Remember to vote next week

It won't be over until the last vote is counted, so be sure to get out and vote next Tuesday or vote absentee upstairs in City Hall (today through Friday).

Although Mick Ireland and Steve Skadron won with hefty margins against Tim Semrau and Toni Kronberg in the first go-round, keep in mind that runoff elections get a historically low voter turnout, and your ho-hum today could be a nasty surprise on June 5.

I supported, and continue to strongly support, Mick Ireland for mayor and Steve Skadron for City Council, these two being far and away the most knowledgeable and best-qualified candidates to join J.E. DeVilbiss and Jack Johnson for one of the strongest councils Aspen has had in years. I'll have to wait and see where Dwayne Romero comes down on the issues.

There's no way to write an election column without addressing the issue of Toni Kronberg's residency, since that has dominated the news and triggered some of the liveliest letters to the editor since Roger Marolt's family of pseudonyms ruled those pages.

On the face of it, I would think that anyone accused of misrepresenting one's place of residency for the past year would easily be able to prove otherwise and, with considerable outrage, would immediately turn such evidence over to the press and the city attorney, nipping said accusations in the bud.

Instead, the rumors and news stories went unanswered by Toni until three people filed complaints, making it a legal matter. Even then, Kronberg waited until the last minute to produce any documents proving her residency, and then waited several days before making her documents public. The city could not do this because of legal technicalities.

What she did turn over (according to the Daily News - I assume she didn't give them to The Aspen Times) was a statement verifying that she had lived in Burlingame employee housing through May 31, 2006 (only that month of May being germane to the required year's residency) and a letter of a caretaking agreement for an Aspen property from Denise Reich dated May 1, 2006.

No end date for this arrangement, no explanation why it wasn't produced sooner if Toni had had it in hand for a year. Still, this would definitely not have cut it if Kronberg had been applying for a city food tax rebate, and it didn't cut it with ad hoc city attorney Jim True, who turned it over to John Worcester when he returned from vacation.

It wasn't black and white for Worcester, either, who turned it over to City Council. By that time it was clearly too late to instigate an investigation with any expectation that it could be completed before June 5, so the council members agreed to let the matter rest until after the election, eliciting considerable public outcry that they were a bunch of spineless wimps.

An unresolved investigation would have tainted Kronberg's campaign and, all in all, I think it was the right decision. Kronberg also made the right decision to release her documentation, giving the public the opportunity to weigh the evidence.

Clearly the laws regarding residency (as well as voter registration) have to be tightened. This is at least the third time in my memory that candidate residency has become an issue, and there's no excuse for it.

<i>Su Lum is a longtime local who will be glad when this election is over. Her column appears every Wednesday in The Aspen Times</i>