Retired attorney. Co-chair of the Avon Planning and Zoning Commission. Candidate for Avon Town Council.
ProfessionRetired attorney with 42 years of legal experience
PracticeContract and commercial litigation, mediation, and jury trials
Community serviceCo-Chair, Avon Planning and Zoning Commission; Member, Town of Avon Ad Hoc Finance Committee; Advisory Board Member, Eagle Valley Community Foundation; Member, Board of Directors, Eagle River Coalition; Volunteer, CDOT Adopt-A-Highway for Route 6
Running forAvon Town Council, election of Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Education and legal career
I attended local parochial schools in St. Louis and graduated from De Smet Jesuit High School in 1973. I earned a Bachelor of Science in political science from the University of Missouri–Columbia in 1977, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. I received my law degree from Saint Louis University School of Law in 1980.
From 1979 to 1980, I served as an intern to the Honorable James A. Pudlowski of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, and then as his law clerk from 1980 to 1981. I entered private practice in 1981 with Epton, Mullin, Segal and Druth. In 1993, I became a founding member and senior partner of Sudekum, Rosenberg and Cassidy, Chtd., now known as Sudekum, Cassidy & Shulruff, Chtd.
Forty-two years of reading the fine print
I spent my career as an attorney, most of it in contract and commercial disputes. I drafted and dissected agreements, tried cases in front of juries, and mediated conflicts where both sides had good arguments and real money at stake. That work teaches a specific discipline: read everything, separate what is proven from what is asserted, and be honest about the weakest part of your own position.
It also teaches you what happens when the details are wrong. Language nobody re-read, an assumption nobody tested, a deadline nobody tracked — those are the things that turn a reasonable plan into an expensive problem. Municipal decisions carry the same risk, and the public pays for it.
Family
My wife, Meg, and I have three children and two grandchildren. Our daughter Lauren and her husband, David Painter, live in Geneva, Switzerland, with our grandchildren, William and Sheridan. Our son Bobby and his wife, Demi Skipper, live in Amsterdam. Our son Johnny and his wife, Erica Gardner, live in Longmont.
The Sudekum family in New York City at the wedding of our niece Danielle Schwartz and James Marcus.The Sudekum family enjoying dinner. Missing: Johnny and Erica.
Public service in Avon
I serve as a co-chair of the Avon Planning and Zoning Commission. It is unglamorous, detailed work: land-use applications, design review, code standards, and public hearings where neighbors show up because a decision affects the street they live on. I read the staff reports and the applications, ask questions in the open, and explain my vote on the record.
That role has given me a working knowledge of how Avon’s code, its review process, and its housing and development goals actually interact — not in theory, but in the specific applications that come across the dais.
I also give time to local nonprofit and community work. It is the fastest way to learn what residents, workers, and small business owners are actually dealing with, which is not always what shows up in a staff memo.
How I make decisions
I listen carefully, study the facts, and ask hard questions before I take a position — and once I take one, I explain it. I would rather change my mind in public because the evidence moved than defend a decision I can no longer justify. I am interested in practical outcomes: did this project deliver what we said it would, at the cost we said it would, for the people we said it would serve?
I am not running to fight with anyone. Council work takes a majority, and a majority takes colleagues who trust that you argued in good faith. I can disagree with someone at 6 p.m. and work with them at 9 a.m.
Why the Town Council, and why now
Avon is making decisions in the next four years that will be difficult to unwind: how much housing gets built and who it serves, how public money is committed to long-lived projects, how the town core functions, and how we handle growth in a valley with limited room. Those decisions reward preparation, patience, and candor. That is the contribution I can make.
If you want to know where I stand on something specific, ask me directly — call or text 312-925-2831.
Priorities
Four priorities, and the reasoning behind them.
Short enough to remember, specific enough to be held to. Each one is about outcomes Avon can actually measure.
01
Affordable housing
Measure results. Make feasible housing possible. Keep affordability durable.
Avon already invests significantly in community housing — money, land, and staff time. The question in front of the next Council is not whether to care about housing. It is whether the tools we are using are producing the homes we intended, for the people we intended, at a cost we can defend.
I would focus on four things:
Measure what our investments deliver. How many homes, at what price points, for which households, at what public cost per home — reported plainly and updated over time.
Make feasible housing easier to create. Look honestly at whether our standards, review steps, and requirements add up to projects that can actually be financed and built, and adjust the ones that do not earn their cost.
Protect long-term affordability. Homes the public helped create should stay attainable through the next sale and the one after that. That means paying attention to how restrictions are written, monitored, and enforced.
Apply public resources carefully. Public participation in a housing project should be sized to the gap it is closing, with the assumptions written down and revisited.
I have read a lot of these applications from the Planning and Zoning dais. The most useful thing a Council member can bring to housing is not enthusiasm — it is follow-through.
Avon’s budget is not abstract. It is a set of commitments — some of them for decades — funded by people who work here, own here, and visit here. Careful stewardship is not the same as saying no to everything. It means knowing what each commitment is expected to cost and deliver, and checking later whether it did.
Show the assumptions. Every significant decision rests on projections. Those projections should be stated in public, in language a resident can follow, along with what happens if they are wrong.
Do the diligence project by project. Scope, contingency, operating cost after completion, and who carries the risk if conditions change. This is contract work, and I have spent a career doing it.
Report results, not just intentions. A short, consistent look back at major projects and programs — what we spent, what we got, what we would do differently.
Respect the long view. Maintenance, reserves, and replacement costs are less exciting than new projects and more important to the town’s stability.
None of this presumes anything is being handled badly. It is simply the standard I would want applied to my own money, and it is the standard I would apply to the town’s.
03
Livable community
Getting around safely. Growing thoughtfully. Caring for the setting.
Livability is the sum of a lot of ordinary decisions: whether you can walk your kid somewhere without crossing traffic, whether the town core works on a busy weekend, whether a new building fits the street it sits on, whether the river and the open space around us stay healthy.
Safe walking and biking connections. Continuous, well-lit routes between where people live and where they actually need to go, with the gaps and crossings prioritized honestly.
Thoughtful growth and land-use decisions. Predictable, well-reasoned review that respects the code, the neighbors, and the applicant’s time.
A town core that functions. Parking, circulation, transit, and public space that work together on ordinary days and on the busiest ones.
Stewardship of the natural setting. Water, wildlife habitat, trails, and open space are part of what makes Avon a place people want to stay — and they are easier to protect than to restore.
These are practical questions with practical answers, and most of them get decided in the details.
04
End Flock cameras
Respect privacy. Honor the Town’s obligations. Avoid unnecessary taxpayer costs.
I have serious concerns about the Flock license-plate reader system, particularly the potential for information collected in Avon to be accessed or misused by law-enforcement agencies outside the Avon Police Department. My concern is not with the professionalism of our police department. It is with the reach and use of a broader information-sharing system.
Review the contracts and safeguards. The Council should understand who can access the information, how it may be used, how long it is retained, and what protections are enforceable.
End the Flock contracts. I support terminating Avon’s Flock license-plate reader contracts.
Evaluate different systems separately. Flock license-plate readers and Dacra speed-enforcement cameras serve different purposes and should not be treated as one and the same.
Listen to Avon’s voters. Residents should understand those differences and have the final say on automated enforcement systems used in town.
Public safety and personal privacy are both legitimate concerns. The Town should address them with clear facts, transparent safeguards, and accountable decisions rather than treating every camera system as identical.
How I’ll approach the work
Evidence, accountability, and colleagues.
Evidence before position
Read the packet, check the numbers, and ask staff the uncomfortable question early rather than late.
Accountability after the vote
Set an expectation when a decision is made, then come back and compare it to what actually happened.
Collaboration with the Council
Nothing passes alone. Build decisions that the Council can defend for the right reasons.
Plain-language explanation
If a decision cannot be explained to a neighbor in two minutes, it has not been thought through yet.
Voter information
How voting works in Avon
Every detail below links to an official source. The Town of Avon and Eagle County run the election — not this campaign — so confirm dates and locations with them.
Avon Town Council members are elected at large, and the candidates receiving the highest number of votes fill the open seats (Town of Avon). Council members serve four-year terms and may serve two consecutive terms (Avon Town Council).
On the ballot, Rick is Lucky No. 7!
Registering and checking your status
Registration, ballots, vote centers, and counting for Avon’s coordinated election are administered by the Eagle County Clerk and Recorder’s elections office. You can register, check your registration, and confirm your mailing address at Colorado’s official voter portal, GoVoteColorado.gov.
Colorado offers same-day registration at vote centers; Eagle County publishes the current deadlines that apply to receiving a ballot by mail. Because the county posts 2026 dates as they are set, please confirm them on the county’s general election page rather than relying on a campaign website.
Returning your ballot in Avon
Avon’s 24-hour ballot drop box is located outside Avon Town Hall at 100 Mikaela Way, Avon, CO, and is open from mid-October through 7 p.m. on Election Day (Town of Avon). Eagle County’s central election operations are located at the Eagle County Commons, 410 Miller Ranch Road in Edwards (Town of Avon). Ballots must be received by the county by the Election Day deadline — postmarks do not count — so confirm return options and vote center hours with Eagle County Elections.
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