City must stop work on Burlingame Village project

Dear Editor:Last summer we watched in disbelief and horror the city of Aspen’s excavation of Deer Hill without proper land-use approvals or permits. This kind of behavior must stop.Today, Aspen City Council during its regular public session will vote on whether to annex the piece of land the city has acquired from us, the Soldner family, to access the proposed Burlingame Village.If we had known or realized that the city of Aspen was going to split our half-acre of land out from the entire Burlingame Village project, we would have insisted on very different language in our negotiations between the city and the Zolines and ourselves. My father and I feel manipulated and deceived, as should all citizens of Aspen.As a result, we will ask City Council to add, as a condition to the annexation of the Soldner land acquired by the city, a requirement that the city of Aspen not continue or begin any earth-moving of any kind, or construction of the road leading to the proposed Burlingame Village, until all land-use approvals, site plans and a thorough community impact study of the proposed Burlingame Village have been approved through the public process and the entire proposed development, both the Zoline free-market home sites and Burlingame Village, has been annexed.If built, the proposed Burlingame Village will be located not, as some people think, close to town in a cattle pasture, but rather more than three miles out of town in the middle of the last vital sage/shrub-oak environment, linking wildlife migration through the Maroon Creek Valley with Red Butte, Red Mountain, the Highlands, Buttermilk Mountain and beyond.Stephanie and Paul SoldnerAspen