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Letter: A letter in response to Richard Goodwin’s recent mailer

Editor’s Note: This letter first appeared in Wednesday’s Snowmass Sun. The alleged salary number in the original letter — as stated by Goodwin in his mailer — was incorrectly referenced. This version has been corrected.

This past weekend, I received your campaign mailing, as did many of our Snowmass Village residents. This mailing was very inaccurate and troubling at best.

Mr. Goodwin, I would prefer not to respond to such erroneous speculations as those found in your letter, however today I chose to take a stance on behalf of Snowmass Village, our Town Council and the great staff of our town.



While I appreciate all of the environmentally sustainable measures you mention, you seem to be expressing a total reliance on renewables and the contributions you have made to CORE. In addition, your mailing contained several facts that are troubling and false:

• You stated that I am mayor of Snowmass Village and director of a local nonprofit Hospice, and that my salary was more than $250,000, largely in part due to the contributions from our developers. Please know your statement is absolutely false! You exaggerated the assertion regarding my salary as the leader of the nonprofit hospice by more than six figures — yes, you over inflated my actual salary by more than $100,000. Please also know that actual salary determinations are decided by a very qualified board of directors, and have nothing to do with the donations that are used to serve dying patients who have no insurance and who are in need of end of life care. Thank goodness to the more than 4,000 donors who help the local nonprofit hospice care for patients and their families at the final hours of life. Check out our most recent IRS 990 found on the web.




• You stated that the town of Snowmass Village has many “loopholes” in our environmental program, land use and town code regarding sustainability. Please know that our Town Council, both past and present, has taken many budgetary measures regarding environmental substantially as a leading goal for decreasing our carbon footprint. Please refer to our environmental sustainability plan, our previous and current budgetary dollars being spent and various reports from the work of the town, and lastly the “green building code.”

• Please also know that your statements suggesting that our new owners will develop subsidiary corporations and that “nothing” will get done is not helpful to all of our residents who continue to be vocal on one major issue to our Town Council, “get Base Village done.” The use of this language devalues the work of our community.

• Lastly, it is imperative that I highlight the simple fact that you, Richard Goodwin, have an ongoing lawsuit against our town. Our taxpayers have spent a considerable amount of money defending our town against your lawsuits. Yes, thousands of dollars to date. We could have put these dollars to use on behalf of improving our parks, trails and caring for our community.

Markey Butler

Mayor of Snowmass Village