Less parking, more angst
If you want to introduce a “living lab” that makes every inhabitant a lab rat, please try it out on a ballot first. Don’t go spending taxpayer dollars removing the people’s parking as some twisted experiment in municipal interventionism.
Did we like having businesses and a semi-functioning town? You know it’s mostly people who don’t live in Aspen who keep Aspen alive? From the trucks who deliver our food, to the gas that is delivered to keep you warm in the winter, to a whole lot of city and county employees who live “out there” beyond the roundabout, and let’s not forget the tourists and the absent but home-owning taxpayer base.
Most of the workers drive into town — maids, construction workers, people who come everyday, sometimes commuting for hours, with cars full of cleaning supplies, tools, construction equipment, to keep the town running! You expect them to park at the Intercept Lot, after they’ve driven an hour already, and what, try to pack all that equipment and supplies onto the bus-seat next to them?
Spend taxpayer dollars removing all those parking meters all over town that clog the streets with cars trying to move two or three times a day to avoid the penalties y’all are about to increase. The parking in town belongs to the people, not to the city government.
A $140 million-plus a year budget isn’t enough for you? You need more revenues to buy million-dollar free-market apartments outside the roundabout to further inflate real estate prices and compete with your Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority while making parking and traffic problems worse by removing 53 parking places in three blocks? That’s right, count the spots, it went from 88 to 35 parking places. “Dumb and Dumber” strikes again!
Andrew Scott
Snowmass
