Durango Mayor Jessika Buell, who is vying for a second term on City Council, said she ran for office to bring a younger person’s perspective to city leadership. Now she’s found her stride.
Buell said she wants her children to be able to afford to live in Durango when they are older, and that means focusing now on creating affordable housing and spurring business development and economic growth.
About this series:
This is the fourth of a five-part series profiling the five candidates running for Durango City Council. Ballots will be mailed to eligible electors Monday, and the city’s municipal election will be held April 1. Voters can register or update their addresses until March 24 and still receive a ballot by mail. Voting in person is also possible through election day. Candidate profiles in this series include:
- March 2: Chris Elias
- March 5: Shirley Gonzales
- March 7: Kip Koso
- Today: Jessica Buell
- March 12: Olivier Bosmans
Since she was elected to City Council in April 2021, the city has formed a housing division and is now instituting a prosperity office focused on housing, tourism and economic development, she said, and it has prioritized community engagement and public outreach in its strategic plan.
The city’s communication with the public was lacking when she first took office, she said. If it weren’t for her direct outreach to then-Councilor Christina Rinderle, she wouldn’t have known anything about the city’s or City Council’s projects and goals.
She said many residents don’t have time to attend City Council meetings, and it’s important the city provides other avenues for communicating with residents.
“I really wanted this informed, engaged community to reach further than the people that volunteer and show up to City Council meetings every day,” she said.
Buell and Klancy Nixon, the city’s community engagement specialist, devised a new format for engaging residents on their own turf last summer. The program, “Neighborhood Walk and Roll with the Mayor,” allows Buell to visit neighborhoods at residents’ request to discuss city projects, services and improvements.
She said she attended a recent Walk and Roll event, where she discussed Downtown’s Next Step, a project to improve walkability on downtown Main Avenue that has received pushback from a vocal and passionate group of residents and business owners.
Buell said she led City Council in pausing Downtown’s Next Step. With a 2005 sales tax reauthorization question that would fund the construction of a new joint city hall and police station on the April ballot, and uncertainty about what construction costs will ultimately be, she said putting the project on hold was the fiscally responsible thing to do.
She added pausing the project gives residents more opportunities to voice their thoughts on the proposal.
She’s heard from residents who want wider sidewalks, more walkability and bicycle traffic, and don’t want Next Step to get shut down.
It makes sense to time the project with needed infrastructure upgrades beneath Main Avenue, she said. Overall, she doesn’t want Next Step to be about sweeping changes to downtown. But she doesn’t want to remain stuck in the status quo either. She favors improved walkability with widened sidewalks while leaving the character of Main Avenue intact.
Who is Jessika Buell?
Durango Mayor Jessika Buell, 43, who is seeking reelection to City Council, is an entrepreneur and the mother of two sons enrolled at Durango High School.
She owns Lucky Services and Marketing Concepts Squared, previously worked as a teacher for Durango schools and co-founded The Professional Women’s Network of Durango.
According to her campaign website, Buell is engaged to Erick Loyer, owner of Pirate Backcountry Adventures in Silverton.
She was elected to her first term on City Council in April 2021. She said she wanted to help make Durango a place her children could someday afford to live.
Buell said since taking office, the city has added affordable housing to its strategic plan, and she’s supported every housing project or initiative that has come before City Council since she was seated.
Buell said she prioritizes finding common ground with residents, colleagues on City Council and neighboring entities such as the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and La Plata County government, both of which the city has clashed with over the last year.
She said she is busy running two businesses and raising her children, but if a resident reaches out, she will respond. It doesn’t matter if she agrees or disagrees with someone, she said.
“I do want to be a part of smart growth and helping businesses cut some red tape and have affordable houses so our kids can come back here and people can move here and raise a family,” she said.
Whether it’s Next Step, homelessness or working effectively with fellow councilors, Buell said she values compromise and finding common ground.
“There’s not one path for everyone, and that’s what’s really hard,” she said about people experiencing homelessness.
Good partnerships between the city, businesses and Manna soup kitchen and other service-oriented nonprofits, while striking a balance between compassion and public safety, are needed to address homelessness, she said.
Buell said she’s hopeful the Residences at Durango, a motel-to-apartment conversion for people earning 30% to 60% area median income, will help people transition into stable housing situations.
Most recently, the city and La Plata County government were opposed over the county’s decision not to accept municipally sentenced offenders into the jail without a new jail agreement.
When the parties failed to reach a new agreement by mid-January, the city sued. The city soon dropped its lawsuits after an unfavorable ruling in the proceedings.
Buell said the city dropped the lawsuits because other options were under discussion, and just because the city and county reached an impasse over the jail doesn’t mean they can’t collaborate well on other projects of mutual interest.
“The best path forward is just forward,” she said, “and what happened in the past was the past.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
