ISSUE #196: For APCHA, Leadership is the Issue (6/20/21)

"If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarves. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants."

-- David Ogilvy

Sunday's column reiterates the leadership vacuum at APCHA and the ill-conceived 2019 decision to seat elected representatives from both city council and the BOCC on the housing board. The inherent conflicts of interest are holding APCHA back.

Yet, hope springs eternal. The board recently and unanimously elected to change the housing guidelines to require a formal inspection of APCHA units prior to listing them for sale. The Red Ant has long advocated for such a move that, as of August 1, will begin to stem the deterioration of our housing inventory. No one will be able to list a pigsty for sale, and therefore there will be no more passing pigsties on to housing lottery winners! HOORAY!!

On the horizon for APHCA is the hiring of a new executive director. Read about the candidates HERE. As part of the 2019 restructuring, however, the ED will not report to the housing board but rather to the city manager, despite the fact that, by law, APCHA is neither a department of the city nor the county.

What could possibly go wrong?

Read my column HERE.

ISSUE #195: Historic Hysteria and the End of an Era (6/6/21)

"I cannot look at modern buildings without thinking of historical ones." -- Kevin McCloud

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

For my long-time readers, the story of 312 W. Hyman Avenue is one you have read about in these pages for years. The saga recently ended, I think, when the city sold the 1950s-era prefabricated "kit" home it had controversially purchased in 2007 and dubiously preserved as historic.

The sale of this non-performing asset is being heralded within city hall for bringing a nearly half-million dollar "profit" to the housing development fund when, conservatively, the place was sold for millions less than it should have.

The whole story is a shameful chapter for the city and one that illustrates the dictatorial historic preservation game, how ill-equipped the city is to deal in real estate, and how clueless our elected leaders are in determining and executing sound fiscal policy.

Read my column in yesterday's Aspen Times HERE

Additionally, here is the listing for 312 W. Hyman.

ISSUE #194: APCHA - Let's Fix This! (5/23/21)

"The time is always right to do what is right." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

The APCHA board appears to be listening, but the changes they're proposing aren't going to get it done. Adding a mandatory inspection to the sales process is a good first step, but without requiring the noted fixes, nothing will change.

It's time for the acceptance of subsidized housing owners neglecting their units only to sell them to the next guy to end.

A mandatory inspection and remedy of the problems prior to listing is the only answer. It's what's fair to the future buyer and to the community that paid for the units in the first place. Personal responsibility should not be controversial.

Read my column in yesterday's Aspen Times HERE.

ISSUE #193: The Burlingame Bombshell (5/9/21)

"A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people." -- Suzy Kassem

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

Another column, another housing travesty. At some point, someone is going to listen and do something, right? It obviously won't be any one of the hundreds of bureaucrats whose paychecks and benefits are on the line, but I'm hopeful that our elected officials will finally and rightfully feel ashamed of their permissive oversight and neglect of our housing program.

To quote from an email I received this morning. "So many residents are crushed under the powerful and often arrogant wheels of Aspen's bureaucracy. They truly seem not to care about so many of their own citizens."

I wholeheartedly agree. It's disgusting. And when the city manager and city attorney (top of the bureaucratic foodchain) are the direct reports of city council, it ABSOLUTELY falls to the five elected members of city council to right this ship.

It's time to clean up the city-caused messes, replace the APCHA board with citizens who will work to save the program, and show some common decency and respect for the hard working locals and families who live in our subsidized housing.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

ISSUE #191: "That's Not Fair!" 4/11/21

"You can never have equal outcomes, but you can have equal opportunity." -- Jamie Dimon

Sadly, Aspen's political chickens have come home to roost. It was only a matter of time. The continual election of woke progressives and socialists with no viable work experience or worldview has finally manifested itself into a fiefdom of idealism, where real-world problems are addressed with BLM marches, cash handouts and sanctuary city policies.

I've recently learned that even the Aspen Music Festival has fallen prey to the "vaccines don't matter" ideology (they're cordoning off spaces on the lawn, OUTSIDE the music tent, lest people sit too closely together).

My sad prediction is that The People's Republic of Aspen will be among the last jurisdictions to reinstate personal responsibility as a guide for regaining lost freedoms in the post-COVID world.

Our elected (and appointed) leaders are simply too addicted to and empowered by the power we so quickly and blindly relinquished to them.

Read my column in yesterday's Aspen Times HERE.

ISSUE #190: Selling Aspen's Slums 3/28/21

"Several generations of slum environment will produce a slum heredity." -- Albion Fellows Bacon

Aspen's housing program is in crisis, but the APCHA board displays little to no willingness to address it. This is likely due to a controversial decision in 2019 to change the make-up of the board to include four citizens and two elected officials each from city council and the BOCC. The conflicts of interest are glaring, not to mention many of the board members are also subsidized housing residents - a dangerous recipe for self-dealing.

Our housing stock is rapidly deteriorating, we are selling uninhabitable units to innocent housing lottery winners and passing on the costs of unit fixes and overdue maintenance to future owners. Increasingly, the fixes are more costly than the purchase price.

HERE is an alarming account of just how bad it is. And HERE is a letter to the editor from former housing director Mike Kosdrosky who now privately consults with other jurisdictions how NOT to run their subsidized housing programs into the ground the way Aspen has.

The APCHA board has met to discuss these issues but cannot decide what to do. Read about this unacceptable inertia HERE.

The program is clearly not going to fix itself. That much is clear. Please join me in emailing the APCHA board to share your disgust with the program oversight and management, and with a request to take the immediate and necessary actions to change policy to include: a program census, inspections of all units prior to sale, and a return to objective governance of APCHA. That would be a good start.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

ISSUE #189: Dear John and Ward.... 3/14/21

"The only thing we learn from new elections is we learned nothing from the old." - Proverb

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

The recent election wasn't even close. Two old-time locals nabbed the two available seats in the first round. Ward Hauenstein, despite his earlier promises to serve "one (term) and done," was re-elected when he opted to run for a second term, and local artist John Doyle will join him at the council table. Doyle, an acolyte of former mayor Mick Ireland, cinched his victory by targeting voters who had opposed the Gorsuch Haus/Lift 1A project that narrowly won in 2019. Perhaps that's a little insight into his political leanings?

Yesterday's column (read it HERE) is my congratulatory letter to John and Ward, with a couple of hot-button issues to consider right out of the gate.

PRESCIENT COMMENTARY FROM OUR FORMER HOUSING DIRECTOR

Controversially dismissed by city manager Sara Ott, the former APCHA director is now consulting in the private sector. A recent post on his website soberly outlines the truths, trials and tribulations he faced from day one on the job. His departure is Aspen's loss - that is, unless you're a bureaucrat who also benefits from the program and therefore cannot objectively see what's wrong, or a housing scofflaw! Echoing much of what I regularly write about APCHA, Mike Kosdrosky's firsthand account of trying to modernize and reform Aspen's now 3100-unit housing portfolio and its institutional lack of transparency is an eye-opening shocker. We have a serious housing CRISIS, and it has nothing to do with lack of units. Read his blog entry HERE.

ISSUE #188: The tax man cometh, but where does the money go? 2/28/21

"It is a good thing that we do not get as much government as we pay for." -- Will Rogers

Today's column takes a line-by-line look at Pitkin County property taxes, specifically the haul by various entities and the pittance allocated to others. When our tax dollars go dramatically against what we state are our community priorities and values, perhaps we should all take a closer look at our annual bills and let our elected representatives know how we feel. (I just did.)

Read today's column HERE.