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Hi, my name is Naomi Reese and I'm running for Colorado House District 59.
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Why are you seeking this office and what experience or perspective would you bring to the position?
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Well, I'm running for House District 59 because I feel strongly that Southwest Colorado needs a much stronger voice in Denver, someone who really understands that the decisions made at the state capitol have real consequences for people who live and work here.
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I've lived here in Southwest Colorado for more than 35 years.
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I've built small businesses here, worked with property owners, developers, and local governments, and served the community through with boards, commissions, agriculture, water, historic preservation, youth programs, and health-related programs.
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And that experience has taught me that good policy starts with listening to the people who actually have to live with the consequences and understanding the history and the geography of our region matters.
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And that's not something that the State House in Denver seems to take into account all the time.
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So it's also shown me that government doesn't always need to do more.
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Sometimes it needs to remove barriers and just get out of the way so people and businesses can succeed.
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Being able to bring that perspective is so important to me.
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I've worked quite a bit with my local planning group, for example, so I really understand the realities of living in a rural area outside the municipalities.
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The thing that we look at most importantly is talking about irrigation and domestic water.
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So the land use and planning side of it is very extensive.
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It's what I've been doing all along.
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I work with a whole different, you know, all different kinds of stakeholders to solve problems in the land use arena.
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I've served on boards and commissions.
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I've been on the Historic Preservation Commission for 15 years.
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I'm the vice chair.
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I own a small farm.
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I irrigate, I have water rights, I understand how important agriculture and water is to our entire community.
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I've worked on all different kinds of water projects.
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My volunteer and community leadership experience is pretty extensive.
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I've been a 4-H leader, I'm a master gardener.
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I have a mediation experience during the downturn of the real estate market.
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Load full transcript
I started mediating and specializing in divorce with children and helping parents create communicative, cooperative, co-parenting plans that were going to survive their child's childhood, looking for practical solutions with people who really don't like each other and don't even want to talk to each other or be in the same room.
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So I'm I like to look for solutions.
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I like to listen to the alternatives.
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I look at what isn't working, I try to understand why, and I try to figure out what is the best solution for the people involved.
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If elected, what would be your main priority while in office and what steps would you take toward accomplishing it?
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My main priority is what I'm hearing constantly here.
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Um it's affordability and opportunity.
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And so it varies a little bit depending on which part of the district I'm talking to people in.
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But if basically it comes down to affordability, affordability, affordability.
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If people can't afford to live here, then businesses can't find workers, um, kids can't live where they grew up, um, businesses can't grow.
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And if people are spending most of their income just keeping a roof over their head, it becomes much harder to build a strong, healthy community when there's nothing left over to pay for gas or food.
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So I would start with housing.
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Um, that has to be where we start.
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It's not necessarily something that's going to change overnight.
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So I would try to look for solutions that could be implemented faster and then more of a long-term, long-range planning solutions as well.
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Um, I would definitely focus on making it easier for private enterprise to build attainably priced housing.
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Um, we have we have passed a lot of affordable housing bills over the last few years.
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Um and I've come to the conclusion after really looking at those bills and thinking about how they're gonna play out in the ground, that first of all, government is not gonna build its way up, not gonna legislate its way out of this housing shortage or the housing crisis.
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Um we just need more housing, period.
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And most importantly, we need to get private enterprise to step into that shortage.
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A recent bipartisan poll did find that affordability is the top concern for Colorado voters.
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What specific bill would you introduce or sponsor to address that?
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Um I would focus on reducing the cost and the um the uncertainty and the timelines of building housing housing and developing, and in fact, developing the property.
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I mean, there's two sides to the affordable housing situation that is also impacting the ability to have attainably priced housing.
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So the first thing that has to happen is developing the property.
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And um, and well, let me digress for a second to explain that when these bills are passed for the front range, I mean, the front range, if you drive down, drive down a street in Pueblo or Colorado Springs, Denver, you're on a road that might even be divided in the middle.
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It has three, four lanes, nice wide lanes on either side.
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There's curb and gutter, there's utilities already present.
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And so when you have a buildable lot, it's shovel ready.
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It truly is shovel ready.
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That is not the case here in Southwest Colorado.
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We have gravel roads, we don't have utilities in.
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But the the build the properties that are ready that fit into some of these affordable housing bills are still there.
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They just don't, they're they don't have, they're not, it's not shovel ready.
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It doesn't fit into how that bill is structured.
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And so the cost and the difficulty of developing the property in the first place, um, and and having everything happen in a much more cost-effective manner for private enterprise is where I would start.
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So we'd have to review state and local regulations, permitting requirements, fees, unnecessary processes, um, that there's a lot out there that just doesn't provide a clear public benefit.
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So I would start with looking at the bills that have already been passed to see if they're creating unintended consequences and making it more difficult for private enterprise and more costly for private enterprise.
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I would review um building codes and mandates that are increasing building costs and work towards easing that timeline.
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It doesn't mean that they aren't there for a good reason.
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They are, but having them um become mandates immediately, and I can give you one really good example, is um electrical wiring, all electric wiring in homes and wiring for EV is that's the kind of thing that drives builders away.
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And when the last thing we need to do is drive builders away.
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Um I'd also look at um, so I'd so I'd look at the like the entities in the state outside the legislature that are enacting these types of regulations and see if we can streamline that or or
eliminate existing problems.
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Um and uh mainly I would be looking at just removing the barriers so that private enterprise can build more housing more efficiently and in a cost-effective manner.
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I mean, we need housing that people in a broad range of income brackets can afford.
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Tell us about a specific decision you made in in a current job or a past one that you would make differently today.
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What did you learn from that experience?
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Certainly, professionally, I've learned a lot.
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Every time I work on a project or every time I mediated a divorce, I learned something.
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Uh so personally, uh I've probably learned uh there are definitely things that I would have done differently personally, but I'm not sure you're asking me about that.
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I mean, I learned from those things too, right?
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Looking back five years, name one Colorado policy you would undo and one you would defend.
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I I have to go back to um what we've been doing with housing.
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Um I've already talked about it a lot, but the affordable housing bills, a lot of them, like for example, in 2026, we passed one, it was 1001.
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Um, well-intentioned, great title.
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Um, concept is good.
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But the problem is that it's we're creating situations where the general public and private enterprise is potentially looking at higher costs and more difficulty because of it.
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There's other problems with 1001 too.
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Like, I mean, I just just recently noticed this.
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I had reviewed it a while ago because it passed early on in the session, but then I reviewed it again recently and I realized that it has a height re it has a height uh restriction in reverse.
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It says that um local municipalities and counties, they can't turn they can't um deny a project based upon height of buildings.
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But for example, the height of the building that they cite in the bill is significantly higher than what the county code says here in La Plata County.
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So if La Plata County has to approve a project that has a much higher height to it, that means that the person next door is still required to build at the height that's in the code.
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And so it becomes this, it becomes negative impacts on adjacent owners.
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Um, it might be a building that has just destroyed the view from the adjacent property, and but they don't have any mechanism for changing it or railing against it or um doing anything themselves.
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There are situations where, I mean, 1001 was specifically targeting um school districts and fire districts and nonprofits that are already in the business of providing housing.
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And they didn't um they did not necessarily um account for the fact that a lot of those entities, once they've developed something, that property comes off the tax rolls.
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So it's a reduction of revenue that would normally be going to provide essential services and money that's going to education.
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So um I would have to go be looking at bills that have already been passed specifically in this area in order to move forward with trying to correct our ability to provide attainably priced housing.
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What is one thing you believe Colorado needs to do that may be difficult, unpopular, or expensive, but that you believe is necessary?
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And what role would your office play in moving that forward?
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Um, one thing that Colorado has to do, we have to look at the spending problem.
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So there's been a lot of talk about this, about you know, the effect on budget on a variety of things, you know.
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Um, the other side of the aisle from me points to TABER, they point to HR1, um, and I'm gonna point to spending.
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Colorado has dramatically increased their spending, their organ the committees and the organizations and the programs over the last eight to ten years.
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There's been a huge increase in those things.
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We need to look for duplication of services.
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We need to look at original services.
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If they weren't functioning exactly as they were intended to function, then maybe they need to be redone instead of passing new programs that will duplicate efforts that become a much more expensive way of looking at things.
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I also, I mean, there are absolutely there has to be good, effective administration of every program, but um the expense of programs is absolutely an area that Colorado has not been doing, not been handling effectively, at least not recently.
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Um I can't speak to what happened 20, 30 years ago, but in the recent past, the administration of a lot of these programs sometimes is higher than the benefit that's being drawn by a specific area of the state or the people that the it was intended to help.
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So I would I would really look to balancing those things.
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And lastly, working in politics can be stressful sometimes.
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What is your favorite way to de-stress or a favorite activity outside of work?
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I like to sew.
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Um, I like that very much.
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I like to read.
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I um also like to spend time in the high country.
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My husband and I love going four-wheeling.
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We camp.
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Um I love to hike.
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Um, I also love to exercise.
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I have been a regular participant in jazz or size for years, probably 40 years.
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I've been um jazzer sizing on and off at times.
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I was an instructor for a while.
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Um, so exercise, hiking, time outdoors, um, uh sewing, reading, and gardening.
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Well, Naomi, thank you so much for taking the time today and best of luck with the elections.
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Thank you.