Durango Mayor Jessika Buell arrived at Schneider Park last month wearing a green T-shirt, black stretch pants and tennis shoes – not her typical garb for meeting with constituents.
But this was no ordinary meeting.
Instead, it was part of the city’s new “Neighborhood Walk and Roll” program, in which residents are invited to join the mayor to walk through neighborhoods around town and discuss city issues important to them.
On this particular day, a sunny but cool evening on Sept. 18, about six residents met the mayor at Schneider Park to walk with her and her boyfriend’s dog, Ned, along the Animas River Trail.
Buell’s agenda was simply to meet with residents who live west of downtown Durango, also known as the Crestview neighborhood, and listen. On the walk, she took photos of park benches that residents said were raised too high off the ground, eyed a troubling intersection lacking crosswalks, and talked about the city’s Downtown’s Next Step project.
Residents had a lot on their minds, including park safety and homelessness, traffic calming options for Roosa Avenue, and an emerging movement called “Vision Zero” aimed at reducing traffic crash fatalities to zero.
The tone of conversation ebbed and flowed from content to contentious and back again, and more than once, Buell urged residents to settle down.
“Neighborhood Walk and Roll” is a new, informal format for engaging with residents. Instead of sitting through long, bureaucratic City Council meetings, residents can stretch their legs and engage with city officials outdoors in neighborhoods around town. The city even offers interpreter services if residents request them in advance.
Buell’s first Walk and Roll was held in late July at Oxbow Park. In an update to Durango City Council at its following meeting, she said attendance was strong and conversation extended longer than the scheduled time of one hour.
She said the walk is a way to make city officials like the mayor more accessible, relatable and personable while giving residents and specific neighborhoods around town the spotlight.
“When (residents) come to council meetings, they can talk for three minutes, but we can’t respond from the dais,” she said. “And so it makes it kind of challenging to have a dialogue or to get people to understand maybe your opinion or viewpoint.”
Buell said the idea was Klancy Nixon’s, the city’s public engagement specialist.
Nixon said the idea for Walk and Roll is to reach a different audience, one that isn’t often seen in council chambers.
“To come to the library and (sit) face-to-face with somebody can be intimidating,” Nixon said, referring to councilor office hours where councilors are available for one-to-one conversations.
The mayor recently used a walking meeting format for another public meeting with residents of the East Third Avenue neighborhood near Durango Public Library. She addressed concerns the city was trying to pull a fast one on residents by including two projects in one proposal involving the relocation of a Tri-County Head Start facility.
At the start of the summer Head Start meeting and the Walk and Roll in September, some residents were fired up about their misgivings with the city. But in both cases, residents who kept pace with Buell ended up reaching some agreement or understanding with the mayor.
That’s an extra benefit of the Walk and Roll format, Buell said. It humanizes city officials to residents while facilitating a dialogue.
Resident Chris Maker said they invited Buell to walk along Roosa Avenue for the latest Walk and Roll on Sept. 18. Residents and the mayor met at a green space above the skate park at Schneider Park around 5:30 p.m., and after giving stragglers five minutes to catch up, the walk began.
Buell joked she brought her boyfriend’s dog, Ned, along for the walk to disarm any residents who got too flustered. How can one stay angry looking at Ned’s adorable face? But that didn’t stop two residents from getting into an argument about what to do about Durango’s homeless population.
Several residents said the city has to disincentivize people who are homeless from coming to Durango. But Buell said it’s not so simple.
She said it is illegal to camp in city parks and the city enforces that with tickets. She is optimistic the city’s municipal judge, Matt Margeson, is striking a balance between enforcement and connecting residents who are homeless with needed services through organizations such as Manna soup kitchen.
Resident Greg Gressel, who lives near Schneider Park, said he and his partner Beth Ann Newman moved to Durango in 2020 and the quality of parks in town has dropped because of people who are homeless frequenting the parks.
He said Newman is harassed by homeless residents with cat calls on morning runs and Schneider Park is often littered with trash from the previous evening. He hates seeing tax dollars spent on cleaning up trash left by people who are homeless.
Tensions rose when Maker cut in, asking Gressel repeatedly what he would have homeless people do.
Gressel said what he would not do is give people sleeping bags, propane and tents.
“You need to cut the incentive off coming to this town because people are coming in here,” Gressel said, his voice raised. “I’ve met two people coming straight off a bus. They had no clue what the winter was like. That was last week.”
Buell tried to de-escalate the situation. She said she wants to find common ground between residents, many of whom land on completely opposite sides of the homelessness issue.
“We’re on a walk. It’s a beautiful day. We’re getting ready to go across the beautiful pickleball courts, which we put here to help stimulate some positive growth in the area,” she said.
She said City Council has had meetings with crowded council chambers where some residents were “screaming that we should ‘let them (people who are homeless) die and float down the river,’ and some screaming that we ‘needed to spend millions of dollars helping them.’”
“We all might walk out of here feeling slightly pissed off and like we didn’t get exactly what we wanted, but that’s probably the best solution,” she said. “People want one thing, people want another. And I’m saying in this gray area that these are people’s lives we’re talking about, and I think we have to be really careful.”
Gressel, taking Buell’s point, said he’s seen the look on tourists’ faces when they pass a homeless person lying on the side of the trail “like they’re dead,” and it’s not a good look for the city.
He said people are getting fed up with the issue.
“This is a quality-of-life issue. … Our house is now up for sale. We put it up two days ago because of this,” he said.
Buell said she can’t do anything about people who are homeless hanging out in the park and minding their own business. When a crime or offense is committed is when law enforcement can take action.
Maker and Buell also butted heads about planned traffic and pedestrian improvements to Roosa Avenue. Buell said she’d have to check with city staff members about why improvements have been delayed, although she’s aware of high construction costs being a factor.
Roosa Avenue improvements
Multimodal Manager Devin King said in September that designs for Roosa Avenue were completed in 2019, but the road wasn’t the top construction priority for the city. The city revisited the project in 2023. Because it involves grant funding from the Colorado Department of Transportation and CDOT’s standards have changed since the original design, designs must be updated to be compliant.
He said the city features the 2019 designs on its website, although they don’t necessarily accurately represent what the new design will be once it is updated. But the gist is it includes a sidewalk from Ninth Street to Avenida del Sol, crossings and bike lanes, and improvements to the El Paso Street and Roosa Avenue intersection.
“We’ll be cleaning that intersection up quite a bit,” he said.
Construction is currently slated for 2026, he added. The city will advertise the project in late summer or early fall in 2025.
Maker left the Walk and Roll, frustrated the mayor couldn’t immediately answer all their questions. But Gressel stuck around. By the time he and the mayor parted ways, they’d reached an understanding.
Buell said yet another perk of Walk and Roll is she gets to explain how City Council works to people. A walk with the mayor draws attention to the event, but once a conversation gets going, she is able to explain she doesn’t actually have any more power than other councilors. She just runs the council meetings, she said.
“He was super kind and said goodbye and said he understood that it’s a challenging situation,” she said. “And then I actually saw him walking down Main (Avenue) the other day … and he was super kind and waved hi.”
The Walk and Roll was a success, Buell said. She hopes to hold a Walk and Roll at least once a month. Residents can request a walk with the mayor in their neighborhood at bit.ly/47DM3iA
“We’re people,” Buell said. “The mayor’s a person that lives here, that owns businesses here, that has kids here, that has a dog that I’m watching.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
