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Letter: Council members won by large margins, so stop the recall effort

A group of special-interest short-term rental business people supported by some in the real estate business are threatening lawsuits and making misleading statements about our most recent City Council election results. The group, going by the name of “Steamboat Springs Community Preservation Alliance” claims the three council members they want to recall won their seats by only “narrow election margins.”

To clarify the election results that brought four new members to City Council we need to look at the overall vote count. Two of the seats had several candidates and two had just two running for each position. Overall, there were three candidates who were directly involved in the real estate industry and expressed support of the STR business and one former City Council member who obviously supported the STR industry. Those four candidates tallied a total of 6,876 votes. The seven candidates who ran on platforms of heeding the desires of the community received 12,343 votes among them and enough individually to defeat the four who ran on platforms supporting the STR industry. These numbers can be verified on the Routt County website in the elections section.

In the end, the four candidates representing the real estate and STR industry lost by an overwhelming margin of votes against them. Now, this “alliance” of special interest groups is doing what has become common in todays political environment, crying foul, attempting to cost the taxpayers even more with special elections and claiming financial armageddon if City Council doesn’t succumb to their wishes and allow our community to become a free-for-all “Disney World!”



I am not intending to be disparaging toward the many hard working people in the real estate business — several are friends. What I have pointed out is that in the most recent election over 69% of the voters in the City of Steamboat Springs said they do not want special interest groups — that is the real estate and STR business — running our community.

This nonsense needs to stop. The voters of this community have spoken once and will have an opportunity to do so again in November. We don’t need a special election to decide if we should have an election!



Michael Turner

Steamboat Springs


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