With a recall election scheduled for Tuesday, March 4, in Dillon, four candidates are vying to potentially replace any of the three current Dillon Town Council members who are subject to the recall effort.

The four candidates running in the upcoming election are Linda Oliver, Claudia Pillow, Barbara Richard and Joshua Samuel. Current Dillon Town Council members Dana Christiansen, Renee Imamura and John Woods are facing a potential recall.

The special election will take place by mail-in ballot. On the ballot, there will be one question for each of the council members facing recall, Dillon Town Clerk Adrienne Stuckey said. On the same ballot, Dillon residents will also be able to vote on the names of those who have been nominated to succeed anyone who is successfully recalled, Stuckey said.

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If the vote is such that one of the council members is recalled, the candidate who has received the highest number of votes will be elected to serve the remainder of the term, Stuckey said. If more than one council member is recalled, then the candidate who received the highest number of votes would be elected to fill the longest remaining term, she said.

Here is a look at the candidates running to potentially replace the current council members who are subject to a potential recall.

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Linda Oliver

Dillon resident Linda Oliver, who has lived in the town and county full-time for eight years, said she is running for the Dillon Town Council because she feels the members subject to recall haven’t represented the community’s interests.

Over the past two years, Oliver said she has attended Town Council meetings, Zoning and Planning Commission meetings and open house meetings hosted by Developer Jake Porritt, who is proposing redevelopment in Dillon’s town core. She said she’s heard from many community members who have expressed concern about the future development of Dillon.

“Stakeholders in our community are saying a change in leadership is the only way they feel that their voice would be heard and represented,” Oliver said, “so I’m running to provide responsive engagement to the Dillon community and to restore respect.”

Oliver said that she would bring customer service and conflict resolution skills to the council from her almost 20-year career as a flight attendant. She said she also has experience as a general contractor and project manager for a construction and renovation company.

Oliver has served as a board member of the Anchorage East Condominium Association in Dillon for five years and as the president of the Leslie’s Community Garden steering committee for six years.

As far as the redevelopment of the Dillon town core goes, Oliver said that “bigger is not always better,” and that she would focus on creating a diversity of smaller, independent businesses rather than “big city” restaurants, chains and box stores. She said she would be interested in attempting to solicit input from other developers interested 

Oliver said she believes that the metropolitan districts established in association with Porritt’s projects benefit the developer more than the town, adding that the town can be revitalized without metro districts. She said that parking is important for Dillon, but that the town needs to explore the proper location for it.

Oliver said one of her top priorities would be crafting an inclusionary housing policy that would require developers to provide workforce housing when proposing development. The current Dillon Town Council has discussed an inclusionary housing policy but opted to hold off on it.

Overall, Oliver said that she believes the current council has “rushed” and “pushed through” decisions related to the redevelopment of town and that she would “slow down” to allow for more research and to give community members a voice. 

“Dillon’s future should be shaped by the citizens, and I would love to be an advocate for policies that reflect the needs and vision of our communities,” Oliver said. “… We need to take time developing our community. We need our inclusionary housing. We need to expand Dillon but keep the small-town atmosphere.”

Barbara Richard

Dillon resident Barbara Richard, who has lived in Dillon for 27 years and the county for 40 years, said that she is running for the Dillon Town Council because there are many town residents who believe that this election is “a battle for the soul of Dillon.”

A member of the committee that called for the recall election, Richard said that the council lost the trust of town residents. During the referendum election last fall, Dillon residents “said clearly this is not the direction we want to go,” but the council members now subject to recall did not listen to the public’s calls to slow down and incorporate more community feedback into redevelopment plans, she said.

“Trust is broken here in town, and it’s going to take solid leadership to go forward,” Richard said. “I think I can use all my skills to build back trust and put the community back into the driver seat.”

Since 1990, Richard said that she has owned her own marketing management business that has worked mostly with small businesses in Summit County, including in Dillon, to strategize communications, advertising and more.

Richard holds a master’s degree in business administration and previously served on the Dillon Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee for 12 years.

Richard said her top priority as a council member would be to engage the community in order to balance financial growth with local values. She said that includes addressing the “housing crisis” with policies like inclusionary housing, which she said she supports.

Richard said that the current service plan the council approved with the metropolitan districts established for Porritt’s redevelopment plans has to be amended or renegotiated to account for changes that have occurred since it was approved. She also said that she would like to create a model metro district policy for how the town goes about establishing any metro districts in the future.

The Dillon core has to be studied as a whole system to prioritize walkability and a community feel, Richard said. While parking is important in Dillon, she said that she doesn’t think that a parking garage should be located on the “most valuable corner in Dillon,” where Porritt has proposed one.

“It’s the vision of the stakeholders that matters. If we’re going to re-envision Dillon, that power belongs to the community,” Richard said. “I want to slow this whole re-envision down and there are tools. The town has amazing power, the council has amazing power to do that.”

Joshua Samuel

Dillon resident Joshua Samuel, who has had a second home in Dillon for 25 years and lived in the town full-time for about six years, said he’s running for the Dillon Town Council because several community members who like his ideas asked him to run.

As the president of the Corinthian Hill Property Owners Association board of directors for more than three years, Samuel said that he has engaged with many Dillon community members, and he believes he can use his board experience to help smooth relations on the Town Council.

“I have brought a lot of peace to the community, and I’m a firm believer that we don’t all have to think the same,” Samuel said. “We can all look at the same information and come away with the information that we need to learn, discuss it, and come away with common solutions.”

Now mostly retired, Samuel ran his own business, Recycled Audio, in Boulder for 46 years, and he was a ski patroller at Arapahoe Basin Ski Area for 17 years. 

Samuel said he would work to create a “more balanced” approach to development. He said he believes the town needs development but that he has not been “overly thrilled” with the way things are currently moving forward “and how people are being treated with disrespect on all sides.”

Samuel said that he believes the council could do more to be good stewards for its residents, including by reviewing and updating the service plan that the council approved with the metro districts for Porritt’s redevelopment plans. He said that the council should have representation on the metro district board.

Dillon needs redevelopment but doesn’t need urban sprawl, so the community should be careful about what projects it moves forward on, Samuel said. With some of the most valuable waterfront property in the county, Dillon has leverage with developers and should use that leverage to negotiate walkability, parking improvements and workforce housing, he said.

If elected, Samuel said that he would also like the council to create a stronger vision for short-term rentals in the community, including potential caps on short-term rentals. Ensuring that infrastructure in town is able to handle the needs of proposed development is also important, he said.

“I feel I have a benefit of being able to see things clearly and listen to all the opinions and then come away with what makes the most sense even if it’s not necessarily what I agree with,” Samuel said. “I know we can listen and learn from each other, so that’s why I’m there running.”

Claudia Pillow

Dillon resident Claudia Pillow, who has lived in Dillon for five years, said that she is running for the Dillon Town Council because she wants to help preserve the town’s natural beauty and develop a vibrant downtown.

Pillow said that she believes that she can use her experience working in business to help the town through its “financial difficulties” and to help it generate revenues from sales tax and other sources.

“I like doing deep dives into profit and losses and balance sheets, and I like forecasting out three to five years to know the impacts of decision-making,” Pillow said. “So that’s what I can bring to the town: practical solutions, common sense, the ability to get along and the promise to listen and honor everybody’s thoughts and beliefs that live here.”

With a master’s degree of business administration, Pillow said that she worked in corporate America as well as for nonprofits and small businesses. She also holds a PhD in health and autoimmune diseases.

Pillow said that she became interested in running for the council after helping to lead the Corinthian Hill Property Owners Association, which she is the vice president of, to receive a Firewise certification from the National Fire Protection Association. She said that experience taught her how to build consensus and be a “peacemaker,” which she said is something the council could use.

Pillow said the “short-sighted financial decisions” that she said the town is making right now are her top concern. One example of those short-sighted decisions is the 5% excise tax on short-term rentals that Dillon voters instituted in 2022, which she said harms Dillon by making it less competitive than surrounding towns, reducing revenues.

Pillow said that she would like to see Porritt lay out his entire vision for the redevelopment of downtown so that the council can discuss it as a whole. She said, for example, that a parking structure doesn’t belong on the “pristine corner lot of town” and would rather see it located to the northeast of town.

But Dillon has a developer who wants to work with the town, so the council needs to work with him, Pillow said. She said she is in favor of reviewing the service agreement with the metro district “but right now we have something at our doorstep, I’d like to open that door.”

Pillow said that housing affordability is also a top issue and that the town should identify parcels of land, other than the valuable land in the town core, that would be suitable for workforce housing. She said that before mandating that developers provide workforce housing, the town should work to understand “the financial picture for the developer” since mandates could make the town less attractive to potential developers.

“We need to bring small businesses into the town so that we can have sales tax revenue,” Pillow said. “So without the sales revenue, we cannot accomplish the goal of affordable housing in the way that I know the town council would like to see done.”