Where I Stand
Chris Hardman — Clear Creek County Commissioner, District 1
Everything on this page comes from Clear Creek County’s own budget documents and public records. Every number has a source next to it. If you think one of them is wrong, email me at TeamHardmanCO@gmail.com and I will either show you where it came from or correct it publicly.
That standard applies to every claim below. I would rather say less and be right than say more and be corrected.
The short version
Clear Creek County’s own budget says the general fund is on track to run dry in 2029. The county’s own budget documents say its cost-saving measures are largely exhausted. Between 2019 and 2026, county wages and benefits rose about 28% while the number of positions stayed essentially flat.
None of that is my analysis. It is the county describing its own finances.
What is missing is anyone at the table asking what happens next. I am running to be that person. Not to slash services, not to lay anyone off, and not to pretend one commissioner out of three can rewrite county government by himself — but to make sure the hard questions get asked out loud, in public, before 2029 arrives and the choices get made for us.
1. Open the books
Summary: An independent financial review of county spending, published in full. Plain-language budget summaries residents can actually read. Written criteria for how the county decides what gets funded.
Why
The county’s Final 2026 Budget projects general fund balance depletion in 2029. That is three budget cycles away. The same document describes the county’s cost-saving measures as largely exhausted — meaning the easy reductions have already been made. Source: Clear Creek County Final 2026 Budget, p.23, and the county’s own budget narrative.
When a household sees three years of runway, it looks hard at every line. Our county has not had an outside set of eyes on its books, and the people who prepare the budget are the same people being asked whether the budget is working. That is not an accusation of wrongdoing. It is just not how you find things.
What I will do
Move for an independent financial review of county operations, with the results published in full rather than summarized.
Publish a plain-language budget summary each year — what came in, what went out, what changed, and why — written for residents rather than for auditors.
Put the criteria for funding decisions in writing and make them public, so the answer to “why did that get funded and this did not” is a document rather than a conversation you had to be in the room for.
2. Spend discipline, without laying anyone off
Summary: Hold the line on the cost of running county government. Freeze cost-of-living increases for positions paid above $100,000 until the structural deficit is closed. No layoffs.
Why
Between 2019 and 2026, county wages and benefits across all funds went from about $16.9 million to about $22.0 million — roughly 28% growth. Over the same period, funded positions went from about 208 to about 206. Cost per position rose from roughly $81,500 to roughly $107,100. Source: Clear Creek County 2019 Budget Report and Final 2026 Budget, compared directly.
Some of that is inflation and some of it is the cost of keeping people in a county where housing is expensive. I am not pretending otherwise. But a 28% increase in the cost of running the same size government, in a county three years from a projected shortfall, deserves a public conversation that has not happened.
What I will do
Propose freezing cost-of-living adjustments for county positions compensated above $100,000 until the structural deficit is closed. This is a pause on increases at the top, not a reduction in anyone’s pay.
Report cost per position publicly each year, by department, so trends are visible before they become crises.
No layoffs. Where I propose changing how a service is delivered, current county employees are transferred to other county positions. If no position is available, the change waits. I would rather a reform take longer than have someone in this county lose a job because I was in a hurry.
One honest limitation: several county offices — Sheriff, Clerk and Recorder, Assessor, Treasurer, Coroner — are separately elected and manage their own personnel. A commissioner sets budget, not their staffing decisions. I will make the case to them; I will not pretend I can order it.
3. Roads: tell people where they stand
Summary: A published map and list showing which roads the county maintains and which it does not. Written criteria for maintenance priority, not just for snow. A clear, plain answer for residents on roads the county does not maintain.
Why
Clear Creek County maintains roughly 160 miles of road — about 72 miles classified as primary across 29 named roads, and the remainder secondary. That is a serious operation for a county this size, and the people doing it are working with what they have. Source: Clear Creek County road maintenance records and county public works documentation.
There is a written snow removal policy with priorities and routes. Somebody put real work into it and it deserves credit. For everything else — grading, storm damage, summer maintenance — I have not been able to find a published priority list or schedule. It may exist. But at a commissioners’ town hall this August I listened to a resident explain that their road is not county-maintained, and that when they looked into maintaining it themselves, that was not simple either. That resident was not asking for special treatment. They were asking where they stood.
What I will do
Publish a single page where any resident can look up their road and see its classification: county primary, county secondary, subdivision, or private.
Publish the criteria the county uses to prioritize non-winter road work, the way the snow policy already does.
Make clear, in plain language, what a property owner may and may not do on a road the county does not maintain, including what permits apply and what they cost.
I cannot promise to pave your road. No commissioner can. I can promise you will be able to find out where you are in line.
4. Find better ways to organize the shelter, Charlie’s Place.
The intergovernmental agreement between Clear Creek and Gilpin county expires at the end of 2027. Before it does, the county should find out whether an outside operator for the shelter exists — put out a request for information and get a real answer. Nobody has asked the question. I’d rather know than assume –in either direction.”
Why
This is the plank where I most want to be clear, because it is the easiest to misrepresent. I am not proposing to close the animal shelter. I am proposing to put it on a footing that can outlast the county’s budget problems.
Animal Services went from about $206,700 in 2024 actual spending to about $303,400 adopted for 2026 — an increase of roughly 47% — while staffing stayed essentially flat at 3.5 to 3.675 positions. On a per-position basis the trend runs about $52,700 in 2019, $59,100 in 2024, and $82,600 in 2026. Source: Clear Creek County Final 2026 Budget department detail, compared against 2019 and 2024 figures.
And… a county-prepared comparative analysis of Clear Creek against Lake, Routt, Ouray and Gilpin county describes our county-managed no-kill animal shelter as a service not provided by peer counties, who typically contract it externally — and calls it, in the county’s own words, a prime candidate for service delivery model evaluation. Source: “Strategic Imperative: Service Line Evaluation Over Staffing Cuts,” county-prepared comparative analysis.
What I will do
Seek community input and resolve a way to keep the shelter open, without cutting staff, despite pending budget problems.
5. The services that show up when you call
Summary: Protect emergency response first. Be honest about what I-70 costs this county. Look hard at services other counties contract out — and be equally honest that some of what we spend is not optional.
Why
Every fiscal argument runs into the same wall: some spending is not discretionary. Some of it is legally required, some is the cost of an interstate highway running through a county of our size, and some of it is what it takes to have someone answer a 911 call at two in the morning.
I spent years as a firefighter and an EMT. I am not going to stand in front of you and pretend emergency response is a line item to be trimmed. When I talk about spending discipline, that is not where I am looking.
What I will do
Treat emergency services as the last thing cut, not the first.
Look at services that peer counties deliver through contracts rather than county departments — starting where the county’s own analysis already points — and bring those options into public view rather than leaving them in working sessions.
This is not a new idea here, and I want to give the county credit for that. An outside assessment of the Sheriff’s Office recommended consolidating dispatch with Jefferson County’s regional center, at real savings, with the existing staff absorbed rather than let go. The county did it. Dispatch left the Sheriff’s Office budget in 2025. That is exactly the kind of change I am talking about, and Clear Creek has already proved it can do it.
It also cuts the other way, and I will say so. The transfer station recovers about 82% of its costs from user fees, up from 44% thirteen years ago, and its net cost to the General Fund has fallen by more than half over that period. That is a department that got substantially better at what it does. It is not a candidate for anything except credit.
Be straight about the obligations we do not get to choose, including costs the county carries as a result of past decisions. Those belong in the public accounting of where the money goes, not left out because they are inconvenient to either side of the argument.
What this office can and cannot do
I would be one commissioner out of three. The other two seats are not on the ballot until 2028. Anything I have described above needs a second vote.
So I want to be plain about what I am actually promising. I am not promising to pass these things by myself, because I cannot, and neither could anyone else running.
What one commissioner can do is make sure the argument gets made in public and the vote gets taken on the record. A great deal of this gets decided in working sessions most people in this county never see. If I move for an independent review of the books and it fails two to one, then two commissioners have to sit in an open meeting and explain to this county why they will not let an outside set of eyes look at the numbers — with the county’s own budget saying we run dry in 2029.
I would rather lose that vote in public than never take it. And honestly, I do not expect to lose all of them. I have never met anybody on that board who is against knowing where the money goes.
What I will not promise
I will not promise to lower your taxes. A commissioner does not set your tax rate by himself, and anyone who tells you otherwise is asking you to believe something that is not true.
I will not promise to fix your road. I will promise you can find out where it stands.
I will not promise a number I cannot source. Every figure on this page has a document behind it. If I do not have the document, I will tell you I do not know — including on the campaign trail, where saying “I do not know” is supposed to be a weakness.
I will not promise that this is easy. The county is three years from a projected shortfall and its own budget says the easy savings are gone. Anyone campaigning on the idea that this can be handled without hard conversations has not read the budget.
Where these numbers come from
Clear Creek County Final 2026 Budget — clearcreekcounty.us, Document Center
Clear Creek County 2019 Budget Report and 2024 Adopted Budget
Clear Creek County Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports
County-prepared comparative staffing and service analysis, “Strategic Imperative: Service Line Evaluation Over Staffing Cuts”
Clear Creek County road maintenance and public works records
Board of County Commissioners meeting materials and town hall remarks, August 2026
If you want to check any of this yourself, most of it is on the county website under Document Center and Archive Center. If you cannot find something, email me and I will send you the file.
Chris Hardman — Clear Creek County Commissioner, District 1 — Election Day November 3, 2026
TeamHardmanCO@gmail.com · TeamHardman.com
Paid for by the Committee to Elect Chris Hardman County Commissioner. Registered Agent: Daniel Lutz.
