ISSUE #237: Don't Shoot The Messenger (12/19/22)

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

They've been after me lately with some of the most vitriolic and the most nonsensical Letters to the Editor yet. Apparently, they think they can intimidate me to make me stop writing. LOL. Right.

No one is fooled. Instead of ignoring the issues and hoping I'll quiet down, it's time to face them - with solutions! 

I can't be the only one out there with a bunch of straightforward ideas!?

Read my column in yesterday's Aspen Times HERE.

I've been writing The Red Ant in one form or another since 2008. Back in the day, during the holidays I summarized the political year in a poem. 

The last stanza was always the same:

At The Red Ant

The fun never ends.

Christmas blessings to you,

Your family and friends.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Elizabeth

* * * 

I’ve struck a nerve. Good. Now we can get to work. The issue is no longer whether or not APCHA is broken, it’s how to fix it.

And what a shame. What was in no uncertain terms the gold standard of subsidized housing programs, certainly in the mountain west, has become a glaring example of what not to do.  But fix it we must, just like the airport and the Castle Creek bridge. Doing nothing is no longer an option.

The program’s original intentions were pure, and for quite some time, they served the community well. But APCHA has lost its way. This is not because of its residents. It’s APCHA’s failed policies that have enabled rational actors to operate fully within the rules to utilize our subsidized housing inventory in ways no one ever contemplated at the program’s inception. I’ll say it again, it’s not the people who are wrong, it’s what the program allows, beginning with something as straightforward as eligibility: working “1500 hours per calendar year in Pitkin County and/or for a Pitkin County employer.” That little “and/or” is the remote work enabler, and it’s there in black and white. Then there’s the biennial affidavit, detailed about employer and salary for renters, but an online checkbox attesting only to the 1500 hour work requirement for owners. 

It’s time to look critically at over 40 years of experience combined with the near build-out within our urban growth boundary and ask ourselves, are we really going to try to build our way out of our worker shortage without specific housing data to direct us? We annexed land for Burlingame and the Lumberyard for massive housing developments, and we’ve recently altered our land use code to allow subsidized multi-family housing complexes to be built anywhere in town. This may seem like the answer, but it’s fraught with unintended consequences, one of which is unabated growth.

Meanwhile, I’m told the word “audit” terrifies people. That’s not the intent, but it does make me wonder what people are so afraid of. An audit is simply a count, with data queries on job, employer and income bracket to inform future policy decisions. It is vital to know which sectors of our community are under-represented in our housing program in order to react responsibly. It’s staggering how strong the resistance is to this knowledge. The palpable fear of program oversight signals that there is either a lot more malfeasance than originally thought or widespread acceptance of APCHA’s overly-lenient policies. All the more reason to look into it. How about we use the word “census” from now on? In any case, we still desperately need one.

To be clear, any changes that I suggest are on a “moving forward” basis, which means they wouldn’t apply to anyone in APCHA today. Current residents would be grandfathered in. Yes, this implies effectively running two different systems as one gets up and running while the other winds down, which may take a generation, but no one is suggesting that anyone in compliance lose their housing. It’s just that the status quo cannot continue and we all know it.

So stop the fear-mongering, especially about retirees. The 2012 AACP stated, “We need a focus on the issues surrounding retirement in affordable housing, as we are on the brink of a rising retiree demographic.” At the time, there were 310 retirees in deed-restricted housing, and the expectation was for more than 800 by 2021. Despite a half-assed affidavit system and the $1.4 million Hometrek system that yields sketchy data that toggles between units and residents, a November 2021 report to council showed over 268 units owned by those 70-plus and another 998 owned by those 50-69. You can do the math. The “Silver Tsunami” is coming, yet no retirement strategy has been discussed since 2012.

It’s time for ideas. I met recently with the president of the APCHA board and gave him four actionable ideas that could be tested the very next day. These were straightforward, easily-implemented experiments that would inform potential policy changes. They were just ideas, but by trying them, we’d learn how the market might react. At the very least, we’d free up units. And each one dealt with utilizing the housing we already have.

My favorite is a limited buy-out test for interested retirees. We hear about people who are anxious to move but have found out the hard way after years of deed-restricted ownership that the sale of their APCHA unit doesn’t give them much buying power elsewhere. Let’s offer them a carrot. If a new APCHA unit costs the community $1.2 million to build, how about a $100,000 bonus to the first 12 retirees who opt to sell? Everyone wins: 12 retirees get an incentive, 12 qualified employees get housing, and the community frees up 12 units for the cost of building one. Maybe it’s scalable. It’s certainly no-growth.

That’s just one idea. I have several. And while it’s really easy to criticize people who are willing to share their ideas, that never solves anything. If you don’t like mine, what are yours?

The key to our worker shortage is the efficient utilization of our existing subsidized housing inventory. I won’t quit. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #236: What Are They Hiding? (12/6/22)

"It's frightening that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence."

-- George Orwell

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

Apologies for the delay in getting this one out, but personal travel delays and a subsequent powder day shifted the priorities a wee bit.

I'm never going to rest until we have an independent audit of APCHA. The more I learn, the more appalling the details become.

Read my column in Sunday's Aspen Times HERE.

And while I'm at it, HERE is a great recent letter to the editor. I couldn't agree more. With a municipal election (mayor and two council seats) set for March 7, voices like this are what we should all be listening to.

I encourage anyone reading here to check your voter registration and, where possible, register to vote in Aspen. If you're new or if you're seasonal, you can bet seasonal workers will be signing up. You should too! Talk about a place where your vote REALLY counts!

***

Everyone is talking about subsidized housing. Everyone except the city and APCHA. Despite it being a city council priority, they refuse to discuss it. It’s just build more, anywhere, at any cost. And APCHA, despite the well-intended community volunteers who serve on its board, is stuck in the mud following a detrimental 2019 decision that placed elected officials from both council and the BOCC in leadership, resulting in an entrenched bureaucratic embrace of the status quo and the perpetuation of proven poor policies and zero transparency.

A cursory glance at the local papers each morning tells a very different story. The usual suspects are speaking out, but more importantly, new voices are weighing in. A particular nugget captured the root of the problem: APCHA’s original sin was allowing units to be sold versus rented. Another cautioned that any sort of program audit was on par with Big Brother and the surveillance state, and neighbors snitching on neighbors is not a good look for Aspen.

I’m not alone in my obsession. Columnist Roger Marolt supports building more subsidized housing because we need a higher ratio of people living here on subsidy in order to replenish the community with “true locals.” And Mick Ireland, godparent of Aspen’s subsidized housing, regularly defends housing’s precarious state of affairs in order to perpetuate “Aspen, land of the free: free spirits, free buses, free nordic trails, free concerts, free lectures” for people “who don’t want to spend a lot of money.” 

A colleague shared an analogy comparing Aspen’s subsidized housing quandry to making a pot of soup with three main ingredients: workforce housing, employee housing and community housing. Workforce housing is housing for workers, both the essential ones (healthcare, education, law enforcement) as well as those in the tourism-related industry (retail, recreation, lodging, restaurants). Employee housing is more discretionary; it is local employer-owned housing for proprietary employees. And then there is community housing for everyone else: non-locally working workers, retirees and other non-workers. So, when the community wants more soup, just add more of everything, right? 

Definitely not. Last week, APCHA confirmed that within the city limits, we have 4072 bedrooms in our subsidized housing portfolio. This number does not include employer-owned units, such as those owned by the schools. Using a very conservative multiplier of 1.25 people per bedroom to account for couples and families, that’s enough bedrooms for 5090 people. With a city population of 7241, that’s room for 70% of our local population in APCHA subsidized housing. So, a question for Roger and Mick, how many more people above 5090 do we need to house until you’re satisfied? We are already housing two times the total population of Telluride, yet somehow our sense of community and number of “true locals” are supposedly extinct.

Meanwhile, as the voices grow louder, the solutions become increasingly clear. Today, we’re operating on anecdotal evidence and assumptions to support our opinions. As you’re well aware, I believe the program lacks sufficient seasonal rental housing for the community and resort service industry workforce. I base my opinion on the well-documented shortage of service industry workers who sustain our tourism-based economy. But without scientific data, I could very well be wrong. I can admit that.

What we need is an independent audit of APCHA. We need to know who we’re housing. We need to know what work they do in our community. And until we change the structure of APCHA, as long as we rely on income levels to distribute our inventory, we need to know people’s income brackets.  It’s the only way to honestly identify which segments of our economy are being provided for at the expense of others. Besides, the habitation of a subsidized APCHA unit is based on contributing to a community purpose. Providing such information is not punishment, it’s a condition. The days of APCHA providing the same conditions as the free market but at a subsidized rate must end if the program is to survive.

An independent audit will clarify our housing needs and highlight our inefficiencies with facts, not feelings. And we’ll be rid of the debunked “EPS regional housing study” the city relies on simply because it concluded we need an additional 3000 units in the upper valley which supports their narrative. (A quick call to the EPS principal to gain an understanding of the research for its findings yielded the critical tell, “There was no formula.” And the young associate who wrote the report? “He is no longer with the firm.”) Incidentally, this study serves as basis for The Lumberyard planning.

In short, we need:

• ·      An APCHA audit
• ·      Employer participation in the APCHA ownership lottery
• ·      A revised APCHA employment affidavit
• ·      A needs study not based on consumer demand

A housing audit is not unlike the city’s “Treeplotter Inventory” that tracks all 11,502 trees within the city limits via GIS mapping and lists them by species, right down to Kentucky Coffeetrees (3), Siberian Elms (12) and Crabapples (384). Tamper with any one of these and it’s big trouble for you! Why should our multi-billion dollar taxpayer subsidized housing inventory operate any differently?

The willful ignorance about who we are actually housing in no way helps those we should be. An audit is the answer. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #235: Punishing Tourists Won't Save Aspen (11/22/22)

"Don't mistake my kindness for weakness. I'll choke you with the same hand I fed you with."

-- Anonymous

There is no doubt in my mind that Aspen is facing some real issues, but somehow, lashing out at tourism doesn't strike me as the best way to go about saving our town.

I also believe that our ongoing labor shortage is a direct result of our inability and unwillingness to provide housing for our workforce despite having over 4000 APCHA bedrooms in the city alone. (We have plenty of housing - we have simply chosen not to manage it efficiently nor require that it be utilized by people who work in our community and resort service industries.)

My column in Sunday's Aspen Times (read it HERE) revisits Aspen Daily News columnist and lifelong local Roger Marolt's recent screed. For this grandson of early Aspenites and ski pioneers, and the son and nephew of winter Olympians whose accomplishments and lives' works, like those of his brothers', contributed greatly to the growth of the ski industry, to profess such disdain for the visitors to Aspen who make it all possible for the rest of us, really galled me.

This thinking is all wrong. And dangerous. Yet it is frighteningly prevalent.

***

My former colleague Roger Marolt recently penned an op-ed in support of ballot measure 2A, “the STR tax.” Marolt is surely feeling his oats today because the Aspen electorate overwhelmingly approved the measure. In his eyes, this special excise tax on renters of private residential property is what is needed to save our town. 

According to Marolt, this 5% - 10% addition to Aspen’s 11.3% nightly sales tax rate will not only bolster our subsidized housing coffers, it will send a message to our visitors “that they create immediate negative impacts on our town while they are here that need to be mitigated.” It’s not visitors who stay in hotels who do this, just the ones who stay in condominiums, apparently, including those that were built and have functioned as traditional tourist accommodations for the past 50 years.  He posits that “visitors to Aspen could have the most positive impact by not vacationing here at all.”

Now remember, Marolt is from Aspen. He has never lived anywhere else. Therefore, his limited worldview and frame of reference are exceedingly narrow. He is obsessed with nostalgia and wants nothing more than for Aspen to return to what it was half a century ago. Lamenting that Aspen has become a resort and is no longer what he considers “a town,” Marolt believes that to make Aspen a “real town” again, we need to “get rid of second homeowners.” 

He also believes “a real town has more than half its residential units occupied by people who work in town.”  But he neglects to identify just what kind of “work” qualifies.  I assume he means people who live in subsidized housing. He probably thinks all those folks actually “work in town.” (They don’t.)

Marolt is clearly confused. He has wrongly placed blame for the negative impacts of recent growth squarely on our visitors. I get it, he doesn’t like that our roads are clogged with workers who drive in every day and is frustrated by what he hears about businesses desperate for employees. But he wrongly assumes the Highway 82 road warriors are coming solely to service tourists and second homeowners. He ignores the fact that the more full-time residents we subsidize, the more nurses and doctors and teachers and police and waiters and bartenders we need on a 24/7/365 basis. The system is stressed. I can’t argue there. But we also can’t ignore the dramatic impacts of massive growth of our full-time population, including in the subsidized housing ranks, which are far greater than seasonal tourism. In short, the problem is us. 

2A passed. But despite its projected revenue stream, we have zero plans to house actual workers. Instead, we’re building subsidized two- and three-bedroom units, to be filled with full-time families who will place even more demand for services on the community and resort workforce without participating in either. Everyone knows, once in the APCHA system, it’s time to “work remote” for a better paycheck and the purchasing power for that second home in Moab or Palm Springs or France to rent out as an income-producing STR. (How ironic.)

So, as we lambaste and heavily tax a critical segment of our tourism economy ostensibly to return Aspen to the locals, will this actually save us? Hardly. We have become so distracted by our labor shortage that we’ve justified a punitive money-grab to build more housing for the wrong people. And somehow, we try to convince ourselves that this growth isn’t growth at all. Only visitors and tourists cause that.

Whether we are a town or a resort is not what we should be focused on.  (Can’t we be both?) Nor should we be intentionally crippling our economic engine. 

The fact is, demand for subsidized housing in Aspen is essentially unlimited, as is demand for any valuable good provided at a price far lower than its free market equivalent. We should acknowledge that our economy relies on tourism, and embrace it. Then focus on what that economy needs - workers – not what the end users of subsidized housing want. In a free market system, we are programmed to prioritize demand from the consumer perspective, but our housing program is not the free market so the consumer demand approach is all wrong. We have been focused entirely on households desiring subsidized housing, not services requiring workers. This is precisely why we are not housing enough of them.

We have a labor shortage, not a housing one. Instead of trying to house the workers we actually need, we are housing people who simply want to live in Aspen affordably. They are not the same. And all growth is growth, the impacts of which are bad for everyone. Acknowledging this is what will really save our town.

Then we can focus on our actual customers: the visitors who make it all possible.

Marolt is clearly angry and frustrated, but his ire is misdirected. It’s time to get our priorities straight. The last time Aspen was only a town and not a resort, it was the 1930s, and it was a ghost town.  Careful what you wish for.

Someone please tell Roger and the other anti-tourist malcontents to check their privilege and change their attitudes. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #234: Housing at ANY cost, even history? (11/6/22)

"A respectfully restored historic structure or site honors the history and culture of our town, whereas a demolished one erases a piece of the Aspen story forever."

-- The AACP, Aspen Area Community Plan, ca. 2012

There is no end to how far the city is willing to go to achieve its publicly subsidized housing goals. Next on the block is the bastardization of 205 W. Main Street. The plan is to allow developers to move the prominent corner Victorian to the side to accommodate nearly 8,000 sf of subsidized housing to be built behind and to the side of it (see rendering below). Standing in the way is Aspen's historical preservation commission (HPC). Their guidelines are clear and the proposal does not meet several of them. But with city council and staff strongly advocating for an approval, will HPC capitulate? I rarely ask you to get this involved, but I can't live with myself if I don't. Please read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE and follow up with a letter to HPC, to be included in their November 16 meeting packet. HERE is an email link. Facts are critical. Please note "205 W. Main Street" on the subject line and be sure to remind them that: The proposed project's density and scale are in no way proportional to the Victorian, as required by the historic preservation guidelines The proposed project does not meet the required open space standards on the site, as required by the historic preservation guidelines The Victorian makes a notable contribution to Aspen's historic character, which prevents it from being moved, as stipulated in the historic preservation guidelines The project is all wrong and antithetical to Aspen's historic preservation values The recent trend of marginalizing historic properties by building/adding enormous subsidized housing complexes must stop Any other thoughts about the inappropriateness of this proposal and others like it It is not HPC's role to assist developers in diminishing our historic buildings; they are the appointed stewards of Aspen's history. Please show HPC your support for prioritizing our history over anything else. (Let our elected city council make any and all tragic decisions that stand to destroy our historic resources.) Here's what they have in mind. If it can happen at the corner of Main Street and First, think where else they'll be doing it. Please speak up about this detrimental trend.

ISSUE #233: Is this what we've become? (11/1/22)

"Visitors to Aspen could have the most positive impact by not vacationing here at all."

-- Roger Marolt

I sat down to write a special issue of The Red Ant after reading a published column in today’s Aspen Daily News by life-long local Roger Marolt. I cringed when I read the headline, “Save our city, right now.”  That isn’t offensive on its face, and I agree that Aspen desperately needs “saving,” but where we disagree is from whom and from what. That it entitled a column by Marolt foreshadowed the hateful perspective and message that followed.

A little background: Marolt is from Aspen. He’s never lived anywhere else. Therefore, his worldview and frame of reference are exceedingly narrow. (He has become the poster-child of what’s wrong with blooming where you’re planted!)

He is also obsessed with nostalgia and wants nothing more than for Aspen to return to what it was 50 years ago.  This mentality is sadly not his own; he shares it with a growing number of malcontents who seek to do everything they can in the public policy realm to destroy Aspen the tourism destination and resort in an effort to return Aspen to the locals. Yes, that means without second homeowners. (He is willing to allow a few tourists.)

I’m not kidding. Here is what he writes:

• The likely-to-pass 5%-10% excise taxes on STRs including Aspen’s traditional condo rentals and condo-hotels (but not fractionals or hotels) “will make visitors mindful that they create immediate negative impacts on our town while they are here. It is a necessary self awareness that most currently lack. It’s time to send the message.”

• “Visitors to Aspen could have the most positive impact by not vacationing here at all”

• “(Visitors) create more impacts on the town and highways and consume far more local resources than does a family just living in a similar house.”

• Our visitors are not “oblivious,” they’re “selfish.”

• “To me, a real town has more than half its residential units occupied by people who work in the town.”

• To make Aspen a "real town" again, we need to "get rid of second homeowners"

• “We need to make sure that everyone knows that visitors create negative impacts on our home town that need to be mitigated.”

HERE is the column. Please read it and let me know what you think. 

Instead of opining here as intended, I have decided that the issue warrants a Sunday column of its own. Besides, I file my column for Sunday, November 6, tomorrow, and need to button that one up before I dive headfirst into this one.

I have a lot more to say on the matter. Today I am disgusted.

ISSUE #232: No on Aspen 2A - The STR Tax Goes Too Far (10/23/22)

"We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate."

-- Thomas Jefferson

It's election season. Your Aspen ballot was mailed on October 17 so you should have it by now. We have several local issues to consider, but I decided to focus on Aspen 2A this week. A tax on short term rentals (STR) was originally conceived to address and mitigate for the impacts to the community from nuisance STRs, but the actual ballot measure reflects something else entirely. The punitive money grab targets the wrong rental units and will be nothing short of detrimental to Aspen's traditional lodging community.  Read my column in yesterday's Aspen Times HERE. MY BALLOT I am voting for / against the following local candidates and issues: County Commissioner District 2: Kelly McNicholas-Kury This is certainly not a ringing endorsement, but sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Sheriff: Michael Buglione This is not an "anti-Joe" vote, rather, a vote for change. Simply put, it's time. I was particularly impacted by this letter from a longtime local whose measured views on local issues have always struck me as spot-on, as well as the letter from Judge Erin Fernandez-Ely in green below. Aspen 2A: The STR Tax NO See the linked column. Aspen 2B: Extension of the 0.5% sales tax for Parks and Open Space NO This 0.5% sales tax was added in 2000 to the original 1% sales tax that took effect in 1970. The additional 0.5% was specifically to fund open space acquisitions. Today, all critical acquisitions have been completed: Smuggler, Cozy Point and Sky Mountain, among others. We've succeeded. The 1% sales tax plus a $14 million fund balance is more than enough to fund the city's parks, open space and rec facility needs into the future. Do not extend the additional 0.5% tax. Aspen 6A: Dedicated funding for the Aspen Ambulance District NO We voted to more than double the Ambulance District's mill levy / tax collections in 2014. Today, property tax revenues for the Ambulance District are WAAAAAAY up. I agree with this letter. There is no need for more funding. YOUR BALLOT Got questions? I've done the research and I'm happy to help. Just drop me a note.

* * * * *

Ballot Issue 2A, the Short Term Rental (STR) tax, fully misses the mark.  The administrative over-reach seeks to add 5% and 10% excise taxes to the nightly sales taxes of various categories of short term rental properties. The rationale, thanks to a financially illiterate city council, is strictly punitive. At the end of the day, this STR tax is specifically designed to discourage tourism. It will be detrimental to Aspen.

Three types of rental properties will be affected by the tax:

An “owner occupied” rental is a local’s primary residence that is rented out no more than 120 nights a year. Think of your neighbors who live here but travel a lot so they rent their Aspen home short term. With the passage of 2A, the nightly sales tax rate would increase from 11.3% to 16.3%. Your neighbor will pass this along to the renters.

A “classic” rental refers to all residential units on the rental market that are specifically not hotels or lodges, which are categorically exempt from the STR tax. The extremely broad “classic” category ranges from large, luxury homes to traditional condominiums, the small complexes you see throughout the downtown core. This category gets whacked the hardest because the tax’s wide net captures the VRBO-type rentals and “party homes” at the center of the STR debate. It will be subject to a 10% excise tax, bringing the nightly rate to an astonishing 21.3%. 

Take that, owners of investment properties! City council does not like you running “mini hotels” in Aspen when you only pay residential property taxes! And as for the hundreds of other legacy condominium units that have been rented short term to people who have preferred condos to hotels for the past 50 years, council wrongly believes these are equally to blame for the negative impacts to the community such as parking, noise, traffic and displacement of locals, despite their business model never having changed. For these traditional condos, their long-time group business, families and foreign visitors will simply go elsewhere. Aspen will price them out of the market.

The “lodge exempt” condo-hotel properties, specifically Aspen Square, The Gant, North of Nell and Aspen Alps, have been detrimentally singled out. Comprised of individually-owned condos and functioning as hotels under unified brands and marketing models with comparable amenities to hotels, these properties are only “exempt” from individual-unit business licenses, not the proposed 5% STR tax.  Oddly, “fractionals” like Dancing Bear and the Residences at The Little Nell which only differ from condo-hotels in that they have multiple-owner vs individual-owner deeds, get a pass on the tax.

Issue 2A was originally conceived to mitigate for negative impacts to the community from nuisance STRs, however, the perceived impacts are distinctly not being driven by the operation of traditional condominiums and condo-hotels. Issue 2A simply targets the wrong market segments. These properties have seen relatively flat occupancies over the years and the notion that their impacts to the community have increased is incorrect. If anything, these sectors are competing with STRs for staff, not generating new demand for employees. And each condo-hotel already provides proprietary housing to a large percentage of its staff.

Most notably, condos and condo-hotel unit owners pay the RETT, directly benefitting subsidized housing. Furthermore, the short term rental of traditional condos and condo-hotel units has never displaced local households.  

These properties should not be subject to any STR tax.

Leading the charge to tax condominiums and condo-hotels has been councilwoman Rachel Richards. Her over-simplified rationale is that these properties pay residential property taxes (6.9%) when hotels pay commercial (27%). But, clean up on aisle five. Richards is looking solely at tax rate, not actual taxes paid. A simple analysis shows that last year’s taxes paid were equitable on a square footage basis. Property values and assessed values are derived using different methods, so to apply a commercial tax rate to a condo property, the assessor would have to value the property as a commercial one, dramatically reducing its value. Richards’ premise is fatally flawed: she’s comparing apples to kumquats as a spiteful means of soaking owners of private properties who she disdains. But it’s Aspen’s tourism that actually gets hurt.

One little-known secret of 2A is a provision that siphons nearly a third of the total revenue collected (over $3 million in year one) for “infrastructure and environmental projects,” the result of a half-baked and leading community survey that asked where the expected windfall should be spent. Tax first, then maybe fund a pet project or two. 

City finance director Pete Strecker recently acknowledged that occupancy numbers are trending downward, but pointed to summer 2022 nightly rates which were “way up.” He concluded that this simply “balances the books, so to speak.” No Pete, that’s more flawed logic from the city. Inflation has already dramatically raised the costs of supplies and utilities, and the Aspen lodging community is bracing for a significant reduction in occupancy with lower nightly rates amid a looming recession and global uncertainty. It’s no time to tax our traditional tourist accommodations.

Focus on the real problems. Vote no on 2A. 

Be like Breckenridge, where traditional “resort accommodations” are exempt from the STR debate. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net.

ISSUE #231: Destroying Aspen's Neighborhoods (10/9/22)

The siren song of redistribution of wealth by centralized government never ceases for those who seek irreversible and unusurpable control over the lives and liberties of private citizens."

-- Josh Jones

The terrible repercussions of recently-passed Ordinance 14 are already being felt. The changes to the land use code that allow dense, multi-family subsidized housing to be built in any zone district are coming to vacant lots throughout town, notably to quiet, established neighborhoods where such development will be detrimental. 

The Aspen Area Community Plan (AACP), our local guiding document, is being deliberately ignored, particularly because those affected are free market and often second homeowners. Their quiet enjoyment does not count, and the destruction of their property values is being celebrated by city council. Subsidized housing at any cost is their mantra.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

Also, to check your voter registration for the November 8 election, go to www.Pitkinvotes.com

Ballots are being mailed out on October 17. Please be in touch if you have questions about candidates, issues and ballot measures.

* * * * * 

The recent passage of Ordinance 14 that changed local land use policy to allow for the development of residential multi-family subsidized housing complexes in all zone districts in Aspen is already wreaking havoc in long-established local neighborhoods. In short, whether it be in the West End, off Cemetery Lane or in Oklahoma Flats, Aspen’s few remaining vacant lots are being quickly snapped up and slated for massive development that fulfills city council’s utopian decision to shoe-horn high-density public housing into incongruous, quiet confines via quick, administrative review processes.

It is widely known that Aspen’s subsidized housing program is a dumpster fire, but this latest move, which passed 5-0 in typical city council “echo chamber” fashion, is a disgusting over-reach and stunning rebuke of the Aspen Area Community Plan (AACP), our community guiding and philosophical document. In fact, the AACP is revered as the holy grail when its plans of action to achieve “community goals” suit the city and its leaders, but when its aspirational and visionary principles are applied to the vilified free market homeowners who make subsidized housing in Aspen possible, it is quickly ignored.

For all the talk of Aspen’s modesty-scaled built environment and the critical need to preserve our small town character, forcing large, dense, subsidized housing complexes into inadequate spaces in quiet residential neighborhoods is antithetical to the community values espoused in the AACP. But given the no-longer-thinly-veiled disdain for free market property owners, these neighborhoods be damned. Subsidized housing belongs everywhere now. And the result is that the AACP has become a hypocritical manifesto serving to support some and to distinctly punish others.

The central themes of the AACP, last updated in 2012, are to maintain community character and quality of life, re-evaluate the impacts of development, manage the adverse effects of development and explore zoning solutions that re-affirm our small-town heritage. Notably, this maintenance, re-evaluation, management and exploration is directed specifically at curbing and controlling free market activity, never subsidized housing development. In the city’s eyes, such development is without effect or impact, when in reality, building dense multi-family complexes in residential neighborhoods is akin to allowing a boisterous pub or gas station in those same locations: completely wrong, and detrimental to the small town neighborhood character that is so regularly referenced.

Throughout the advisory document, highfalutin community aspirations abound, but are thrown by the wayside when private property owners seek to, God forbid, preserve their quality of life and the quiet enjoyment of their properties. The AACP no longer applies to them, if it ever did. In fact, this new subsidized housing development legislation flies directly in the face of many critical tenets of the document:

Governance: The AACP states that good governance is transparent, participatory, inclusive, collaborative, civil, consensus-oriented, responsive, effective, efficient and accountable. Just because Ordinance 14 passed unanimously at the council table in no way makes the resulting  legislation inclusive, collaborative or civil. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The punitive intent and overt destruction of property values is being proudly celebrated as a “win” toward city council’s wealth redistribution goals.

The Aspen Idea:  The AACP reminds that we value authentic engagement with others, including civil discourse about the community we want to create and maintain. This collaboration is intended to create common ground to reduce stratification in the town. Right. The community we want to create and maintain should never intentionally support such deliberate preference for some over others. We are already seeing the opening battles of an unprecedented class war. This legislation makes things dramatically worse.

Growth Management: The AACP condemns recent growth, defined as an increase in population, jobs, infrastructure, demand for services and an increase in the size of buildings, that is inconsistent with the history, scale, density and context of our small town character.

It says that limiting mass and scale limits the public financial burden of additional infrastructure and government operations and housing mitigation offsets impacts on the community: schools, roads, public transit, water, sewer and traffic. But the city does not view the development of subsidized housing as any kind of growth. Only free market development causes that! Hundreds more full-time, year-round residents will mysteriously have zero impact on our critical infrastructure.

Housing: Long cited in historical AACPs, “(subsidized) housing should be compatible with the scale and character of the community,” and notably, new subsidized housing “should demonstrate compatibility with the massing, scale and character of the neighborhood.” That is, until it’s convenient to simply ignore this clear stipulation because it no longer supports the narrative.

City council is out of control. They are hell-bent on pursuing their unrealistic subsidized housing goals at any cost, even if it means throwing out the AACP. New housing development before any comprehensive true needs assessment is virtue signaling at its worst. Instead of moving the needle to address any aspect of our “housing crisis,” which is distinctly not a shortage, such activity will cause real and lasting damage to our community, and in no way will this be limited to the wealthy second-homeowners who they hate. The desecration of the AACP negatively impacts all of us. 

Destroying others’ property values will not make Aspen more affordable, just uglier. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #230: United We Stand (9/26/22)

"Restlessness is discontent - and discontent is the first necessity of progress."

-- Thomas Edison

Things are ugly around here. Everyone has a grievance, and that includes segments of our community that aren't usually in the local political crosshairs. These days, as a result of a never-ending stream of bad decisions and tone-deaf policies by the current city council, there's a gripe on every corner.

So here we are, strangely united: united in our discontent.

Read my column in yesterday's Aspen Times HERE.

* * * * *

In a small town known for its political squabbles and petty arguments, today we are more united than ever. United in discontent. There has perhaps never been a time when the community has shared such a palpable sentiment stemming from numerous ignorant and ill-conceived decisions by our local government. The discontent manifests itself in different ways to different constituencies, but council has been nothing if not consistent in its ability to negatively impact just about everyone.

Downtown businesses were hit with the “Living Lab” experiment on Galena and Cooper that removed 44 parking spaces and made the already precarious driving-riding-walking corridor even more treacherous. Council’s car-free downtown dream is fatally flawed until there is a place to park the cars in the first place. Instead, cars circled the blocks, looking for parking, until many decided not to come to town anymore. The experiment has recently been tweaked to accommodate more cars, but the damage is done. 

Restaurants were the first to be on the receiving end of the city’s post-pandemic return to normalcy. Despite being highlighted in the AACP, the community’s guiding document, “messy vitality” is apparently no longer a community value. Innovative build-outs and street activations were shut down, despite the proprietors paying for the spaces and mitigating for subsidized housing. Unless formal plans were under way with the city to make the temporary structures permanent, all the quirky additions were removed, and with them, seats for hundreds of diners.

Families with children found themselves scrambling for childcare options in an already dire childcare market. In its most tone-deaf decision of all, city council attempted to increase childcare availability by requiring not one but two long-time local providers who rent city space in the Yellow Brick to operate five days a week as terms of their leases. For years, the cherished four-day-a-week providers had served hundreds of local families, but the new regulations forced both businesses to shut down. Today the city touts its under-construction $8 million childcare facility at Burlingame as the answer. Imagine how two round-trips each day will impact traffic, not to mention the working families who have to make them.

Homeowners have become the latest boogeymen. If you need a building permit, be prepared to wait, sometimes as long as 12-18 months. And don’t even think about a demo. There can only be six each year. In Vail, by contrast, it’s closer to two months, with apologies after 3-4 weeks. And in Minnesota, state statute requires decisions on complete applications within 60 days. What takes Aspen so long? It’s all about control and palpable disdain for private property owners. Our city hall has no discipline, no reliability and a culture that disrespects its citizens.

The Arts, including the Red Brick, were set to receive significantly more funding from the Wheeler coffers when 71% of the electorate approved a November 2021 amendment to the RETT. But when council refused to seat a dedicated arts council and allocated the arts funding itself, “arts fellowships” received only a dime for every dollar council kept to “improve city facilities.” Hardly the intent of the ballot measure.

West End residents, long besieged by west-bound, rush-hour commuters who attempt to bypass the traffic jam on Main Street and who ignore stop signs and speed limits, have implored the city to put an end to this dangerous and disruptive practice but remain in limbo as bureaucratic stalling and traffic studies are carried out.

Second Homeowners, our tax-paying but non-voting neighbors, have been blamed for displacing locals from in-town housing, crowding our restaurants and gentrifying our town. (No mention of their contributions to job creation, the RETT coffers, the tax base and our non-profits.) Short term rentals have already been punitively regulated because apparently no one but locals should be able to make money renting their homes. And council none-too-subtly threatens a future “vacancy tax” to further punish those not occupying their homes full time.

Subsidized Housing residents stand to suffer greatly as a result of this council’s decisions and priorities. For years, our deteriorating housing inventory has been further neglected for want of policy changes to bolster HOA reserves and undertake preventative maintenance. Decaying buildings will not fix themselves. Plus, the current focus on building hundreds of new units will add to our year-round population in significant numbers. “More” may initially sound appealing, but it also means more competition for increasingly scarce resources. After all, with just 12 bar stools at Mi Chola, where will hundreds of new folks watch the Broncos?

This is just a partial list, but you get the idea. Every sector of this community has been negatively impacted by the naïve and irresponsible decisions of this council. Blinded by their idealism and lack of real-world experience or business acumen, this group is solely responsible for making all of our lives more complicated, more costly and more inconvenient.

But we are the voters. There is a municipal election in March. It’s a sad state of affairs to be united in our discontent, but united we must remain. Together we can force the important changes we all can agree on.

Aspen deserves better. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net