No 2023 Crested Butte town council election to be held

Four seats, four interested citizens: Billick, Magner, Prochaska and Cowherd

By Mark Reaman

For the first time in decades, if not history, the town of Crested Butte will not have a contested election for mayor and town council. As a result, there will be no council election this fall. Crested Butte town clerk Lynelle Stanford said she could find no record of a town council election being cancelled because there were no contested seats.

With three council seats and the mayor’s seat up for election, three people returned election petitions for council and one returned a petition to run for mayor.

Current Crested Butte mayor Ian Billick will get another two years in the middle seat as he was the only one to submit a petition for the office. He was elected two years ago after defeating former councilmember Kent Cowherd for the office.

Cowherd will return to council in November as he was one of three citizens to return a completed petition to run for council. The other two are incumbents Mallika Magner, who was elected four years ago and originally appointed to council in 2019 to complete Jackson Petito’s term, and Gabi Prochaska who was appointed to the council in May of 2022 to fill out the term of Mona Merrill who stepped down. Current councilmember Chris Haver decided to  not run again.

The council members will be sworn in at the council meeting scheduled for Monday, November 20.

Six candidates qualify for school board

Meanwhile, six people will be on the ballot for the Gunnison Watershed School District board.  Mark VanderVeer, Jody Coleman, Anne Brookhart, Cori Dobson, Lisa Henry, and Greg Kruthaupt all returned petitions with enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. VanderVeer, Coleman and Brookhart are running as a slate to continue the current direction set by the board.