After the hot-damn town hall meeting about affordable housing at the Paepcke, I was more than willing to leave the Burlingate affordable housing fiasco behind. When you’re sick of both sides—when your allies are cursing you out harder than the other times—it’s time to step back.
 

The City, you see, is trying to pull another fast one. On a Wednesday, City Manager Steve Barwick seemed to say unequivocally that he was recommending against putting an affordable housing bond on the ballot.
 

Barwick said: “I’ll be making a recommendation to not do a Burlingame construction bond on the November ballot.”
 

Guess what Aspen City Council did the following Tuesday? You got it: they put a bond on the ballot—not the $49 million as advertised at the ill-fated Open House, but a $16 million bond meant to account for the $8 million owed the Wheeler Opera House fund to pay for the BMC West lumber yard ($18 million). An unexplained and inexplicable $7 million-plus in “contingencies” was put on the smaller bond just to show the Council was not done yet with asking for a blank check when it comes to affordable housing.
 

“Burlingame bond is dead for now,” was the headline in The Aspen Times, a remarkably misleading headline for a story that described a stealth bond would in fact be on the ballot, albeit one to play for land bought rather than construction contemplated.
 

Another twist in the bond plot: the news that the town fathers would concomitantly try to extend the Real Estate Transfer Tax (RETT) so as to assure municipal bond underwriters that the city will be able to pay off the long-term debt on time.
 

As the late great New York sportswriter Dick Young used to say: “What’s going on here?”
 

It’s simple really, once you consider the masterminds on the City Council are at their most transparent when their trying to be their most clever. By putting a much smaller $16 million bond on the November ballot—and disassociating it from Burlingate—they increase their chances of success exponentially. By putting the RETT extension on the ballot, they also pass a necessary hurdle to finance additional bonds until their hunger for affordable housing is sated. The RETT vote is far more significant long-term, but the combo platter of RETT extension and $16 million bond sets the table for debt financing for decades to come.
 

I have to look at it this way: if the stealth bond and RETT extension pass in November, then City Council (most of them) and City staff have pulled off a bait-and-switch of epic proportions. The key for them is to extend the RETT even as they set up the precedent of voters sinking the City into debt to pay for affordable housing past and present.
 

The game is still the same: if the bond passes in November, the pols and officials who brought us Burlingate win again.

Entry Filed under: Aspen, Affordable Housing, Aspen City Council