Eight years ago, Jeremy D. (JD) Krones moved to Grand Lake to run Colorado Headwaters Land Trust. Today, he is running for County Commissioner for Grand County.
In his mid-30s, Krones has lived in a variety of locations, from Israel to Flagstaff, almost always in rural areas.
“Doing what I do and living the life I want to live requires me to live out in the sticks,” he told the IJN last October for its “Difference Makers Under 40” edition.
Krones spoke to the IJN about his campaign for County Commissioner — why he is running and what his goals are.
IJN: What is the job of a county commissioner?
JD Krones: I see it in three parts. The first one, which is the one I think most people know about, is the power of the purse.
The county commission take in property tax dollars and other funds and then distribute them, mostly to government offices, but then through grants and other agreements.
Second is more on the policy side, the enacting and enforcement of zoning and code and policies. [County commissioners] don’t pass legislation, but they can make policy on the county level.
The third is representing the community. Towns have mayors and town councils; the county has the county commission. It is the most immediate public voice for the population.
County commissioners are members of advocacy groups like Colorado Counties Incorporated or Club 20, which is a Western Slope organization. If there’s a bill [in the legislature] in the commission would say something, maybe one of those organizations would say something. And then they’re elected community leaders.
Do the towns report to the county commissioner?
Not really. There are six incorporated towns in Grand County — Fraser, Winter Park, Granby, Grand Lake, Kremmling and Hot Sulphur. Their town councils control what happens in the town, and they’re relatively independent. However, the county and towns work together when it comes to growth areas.
Right now, the county is undergoing a renewal to our master plan. I think the last one was done in 2011. The county is saying, we want to see the growth area around the town of Grand Lake look like this.
The town can play ball or not. If it’s within their town limits, the county can’t tell the town what to do. Also, a lot of the sales tax still goes to the county.
I’ve been attending weekly commissioner meetings, and the towns rarely have any representative because most of the issues the commissioners talk about, at least on a weekly basis, are not relevant to the goings on of the towns.
It’s talking about unincorporated Grand County, zoning issues and enforcement.
A hot topic is the county sheriff’s department. Only Kremmling, Granby and Fraser-Winter Park have town-based police departments. That only happened after the Killdozer incident [in 2004, when a man destroyed 13 buildings in Granby using a modified bulldozer].
Towns realized, Oh, we need our own police departments. We can’t always rely on the sheriff.
Grand County is 150% the size of Rhode Island, geographically. Ten guys in cop cars can’t cover the entire territory. Someone has to pick up the slack.
Why did you run?
It’s always been in the back of my mind. I had a really influential civics government history teacher six times between sixth and 12th grades. She taught us the immense value of elected office, specifically local office, that it is an extension of community service.
There’s a common saying — you don’t run for local office to be something, you run to do something.
Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve dived in headfirst.
They don’t want to be a commissioner, but they want the commission to listen to them
Most of my community service, whether it’s for work [in land conservation], Rotary, as president of the library board, I lead the Jewish community, all of these are about community organizing and community engagement and understanding my neighbors.
When I envisioned that path as far down as it can go, the first big milestone is kind a county-level leadership position.
I will have been in Grand County eight years this fall; it’s been a busy eight years. I still meet people who are surprised that I’ve only been here eight years.
I’m not intending on walking into county hall and flipping the table over and changing everything. I’m also not running because I feel the commission has been doing a terrible job. It’s that they should have a diversity of voices on the commission, represent more disparate parts of the county.
Running as an independent, it’s to drive the conversation forward without being burdened by state politics and national politics and having the label after my name of Republican or Democrat.
We can talk about my views on the culture war or on large national issues. But I’m still going to want to end the conversation talking about local issues, because that’s really what matters.
I view local office as the smallest step outside the home, of being able to affect our lives.
What is Grand County?
Grand County is a massive county with 16,000 residents.
Starting in Winter Park, you have second and third and fourth vacation homes, you have the ski resort. There’s a lot of value in the recreation side of public land. There are still some land holdings, but a lot of it is public or developed.
You start moving north toward where I am in Grand Lake and it’s more what I would describe as homesteads. Larger parcels, but very few full ranches.
Then you get farther west towards Kremmling. It’s big ranches and hay farms. And my portfolio at the land trust covered the whole gamut.
In a day, I would visit our smallest conservation easement that was a third of an acre on the shore of Lake Granby. Our largest was a 1,000-acre ranch. In a day I could visit both of these groups of people, talking about wolves and water and all these touchy topics.
The library district is unique because it covers the entire county. We have five libraries, Fraser Valley, Granby, Grand Lake, Hot Sulphur and Kremmling, all under the same [administrative] roof.
We’re building a new library in Kremmling. We’re telling the architect, you can’t just build a library. It can’t look like it belongs anywhere else in the county. This has to be a library for Kremmling.
Tell us about your Jewish community leadership.
In a chavurah like mine, there is no through line besides the fact that most of us are Jews.
When I lein (read Torah) and when I give a dvar, I have to balance that out.
The way I’ve done that is thinking, I’m just going to speak my truth. Whether that’s at the land trust or at the library or at the Jewish community or in Rotary, I’m going to be as frank and honest as I can be.
If I start pandering to one group or the other, they will know that I’m pandering.
What I found is, I’m just going to be me and people can take it or leave it.
By and large they take it because I’m honest and they appreciate that.
Some Friday nights I have to bail if my work goes long. I have three or four members who are capable and interested in leading full services.
I’ve never attended because they only lead when I’m not there, but I’ve heard great things. I’ll hear from other people saying when Shira led, that was amazing, that was a different perspective. She’s younger. She’s from Denver. She’s different.
Or when Ken leads, he’s older, he’s a little more conservative. It’s all of these different things. It allows everybody to just be themselves.
What are your main foci?
My priority, mainly because it’s my background, is land use. That encompasses development and infrastructure, open spaces and agriculture. So it’s how we approach our open spaces, how we approach development.
It has to be responsible. I understand that we can’t stop development. I just built a house. I chose not to leave the county after the [East Troublesome] fire.
So driving those conversations forward about what do we value.
It’s where I find the most common ground, whether you’re a rancher or a big public lands advocate and you like seeing wolves on the ground. The common ground is the land itself. It’s seeing it open, whether there’s cattle on it or wildlife.
My second focus, which is related to that, which is infrastructure. Roads, energy, internet, water — all of the things that make our society function. Some of it is going really well [such as] our roads department.
With others, I feel we’ve stuck to the status quo for too long. Why don’t we entertain different ideas about how to improve our infrastructure and make it more resilient in the face of wildfires and drought. When more people move up here, there’s going to be less water to go around. There will be more strains on our energy grid.
As I’m talking to people, by and large, those are the issues [that come up]: Why is this development happening? What was the code that was followed? How is our infrastructure looking? Why hasn’t my road been graded in three years?
As I’m talking to more people, door knocking, going to events like the county fair, people also just want to be heard.
They don’t want to be a commissioner, but they want the commission to listen to them. I think there’s been this off balance for many years, since before I came here, where the commission just kind of stuck to the status quo. They didn’t rock the boat. They just kind of move forward.
Some people are saying, Let’s rock the boat a little bit. Let’s see what happens.
Are people are attracted by the fact that you’re an independent?
My priority is representing the voters of Grand County, not advancing a larger platform. The issues we have are practical, not partisan, and party labels are distractions. There is more common ground between us if we actually sit down across the table from one another and not just look at the label itself.
I’m not running as an independent because I’m politically homeless. It’s that at a local level, the parties don’t really have a role.
© IJN 2026
 Krones moved to Grand Lake to run Colorado Headwaters Land Trust. Today, he is running for County Commissioner for Grand County.){kind=link}