What unfolded during the uncertified transition

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

Actions taken before the board was sworn in

Florissant’s May 2, 2023 election put five new people on the fire district board, and the change was obvious right away. The newcomers had run together as a coordinated slate. Within weeks, their actions toward Fire Chief Erik Holt sparked a sequence of events that ended with his firing, a criminal investigation left on the floor—and a lawsuit now sitting before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

This is what happened after the election—most of which voters never saw. 

For details on the election-day conduct that triggered Holt’s report to prosecutors, see our companion investigation.

A board acting before it was seated

The election hadn’t been certified yet because a civil challenge was still moving through Teller County District Court, which pushed back the meeting to swear in the new board. Even so, the presumed winners started acting as if they were already in charge. 

They contacted Holt for internal access, treated themselves as seated directors and started directing district business while the transition was still unresolved.

Board member Starla Thompson’s election challenge didn’t fail because of its claims. The court dismissed it on June 27, 2023, when the required $5,000 bond wasn’t posted. 

Around the same time, the district’s attorney, Linda Glesne, stepped back from representing the board after reporting voter complaints to the District Attorney’s Office and identifying a conflict of interest.

The district was in limbo—certification on hold, legal counsel stepping out and a new slate acting as if it had already taken office.

A sudden freeze

On May 26, just weeks after the election, new director Paul Del Toro notified Holt that the district’s bank accounts had been frozen. The accounts were now under the control of the incoming board, and Del Toro told Holt the bank would contact him for approval on any transaction, even though Holt wasn’t authorized to move district funds under policy.

The freeze landed at the exact moment when the district’s liability insurance renewal was due. Rhodes Risk Advisors had already sent the renewal packet and invoice, along with warnings about the June 1 deadline. Holt couldn’t make the payment himself. Under district policy he wasn’t authorized to sign checks of that size or make unilateral financial decisions. He had no way to override the freeze.

What the board’s later paperwork didn’t mention was that Holt had already handed the renewal materials directly to Del Toro. On May 30, Holt met him at the station, provided the printed invoice and the uninsured-motorist form and told him the payment had to be submitted by June 1. Del Toro signed the form that same day.

With the accounts frozen and Holt unable to authorize large payments, the deadline passed without the renewal being submitted.

Pressure on the inside

While the renewal deadline approached, the board-elect was also pushing Holt for access to the district’s systems. Emails from that period show requests for passwords, keys and control of the department’s internal tools even as the outgoing board and district counsel were still in place. 

Holt kept tracking the insurance renewal in the middle of this, but with the freeze in effect and no authority to move the funds, he had no way to submit the payment.

The six-day lapse

On June 6, Rhodes Risk Advisors notified Holt that the policy had lapsed because the renewal payment had not posted. That morning, FFPD temporarily paused operations and relied on mutual aid until coverage could be restored. Del Toro wired the payment later that day, and the carrier reinstated coverage retroactive to June 1.

Even so, the lapse became the stated grounds for firing Holt.

A ready-made dossier

When Holt was dismissed on June 22, he was handed an 89-page binder titled “Investigation re Non-Payment of District Insurance – May/June 2023.” The document, authored by new board members Judy Dunn and Allen Schultz, laid out a narrative that blamed Holt for the lapse and accused him of failing to protect the district’s financial and operational integrity.

What the packet didn’t include were the details Holt had already provided to the DA—the notification Del Toro sent freezing the accounts, the May 30 meeting where Holt delivered the invoice and forms, the warnings from Rhodes Risk Advisors and the June 1 deadline that passed while the accounts remained locked.

Holt delivered the entire binder to the DA’s office on June 26. It was logged into the active criminal investigation.

A warning the night before

On June 21, Holt called DA Investigator David Guest and said he believed the board was preparing to fire him because he had reported the election-day irregularities. Guest documented the concern—included in legal filings, and encouraged Holt to update him the next day.

Holt was fired the following afternoon.

A clean line on paper, a different picture in the files

The board’s public explanation pointed to the insurance lapse as the reason for his dismissal. In the record, the timeline tells a different story.

Del Toro froze the accounts, then received the signed forms and invoice. The renewal deadline passed while the account was still locked. Coverage was restored the same day the lapse was discovered. And Holt was fired one day after telling the DA he believed retaliation was underway.

None of that appeared in the board’s internal “investigation” packet.

The investigation that didn’t change the outcome

As the district drama unfolded, the DA’s office continued building its election case. Senior Investigator Clint Kramer wrote that Holt’s surveillance videos showed multiple violations of Colorado Rule 8. Investigator David Guest expanded the record by isolating the audio, interviewing witnesses, logging voter complaints and measuring the distances that placed the watchers well inside the 100-foot boundary.

On July 5, Guest routed the full case to Chief Deputy District Attorney Andy Vaughan for charging review.

On August 1, Vaughan closed the case as “No File.”

None of the new board’s actions toward Holt changed the DA’s decision. And none of the DA’s findings changed the board’s.

What remains unresolved

Holt filed a federal lawsuit and later appealed to the Tenth Circuit. He says the sequence of actions taken by the new board—the account freeze, the timing of the insurance deadline, the demands for internal access and the use of the lapse as cause—formed a retaliation campaign triggered by his report to prosecutors.

The record shows he shared every step of it with the DA.

What comes next now depends on whether Colorado is willing to revisit what happened during that unsettled transition and examine the decisions made along the way.