Montrose Mayor Barbara Bynum announced her candidacy for Colorado Senate District 5 July 26. Bynum will be running against New Castle resident and former House District 57 representative Republican Perry Will.
Bynum, registered as a Democratic candidate as of July 25, intends to broaden her impact beyond Montrose as she ends the last few months of her final term on Montrose City Council.
She was first elected to City Council in 2017 and is now in her second turn as mayor. Additionally, she serves on the State of Colorado’s Department of Local Affairs Mineral and Energy Impact Assistance Advisory Fund Committee. Bynum also credits her background in public lands management to her time on the State Land Board, among other leadership positions around the community.
To learn more about Bynum’s campaign, visit barbarabynum.com
TRANSCRIPT:
CK: What made you decide to run for the Colorado Senate I decided to run for the Colorado Senate.
BB: I kind of surprised myself. Although so many people have found out and said, "Oh, I'm not surprised you're doing that at all." I began thinking about what I would do as my time on the city council in Montrose would end and I've always had a passion for serving my community.
I care a lot about issues like housing, getting better paying jobs to our community, providing enough child care facilities, and I realize that my passion for those kinds of problems and working collaboratively and coming up with solutions.... that doesn't end just because I'm term limited on Council. So I started to think about how I would best continue working on those issues on behalf of folks and and decided that you know what? It's probably a good idea to run for the Colorado State Senate.
CK: So your term ends on City Council next April. What kind of impact, if any, would your campaign have on your position as mayor here in Montrose until then?
BB: You know, my run for the state senate seat does overlap with my time as mayor, but just for a few months and so I think that it won't be a problem to do both. I will still be serving our community as mayor. That is a part-time job, you know, the city council in Montrose really elects volunteers. So I have time to do both and in fact, I really love the opportunity that being mayor provides me to learn about what's going on in our community and what our challenges are and work towards finding solutions.
CK: What has your experience as mayor... how will that contribute to this campaign and if you're elected to the seat?
BB: Thanks for asking. I think that's a great question. Senate District 5 includes pieces of seven different Colorado counties and includes more than 20 incorporated towns or cities within the limits of Senate District 5. So my work on city council for the city of Montrose, in addition to my work on the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) committee at the state level has really given me a lot of good information about the challenges and successes that our small Western Rural cities and towns have. I think that really provides me with the background to take that information and take it to the state senate and to really fight for what I know our small towns and cities here need.
CK: What kind of issues is the community facing that you want to address and how would you do that?
BB: I think that the communities across District 5 have some of the same challenges right now across the district. We are seeing housing as a major issue and you know, the housing crisis in Aspen looks different than the housing crisis in Delta, but all of those communities are being impacted by the lack of affordable housing.
People want to be able to live in the communities where they work and I know our local governments are working really hard on that. I think there's an opportunity for the state to help.
Another issue that's important is the economy. We're always trying to create and ensure that we have a diverse economy in Western Colorado — that's not tied to any one industry, and that we have opportunities for people to raise families and encourage kids to come back and find a good paying job along with raising families.
Childcare is an issue for a lot of Western Colorado. It is what we call a "childcare desert," there just isn't enough. So I think we have folks who are underemployed because they can't be employed in the full capacity because they can't find quality affordable child care. Those are some of the issues.
I mean I could keep going. Healthcare is an issue. We've got some of the highest health insurance rates in the state and this part of Colorado. So I think healthcare is an issue.
Then you know water is an issue for the entire western United States, but in the cities and towns and counties that make up Colorado, we all so have a role in fighting to make sure that we keep the water that we have on this side of the state— that we're good stewards of that resource. So I think that's important as well.
CK: These aren't just issues you're just talking about, you've already done a lot of work in them. Specifically, the child care issue here in Montrose. Can you go a little bit into the work that you've been focusing on lately?
BB: Absolutely. I think that the City of Montrose has known even before we helped commission a study in child care. We have known that we didn't have enough quality affordable child care in our community. We were happy to partner with the Western Colorado Alliance. They commissioned a full child care assessment.
Montrose County also financially participated in getting that done. So my hats off to them for their support — that study was very thorough and comprehensive and basically told us what we kind of knew anecdotally — there's not enough quality affordable child care.
The city has supported the expansion of a couple childcare businesses within the city, not just by trying to cut the red tape at the local government level, but also by providing financial support and I'm really excited to see an organization called Unify America come in with a Unify Montrose chapter. They're going to do a deep dive on child care that is just beginning this summer and goes through the fall into the winter to figure out what solutions we might have on more child care here in Montrose.
CK: Is there anything else you'd like people to know that I didn't think to ask you?
BB: One of the reasons I am running for state senator is to represent the people on this side of the state. I think so often folks in Denver don't understand...or can't identify with the issues that are important to us or how we do things over here on the Western Slope.
I go to meetings in Denver quite often and routinely I am in a position of saying 'hold up, that idea isn't gonna work in Western Colorado' or 'hold up, that's not best for the people of Western Colorado' or it can be as simple as reminding people in the Denver metro area that we aren't just a couple hours away.
We are hours and hours away from Denver, and that's on a good day with good weather. We have a lot of roads between our side of the state and Denver that are subject to wildfire mudslides construction. Sinkholes are the latest issue that have caused some traffic problems. So I think that we need a strong voice representing Western Colorado at the State House who can say, you know, the folks back in Senate District 5 want this, need this, see this this way and I think would be a good strong voice for that.
CK: That was Montrose Mayor Barbara Bynum speaking on her campaign for Colorado Senate District 5 for KVNF. I'm Cassie Knust.
Editor's Note: KVNF has reached out to incumbent Perry Will for an interview and awaits a response.
