By Peter Baumgartner

Redstone Review

LYONS – A friend of mine, Tim Oakes, and I were riding home on Y bus and Tim asked me, “Now that you’re no longer on the town board are you going to be writing your memoirs?”

Frankly I didn’t know if he was joking or only half joking. I took it as a half joke/half suggestion and decided to see if the readers of the Redstone Review might enjoy a look back. I hope so. Here goes.

I think there were several matters which motivated me to run for the Lyons Board of Trustees for the first time in 2004. Four of them might make for good retelling.

One of my first issues was the very limited access Lyons residents had to Boulder County public lands and a lack of trailheads in the vicinity of Lyons. This was personalized when I bought my wife a horse and we brought it to our friend Boone Thompson’s ranch near Loukonen’s stone yard. Boone had about 35 acres off of U.S. Highway 36 and the back of his property abutted Boulder County Open Space.  After riding for months on Boone’s acreage and getting to know her horse, Claire wanted to trail ride.  However, no Heil Valley Ranch access from anywhere near Lyons was permitted. Collectively, we bought this land, but to gain access a horse would have to be put in a trailer and brought to Left Hand Canyon Road half way to Boulder. Access was no different for bicyclers or hikers. I thought what a shame.

A second issue and a bigger concern was the then impending Iraq war. My neighbor Rick Visser shared with me a draft of a petition that was to be circulated, asking our town board to take a position and forward the resolution to our senators and representatives opposing a U.S. military invasion of Iraq. I had been a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam war and an anti-war activist and like Viet Nam it seemed to me that there was no honest or justifiable reason for an invasion of Iraq. I rewrote the resolution with format instructions from Trustee Tim Kyer and got the matter on the town board agenda.  During the first reading of the resolution, then-Mayor Henshaw announced he would limit all citizens to just three minutes and he pointed to the police officer present to demonstrate enforcement capability. My prepared remarks I abridged to four minutes and I thought I needed every second of that time to make my points.  After three minutes he cut me off.  Henshaw then took almost 20 minutes to ridicule the efforts of those of us opposing an invasion. While I listened to each of the trustees who opposed our resolution give their reasons, the thought came to my mind that we needed to have smarter people for trustees.

A third reason I decided to run was I knew the health hazards of second-hand smoke. Smoking at the time was allowed at most Lyons commercial venues. Many progressive towns in Colorado had recently passed legislation to prevent smoking in bars and restaurants, but Lyons still allowed smoking. Workers at Lyons restaurants had complained to me how much they hated the smoke blown in their faces and how their clothes stank when they left work. To me this was more than just an unpleasant atmosphere causing me to keep out of local pubs, it was a labor issue and I had grown up with union members advocating for fair pay and worker safety. Forcing restaurant and bar employees to work in heavily polluted air I believed was an infringement on their right to a safe work place. Furthermore, I saw people who were unwilling to sacrifice their health being deprived of local employment opportunities. I saw this as a wrong that needed to be made right.

A fourth issue for me was pedestrian and bicyclist safety. In the late years of the last millennium the prevailing Lyons concept was the drivers of motor vehicles commanded the right of way and the bigger their vehicle the more room the vulnerable had to yield. Even at Main Street and Fifth Avenue, the very heart of our shopping district, we had no crosswalk marked. Almost no parents allowed their children to bicycle to school. Matters were made worse when a requested Department of Transportation traffic study, to determine appropriate speed limits through Lyons, resulted in the speed limit on the eastern side of town being raised. In my mind, we needed to make it safer for people to get out of their cars and walk or pedal about town.

These issues grew to become annoyances that bothered me daily. I had been asked for years if I would run for office and after living in the town for nine years, I felt I had met a self-imposed length of residency requirement. Then Tim Kyer, who was running for mayor, asked me to run for the town board and I told him I would consider it.  On a Saturday afternoon, I was chatting on the phone with Susan    McCann, the editor of the Redstone Review, and she asked me if I was going to run.  At that moment, I decided and said I would. It was the last telephone conversation I had that day. I locked up my Boulder office and headed home to Lyons. Once in Lyons, I stopped at the Stone Cup coffee shop and sat down with friend Mike Whipp.

“Peter,” Mike said, “I hear you’re going to run for the town board.” The news had beaten me home.

Peter Baumgartner is a former Lyons town board trustee. He was term-limited so he did not run in the last election. He has a daughter and lives in Lyons.

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