KSJD begins its series of longform interviews with candidates for Montezuma County Commissioner. In this conversation, Republican candidate Bonnie Anderson shares her background and outlines her top priorities, including public safety, road and infrastructure challenges, economic development, county finances, and transparency in local government.
LP McKay
Okay, so we'll start kind of with just basic background information. First, I want to give you the opportunity, if you are running with as an affiliated party member, to give that affiliation, but I'd also like to hear about your background and what motivated for you to run for county commissioner.
Bonnie Anderson
Okay, well, thanks for having me here. I'm Bonnie Anderson. I'm running under the Republican Party. I like to consider myself a practical Republican, because I am very fact oriented.
Well, I grew up pretty much on the front range in Littleton, Colorado. I started working when I was 13 years old, maybe a little earlier, in exchange for writing lessons. So I've been working since a young child. I was taught whatever you want in life, you're going to have to work for and I think that's good work ethics that I was taught as a young kid, but I went to college at Colorado State University. I got a forest management degree.
Throughout college, I worked for Rocky Mountain National Park for the federal government, doing wildland firefighting and fuel reductions. And then after college, I moved back to Mancos, and I worked for the State Forest Service. I did forest inventory analysis. After that, I worked for private industry.
That's when I got into the noxious weed world, working for Premier weed Kenny Smith, and that was kind of eye opening. He needed somebody who had experience with GIS to do some mapping for this era stimulus grant. So that's how I fell into that. I fell in love with noxious weeds just because it's not something that everybody understands the situation with, and I felt like it was just kind of my calling.
But I ended up getting a job with the county running their noxious weed department, and I did that for about 10 years. So I have experience, you know, working for the federal government, the state government and the local government. I enjoy the local government the most just because of the flexibility and how you can adapt management to real world needs on the community. So it was very flexible, and I could fluctuate my plans to resemble the real world conditions.
And I just, I loved that flexibility. With federal government, it's just a rigid system that develops waste, and I saw that a bunch, and I didn't like it, but local, local government was great. And then, since the county, I stopped working for the county in '23 I have two private businesses, a weed spring business, an art business. I'm a mom of four. I stay very busy, and then I volunteer for a nonprofit named National Mustang Association. I've been doing that for four years.
LP McKay
That's a great varied background. There all kinds of stuff. So if you're elected, what would your top two or three priorities be? We're gonna ask you to narrow your saying, Yeah, five, but gotta narrow it down to two or three. Just, I want to be sure, be sure and give everybody the same exact footing. But at least in your first year, just the first few priorities.
Bonnie Anderson
Yeah, public safety is my number one priority. If a community doesn't feel safe, families aren't going to want to stay here, businesses aren't going to want to come here. So public safety should be the principle or the heart of every community. It's been seen that drugs have been increasing, and it seems like there's a correlation with crime to drugs increase. Crime increases in the 2025 drug task force, they removed 88.127 pounds of crystal meth, 9.9 ounces of fentanyl powder. 23,370 fentanyl pills, 168.21 pounds of cocaine within Montezuma County.
So that's pretty extensive, and that's just a fraction of what we have really so with the crimes increasing, public safety, in turn, has to increase as well. The KRW is an independent assess. Well, they did an independent assessment from the KRW on the sheriff's department, and they concluded that Montezuma County Sheriff's Office is at a critical threshold of instability, and that's mainly because of poor retention of sheriff deputies for multiple reasons. I think it's very important that we take this KRW report seriously. We use it for framework or roadmaps for a five year strategic plan to address everything that they addressed in that plan.
LP McKay
And would you mind quickly just saying what KRW stands for, and
Bonnie Anderson
I don't remember.
LP McKay
Okay, I'll look it up. Okay,
Bonnie Anderson
Sorry, where was I? So as a as a county commissioner, you're not meant to micromanage law enforcement. That's not how it works. Law enforcement, you should be making sure they have clear. Are forward looking plans with realistic funding, and then you need to support them 100% you need to support their plan. You need to work collaborative, collaboratively with them, transparently and respectfully. And if I was elected as Commissioner, I would fully support their plan, and I fully support every individual that's working for the sheriff's office, and I thank them for the service that they've done risk in their lives every day to protect their community. The next priority is with regards to the road department. So I got a core report, and I learned that in 2025 from January to November, there were 16 separations within that department, meaning their turnover rate was 49.5% that is extreme for a department that is not sustainable. It's at the brink of collapse. And the road department is another one of our the heart of our, you know, community. How do we drive to work using the roads? How do public safety or emergency responders get anywhere they use the roads. So we really have to have a strong road department. So my if I become elected, my priority is to get some retention plans, some succession plans, find that superintendent that has a lot of experience, bring them to the road department and work on that, working operational sustainability for the road department. And with that being said, really, every single department within the county needs to make those plans. They need forward thinking plans, how they think that their services are going to change over time, what they're going to need over time. And those retention and succession plans are huge. We you know, employees are an asset, and they're we've invested in them. We've put training in them, and when they leave, they take that training, they take the knowledge with them. So we really need to value our employees and have those retention and succession plans. So I guess my third one is economic development. We really need to hire a professional, economic development professional that will work on sustainable local economy, economy, the growth we did have one for a couple years that was paid off of a through, I think, a road maps grant, but she was let go in 2023 due to budget cuts. That decision was shortsighted. In my point of view, economic development is not an expense, it's an investment for the county, and we really need to look into the future and see how we can support the county itself and our community around us. So I think economic development should be a top priority for sustainable, creative revenue solutions going forward,
LP McKay
and you're kind of touching on it there. Montezuma County has a number of ongoing financial challenges. How do you view the county's current budget situation, and what steps would you support to improve long term revenue stability?
Bonnie Anderson
Okay, and I'll try not to be too long here this I could go on forever. Okay, so I think that Montezuma county really does have a strong financial position right now. However, I think there's a lot of structural challenges that are coming up that we're going to have to clearly plan for in order to remain financially stable. So I did want to talk about the 2024 audit that came out for Montezuma County, the General Fund's ending balance was $29.1 million and of that 1.3 6 million is restricted, and that's for the Tabor emergency fund, which is you have to have 3% of the revenues from the previous year, and you have to hold that money into an account for a year, and it's it's specific funding that can come out of that, but that's pretty restricted. And then there's another one out of the general fund, and that is the cancer treatment fund, so that's restricted as well. So subtracting those out of that ending balance, we get $27.7 million available for continuity of services. And then if you look at the audit and you calculate the annual the monthly expenses for the general fund, it comes out to 1.4 million a month. And from there we can get the number of how much reserves we have. So in 2024 we ended with 20 months of reserves. 2025 they're projected ending general fund balance is $24.3 million which is 17 months of reserves. So in 2023 our Board of County Commissioners made a reserve policy, and if you look at that policy, it says that their goal is to have 12 months of reserves. Typically, counties do about three to six months of reserves, but that's fine. If our county wants to do 12, I personally think maybe seven months might be more appropriate. But regardless, if our county commissioners feel like they want a goal of 12 months, that's fine. However, within that policy, I really think that it's important to establish what these funds can. Be used for, and what considerations comes with that, because reserves shouldn't be Do not touch me money. These are emergency funds, and public safety really fits into those emergency needs. If we're at critically, a critical threshold of instability, because we don't have enough positions right now, we need to use some of those reserves to fill that shortfall. And I also want to say I don't believe that using reserves continually for the same thing is appropriate. I think that to fill those shortfalls right now is appropriate and do a lot of long term planning for, you know, the reserve, the revenue. So, long term, creative revenue and on that. I just want to talk about another thing. One of the biggest structural challenges we have in Montezuma county right now is an unfair unfunded mandate, which is the jail. And I don't know if you guys have realized that I've listened to the sheriff for, you know, the last 10 years that I've worked here, and he's mentioned it that the reimbursements do not match what the expenses are in the jail, and the jail is, it's we're required to have a jail through the state and the feds, we're required to have a jail. So how this works, and I've been learning for the last few months about how this works. When you're arrested, you're either arrested on a municipality charge or you're arrested on a state charge. When you're arrested on a municipality charge, the municipalities will reimburse the jail directly per inmate day. The Board of County Commissioners set that reimbursement rate, and right now it's set at $125 a day. State charges are different until that inmate is actually convicted for a crime and is transferred over to the Department of Corrections. Inmates, there is no reimbursement to the county holding that inmate, even though they're being held on a state charge and also in the D, O, C charges, that reimbursement rate is much lower than what the actual expenses are. So it's just kind of like Tabor. The equation doesn't really match reality. So understanding this that we're not being reimbursed for the state inmates until they get charged in 2023 alone, the jail experienced a $2.6 million shortfall in unreimbursed costs. It's not sustainable for rural community, rural communities, and really the state needs to step it up if they're going to require us to have a jail, and if we're arresting these people on state charges, they do need to reimburse us. So that's one thing that's one of our structural challenges, and we really need to work with our house representatives and our state partners to start addressing these unfunded mandates. The jail being a priority.
LP McKay
Thank you for that answer, and this is kind of a more on the budgeting and how to prioritize services you've mentioned there, road maintenance, public safety. How do you balance those big priorities with all the other services that the county provides?
Bonnie Anderson
Really, you got to just sit down and look at it all. And a lot of the other programs and departments in the county have a lot of grant funding to to cover their expenses. And I know that from experience, because I've worked in them, the noxious weed department, most of our funding was grant funding. And I will say you have to get the right person that has motivation and passion for this subject, or for her work or his work, to actually make that effort into covering those shortfalls so we can continue to have the programs and projects that support this community,
LP McKay
and kind of with that, a big point of concern for a lot of people here in this county, it sounds like for you as well, is economic development that includes supporting local businesses job growth and The workforce here in Montezuma County. How do you see the commissioners playing a role in the in the development of our economics here, 100%
Bonnie Anderson
and I will say one of the reasons I'm running is because I have kids and I want them to stick around, but do they have the opportunities to be able to stick around once they graduate high school or college? So the three main pillars of our Montezuma county economy is agriculture, tourism and extraction. And like I said, we really need to hire an economic development professional to help us really sustain some local economy. But I want to say our two biggest constraints right now is housing and water. Workforce, housing, low income housing is a huge issue right now, and we've outlined that problem with housing needs assessments that's done every three years for Montezuma County. If people can't afford to live here, businesses won't have anybody to hire, and the whole system will just collapse. Same with my kids, my kids when they graduate. High School, they can't afford a single family home, multifamily home. They need an apartment or somewhere they can afford. So we really need an economic developer, or even the commissioner, someone to work with the municipalities, to work with the Chamber of Commerce, to develop some affordable housing solutions within that sphere of influence around the municipalities. I feel like that's the most appropriate place for it because of infrastructure. I also want to touch on the water issue. Water is life, and as we all know that the water situation around here is pretty grim with the weather situation, there are two proposed reservoirs, and they've been talking about these reservoirs for quite some time. They're meant to catch the snow melt that Dolores River, otherwise does not catch as a backup, a backup component for McPhee reservoir. The cost of these reservoirs is extremely high, and that's why I don't think it's really gone anywhere. However, one ounce of prevention is worth one pound of cure, the cost now is going to be nothing compared to the cost it is in the future. Everything is increasing. So if it's anything concerned to water, we need to jump on it and be proactive and look into these options. I developed a non native free out of fight removal project for Montezuma County in 2017 and this was a big Water Saver, and we need more projects like this. But just for some facts about this, one acre of friatifites. And a friatifite is Russian olives and salt cedars. Those are the non native species in our area. They consume one acre of these guys consume 5.2 acre feet of water, ending in 2023 we had about 7800 acres infested by these species within Montezuma County. I do want to stress that there's 60,000 of of habitat that these guys can go to so they're still spreading. One ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It's going to get worse, but the 7800 acres that are infesting Montezuma county right now consume about 40,600 acre feet of water in Montezuma, Montezuma county a year. In comparison, that's 36 million gallons of water per day for a full year. And another comparison is roughly 40,600 households for a year, how much water they they consume. That's how much these non native species are taking from us. So if we had more projects to help offset our drought situation, we really need to invest in them.
LP McKay
And on the next point here, accessibility with government at all levels is a big a big concern, a big thing that people are looking for. How would you help make the county government more accessible, help folks feel like they're being heard?
Bonnie Anderson
Well, I think the main thing is restoring the trust and improving how we work together when people feel dismissed or disrespected, that's how the local government will start to erode, and I feel like we're at that point, and so restoring this trust and improving how we communicate with each other is a huge thing. One option we might have all the municipalities meet after hours so people you know who are working day day jobs can actually attend these meetings and give their input. So that's something that we could do with the Board of County Commissioner meeting, and they do it in other areas, have night meetings, or even do it on the weekend, where people can actually attend. But I think respect is a huge, a huge thing, and we need to improve that. And we need to improve that, the transparency component, where people feel comfortable enough to talk, and they feel like they're being respected, and they feel like they're being heard and told the full story.
LP McKay
What do you see as the biggest challenge facing Montezuma county right now? We've talked about a myriad, but if you had to pick one, but then I don't, I will also want to let you talk about what you're most excited about, if there's a positive, something that you're really excited to get your your feet into. So yeah, let's start with the with the biggest problem that you see, and then how what you're excited about.
Bonnie Anderson
The biggest problem is public safety right now, I think our crime is definitely out doing. How many officers we have out there? And just with the care W report, you know, told us that we're at this critical threshold. We don't have enough people out there. I think we need a 100% prioritize the sheriff's office.
LP McKay
And what you're most excited about.
Bonnie Anderson
I'm most excited about just the opportunity of making this place a better place. I'm a very solution oriented person. I do my homework, and I have a lot of great ideas, and I have a lot of energy, and I will actually spend the time doing the work to make these solutions come to life.
LP McKay
and you've mentioned this throughout all your answers, but county commissioners, you have to work with staff. You have to work with other elected officials from municipalities, other counties, state, federal governments. How do you describe your leadership style and your collaboration style?
Bonnie Anderson
And I've done that for the last, you know, 10 years when I was working for the county, I worked directly with the administrator, I worked with the county commissioners. I also worked with municipalities, other organizations. I went and talked to Lauren Bobert. I talked to Cleve Simpson.
So I've already had a lot of experience working at all those different levels, and I work collaboratively, collaboratively and respectfully, I'll listen to ideas, and I love getting input from other people,
LP McKay
and if there's something that we oh, wait, here we go. I don't want to skip this one. How would voters measure your success if you're elected after that first year?
Bonnie Anderson
I will say that I will give reports every week, and they will actually be in depth reports saying what I spent my time on. Because right now, the reports that were given sometimes we don't, we aren't even given reports. So it's like, Well, what did you use my tax money for? You know, as being a commissioner. No disrespect, I'm just saying, when I give my reports, you're going to know exactly what I've been working on, what my goals are, and what my my solutions that I'm going towards. So I will be very transparent with what I'm doing, the
LP McKay
increase in reporting and transparency. And if there is there an issue that we haven't discussed in our time here together that you want to make sure and let people know about,
Bonnie Anderson
I do want to talk about infrastructure, I think we really need to do some comprehensive capital and asset inventory. We need to understand where our culverts are that are going to need to be replaced. We need to understand what buildings, all the components that go into our county assets. That way we can be more proactive instead of reactive.
And some examples is the county road, P the culvert wasn't adequate for the runoff that year, so the entire road got washed out. We're having a lot of issues with the annex, one with utilities, if, maybe, if we're more proactive, it's going to be less costly, it's going to be less disruptive to the services. And I do want to mention that I learned that Mancos rural water is on a has a moratorium for no new water taps, and that's because the infrastructure they have for Montezuma county right now can't deliver any more water to new residents. So it's not an issue on how much water we have, it's the infrastructure we have.
So that's really going to help our planning. Having these plans with what infrastructure we have, how much growth we can actually have. And I truly believe a city should not grow beyond what natural resources can actually sustain it. So water is a big one.
Infrastructure is going to be a limiting, short time factor, but these are all things that we really need to take into account for planning Well,
LP McKay
thank you. That was the last question I had. If there's anything else you want to mention? Nope. Okay, cool. Well, I thank you so much for your time. And yeah, look forward to speaking more with you as we near the election. Perfect.
Bonnie Anderson
Thank you.
