Post blogger Michael Conniff believes Aspen pols and City staff have learned next to nothing from the affordable housing fiasco. "The major finding from the Town Hall," he blogs, "was the overwhelming consensus that the City is crazy to act as its own developer, and is likely to screw things up again if it doesn’t find someone who knows what they’re doing. The intrinsic, festering problems in affordable housing have nothing to do with issuing a bond, and everything to do with politicians and bureaucrats so set in their ways they can’t change in the face of the obvious. They think the workers of the world are in chains, that the only way to set them free is to keep them in bondage."
Theatre Aspen puts an exclamation on the final performance of the season with "Crimes of the Heart."
Don't get conned. LIke it or not, Post blogger Michael Conniff says the City's plans to use debt to pay for affordable housing is alive and well. "I have to look at it this way," he blogs, "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."
Posts filed under 'Affordable Housing'
I badly want to believe the news that Aspen City Council is likely to postpone any bond relating to affordable housing—the $16 million “stealth bond” I’ve blogged about before.
I badly want to applaud that decision but I can’t, because it’s clear City Mamas and Papas are embracing the postponement for all the wrong reasons, citing concerns like multiple administrative costs for multiple bonds, as if a little tweaking will make everything right.
My applause will have to wait, because I have seen or heard nothing to indicate anyone in the top of the Aspen hierarchy—pols or staff—understands what just happened in the last six months when it comes to affordable housing.
Continue Reading August 22nd, 2008
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.
Just not yet.
The City, you see, is trying to pull another fast one.
Continue Reading August 19th, 2008
Side-by-side on the front page of the local paper Friday morning were two stories that said everything that’s wrong about Aspen—and, more to the point, everything that’s right.
The first story spoke of the open house on affordable housing I moderated for “The Jerry Bovino Show” at the Paepcke auditorium Thursday night (and seen on GrassRoots TV); the second of Aspen City Manager Steve Barwick’s decision not to support placing a $50 million bond on the ballot come November 2008 to pay for affordable housing.
In my opinion, the news contained in both stories was nothing less than a monumental ellipsis in the history of Aspen, a “Return of the Jedi” moment for the plain old people who form the heart and soul of the town.
Continue Reading August 10th, 2008
I will have (much) more to say about what went down Thursday night at the Paepcke when about 100 people who really do care about Aspen showed up for a Town Hall confab put on by The Committee That Knows No Name. But something amazing happened at the very end of the evening, something I’m confident the reporters from the local papers missed.
By the time the topic of intimidation came onto the table, about 50 people were still in the room—the people who really really cared. I think it was Jerry Bovino who asked whether those in the audience felt they could speak out in Aspen without fear of intimidation or retribution.
Close to half the hands shot up into the air, including many of those up front and right on the aisle—another signal of their intense interest in the town.
Continue Reading August 8th, 2008
[Editor's Note: This news coverage has been underwritten by Factual Aspen Investigative Reporting (F.A.I.R.). F.A.I.R. has been formed and organized in Aspen, Colorado, as a nonprofit corporation to conduct investigative journalism in the public interest, and to provide accurate, meaningful and non-biased news coverage based on correct factual information.]
ASPEN (Post Time News)—Even a city like Aspen, known for affluence and excess, can flat run out of money when it comes
to funding affordable housing.
One solution: to borrow money in the municipal bond market in part to pay back the millions you just borrowed from your
own internal funds.
After spending more money than the City had in the bank to bank land for its 32-year-old affordable housing program, the
City of Aspen was compelled to borrow $8 million from the Wheeler Opera House fund to help finance more than $35 million
in land purchases. The City may be forced to borrow millions more from the City-owned Wheeler to pay off the outstanding balance, according to Aspen Finance Director Don Taylor.
“Additional amounts may have to be borrowed from Wheeler fund in 2008 to cover the 18,000,000 that was spent in 2007
on the BMC West lumber yard,” according to an email from Taylor. “It will depend on the RETT actual collections and what
happens with the bond issue.”
Continue Reading August 5th, 2008
The appalling dishonesty in the Burlingame saga continues. The City persists in its misrepresentation of the facts, deception of the public and cover-ups of deliberate actions related to Burlingame.
The results of recent audits were presented to our local media last Monday via a press release from the City that erroneously cited that the "two independent investigations" found "no evidence of intentional misrepresentation of facts." Tuesday’s headlines screamed "vindication" for the City. This is particularly troubling since the CPA audit appropriately did not even address this issue, yet alone comment on it. (CPA audits do not and cannot undertake legal issues such as “intentional misrepresentation.”)
Continue Reading August 5th, 2008
Assistant City Manager Bentley Henderson is not exactly a casualty of the Burlingate affordable housing brouhaha. He just got a better job in his hometown of Basalt.
That's the story emanating from Aspen City Hall and there's no reason not to believe it. Many of Burlingame's headaches preceded Henderson's tenure as head of the asset management department, and so he was not personally on the hook for Burlingate's sordid unaffordable history. Compared to months of agita to come in Aspen, no wonder he chose the relative anonymity of the Basalt Public Works department.
Continue Reading August 5th, 2008
The Burlingame affordable housing mess got messier this week when the City of Aspen issued a press release saying two internal inquiries, by a consulting firm and a Certified Public Accountants, exonerated Aspen City Council and City officials--an assertion the City had to retract the very next day in a clarifying press release with corrections.
The discrepancy is significant because both the Aspen Daily News and the Aspen Times ran stories based on the incorrect conclusions put forth in the press release. The Daily News headline read: "Burlingame Probe Clears City of Aspen." The Times reported "Audits Clear City In Burlingame Error."
Continue Reading July 29th, 2008
Now I'm really really mad.
The City of Aspen has identified yours truly as the source of the half-a-billion dollar Burlingame "rumor." In a story by the always power-friendly Carolyn Sackariasan, she spells my name right on the front page in a lead story and gets everything else wrong. Nor did she bother to even try to contact me to set the record straight.
Never would she let the facts get in the way of a good story if that story advances the Burlingate coverup.
Continue Reading July 19th, 2008
Now I'm really mad.
First the Aspen City Council, knowingly or not, published a brochure wih gargantuan errors that helped convince unsuspecting voters to vote for the Burlingate affordable housing project.
Then Mayor Mick Ireland and Aspen City Council--for reasons no Kremlinologist could ever fathom--fought tooth and nail to squelch any investigation, most recently the suggestion of an independent prosecutor.
Now it gets personal. In a newspaper advertising campaign paid for with taxpayer dollars, the City is misquoting something I said so as to present further misinformation about Burlingate, so as to pass the infamous $75 million bond in November. Without the bond to paper over their mistakes, Burlingate Phases II and III could fade into memory. No wonder they continue to mislead the public.
Continue Reading July 15th, 2008
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