Vail Residents Shift to Negative View of Town's Direction

Aspen —Vail is losing its faith in itself.

For the first time, a slight majority of residents say the town is on the wrong track. The 2026 Town of Vail Community Survey flipped a long-standing trend of optimism.

The numbers don’t lie. 41% of respondents chose “wrong track.” Only 39% said things are going in the right direction. Another 20% stayed neutral, saying they didn’t know.

This is a sharp departure from recent history. In 2024, 48% said “right direction” versus 32% for “wrong.” In 2022, it was 44% to 37%. The positivity held steady. Now, it’s broken.

The survey came out of a rough winter and ongoing redevelopment debates. Vail communications director Kris Widlak told the Town Council on Tuesday that the results reflect current anxieties.

“At the time that this survey went out to the public, there were many things going on,” Widlak said. “Not the least of which was a very rough winter for many people and a lot of discussion around certain businesses in town and what was going to happen in the future.”

Homeowners drove the negativity. Approximately 84% of the 780 respondents self-identified as homeowners. They were unhappy about two things: a record-low snow year and the upheaval in Vail Village.

Widlak noted that town services still ranked highly. People like the garbage collection, the roads, and the police. They trust what the town controls.

But they are losing their character. Many comments cited a loss of beloved businesses in the Village. The soul of the ski town feels eroded by big-money redevelopment.

RRC Associates, a Boulder-based firm that has conducted these surveys since the 1990s, delivered the data. CEO Sean Maher told the council that this year’s result is unique for Vail.

“Historically, the right-direction respondents have always been in the majority in Vail,” Maher said. “That’s not true everywhere we do these surveys, but in Vail it’s always been a net positive result from the community. This year for the first time we actually had just a slightly negative response.”

Maher sees this unease across Colorado. It’s not just Vail. Residents from Grand Junction to Boulder and Denver feel the same way.

The reasons are broad. Uncertainty about the economy. Ongoing wars. A mega-drought in Colorado. People are uneasy. No one is breaking records for optimism.

Vail Town Manager Russ Forrest spoke to the council, though his specific comments were cut off in the report. The focus remains on the disconnect between service quality and community sentiment.

The town provides good services. Residents don’t think they’re on the right track. That’s the contradiction.

The survey asked a simple question: Are things going in the right direction, or have they gotten off on the wrong track?

The answer changed. It didn’t crash. It just tipped. 780 postcards were sent to full- and part-time residents in late May and June. A 12% response rate is solid for a mail-in survey.

The debate over Vail’s future isn’t slowing down. The town is aging out its old identity while developers reshape the Village. The residents feel it in their wallets and their commutes.

Negativity is no longer an outlier here. It’s the new normal.