I am an attorney who specializes in real estate titles. I previously owned a residential title and escrow company in Frisco, but I now work as a contract consultant for companies developing real estate in several states in the Rocky Mountain West.

My wife, Dana, and I came to Summit County in an old, slide-on camper on the back of a ’73 Chevy pickup truck in 1993, with about $75 in our wallets, both of us getting jobs with the then Ralston Purina-owned Keystone Resort. We fell in love with both the scenic beauty and the community here, and in a short time, we knew that this is where we wanted to live and have our family. Our children, Grace and Ben, are Summit County natives.

Unfortunately, it has become much more difficult for our hard-working local families to live and work and raise children here in just the last 20 years. I am running for these families and the pocketbook issues that are causing them to struggle.

Priority No. 1: Property taxes

For example, property tax bills this year were roughly 136% of what they were just one year ago, yet our county government could not see fit to provide tax relief to locals, who were already struggling with the additional burden of historically high inflation. The failure to give our locals property tax relief was a terrible missed opportunity to help make housing more affordable for locals. Furthermore, it signals that we have a government with a propensity for oppressive taxation and out-of-control spending.

Priority No. 2: Respecting investment

Many locals have built small businesses providing goods and services in our visitor-based economy, yet we have a county government that appears to dislike the very people who invest in the real estate that lodges most of our visitors, the engine of our locals’ businesses. I have been asked countless times by folks who have bought second homes here, “Why does the county hate me?” Instead, we need to make it clear that we like and welcome those who choose to invest in our community — and who most often become locals themselves, strengthening the fabric of our community and contributing time, talent and treasure in the most profound ways.

Priority No. 3: Housing

I run, too, because our present strategies for creating more local housing appear to me to lack clear thinking or innovation. I do not believe the county can build its way out of a housing shortage, and, philosophically, at some level I don’t think the county should become a huge landlord. Instead, we should grant incentives to locals who own and lease long-term housing.

Liberalizing the permitting of accessory dwelling units without deed restriction will also help alleviate the local housing shortage. Currently, the county deed restricts accessory dwelling units, a requirement that keeps them in very, very short supply.

As wonderful as it would be if everyone who worked in Summit County lived here, the truth is that a significant portion of our workforce lives in communities in Lake, Grand and Park counties, and that will probably always be true. This is not atypical of life across the U.S., in which many people either forego or are priced out of the very high cost of living in an expensive city or resort center. Instead of trying only to build subsidized housing to accommodate vast portions of our workforce, we must also focus on designing excellent, reliable and thorough transit to neighboring communities as an alternative.

I don’t believe that every challenge we face is a “crisis” that requires the heavy hand of government regulation and government bureaucrats to “fix.” Instead, the good people of Summit County will overcome the challenges we face through the creativity, energy and innovation they bring to the thousands of free economic choices they make every day.

Bob Cottrell is a candidate for Summit Board of County Commissioners District 2. He can be reached at bob@bobcottrell.com.