Two long-serving politicians are stepping down this year into uncertain futures from the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners.

Republicans Stan VanderWerf and Longinos Gonzalez have each served two four-year terms on the board, the most allowed. Their successors, both Republicans elected in November, will be sworn in on Jan. 14.

Both came to the board with military career experience — Gonzalez was a deputy director of an Air Force intelligence agency, and VanderWerf also held an Air Force career in various roles including overseas. Their tenure was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the steady growth of El Paso County as the most populous county in the state.

VanderWerf represented District 3 encompassing parts of west and central El Paso County including downtown Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs and Monument. In his last months on the board, VanderWerf was running for state Senate District 12 against Democrat Marc Snyder. He lost the close race by just over 1 percentage point.

He said his next steps were not yet set.

“When I was running for the senate, I didn’t work on Plan B, and now of course I am,” he said.

VanderWerf said he had aspirations for a political appointment in the Trump administration, while putting applications out for employment in the private, public and nonprofit sectors. He is also signed on as ambassador for a ballot initiative campaign to repeal wolf reintroduction in Colorado.

An avid mountain climber and commercial-rated pilot, VanderWerf said he would also be making time for other pursuits after his time on the commission.

Gonzalez represents District 4, which includes parts of southeast Colorado Springs, the city of Fountain and southeast El Paso County. He made a bid during office for Colorado Springs mayor in 2023, garnering about 8% of the vote in the general election.

Gonzalez said he, too, would be figuring out his next steps after leaving office, exploring the possibility of teaching in higher education.

“I’m looking forward to a little bit of downtime,” he said.

Here are some of the issues that came to define the commissioners’ tenure and will likely continue to affect the county.

Housing

“I think the thing that is going to be the big issue for the next decade is housing,” said Gonzalez, reflecting on priorities for his successor.

Both Gonzalez and VanderWerf identified the lack of affordable housing in El Paso County as an ongoing problem, one they’ve tried to address on the commission. The Colorado-based research organization Common Sense Institute estimated the county had a 2023 housing shortage of 16,554 to 27,360 units.

VanderWerf, a commissioner for a district which has frequently grappled with the need for housing versus the risk of wildfire in the wildland-urban interface along Pike San Isabel National Forest, said his approach has always been “thoughtful growth.” He advocated in his Senate campaign for the creation of a state-level modeling office to make recommendations based on holistic modeling of evacuation routes in the event of fire.

“There’s a lot of people on the west side who have a certain level of frustration about whether or not we have sufficient infrastructure for evacuations, but they actually don’t know scientifically if they have a problem or not,” he said.

When it came to projects meeting existing regulations, he was a proponent of making the way more open for developers.

“As a public agency, you’ve got to let the market do its job,” he said.

Gonzalez, also a proponent of housing growth, said that he supported the county maintaining its 300-year water rule, which requires all new developments to prove they would have 300 years of access to the amount of water demanded.

Water access has been a topic of discussion in his district, where recently the approximate 9,500-home Amara development failed its annexation bid with the city of Colorado Springs. The decision fell partly to concerns over water availability from the Arkansas Valley, which supplies Colorado Springs Utilities.

Neither commissioner commented on annexation decisions, which are the purview of municipalities.

Development

Gonzalez lauded several major infrastructure and development projects completed by the county during his time in office while also maintaining a healthy budget and reserves. In his district, he said the completion of El Paso County Public Health South helped fill some of the historical gap in services suffered by the southeast part of Colorado Springs and El Paso County.

Still, he said health care development was focused elsewhere.

“The big hospitals are being built on the north side,” he said.

Gonzalez also pointed to the completion of the Interstate 25 South Gap project as a success of his tenure. Built using funds from the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority sales tax dollars, Douglas County and the Colorado Department of Transportation, the widening project added an express lane and wider shoulders to an 18-mile stretch of the highway between Monument and Castle Rock.

Gonzalez said advocacy of the board and colleagues like former commissioner Mark Waller brought the project to taxpayers years sooner than expected.

VanderWerf said he was proud of the progress so far in lobbying for a federal courthouse in El Paso County, which is now slated for a requirement study. He said the addition of a federal courthouse outside of Denver would be a boon for defendants in southeast Colorado, as well as an economic development tool for Colorado Springs’ legal industry.

“Almost every state across the country has a federal courthouse in more than one city,” he said.

Political influence

VanderWerf and Gonzalez put work during their time on the board into elevating the county’s status and bargaining power at the state and federal levels. VanderWerf touted his Stepping Up campaign, which matched commissioners with lobbying causes on the state and federal level.

At the federal level, VanderWerf worked with multiple Pikes Peak-area partners to prevent Space Command from being moved from Colorado to Alabama, a decision made under the Trump administration and reversed under the Biden administration. With the return of Donald Trump as president, he said he was less worried about the issue cropping up again due to cost concerns.

“I’m not going to say it’s a zero risk of it happening.”

Both commissioners highlighted their work with other Colorado counties and municipalities in fighting what they both called “unfunded mandates” from the legislature.

“You’re seeing El Paso County being a leader statewide,” said Gonzalez.

Both commissioners said they had been affected by a lack of unity within the county and state Republican Party, which weathered a series of internal conflicts in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

“They’re caustic, they’re problematic, and they’re not successful,” said VanderWerf.

The county party may soon be involved in the inner workings of the El Paso Board of County Commissioners if plans by District 5 Commissioner Cami Bremer to resign go forward this year. In that case, the county party would be responsible for electing a replacement to serve out the rest of her term via a vacancy committee.

Gonzalez, who would vote in the vacancy process as precinct leader and a new resident of Bremer’s district after a redistricting process, said he hoped things would go smoothly.

“Whoever that is, I’m going to be supportive of that person, and I hope everyone else will, as well,” he said.

Bremer has not finalized plans for her resignation.