Photo by Brendan Henry
Will Karspeck

By Brendan Henry
The Surveyor

Mayor Will Karspeck is running to serve a final term in Berthoud’s mayoral role. If he wins, he will have 10 years of mayoral experience under his belt by 2028. For the 2024 municipal election, Karspeck has just one opponent looking to take the seat of mayor—Justin Delap.

Karspeck grew up with parents involved in the Berthoud municipal scene, his mother being on the tree advisory committee for many years and his father serving as mayor for two terms. He says that conversations at the dinner table involved a lot of municipal talks, so naturally, this led him down a similar path.

After finding a home in Berthoud, Karspeck was elected as a trustee on the town board in 2016. Two years later, he was appointed as the interim mayor to cover the previous mayor’s remaining term. When 2020 rolled around, he would start his first official term which initially consisted of COVID-19 policy and communication.

On the topic of growth, Karspeck wants to keep the small town feel by promoting uniqueness and preserving the history of Berthoud. His focus is on creating good-looking commercial zones, promoting pedestrian activity and supporting open spaces.

“A big part of growth is, a big push we have is preserving that open space around us, looking at the areas we don’t want to grow into, and trying to preserve buffer zones between communities having some borders we can look at,” Karspeck said. “So creating certainty where there might not be for citizens. And that’s the point of a comprehensive plan is kind of a roadmap for all of us to look at, and I think we have a great comprehensive plan.”

Open spaces are something Karspeck would like to focus on if he is reelected, along with water preservation. With open spaces, he would like to find funds to maintain agricultural viability, and water preservation goes hand-in-hand with this. He wants to find a way to preserve water that is not only usable for agriculture, but for the municipality as well—an idea he says is fairly new statewide.

“The only example we have is actually just west of town, it’s a property that is in a water sharing agreement … (they share) the water three out of 10 years, they can use some of that water for municipal reasons. So it shares the water with the farmer, the farmer gets compensated when they can’t use all the water and they can fallow a portion of their field,” Karspeck said.

To attract local businesses, Karspeck says the current corporate competition is fierce and the process is not cheap with expensive loans and interest rates, but he would like to see expansion of Second Street going north towards the Northern Water building. He believes with this expansion into the Jackson property, more buildings can be built that would support smaller businesses. Also creating larger buildings than what the town currently has would expand capacity in Karspeck’s opinion, and giving the water professionals in town their own building in that area would be a positive contribution.

“That helps drive in the big infrastructure, and it makes it more affordable on the businesses to do the rest,” Karspeck said.

One of Karpeck’s biggest regrets while working in Berthoud’s municipality occurred while he was a trustee on the board. New to the position, Karspeck and all but one of his fellow board members voted to rezone the Hammond Farm development from commercial to residential. “A piece of me regrets that. You had things in the previous comprehensive plan that were just for expeditious reasons only,” Karspeck said.

Karspeck believes that he should be reelected because he feels that he is a good representation of the community. He grew up in Berthoud and plans to live in town for the rest of his life, so he seeks to represent both the younger and older people and uphold their values. Controlling growth to maintain the small-town feel but also improve the quality of life for residents is important to him, and he feels his connections to the committees and commissions in Berthoud have given him the experience and qualification for another term as mayor.