City blows opportunities to make Aspen better

Locals aren’t being priced out of Aspen; their tax dollars are being spent foolishly while city-owned properties are being grossly underutilized. Quit wasting money on massive city government projects such as the new city call and invest into the properties that the developers are purchasing; control our destiny rather than complain about developers ruining Aspen one parcel at a time.

Why subsidize the Wheeler restaurant space for an affordable local restaurant when the city could get that $50,000 a month in rent and invest into numerous sub-prime spaces for local restaurateurs that will actually allow them to be affordable? How much is the city government going to spend on consultants who never lived in Aspen to tell us how to fix all the problems that we keep feeding?

Don’t even get me started on how much the City Council is going to spend on climate change, only to counter any dent they make by introducing 500 to 1,000 cars at the Lumberyard to the existing traffic jam that already exists from the Aspen Business Center to Aspen. We have a $150 million annual budget. This is a managerial problem, not a money problem.

Mark Reece

Aspen