Aspen City Council wants and gets it both ways

The city attorney says that somehow Councilman Skippy Mesirow doesn’t have a conflict of interest even though he works for a short-term rental property management company that will directly financially benefit from his vote to give them more business at the expense of other property owners in Ordinance 27? (“Councilman’s professional work with STRs still doesn’t pose conflict, Aspen city attorney says,” Dec. 9, The Aspen Times)

Just because “he won’t directly financially benefit from an increase in pay?” No holiday bonus for Skippy. It must have been quid pro bono.

Sure. As if a councilman who worked for Aspen Skiing Co. could have voted for the Pandora’s expansion, even though it wouldn’t necessarily directly increase their paycheck? Or should we conclude that the council members do work for Skico, since they went against their own staff recommendation in allowing the cutting down of 3,200 trees in mostly National Forest Land right before they initiated a moratorium on development because of a “climate emergency?”

Hey! Know what you can do for the climate emergency? Save those trees that actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere, unlike all the “carbon offsets” that Skico pretends they are saving the Earth with, while their ownership keeps profiting off the production of private jets, nuclear submarines, naval destroyers, ye old F-16s? Right.

Andrew Scott

Aspen