The District Board
District Board members are volunteers who are passionate about land stewardship and natural resource conservation that are elected by residents of the county.
Janet Bell-Chairman
Janet Bell is a member of the IBC Metro Water Roundtable and the Evergreen Jazz Festival Board. She was the Administrator of Long Range Planning for Jefferson County and responsible for the County Community Plans and the Mountain Groundwater Resources Study. She was named Emeritus Member of the Public Involvement in Transportation Committee of the National Academies Transportation Research Board and has been honored as Conservationist of the Year by the Jefferson Conservation District. Other awards include the EPA Regional 8 Environmental Achievement 2001, BearCreek Watershed Association Golden Trout.
Kerry Finnegan-Secretary Treasurer
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Karen Berry-Vice Chairman
Karen Berry was elected to the Jefferson Conservation Board in 1999. She is the mother of two and has a background in natural resources conservation, engineering, geology, and planning. A lifelong resident of Jefferson County, Berry graduated from the Colorado School of Mines.
After college, Berry worked as an engineer and geologist for petroleum, mining, and engineering firms. She left the private sector to work on community-based conservation close to home. For over ten years, Berry worked as a natural resources planner in Jefferson County.
Currently, Berry is a program manager for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, where she works closely with cities and counties across the state on a variety of land use and natural resource issues. She is a certified planner, a professional geologist, and a water quality expert.
Berry served on the Wheat Ridge Planning Commission and on the Liquor Licensing Authority. As a Wheat Ridge Councilmember, she serves on the Board of the Denver Regional Council of Governments, the Colorado Municipal League Policy Committee, and is chair of the WR2020 Planning Committee.
Karen also serves on the the Front Range Fuels Treatment Partnership, is President of the Coalition of the Upper South Platte and the Upper South Platte Watershed Association, and is a policy committee member of the National Association of Conservation Districts.
Julio G. Iturreria
Julio G. Iturreria for the past thirty-three years has been involved with urban and rural planning in various positions from a planner to a manager, and Community Development Director. He currently is working as the Long Range Program Manager in Arapahoe County, Colorado. This involves working on comprehensive plans and sub-area plans to water, water quality, air quality, conservation, open space, regional trails, parks, multiple scaled developments, local (Arapahoe County sales tax for open space) and regional (Denver West Conservation District) issues that affect in those state jurisdictions.
Bernie Weingardt
After serving nearly 37 years, Bernie Weingardt retired from the US Forest Service October 3, 2007. Bernie became Pacific Southwest Regional Forester in June 2005 – a position he held until retirement. In this position, he oversaw 18 national forests and 1 national grassland in California, which make up over 20 million acres covering the North coast, Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges and extending from Big Sur to the Mexican border in the South Coast range. His responsibilities also included assistance to state and private landowners in California, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands.
Weingardt was formerly Deputy Regional Forester for Resources in the Pacific Southwest Region from January 2001 until 2005. Before that, he served five years as Forest Supervisor of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
He began his Forest Service career in 1970 as a seasonal employee on the White River and Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forests in Colorado working in recreation and fire. In 1974 he became a full-time employee, and through a series of natural resource management positions, gained experience and expertise, working his way up to District Ranger on the San Juan National Forest in 1980. A second District Ranger position followed in 1986 on the Dillon Ranger District of the White River National Forest in Colorado. In 1989 he became the Deputy Forest Supervisor on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in Washington until 1993 when he was appointed as the National Recreation Strategy leader at the Forest Service’s headquarters in Washington DC.
Weingardt holds a degree in Forest Management Science from Colorado State University. Although retired, he remains active in natural resource conservation. Among other activities, he continues his role with the National Forest Foundation where he serves as chairman of their leadership council. His favorite pastimes include skiing, carpentry, hiking, fishing and camping in the great outdoors. Now in his home state of Colorado, he intends to do more of what he loves – skiing the powder and sharing his passion for the outdoors with his wife Susan and energetic 5-year-old daughter, Serena.
