Summit County Commissioners
Bob French| Thomas Davidson | Karn Stiegelmeier
Bob French
Summit County Commissioner
Born in Boston 1931. B. A. Williams College, Williamstown, MA 1953. Active duty USNR 1953-57. LL.B. Harvard University 1960. Private law practice in Washington, D.C. 1960-1971. Private practice in Breckenridge, CO 1971-2004. Bob’s practice in Washington included a good deal of work for various trade associations in support of their legislative efforts before one congressional committee or another. He also did all the things his high-powered bosses thought beneath them: representation of small business corporations, divorces, court-appointed defense of juveniles, real estate deals, evictions, and the like. Much like the practice he carried on for 30 years here in Breckenridge, where he did his time as county attorney (1976-9), counsel to or board member of innumerable charitable non-profits, and, in his younger years, criminal defense — traffic, DUI's, minor assaults, etc. He’s not sorry to say that his white hairs have long since cut off the 2am phone calls from the jail.
In recent years he did whatever Summit County was doing: every kind of real estate all the way from zoning issues for major land development through condo documents and residential construction on down to landlord-tenant beefs; organization, operation, and transfers of small businesses, special districts (fire, water, metro), homeowner associations, estate planning, financing packages.
That pretty much tells the professional story. Otherwise he’s been known to walk up a hill, get on a pair of skis or a horse, cook a meal, and take a part in a play. Books are important. Music. He and Kay have a bunch of grandchildren, most of whom live in Colorado and occupy most of what passes for their spare time, when they're not engaged in domestic maintenance, trying to keep the house from falling down about their ears.
Bob can be contacted at:
PO Box 68
Breckenridge, CO 80424
970.453.3411
bobf@co.summit.co.us
Thomas Davidson
Summit County Commissioner
Thomas C. Davidson, 46, came to Summit County in November of 1985 from a family farm in eastern Kansas. He got his first job at Arapahoe Basin as a chairlift operator with a starting wage of $3.35/hour and lived in Sagebrush Employee Housing at Keystone. Thomas spent the next twenty-two years working at Keystone Resort. His last position was as a Director of Development for Vail Resorts.
In December of 2006, the Summit County Democratic Party selected Thomas to fill a vacancy on the BOCC. He was sworn into office in January 2007, and is the current Chairman of the County Commission.
As Commissioner, Thomas
- has focused attention on affordable housing, affordable childcare and affordable health care.
- currently serves as the County’s representative for and is Chair of the Summit Combined Housing Authority.
- has served the past eight years on the board of Early Childhood Options, which successfully started the County’s Head Start program and won voter approval of the County’s own Right Start program.
- has served on the task force that just completed a health assessment of Summit County and a 5-year plan for improving accessibility, affordability and availability of quality health care.
- serves as Summit County’s voting member of Colorado Counties, Inc. (CCI), which represents and advocates for the concerns of all county commissioners to the state legislature and Governor’s office.
- was recently elected by CCI to serve on the Public Lands committee for the National Association of Counties, which advocates for funding and good policy at the national level.
- serves as the County’s voting representative to Club 20, an organization of local governments and businesses that represents the interests of all counties on the Western Slope.
Thomas also gives his time to several nonprofit organizations, notably as a trustee of The Summit Foundation and as the secretary of the Foundation’s executive board; on the High Country Regional Council of the El Pomar Foundation; and on the board of directors for the Credit Union of the Rockies.
Thomas is a member of Summit County Rotary Club and the High Country Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.
Thomas can be contacted at:
PO Box 68
Breckenridge, CO 80424
970.453.3413
thomasd@co.summit.co.us
Karn Stiegelmeier
Summit County Commissioner
Karn is a fifth generation Colorado native born in Colorado Springs. Upon graduating
from CU Boulder with a degree in Environmental Conservation, she took a series of
assignments with the National Forest Service and National Park Service including
wildland firefighter, wilderness ranger, fire dispatcher, naturalist and park ranger.
She taught environmental education with Yosemite Institute in California. Karn completed graduate work at San Francisco State University leading to a multiple subjects teaching credential. She taught all subjects, primarily science to a range of ages in public and private schools. She was the director and a science teacher at the Alpine Charter School in Dillon.
Karn believes we have an unrivaled quality of life in Summit County. The challenge of the future is to balance growth and community needs without impairing this precious Rocky Mountain high elevation quality of life.
Karn served as the director of the Friends of the Lower Blue River, Chair of the Blue River Group of the Sierra Club, board member of the Continental Divide Land Trust, mountain representative on the I-70 Mountain Corridor Collaborative Effort team, and a volunteer in many other community efforts. She enjoys skiing, hiking and river running in Summit County with her husband and daughter.
Contact Karn at:
PO Box 68 Breckenridge, CO 80424
970.453.3412
karns@co.summit.co.us