Krenning resigns early from Loveland City Council

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about the March 4 election.

LOVELAND — Facing a March 4 recall election, attorney Troy Krenning resigned his Ward 1 Loveland City Council seat at noon Tuesday, a month after saying he’d stay on the job until May.

According to Nicole Yost, the city’s director of communication and engagement, “a special election will still move forward in March as required by state law. Ballots are scheduled to be printed next week and distributed the following week.

“The first ballot question, related to recalling Councilor Krenning, is now irrelevant due to his resignation,” she wrote. “The second ballot question will remain, allowing voters to select a new city councilor to represent Ward 1.”

According to the Loveland City Charter, Yost said, “City Council may choose to appoint someone to fill the vacant Ward 1 seat until voters elect a new councilor in the March 4 election. This appointment would require a majority vote from the remaining eight seated councilors.”

Former Loveland City Council member Dave Clark and two other Ward 1 residents last June launched a successful petition drive in an attempt to recall Krenning. Krenning appealed the certification of the petition, but dropped his appeal in December, announcing at that time that he would resign his Ward 1 Loveland City Council seat, effective May 7.

Krenning decided otherwise this week.

“I want the new city manager and city clerk to come into their roles with a fresh start and not be bogged down with the Overcash/Clark antics of 2024,” Krenning wrote in a Facebook post, referring to a lawsuit filed against the city by former City Council members Clark, Don Overcash and six others against the current City Council over its actions surrounding the proposed Centerra South mixed-use development.

“It has been a struggle spending every Tuesday night wallowing around in the often mindless babble of City Council meetings,” Krenning wrote. “I value nothing in life more than time I have with my family. Sacrificing yet another Tuesday night away from them in exchange for hours of sniping with certain members of the council has become more of a load than I care to carry.

“I have been more effective as a lawyer fighting on the outside than a member of the current dysfunctional nine-member City Council trying to fight from the inside,” he wrote. “I have no plan to stop calling out injustice and incompetence that takes place inside city hall. I apologize to those who have encouraged me to fight. The fight will continue, just simply with less restraint than required of a City Council member.”

Reached by telephone minutes before his resignation was to take effect, Krenning doubled down on his comments.

“The council hasn’t been in session for three weeks, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed those last three weeks’ time with my family,” Krenning told BizWest. “Tonight’s meeting will be another meeting of zero accomplishments, wasted time and energy, and I finally just thought, ‘Who needs this?’

“I’m all for new faces on City Council, and I’ll be the first to get out of the way for them,” he said. “We’ve now got a new city manager and new city clerk, and I want to contribute to their success by not carrying over the old baggage of 2024.

“The problem now is that March 4 is structured as a recall election,” Krenning said. “There are people who may want to seek election to Ward 1 but who have not come out with a campaign because it would have been a contingent campaign, contingent on me being recalled. With me clearing the way, it’s a wide open race and others may see an opportunity they didn’t see previously.”

Krenning, the only attorney on the current council, has drawn continued fire from development and other business interests in Loveland since taking office. Two weeks after he was elected, Krenning led the drive to rescind the Centerra South agreements, a decision that subsequently was reversed after McWhinney sued the City Council alleging breach of contract. Krenning also led a push to investigate the four-member Loveland City Council minority over alleged open-meetings violations before the agreements were originally approved by the previous council.

Krenning’s departure leaves a four-four ideological split on the council. With a 4-4 vote constituting a rejection of a measure, the council will likely be at a stalemate over issues that involve the factional split until a ninth member is elected or appointed.

Councilor Andrea Samson planned to move at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting that the City Attorney’s office stop paying for legal services from Denver-based law firm Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie LLP to defend the city against lawsuits involving Centerra South “now that the legal cases … are no longer active or pending, and given budgetary concerns and constraints.”

Samson wrote that two lawsuits including the one filed by Clark and Overcash ‘have come to a point where both cases have now been dismissed three times, most recently in the attached orders granting dismissal. Further, the McWhinney case is now resolved. The city does not have the resources to continue to pay Lewis Roca and their top-tier services are no longer necessary.”

She wrote that the city in 2024 will have spent approximately $600,000 on fees to Lewis Roca and that the city attorney’s office’s professional-services budget is “just shy of $100,000 for 2025.”

However, two cases are not yet resolved.

Representing Clark, Overcash and the other six plaintiffs, Loveland-based attorney Russell Sinnett on Dec. 18 appealed the dismissal of that lawsuit to the Colorado Court of Appeals. Reached Tuesday, Sinnett said a hearing on that appeal has not yet been set.

The eight plaintiffs including former Loveland City Council members Clark, Overcash, Richard Ball, John Fogle and Chauncey Taylor sued the current city council, seeking the ouster of Krenning, Mayor Jacki Marsh, Mayor Pro Tem Jon Mallo, and council members Erin Black and Laura Light-Kovacs, alleging they violated the city charter on Nov. 21, 2023, by not calling for a public vote on their rescission of urban-renewal and financial agreements with McWhinney Real Estate Services Inc. approved in April and May 2023 over its proposed Centerra South development. 

The lawsuit said the public vote should have been called because Loveland voters in the same Nov. 7 election that propelled Krenning and other council members less amenable to McWhinney’s plans into office had also approved the citizen-initiated Ballot Issue 301, which gave voters the final say on urban-renewal plans.

In dismissing that lawsuit, Larimer District Judge Laurie Dean called their claim “moot” because, after McWhinney sued the council, alleging breach of contract, council members on Feb. 21 voted to reverse their vote and restore the Centerra South agreements. Sinnett challenged Dean’s “moot” contention in his appeal.

Another lawsuit with which the city must still contend was filed by barbershop owner Bill Jensen. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals last week reversed a Larimer District Court judge’s dismissal of his lawsuit against the city over the previous City Council’s vote in May 2023 to approve the urban-renewal agreement for Centerra South mixed-use development. The panel  remanded Jensen’s case back to the Larimer court, ordering that it be heard on its merits.

Jensen’s lawsuit, originally filed in December 2023, claimed that the council’s urban-renewal agreement with McWhinney was invalid based on violations of city and state open-meetings rules and improper notice.

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