think the Yampa Valley Housing Authority did have some successes early on with the properties they still manage, I believe their other projects … have zero transparency,” he said. “When we ask who lives there, who monitors the leases, who checks the credentials of the people living there, the YVHA says, ‘Not us.'”

“It seems pretty clear once they hand projects off to management companies, there is no way to know if those complexes are housing the very people they were intended to,” Barnes continued. “If we can’t get transparency on what they have already built, how do we know what’s working?” 

Barnes warned that if voters had approved the Brown Ranch annexation, the housing authority would have handled it in a similarly distant manner. He said that YVHA is not a nonprofit, but instead is a “for-profit, quasi-government developer whose mandate is to build.” 

“I would propose to restructure the housing authority to make them manage these properties after building them,” he said, “with clear accounting of who lives there and that they are indeed rented to people that deserve them, under the requirements sold to the community of Steamboat.”

Barnes strongly rejects the notion of a “housing crisis,” preferring the term “housing challenge,” and he is skeptical of YVHA-commissioned data on the severity of affordable housing needs. But he does maintain that housing is a key issue. 

“They want to re-house 1,600 families that live in North Routt, South Routt, Hayden and Craig, and I don’t think anybody’s asked those families if they want to live in Steamboat,” said Barnes. “We have, on average, built 100 units per year for the last 22 years. If that trend continued and we build on Brown Ranch as originally proposed, we would be doubling our historical rate of building.”

“That’s one of the biggest reasons why I’m running: I think the very people that we hold up, the teachers, the firefighters, the nurses, the doctors, ski patrollers, we’re not helping those,” he continued. “Those are the people that are going to build the foundation for the future of Steamboat, and not necessarily the chair bumpers or snowboarders or skiers.”

“I don’t think we’re fulfilling that obligation with affordable housing the way it’s going right now,” he said. 

Barnes also urged caution on affordability initiatives he believes can inadvertently put families underwater if markets soften.

“Let’s say somebody gets a deferred down-payment loan from the housing authority or another entity — then they have a deed-restricted property that’s kept at 2%. If the real estate market goes down, they’re underwater immediately with their house,” he said, “and all of the predictions that the (housing authority) has made is that the real estate market is going to continue to go up forever.”

“For people that we get into those situations, we could end up hurting them as much as we could be helping them,” he added. 

Like many candidates, Barnes supports some iteration of Brown Ranch, calling it “an incredible gift,” but is critical of both the way it was handled ahead of the March 2024 annexation vote, and the way the decision-making process is currently being handled by the 40-member Deliberation and Stewardship Team.

“I think that everybody got excited about building 2,200 units over 20 years, and I think then it became an at-all-costs sort of project, and I think they wanted to ram it down everybody’s throat,” said Barnes, who was a member of the committee to petition the Brown Ranch annexation proposal to go to the voters. 

He called the input of the DST “invaluable,” acknowledging the significance of community perspectives, but insists that “the council should own every inch” of such major decisions — provided they are sent to the public for a vote.

“In my eyes, it’s a little bit of a cop-out by the council to just give it to a group of members that are on a committee,” he said. 

On the development itself, Barnes said Brown Ranch “desperately needs a commercial and industrial component,” noting that the addition of a full-sized grocery store on the west side of town would reduce the traffic concerns raised by many community members. 

He calls for more inclusive planning, urging that communities like Steamboat II, Heritage Park and Silver Spur — along with the wider county — have a voice in decisions affecting Brown Ranch and other major developments.

“We have Silver Spur, Heritage Park and Steamboat II that are going to be the most affected by a 20-year construction project — noise, dirt, traffic, everything — and they don’t even get to vote on it,” he said. “Everybody who lives in the county has to come through (U.S. Highway) 40 at some point and they don’t get to weigh in on what a project like that would do.”

“If they can’t vote on a referendum, then they should be part of the steering committees and weigh in on what these potential effects are going to be, because they’re not second-class citizens,” he said.

Regarding YVHA Executive Director Jason Peasley, who has been criticized by candidates like Phillips for lacking transparency in leadership decisions, Barnes said Peasley’s actions “speak for themselves.” 

“He’s not helping his own cause, I don’t think,” said Barnes. 

On fiscal accountability and transportation

Barnes criticized the city’s taxation approach for securing needed revenue, calling the current City Council “reactive.” He said there is a mismatch between an overexpanding payroll and “what’s happening with actual people.” 

“From 2021 to now our city’s payroll has grown 76%,” said Barnes, citing numbers based on city budget reports. “We’re building new police stations, new fire stations, new city offices, adding more payroll … and the fundamental amount of people in Steamboat has grown much more slowly than that payroll.”

“So, of course, the council is trying to find new sources of revenue, and I’m not saying that we don’t need it all, but we also need to live within our means,” he said.

Barnes commented on the series of both successful and failed tax proposals in Steamboat, calling the town “a resort community for sure.” 

“We did the short-term rental taxes — which is one of the largest tax increases in the history of Colorado on a percentage basis — and in the meantime, we took away people’s personal property rights, and then we proposed to tax the people on having a vacant house after we took away their ability to rent them out,” he said.

Barnes views the proposed Yampa Valley Regional Transportation Authority as a promising beginning, with potential to ease transitions for residents of Hayden and Craig facing job losses from impending closures of coal-fired power plants.

Regarding the city’s relationship with Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp., Barnes admitted he lacks detailed insight but described the current state as clearly “strained.” 

“(Ski Corp. is) a vital partner to our community, and should be treated as such,” he said. “They should also feel the exact same way toward us as well.”

Barnes emphasized the importance of intentional, measured development, warning against big projects in times of economic uncertainty that could exacerbate challenges.

“One of the biggest reasons I’m running is out of frustration,” he said. “We have very short memories and we forget what the great financial crisis was like here.”

“Steamboat is special, and special places take thoughtful government,” Barnes added. “It takes all hands to work to make our community stronger and accessible for all that choose to work hard, play hard and contribute.”

To reach Barnes or to learn more about his campaign, contact abetterwayforwardss@gmail.com.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that Barnes is an “entrepreneur,” not a “real estate agent” as published in the previous version of this story.