Letter: Manly enough for hard choices?

Last week, the Basalt town manager parroted words used by one of the Lowe Enterprises proposal mega supporters who earlier used the same phrase in hopes of motivating the council to “man up” and to vote for a bloated development proposal to develop more than half of, instead of leaving 80 percent of the area open, to become the most spectacular river park in the state. The town manager used the words after expressing disappointment that the park issue might go to the voters to decide since the council has shown they are hell bent on pleasing the development group over the public’s mostly river-park preference. The words are: “Council gets elected to make hard choices.” With six of the seven decision-makers being men, and three of them with major common-sense conflict of interest favoring Lowe Enterprises and big development, this is a brilliant phrase of manipulation to appeal to council’s macho side to get them to vote in lockstep with the developer group. Who does not want to manly enough to vote for making a hard decision? Let us all hope that the council members are manly enough not to have to prove further manliness and instead are motivated by a long-term and public-inclusive decision for Basalt instead.

Mark Kwiecienski

Aspen