YIMBY Fort Collins Complicit in Dissolution of Local Sierra Club Group

Written By Preserve Fort Collins

YIMBY Fort Collins Executes a Hostile Takeover of 30-year Old Local Sierra Club Poudre Canyon Group (PCG), Leading to PCG’s Purposeful Dissolution by an Unelected, YIMBY-centric State Sierra Club Steering Committee.

Video Caption: Dr. Cory Carroll, MD, former Chair of the Poudre Canyon Group of the Sierra Club (PCG) speaks to the Fort Collins City Council on September 2, 2025, days after the PCG was dissolved by the Sierra Club State Chapter. According to video evidence, at least one Fort Collins City Councilmember, Julie Pignataro, and one D1 Council candidate, Chris Conway, seem to have played a role in PCG's dissolution, perhaps as possible retaliation for PCG's past endorsements.

Links:

On August 28, 2025 the decades-old, respected local Sierra Club organization, the “Poudre Canyon Group” (PCG), was dissolved by an unelected body of the YIMBY-centric State of Colorado Sierra Club, in a callous meeting that took less than five minutes.

The dissolution of PCG came nine difficult months after the YIMBY Fort Collins (YIMBY FC) leadership board, its founder Chris Conway (Fort Collins District 1 City Council Candidate), and a large number of other YIMBY Action/YIMBY Fort Collins allies colluded to engage in coordinated and proven election manipulation against the PCG in the local club’s December 2024 election, during which four open seats on the PCG Board (“Executive Committee”) were to be filled. See the link for the direct evidence of this hostile takeover. 

Also, according to the evidence, at least one Fort Collins City Council member (J. Pignataro) was directly involved with encouraging the dissolution of PCG, and was inappropriately invited and attended the state steering committee dissolution meeting. See the link to the video of the dissolution meeting for evidence of this. The PCG endorsed council member Pignataro for her first very narrowly-won city council campaign, but endorsed her opponent for her second campaign in 2023.

The evidence speaks for itself, but here is a more detailed summary of events:

  • Yimby Fort Collins founding leads (C. Conway, M. Behunin, K. Conley, P. Erickson) and others worked to assemble a large group of never-before-members — YIMBYs who had never been to a PCG meeting, event, or outing — to suddenly join the PCG group in order to assemble a supportive voting block. The evidence shows that Chris Conway was dissatisfied with the lack of endorsement by PCG of recent candidates he favored, falsely saying they have been “notoriously anti-housing for years”. See group chat evidence below.

  • The Slack chat evidence indicates that P. Erickson, a founding lead of Yimby FC, somehow obtained a highly restricted database list of PCG member information and used it to coordinate the election manipulation process, double checking the membership status of the Yimby allies and ensuring they had ballots and they knew who to vote for. This member information list is held only by authorized state-level Sierra Club personnel (specifically, Chris Applegate) and is certainly not available to ordinary chapter leaders or members.

  • The purpose of this secretly assembled pro-Yimby voting block was more or less under the radar of the chapter leadership. The election occurred and four pro-Yimby candidates won seats on the Executive Committee, with each of them receiving almost exactly the same number of votes. The four were Eric Jensen, Field Peterson, Sophia Gulutzo, and Heath Orcutt; see Slack screenshots for evidence.

  • The vote totals were somewhat less than usual. Following the election, many long-time, active members of PCG complained about not receiving a ballot electronically or in the mail for the ExCom election.

  • The purpose of the election manipulation was to produce an elected 4-out-of-7 majority so that the PCG ExCom could officially endorse pro-Yimby candidate Conway in the November 2025 Fort Collins municipal election, as well as YIMBY policy agendas. The new pro-Yimby majority did not realize that PCG endorsements (of candidates) require a ⅔ vote. 

  • On several occasions, when questioned about the details and objectives of what appeared to be a planned hostile takeover by YIMBY FC, the new ExCom members engaged in pathological deception and dishonesty by repeatedly and adamantly denying association with YIMBY FC or that a coordinated takeover was planned and perpetrated. The repeated disingenuous and manipulative behavior around their ultimate intent, particularly that of Eric Jensen, displays a serious and inexcusable lack of principles, trustworthiness and professionalism that has no place in local, state, or Sierra Club leadership or membership. Their actions sent reverberations throughout the entire group, and resulted in divisiveness and a profound erosion of trust that DID NOT exist prior to the newly-elected ExCom members’ first ever PCG meeting in January 2025. The disgraceful actions of the four new PCG ExCom members threw the monthly ExCom meetings and club business into disarray and brought the group’s conservation work to a halt. Seemingly, that was the intent of the takeover by the four new, aforementioned members from YIMBY FC.

  • One Yimby ExCom member moved out of the state and resigned his seat.  Now, no longer with a majority vote of the ExCom, the pro-Yimby faction could not come close to using the PCG for the political purpose they desired.

  • Their last action was to call in the state-level, unelected, pro-Yimby Colorado Sierra Club steering committee, and dissolve the PCG in a brief Zoom meeting. It was during this meeting that Fort Collins city council member J. Pignataro was thanked by the state level personnel for her help with organizing the dissolution. (see video of Zoom meeting). Council member Pignataro may be an ordinary member of PCG, but does not have special status in the PCG.

  • Currently, the decades-old Poudre Canyon Group of the Colorado Sierra Club no longer exists — a result of an ill-conceived, poisonous, purely political collusion of Yimby FC leadership and their allies. All of this to ultimately fail at their goal: the endorsement of Chris Conway for city council seat in District 1. A large number of members (~ 1,500) who paid their dues now have no local Sierra Club organization to show for it. 

  • These disturbing events represent a page out of the nation-wide YIMBY Action playbook, wherein anti-environmental, pro-deregulation and pro-development YIMBY operatives take over long-standing environmental groups to advance YIMBY candidate and policy endorsements

The organized collusion by the founders of YIMBY Fort Collins, including Conway who is currently a District 1 City Council candidate, is quite concerning because a person displaying this level of unscrupulous behavior and an inability to work with others who they have simple policy disagreements with suggests not only a lack of professionalism and judgement, but also a lack of principles that may make them unfit for elected office.

Below:
Screenshot Evidence from the YIMBY Fort Collins Slack Channel ( source). Click to Enlarge and Scroll Through Images with Arrow Keys.

Video Caption: An unelected, YIMBY-centric, Steering Committee of the Colorado Chapter of the Sierra Club laughs as committee members dissolve the 30+ year Sierra Club Poudre Canyon Group. The Steering Committee members were unaware that PCG members were in the virtual room and listening to their callous discussion and laughter. The August 28, 2025 dissolution is the result of election manipulation by YIMBY Fort Collins and its founder, a D1 Fort Collins Council Candidate, Chris Conway. The effort was meant as a hostile takeover of the PCG's Executive Committee to garner endorsements of YIMBY FC candidates and policies. It appears that at least one Fort Collins City Councilmember, J. Pignataro, was directly involved in PCG's dissolution according to recorded video.

Preserve Fort Collins
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