How the bloc-5 majority came to power.

Background — Krenning Ward 1

Troy Krenning, a Loveland attorney, was elected to the Ward 1 City Council seat in 2023 on an anti-developer platform. His self-described mission was to stand up to McWhinney Real Estate Services, which he characterised as a firm that had been “given hundreds of millions of YOUR tax dollars to build their personal fortunes”¹ . Among other actions, he voted to engage Ernst & Young to conduct a forensic audit of the Centerra urban-renewal plan (see Chapter 06).

The recall petition (June - August 2024)

A recall committee organised by Don Overcash (two-time losing mayoral candidate, real-estate broker) and sponsored by former Councilor Dave Clark, Earle Sethre, and Marvin Childers filed paperwork with the Loveland City Clerk in June 2024¹ . The grounds language on the recall petition reads, in part:

Troy Krenning must be recalled due to his destructive and abusive behavior that has cost Loveland millions of dollars, damaged its reputation and resulted in the loss of excellent and respected leadership within city hall … his willingness to ruin Loveland’s reputation and waste millions of taxpayer dollars for his destructive and personal vendettas makes him unqualified to represent Ward One.¹

Krenning’s response, published on the same petition document, framed the recall as a developer-driven counterattack:

The proponents of the recall, organized by Don Overcash … represent the developer interests of Loveland. This recall is designed to replace me with a councilor who would turn control of the City Council, yet again, back over to developers such as McWhinney.¹

A coalition of residents opposed to the proposed First Christian Church homeless shelter and to a planned needle-exchange program rallied at Loveland City Hall on 27 August 2024 in support of the recall and against both other initiatives. Reporter-Herald counted ≈25 attendees² .

Required signatures: 1,615 from Ward 1 residents within 60 days. They were submitted 7 August 2024 and certified 13 August 2024.

The funder: Centerra Properties West, LLC

The recall election was funded primarily through Strong Colorado IEC, an independent expenditure committee registered with the Colorado Secretary of State (CO_ID 20245047480). Its donor roll, reproduced from TRACER bulk contribution data:

click to enlarge

The vendor — Polifi LLC

Strong Colorado IEC’s largest single expenditure category was a monthly retainer to Polifi LLC, a statewide Republican consulting firm whose 2024-2026 TRACER expenditure receipts total $312,870 across at least twenty Colorado IEC and candidate clients including Kirkmeyer for State Senate, Carlos for HD 48, Woog for HD 19, Lori Garcia Sander for HD 65 (Larimer-adjacent), Armagost for HD 64, Brauchler for DA, Montoya for Sheriff, and county Republican central committees in Boulder, Arapahoe, Weld, and Broomfield³ .

Polifi also appears as a consultant for two other Northern Colorado IECs: NoCo Reboot (Windsor; funded by The Revere Initiative 501(c)(4) and the Colorado State Fraternal Order of Police SDC) and Justice for Jason (funded $42,000 by Patricia Telleen, Fort Collins). The presence of the same vendor across all three vehicles is the documented structural connection between the recall apparatus and the broader Northern Colorado dark-money network — see Players, Adjacent Network.

The link is tighter than “same vendor”: Marge Klein is the named registered agent of record on all three TRACER committee filings, not just a contracted consultant. The same individual signs the campaign-finance paperwork for the Krenning-recall vehicle (Strong Colorado IEC, reg 06/26/2024), the McLaughlin-DA opposition vehicle (Justice for Jason, reg 02/14/2024), and the older legislature-and-county vehicle (NoCo Reboot, reg 10/08/2019). As of the 14 May 2026 filing, Strong Colorado IEC remains active — beginning balance $32.20, $12,000 in fresh donations, $6,788 expended in the 04/30–05/13 reporting window, $5,244 ending balance — i.e. the vehicle that financed the recall is still spending into the 2026 election cycle^3.5 .

Council action and the election

At its 16 December 2024 meeting, City Council voted on two quarter-million-dollar questions simultaneously:

• Approve the $249,000 Ernst & Young forensic audit of the Centerra URA.
• Approve scheduling and paying for a $250,000 special election to recall Krenning.

Both passed. Council rejected Krenning’s offer of a conditional resignation in May on a 4-4 tie vote, electing instead to proceed with the March 4 special election⁴ .

Krenning resigned outright on 7 January 2025. The recall election still proceeded as a procedural matter; yes/no totals on the recall question itself were not reported. On the replacement-candidate ballot, Jennifer Swanty defeated Geoff Frahm for the Ward 1 seat on 4 March 2025⁴ .

Geoff Frahm subsequently won a different council seat in November 2025 and is one of the five votes in the current bloc-5 majority.

February 2024 senior-staff severance — the $770K context

The recall petition’s “hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars” framing rested in part on a February 2024 cluster of senior-staff departures and severance packages. The publicly-filed amounts:

On the Garcia severance specifically: the without-cause contractual minimum was $127,633.21; the final amount $341,032.09 was $213,398.88 above that floor (Krenning rounded the differential to “$200,000” on the record). The vote was 6–3 on 27 February 2024 with Black, Krenning, and Olson dissenting (per Reporter-Herald 27 Feb 2024 primary reporting). Olson aligned with Krenning’s $200K-above-minimum objection; the YES bloc on the higher amount was therefore the other six councilors, of whom Pat McFall and Dana Foley are the relevant pre-mayoral establishment names for this sidebar’s argument (and who later figured in the bloc McFall convenes).

The ~$770K total directly supports the recall petition’s “hundreds of thousands of dollars” framing — but the senior-staff departures the petition then used to characterise Krenning’s tenure were approved at the Adams/Garcia amounts by McFall, Foley, and four other YES voters, over Krenning’s and Olson’s objection. The same coalition that funded the recall then ran McFall for mayor on a platform that included the staff-cost grievance their own votes had produced.

Randall v. McFall — the lawsuit

On 17 February 2026, Ward 2 resident Gail Randall spoke during the public-comment period of the Council meeting at which R-10-2026 (the Costco BAA) was being considered. She referenced the Ernst & Young forensic review of Centerra Metropolitan District No. 1, arguing that the audit findings were directly relevant to the resolution before Council, which proposed handing the same metro district’s master developer up to $125 million in sales-tax rebates.

Mayor Pat McFall directed her to remain focused on the agenda item, then directed the clerk to move to the next speaker before her allotted three minutes had expired. After Randall, other speakers raising the same Ernst & Young review were allowed by McFall to complete their remarks⁵ .

Three days later Randall filed a verified complaint in Larimer County District Court against the City of Loveland and Mayor McFall in both his official and individual capacities. The complaint asserts the mayor’s enforcement of the “stay on topic” rule was “selective, arbitrary, and based on the content and viewpoint of Plaintiff’s speech,” constituting unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment⁵ . The R-10-2026 resolution itself does not contain a single “$125 million” line item; the figure aggregates identifiable contractual city commitments (~$42.5M = $25M cap + $11M Kendall + $6.5M reimbursement) with the AIR-102809 staff-packet projection of “over $100MM” of city revenue into the city over 25 years — see Chapter 06 for the component buildup.

McFall’s stated defense, given to Reporter-Herald, was that he believed he was enforcing the Council’s adopted Rules of Procedure, which authorise the presiding officer to limit testimony to the matter under consideration during agenda items. His direct quote:

If she’d been speaking in open public comment, she could have talked about pink and blue aliens — I don’t care. She has that right.⁵

The dispute the lawsuit will turn on is not whether the rule exists but whether it was applied selectively — silencing only those raising the Ernst & Young audit while allowing other speakers to raise the same topic without intervention.

Recall organizers’ broader political footprint

For background, the TRACER bulk contribution data for the four named recall organizers shows the following 2023-2026 donation pattern (selected entries):

None of this is unusual on its own — political donors give to candidates and PACs they support. What is unusual is the converging pattern: the same small group of named individuals appears as recall organizers, as IEC donors, as appointees to city advisory bodies under the post-recall administration, and as state-level donors to candidates the same Polifi LLC consultancy is also paid by.