Dear Editor,

As we wrap up this election season, I thought it would be important to summarize the positive changes that I plan to bring to our county.  

First, I’d like to focus on changing our county government culture. I’d lead the culture shift to three significant changes, a culture of: service to the residents, resident input and inclusion in decisions, and running things like a business.  

Moving to a culture of service means we’ll focus on the services the county is mandated to provide like Road Maintenance, Law Enforcement, Parks and Rec, Health and Human Service, and not divert funds from these services until the residents rate the services as “Outstanding”. We’ll start by having the residents defining “Outstanding” service and continually measure how we are doing through continual feedback from residents.  

Moving to a culture of resident input and inclusion in decisions means we’ll change the meeting and workshop format to allow for more robust input from residents. This includes conducting most of the decision discussions to workshops at convenient times for residents to attend and allow their input (Including evening workshops).  

Finally, moving to a culture of running things like a business means we’ll use solid business practices to manage things, like ensuring our revenues are equal to or exceed our expenses, utilizing a 5-10 year financial forecast to eliminate surprises in future years and seeing the future financial impact of Commissioner decisions, and utilizing an Asset Management System to ensure we have the lowest cost of ownership of county assets.  

In addition to changing our county government culture, I will focus on stimulating our county revenues, creating a management plan for Visitors, and creating a resident Wildfire prevention culture. We’ll continually grow our county revenue and create jobs by increasing the gaming industry and bringing new taxable businesses to our county.  

We’ll keep our county safe and calm by creating a Visitor Management plan to proactively cope with the ever-increasing outdoor recreation and gaming visitors to our county.  And of high importance, we’ll create a resident culture of being certified forest thinning and prescribed burn experts for their own properties. The biggest impact we can all have on preventing fire devastation is thinning and pre-burning all the fuels.  The county will lead this army of resident prescribed burners by training the residents, organizing, and communicating the safe burn times. Enlisting this resident army can finally make an impact.  

By leading the above positive changes, our county can move to the next level of confidence that we live in a little paradise. I’d be humbled and honored to have your vote.

Corey Marshall

Gilpin County Commissioner Candidate for District 3