John Scarffe, Nederland.  Topher Donahue served on the Nederland Board of Trustees from 2014 to 2016. He responded to a questionnaire from The Mountain-Ear about his time on the Board.

Donahue said his greatest accomplishment while on the Board was attending an Environmental Protection Agency workshop and learning that the town can get a grant from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs to assist with integrating the master plan into town code.

“This would help with Vision 2020 and the housing issue,” Donahue said. Attending the EPA workshop is his most outstanding memory while on the Board.

Donahue, P.O. Box 1d462A, has lived in Nederland for 13 years. A father of 9-year-old twins, Donahue is a writer and photographer. In addition to serving on the Board of Trustees, he has served on the Nederland Planning Commission as Board liaison and on the Ecopass Board.

Donahue said that, when elected to the Board, “If anything, my goal was to help find middle ground on contentious issues. I’d say it didn’t fare so well.

“Interestingly, Nederland has already achieved much of Vision 2020, but there is a loud voice of dissent in this community (and on the Board). Dissent can be good, but it can also obscure the great things this town has already done. As consultants told us on multiple occasions: ‘You guys are way ahead of the curve. Why don’t you give yourselves more credit?’”

If he had a chance to do anything over again, he said: “There’s always a little bit of every meeting I wish I could do over again, but overall I’m more of a forward thinking person and don’t really want to do any of it over again. I’d rather look towards making the next decisions the best way possible for the town rather than dwell on what could have been different.”