Lavonna Longwell is running for the at-large city council seat. Here’s where she stands on the issues.

By Kelly Ragan

Lavonna Longwell is running for the at-large city council seat. The at-large councilmember is tasked with representing all of Greeley, rather than a single ward. 

At a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization, Greeley mayor and city council candidates answered questions from the league and from audience members regarding where they stood on various issues, what their plans would be if elected, and more. 

Some of the major topics included housing, transportation, water, diversity, and communication. Candidates were also asked about three ballot measures, 2F (also known as Keep Greeley Moving), and 2G and 2H (also known as the water ballot measures). 

The NoCo Optimist included candidates’ opening and closing statements, answers (with edits for clarity and  brevity when possible) as well as the questions asked for context. The NoCo Optimist’s goal here is to give you an idea of who a candidate is and where they stand on issues that matter to you. 

Opening statement

I’m running for office because I want diversity of ideas at this table. In an ever-changing world, we must foster new ideas for our city. Without diversity of ideas, we have stale thinking and living with the status quo for too long. Climate change, population growth, and the digital age will not wait for us. We must be inclusive and innovative and take bold actions. 

Let’s meet the future with expanded transportation options that could lead to and support a resilient economy while protecting our natural resources and working for all of our families and all of our businesses and all of our neighborhoods. 

I am committed to representing all viewpoints, having respectful discussions, and doing the hard work to find our best solutions for the entire city. I’m committed to having better living through community in Greeley.  

Question: As the city of Greeley continues to experience increasing population growth and diversity, moving from a town to a big city, this growth has impacted a number of areas such as housing, transportation and water to name a few. What ideas or strategies do you have to address future issues impacted by this growth? 

Well, I’ll pick the subject that I’m most passionate about, and I think it has a big impact on our population growth, and that’s expanding our transportation options. Transportation supports a resilient economy and helps built a resilient economy, so I would definitely like to see more expansion within Greeley of our bus system and certainly more expansion of our regional transportation. We’ve got 40,000 more people that are going to be living here soon, that means about 80,000 cars – maybe not that many, but at least every family is going to have two cars, so we can’t just build wider roads and more efficient roads. That’s part of the solution, but public transit and regional transit is key.

Question: Do you think the city is effectively communicating with the community about its activities and needs? If so, how are they doing that? If not, what needs to be improved?

I would have to say I think there needs to be some improvement. I’d like to see more public gatherings and reports from individual council members. Everyone’s got a very busy life, and a summary of what’s going on, a discussion with our residents about what’s going on, to hear their point of view before we make decisions, I think is very important. 

You have to stay in dialogue with people to understand what their needs are. You can do that in many different ways. You can have a website where people can come and see what’s going on, you can have public gatherings. I think we need to be a little bit more creative in the way we inform our residents. 

Question: Offer some specific ideas on addressing growth and housing challenges. 

Yeah, I honestly don't know how to solve this problem, but I think what we need to have is again, a diversity of ideas on how to solve it.

For example, I came to Greeley and got a really good price on my house so that I could live here as a retired person. But if I wanted to downsize, I couldn’t afford to because the cost of housing now is so high my retirement fund won't meet that need.

You think of all of our young people who want to buy their first home, and we're going to have people coming here from the west coast getting away from climate change, the fires, the droughts, and raising housing prices. 

So, we have really got to do some creative thinking and we've got to think outside the box and satisfy the needs of all our residents, not just the rich ones. 

Question: About 40% of Greeley’s population identifies as Latino or Hispanic. But there aren’t many language services to reflect that. How will you support the Latino population and other minorities in Greeley, including undocumented people?

Well, I think it's an interesting question given that probably Hispanic people lived here before we did. So, you know they're part of our community, they are our neighbors, they are our community. Many of them are working many, many jobs to stay alive and aren't able to come and volunteer for a committee, but they still need a voice. 

That's where we have to take extra steps to have neighborhood gatherings to find out what are your concerns. You know, part of communication is listening, and it's a big part. We don't always have the answer, and we may find the answer by listening to their needs. I think we need to do a lot more of that, and for heaven's sakes they're part of our community.

Question: What is your position on Keep Greeley Moving? Why? What is your position regarding the changes to the home rule charter on water decisions? Please explain. 

I’m absolutely a fan of Keep Greeley Moving. 

As chair of the citizens advisory transportation advisory board, this is an important resource for us to pay for our road maintenance, maintenance of sidewalks, updating things to code for ADA, so absolutely I stand behind it.

My first reaction to the proposed home rule charter changes involving water  is let’s have the experts make the decisions. At this point, I feel like the water department knows more about water and what's safe than I do, and I trust them. 

Closing statement

I've had 20 years of experience in local, state and federal agencies, and I've had longer experience working in teams to solve problems. What I see missing in Greeley is the listening to the residents. The voters voted a long time ago to have the city look at broadband becoming part of a city program.

A task force got together and met for a year and worked hard and looked at all of the issues and presented it to the board. And the board decided to do nothing, to keep the status quo right when the pandemic began. This was a huge disappointment for me because I sat on that task force and I know the work we did. The option that we presented was viable. I want to see that work in the city now. I want to see bold action taken now.