Atis Jurka Wants Palmer Lake Residents Heard First. Now He Is Running for Mayor.

A retired Army officer who has spent two years on Palmer Lake’s board, and cast its lone dissent on some of its biggest decisions, is asking voters to make him mayor. Atis Jurka’s campaign rests on the idea that residents should be heard before decisions are made and able to see how their money is spent. He pairs it with a plan to pay for a second town well, a fresh look at the town’s stormwater problems and a preference for small business over new housing, and he is candid that the costs are large and the funding uncertain. The mayor elected in November takes office in January, as the town writes its 2027 budget and weighs how to strengthen its finances.

Palmer Lake’s board of trustees voted 5–1 in June 2025 to appoint Dennis Stern mayor after Glant Havenar resigned. The board took no public comment on the choice. The one vote against came from Atis Jurka, who argued that the town should not fill its top office with a trustee then facing recall. “Is it better to appoint someone who is not under a cloud?” he asked, as Colorado Public Radio reported. Two weeks earlier he had been the only trustee to vote against letting the Buc-ee’s annexation request go forward.

He is making the same argument about the same office now. Stern is not seeking re-election as mayor; he is running for trustee. Jurka has two years left on his trustee seat and keeps it if he loses. He is running, he says, because he saw only one other candidate stepping forward and disagrees with him about what the town needs. “I think the people should have a choice,” he said.

The candidate

Jurka is a first-generation American whose Latvian parents came to the United States as refugees after the Second World War. He attended West Point and, by his campaign’s account, served more than 12 years on active duty in the Army and later in the Reserve, leaving as a major. He spent the rest of his working life in cable and telecommunications.

He has lived in Palmer Lake for more than 19 years. He and his wife, Nancy, started a local business. Nancy Godbout Jurka is the author of children’s books about Palmer Lake and its famous star; his campaign says the couple created two of them together, Bright Star of Palmer Lake and Magic on the Mountain. His campaign lists him as a member of the American Legion and a former president of the Palmer Lake Economic Development Group. He is also Palmer Lake’s member of the Commission on Aging of the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, in a term that runs to January 2029.

He came to town government as an engaged resident. He traces the start of his involvement to joining a citizens’ group concerned about how the fire department’s 10-mill levy was spent, and then to Elephant Rock, the 28-acre former church camp gifted to the town. He served on two advisory committees formed to decide what to do with it, after several interested parties and the town’s leadership could not reach an agreement. The second committee, he says, weighed more than 100 ideas from residents and narrowed them to several workable options; it presented them to the Board of Trustees, which did not act on them. He also argued for preserving the property’s six cabins. Around the same time, when a Dollar General store was proposed downtown, he asked the board to write parts of the newly adopted master plan into ordinance, so that its guidance on the town’s character could be enforced rather than merely consulted. The idea did not advance then; it is back in his platform now. In summer 2024 he ran for trustee and finished third of five for three seats, alongside Tim Caves and Amy Hutson. He has served since December 2024. Of the trustees elected at a regular election, he is the only one still in the seat he won.

Water

The town declared a Stage 1 water emergency on August 13th. Outdoor watering is limited to one hour a week, by bucket, and a single Arapahoe aquifer well has been carrying the town since the end of June. His website lists “renewable water security” among his priorities, promising to pursue renewable water rights, infrastructure upgrades and regional partnerships, and in the interview water drew his longest answer.

He started with the constraint. Monument Creek and the reservoirs hold some water, but not enough flow to treat, and downstream rights limit what the town may take. His answer to that is a second well. He puts its cost at $2 million to $4 million and would want it within about five years. The town’s engineering consultant, GMS, put the cost of the planned backup well, known as Well A-1, at about $4.3 million in a 2023 report, just above his range; the town had expected to pay for it with loans or bonds repaid through water bills. The water fund generally runs a surplus, he said, so the town should begin setting money aside now rather than impose the whole cost at once through rates. The board can raise rates, he noted, but a large increase would meet resistance.

He would pair the well with a study of whether supply will cover demand five years out, including new annexation requests now before the town. He expects existing wells to need re-drilling eventually as the aquifer falls. Regional pipelines, he said, were never affordable at Palmer Lake’s scale. He cited a comparison made by Town Administrator Patrick Davidson: a dollar a month on Denver’s rates raises about $14 million a year, while a dollar a month on Palmer Lake’s raises about $12,000.

The money

On September 24th Davidson told trustees that at current spending the town has “about two years before you run out of money,” and called it “a revenue issue, not an expense issue.” Jurka half agrees, and says Davidson still owes him the data behind the estimate.

He has studied the revenue side closely. Sales tax is limited. Retail marijuana was once sold to the town as a rescue, and he says, citing its two dispensary owners, that their sales fell sharply after Colorado Springs allowed retail sales. Property tax is flat. And he does not think new subdivisions would help. “Whatever you gain in property tax, you shell out on expenses,” he said of new housing. At best, in his view, it breaks even, and the gain goes to the developer.

His preference is business rather than housing. He wants infill on the vacant lots already scattered through town, growth in the industrial area, and a tourism push of the kind his economic-development group once ran, when it placed a Palmer Lake brochure in all eight state welcome centers. He also wants the town to bring the county-owned land around the lake inside its boundary, including the parking lot and restroom. He says that would let Palmer Lake charge for parking and earn revenue from food trucks and other services on the added land. The point of all of it, for him, is to turn visitors into customers, and possibly into residents and business owners. People come to Palmer Lake for the lake, he said, more than for the restaurants, and the town’s small businesses depend on catching them on the way through. He has talked with business owners about what a Buc-ee’s at County Line Road would mean for them, and the concern is that visitors would buy their food at the interstate, eat it at the lake and leave without spending anything in town. “People are going to go to Buc-ee’s, get their food, bring it to the lake, and then leave,” he said. “They’re not going to visit O’Malley’s.” He named others that depend on the same traffic: 105 Social House, Rock House Ice Cream Candy and More and Sundance Pit BBQ. The brochures, the lakefront and the downtown lots are, in his telling, parts of one plan: give people a reason to come, and a reason to stay for a meal.

On stormwater he is still refining his numbers, and says so. The town’s drainage problems come, in his account, from decades of building on the mountainside without planning for runoff. The worst spots are near the elementary school and in the subdivision north along Highway 105. He would start with equipment to keep culverts clear, revisit the town’s existing study, commission a new one to map the drainage basins, and look for grant money. He put the cost at perhaps $2 million for a stopgap and $8 million “to do it right,” and said the town would have to prioritize. He is weighing the details rather than assuming them: gravel roads wash into culverts and clog them, he noted, while paved roads send water downhill faster, and he wants the study to say which approach suits which part of town.

His flyer adds one proposal he did not raise in the interview: a joint commission of residents and trustees to study rising living costs and look for ways to strengthen the town’s workforce and volunteer ranks. Palmer Lake depends on both, from a fire department that counts volunteers on its crews to a town staff that has turned over repeatedly in the past two years. He adds a third aim: making sure the town’s businesses can find the staff they need.

The fire department

The largest line in the general fund is fire and emergency services, and the question in front of the town is whether to fold its department into the Monument Fire District. Joining would add 8.4 mills to Palmer Lake tax bills and requires voter approval in a special election, which the board is aiming at March 2027.

Jurka has not made up his mind, and sets out both columns. In favor: a better insurance rating, the district’s ambulances, newer equipment and fuller crews. He says the town now sends “two and a half” firefighters to a call, a volunteer counting as half. That squares with the department’s own report of two full-time firefighters and a volunteer on a typical day. Against: the district’s larger trucks may not fit the narrow roads of the Glen; volunteers may lose their firefighting roles; and residents want the station to stay in town. It would work, he said, if the station remains a community fixture inside Palmer Lake, if the district keeps up the traditions the department carries, including the Palmer Lake Star, and if ambulance response times hold. “It’s not a done deal,” he said.

His sympathy for the merger comes from the equipment. The town’s firehouse was never designed as one, he said, and its main engine is about 30 years old; he has asked the chief more than once how long the town can keep finding parts for it. The district, he noted, has bought new engines and runs its own ambulances. Three sites have been discussed for a new station: the Elephant Rock property, the current site together with land behind it owned by the firefighters’ association, and a parcel across Highway 105. He expects residents to favor keeping it where it is. Whatever the answer, he wants the terms agreed before anything goes to voters, and an honest case made to them. Taking fire off the town’s books would help the budget, as Davidson has said, and Jurka agrees; but it would not by itself solve the revenue problem.

He would keep the Elephant Rock property from being developed as a residential subdivision. It already has extensive trails, and the EcoSpa there is about to open, which he says will bring the town revenue and an event center residents can use. He would look to lease the old main lodge to a tenant that produces revenue, such as a restaurant or brewpub using its commercial kitchen, a day care, or a community or senior center, which the town lacks. One part of the property is set aside for a future public-safety building, which is among the sites the fire district has considered for a new station.

Growth

Jurka was the only trustee to vote against Buc-ee’s annexation eligibility in May 2025, and he remains skeptical of annexation generally, especially the long “flagpole” strips that connect a distant parcel to a town. Asked whether the County Line corridor was the only room Palmer Lake had to grow, as Kent Hutson has argued, he disagreed. He pointed to vacant lots downtown and to land along Highway 105 toward Red Rocks. He also doubts residents along County Line Road want to join the town. “More residential housing is not going to benefit us,” he said. He supports the voter-approved rule that annexations go to a public vote.

He thinks about the town’s shape as much as its size. The Highway 105 sidewalk design now being drawn up revives an idea he raised years ago, he said, and he wants safe pedestrian crossings in the final plan. But his larger concern is the southern end of town, where residents of the mobile-home parks and newer homes on private wells, he said, feel forgotten, with little connection to downtown. Connecting them, by footpath or by water line, is expensive. He wants the town at least to be able to answer the question he hears from those residents: what they receive for their tax dollars.

Open government

The thread running through Jurka’s campaign is that Palmer Lake’s residents should be heard before decisions are made and should be able to see what their government is doing. His flyer promises “leadership that listens” and says local government belongs to the people who live here, “not to closed-door meetings, silenced public comments, or rushed agendas.” In practice that means three things to him.

The first is the town’s legal bills. Palmer Lake’s lawyers once sent itemized invoices, he says. During the investigation of Trustee Roger Moseley those invoices were cut to a single line and then redacted, and he is not convinced everything blacked out concerned the investigation. What the public sees now is the first page of the firm’s statement. In the September 24th packet, the town attorney’s August bill appears as a one-page summary by matter, general and real estate, headed “detailed statement follows”; the detailed pages are not in the packet. Monument, next door, publishes its attorney’s bill the same way, as a statement broken out by matter. On September 10th Jurka asked the board for a formal discussion of more detailed attorney invoices, and on September 24th the town attorney agreed to give trustees itemized bills privately. Jurka wants the details available, so that residents can see what the town is paying for. The second is executive sessions, which his campaign promises to “minimize.” He would reserve them for contract negotiations, the administrator’s employment and annexation agreements, and would hold the board to the topic it announced. Frequent closed sessions breed suspicion, he said, and the agenda should state plainly what each one is for; there have been notices whose purpose was unclear even to him.

The third is the agenda. Under the current policy, a trustee who wants an urgent item added between meetings needs a second trustee’s support, delivered to the clerk by 9 a.m. on the Wednesday deadline; the agenda itself is set by the mayor, the mayor pro tem, the town attorney and the town administrator. Staff told Jurka on September 24th that his written request for an item on bears and trash had not met that standard. As mayor he would let any trustee place an item by a set deadline, with staff raising any objection a few days before the meeting so the two sides could work it out. “Flat out ignore is not how I would handle it,” he said.

The race

Palmer Lake’s mayor serves two years. Five of the six trustee seats are also on the November 3rd ballot, and ballots go to voters on October 5th. If Jurka wins, his trustee seat becomes vacant and the board fills it by appointment until 2028. If he loses, he stays on the board.

He is paying for his own campaign so far: yard signs, banners, flyers and a website. He formed a campaign committee so that residents who want to contribute can, and says he will not accept donations from developers.

The two candidates run on similar vocabulary. Hutson campaigns on “Honesty, Civility, Leadership”; Jurka’s flyer promises to “lead all Board of Trustee meetings with decorum, fairness, order and most of all, trustworthiness,” and says that “disagreements are natural, but disrespect and secrecy have no place in Town Hall.” Their records differ. Hutson chaired the committee that wrote the 2022 master plan and proposes to govern by convening, putting questions to workshops and commissions. Jurka has cast the lone no on some of the board’s most consequential decisions, including Stern’s appointment and the Buc-ee’s eligibility vote, and describes those votes as a matter of principle. On routine business he votes with his colleagues: in the Independent’s BoardWatch record he was in the majority on 83 of 88 recorded votes. He quotes the West Point Cadet Prayer’s line about choosing “the harder right instead of the easier wrong.” “People know what I stand for,” he said. “I don’t waffle.”

What the winner inherits

The mayor elected in November takes office in January to a budget already written. Department heads were due to present to the board on September 30th, a draft budget is due October 15th, and adoption is expected December 10th. Whoever wins inherits Davidson’s two-year warning, a water system running on one well, a fire-merger vote that needs a campaign behind it, and a board on which the mayor’s chair and at least one trustee seat will change hands.

Asked what would be different in two years, Jurka did not promise a transformation. He wants long-term plans in place for water, fire and the town’s finances, so that Palmer Lake does not, in his words, go bankrupt, and a master plan with “some teeth to it,” written into code rather than left as guidance. There is no silver bullet, he said; the town has been promised one before, first in retail marijuana and then in Buc-ee’s. His case to voters is that a town which listens to its residents and shows them its books will make better decisions on the hard questions. Those questions are waiting: a well that costs millions, a stormwater bill he estimates at up to $8 million, and a revenue problem that neither candidate has yet solved. None of it, Jurka says, will happen overnight; it will take a long-term strategy and a plan.

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: Kent Hutson Chaired Palmer Lake’s Master Plan. Now He Is Running for Mayor. — profile of the other candidate, built the same way · Palmer Lake’s November Ballot Is Set — the certified ballot and the staggered-term rule · Palmer Lake Sets Bear Workshop as Administrator Warns of Two-Year Cash Runway — the agenda dispute, the invoice decision and Davidson’s warning · Bears, Trash and a Town Hall — Jurka’s written agenda requests · Palmer Lake Could Vote in 2027 on Dissolving Its Fire Department — the merger terms and staffing figures · In Palmer Lake, Outdoor Watering Is Now One Hour a Week, by Bucket — the water emergency · Palmer Lake Candidate Forum Set for Saturday — the forum Jurka helped organize.

Campaign: Atis Jurka for Mayor of Palmer Lake — the “Meet Atis Jurka” and “Vision” pages, read September 30 and October 1, 2026 · two-sided campaign flyer, supplied by the candidate.

Other reporting: Colorado Public Radio, June 12, 2025, on Stern’s appointment and Jurka’s dissent · The Gazette, November 5, 2024, on the trustee election · The Gazette, September 21, 2026, on the candidate forum.

Methodology

Atis Jurka was interviewed in person at his home on the afternoon of September 30th, 2026, in two recorded sessions of about an hour and about 40 minutes. Quotations come from those recordings, worked from a machine-generated transcript. Transcripts of this kind misrender names and garble phrases, and the Independent’s reporting process uses AI tools that can make mistakes. Every quotation was checked against the audio, and where his spoken answer was hard to follow, the passage is paraphrased rather than quoted. If we have got something wrong we will correct it, via the Independent’s corrections page.

His military service, career, residence and community roles are his own account, from the interview, his campaign website and his flyer. They have not been confirmed with the Army or his former employers; his Commission on Aging seat is taken from the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments’ published roster. His votes are taken from contemporaneous reporting and this newspaper’s own coverage of the board. His estimates of the cost of a new well and of stormwater work are his and are attributed to him throughout. The $4,297,027 estimate for the backup well, Well A-1, is from the town’s Preliminary Engineering Report for Water System Improvements, prepared by GMS in 2022 with a 2023 addendum, as cited in a summary the town published on July 25, 2025, which this newspaper read in full. His account of the dispensaries’ sales comes from conversations he described with their owners and is attributed accordingly.

The account of the agenda policy, the invoice decision and Davidson’s budget warning is from this newspaper’s report of the September 24th meeting, worked from the meeting recording.