Let’s reevaluate how we Aspen

Let’s reevaluate how we Aspen

Thank you for publishing the guest commentary from commissioners in Eagle County, namely, Kathy Chandler-Henry, Matt Schwerr and Jeanne McQueeny (“Imagining the future of Eagle County,” April 29). It seems to question why, in a time of economic boom (at least on paper) 25% of residents couldn’t make ends meet and 40% couldn’t find affordable housing. It says we should create a new future for ourselves if we can.

This opening up of construction sites on an “expedited schedule” just is not the right way to go. It has been the wrong way to go for a long time now. It looks good on paper, but in reality it does not benefit the locals much. Not when the “locals” drive up from Rifle and beyond. I think we need to take this coronavirus hiatus as a time not only to be safe but to do some real serious thinking about what we are all about as Aspen locals. Here is what I do not miss during this lockdown time: traffic jams. Contrail skies. Umpty jets over my home, all hours. Food & Wine hogging the park. Retailers just loaded with laughable items I don’t even want, and if I did, I couldn’t afford them. The whole feel of a town crowded with too-big, too-new cars until there is not only no parking space, but hardly room to breathe.

I miss the library and the Thrift Shop but it has been a hell of a while since I missed anything else.

So, people, let’s not be so quick to sacrifice this poor town once again on the altar of greed and minimum wage for all. Do we have no pride? Sense of place? It is not our duty to cave and allow anyone to come here and feast on what we once used to have for free-for me, the most beautiful, dirty little town I’d ever seen. I fell in love. I will end with a quote: “No matter how far you have gone down the wrong road, you can turn back” — Turkish proverb

Janet Mohrman

Aspen