Patten: That what we want?
Letter to the editor
Editor’s note: We missed the first page of this letter earlier this week. Here is the full letter:
In response to the Elizabeth Milias’ column “Time to stop the madness” in The Aspen Times on Feb. 18, I have this to say: Elizabeth, there is no madness! There are four people on the City Council, and the mayor, who were elected by the voters of Aspen, and you simply disagree with their decisions on so many issues. Just because they voted in a way you don’t like does not constitute madness.
So now, it seems that you are supporting Tracy Sutton for mayor and Bill Guth for City Council.
Ms. Sutton has a luxury, vacation-rental business and is a real-estate broker. By her own admission, most of her business comes from short-term rentals. She is opposed to the short-term rental tax passed last year by 62% of the votes cast. Her opposition to it seems like a slap in the face of the voting process.
Mr. Guth is a developer/broker who is also opposed to the way the STR tax was implemented and to the construction moratorium last year.
I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t agree that there is too much construction underway in our town, both residential and commercial, and that there needs to be some mitigation measure in place.
While I suspect both of these candidates are nice people, I feel both are running on a platform of profit-over-people with a high percentage of supporters from the real-estate and development industry.
Do we really want pro-short-term rental and pro-development folks making the decisions about the direction our town is going?
I urge voters to to vote for Torre and Skippy.
Buzz Patten
Aspen
