JOHNSTOWN – Mayor Troy Mellon announced this week he will run for mayor in the municipal election this coming April.
“I guess I feel like I still have some more to give,” he said during an interview Monday. “I want to close this out and leave something good for the next man or woman who takes this position.”
Mellon was elected as mayor in April 2000, and re-elected in April 2004. Previous to that, he served as a trustee on the Johnstown Town Board, having been elected in April 1998. He was elected to a Johnstown Town Council seat in April 2012, and re-elected in April 2014 and April 2018.
As mayor pro tem, he took over the gavel again this year after Gary Lebsack stepped down from the council when he moved out of the town.
Some of the issues Mellon said the Town Council – and by extension the mayor – will have to address in the coming years are the ongoing modernization of the town’s water and wastewater system and expansion of Colorado Highway 60 – possibly to four lanes. “CDOT has to approve it,” Mellon said, “but it will be Johnstown that has to pay for it.”
“My philosophy is there are things we do great, let’s do them better,” Mellon said. “We shouldn’t be resting on our laurels. Until Gary retired, I wasn’t planning on running again. But now that I’ve shifted into the mayor’s role again, this is something I think I can do well, and that I hope people think I do well.”
Mellon said he sees the role of mayor as a combination of leadership and mediator.
“The mayor provides the fundamental direction,” he said. “The other role is that of a mediator. Trying to find the correct middle ground with the different opinions on the council. Trying to craft a solution from sometimes very different points of view.”
Mellon said Johnstown isn’t your typical small town.
“We’re a unique small town,” he said. “We are a town of almost 18,000 people but you’d never know it by looking around because of the wide geographical expanse we have. That’s a challenge. You can’t get an attitude of this part of town or that part of town. We’re all one town. We have to work together.
“I hope the changes people see, sometimes they don’t like change, but I hope the changes they’ll see will be positive.”
Mellon was raised on the family farm north of Johnstown and graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1981. He received a Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship and attended the University of Kansas at Lawrence, Kansas, graduating with a BA in Astronomy in 1985 and was immediately commissioned as a regular officer in the U.S. Navy.
He is currently employed with Banner Health working at the North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley as a senior network engineer.
Mellon is married to the former Margaret (Margie) Rivera, of Bronx, New York. They have two adult sons, Charles (C.D.) and William.
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