Frank Lancaster: Town Trustee

Story by Barb Boyer Buck

This is the second in a series the Estes Valley Voice is publishing on the individuals who serve as Estes Park Town Trustees. The first featured Trustee Mark Igel.

“When you’re all done and you’re sitting on the back porch having a beer with friends, and they are talking about what I did during my term in office, what do I want them to say?” said Town of Estes Park Trustee Frank Lancaster in an interview on January 23.

He brings a wealth of professional experience to his perspectives and actions while serving on Town Board. For 18 years, he was the Larimer County manager, working with the staff and boards of each of the communities, including Estes Park. In 2012, he was hired as Town Administrator locally, retiring in 2019.

“I was approached by a couple people on the board to see if I would apply” to fill the seat vacated by the sudden death of Trustee Scott Webermeier in March 2023. Webermeier also served as mayor pro tem, a position currently held by Trustee Marie Cenac. 

“I had always said there’s no way I’d want to be an elected official,” said Lancaster. “I liked being on the staff side, the professional side. But they said they really wanted somebody who could hit the ground running.”  Lancaster was appointed to fill the seat held by Webermeier in May of 2023. In 2024, he ran for Town Board and was elected to a four-year term. He has no plans to run again in 2028.

“That’ll be five years on the board,” he said. That’s enough.”

Lancaster believes Town Board is a policy governing entity, not micro-managers for what Town staff were hired to do.  He is a senior advisor to the International City/County Management Association, working with boards all over the country. “It’s a mentorship role,” he said; one in which he has seen all kinds of boards, including dysfunctional ones, that get “caught in the weeds.”

“They would like to tell staff what to do, or tell them how to do it,” he said. “I don’t believe that’s appropriate; it doesn’t fit with policy governance (which is) based on a lot of research about what makes a high functioning board, which is what I want us to be.

 “Sometimes there’s this feeling that, well, if I’m elected, I must understand it all. … (but Trustees are) there to represent the people and set the policy in the overall direction, not the day-to-day stuff,” he said.

This subject was included in his book, “Navigating Rough Waters: Anecdotes, Quips, Quotes and Musings of a Local Government Manager. ” In it, he combines his past management experiences with that of working as a river rafting guide, which he did for a while after graduating from Colorado State University with a degree in horticulture.

Lancaster is a Colorado native and grew up in Wheatridge. After his time as a rafting guide, he worked as a Larimer County forester, running the weed district which led to a position in solid waste management for the county.

“In the mid-1980s, the landfill had problems,” he said. After 10 years in that position, Lancaster went on to get his MBA in public management before becoming the Larimer County Manager. Lancaster is also a CSU Master Gardener, providing advice about horticulture issues to local landowners and property managers.

Specific projects he would like to work on during his tenure as Trustee include moving the post office and revitalizing Cleve Street.

“There could be more quaint stores (along Cleve Street and in the space where the post office is now), more reasons to come up in the winter,” said Lancaster. He said the downtown corridor is a destination in itself, not just a way to get to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Another big priority is flood and fire mitigation; “the insurance issue is huge, he said. “what’s going to happen if we can’t get a gen