KNFO News Director David Bach is reporting on the by now world-famous man who fell off the lift in Vail--all but for a foot and ski--and left himself naked from the waist down for the world to see.
The investigation into how carbon monoxide leaked from a snowmelt system and killed a Denver Family ------continues this morning.
The four members of the Lofgren family, who had won a trip to Aspen, were staying in a luxury home just east of town over Thanksgiving, when somehow the deadly and silent gas filled the house.
"Aspen will continue to be a dysfunctional town with plenty of dysfunctional people," writes Bonnie in comment #1. "Unfortunately, too many of them are politicians...."
The Burling-Blame Game Explained Learn the rules of the game in two minutes or less and you too can play. A brief primer; In 2005 City Council got a FIXED Bid to build Burlingame Phase I for $150 a square foot which included infrastructure inside the site. This contract got executed successfully with minor changes. At the time, city staff was responsible for estimating additional external infrastructure and future changes to the project. At the time the total cost estimate for Phase I was about $39 million. The original cost increased by $20.1 MILLION (per city staff memo) by mainly discretionary changes to reduce cost of units, add park, trail, buses, green improvements etc. Additionally the infrastructure estimate by city staff was wildly off, the total cost appears to have increased $18.4 MILLION more than the original estimate (per city staff memo). Essentially the cost of Burlingame Phase I DOUBLED due to Council discretionary decisions and a terrible cost estimate of infrastructure by city staff. It was NOT due to construction inflation since it was a fixed bid. It was NOT due to a delay in starting Burlingame in 2005 instead of 2002, since the city’s cost to produce housing per square foot was less in 2005 than what the city paid in 2002.
We have a good box for you this week and some new recipes, let's
hope! We have Cherries, Potatoes, Onions, Salad Mix, Tomato,
Cilantro, Garlic, Kale, Romaine Lettuce, Sugar Snaps and Snow Peas.
Wahoo! It's looking like summer! I think it will be one more week on
one size box and then next week we will have enough food to split
into half and full size. I may change my mind on that during pack
out, we will see.
Highlights of Ideas Festival sessions open to the public (tickets required) include:
· US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff in conversation with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg
· Alice Waters in conversation with The Atlantic’s Corby Kummer, with dessert served from her cookbook
· Award-winning National Geographic photographer James Balog exploring ice on the run in his “Extreme Ice Survey”
· A global perspective on the US elections from Der Tagesspiegel’s Christoph von Marschall, Ha'aretz’s Ari Shavit, Edward Luce of the Financial Times, and others
· A talk with four young, resilient survivors of genocide, war, and gang violence, moderated by playwright and actor Anna Deavere Smith.
I have made a very difficult decision to resign from the Task Force and Subcommittee. I deeply regret that I cannot continue the good work we have started together. I have learned so very much and most importantly, made new friends in the process.
The work of these two bodies is of critical importance to the community at this very crucial time. Future Burlingame plans and the future of our affordable housing are in question today. The community needs your strong, independent, and credible voice for information and guidance, and to rebuild confidence in the financial policies of the City. The City Council needs your objective input as well.
The thing I love most about the Food and Wine festival here in Aspen is the famous people I’ve never heard of and would not know from Adam. It’s like going to the Super Bowl with no clue about frozen tundra—you should have stood in bed instead of taking up space in the stands.
A couple years back I was saving a chair at the Hotel Jerome for my fiancée when a woman took the chair for her husband without asking. She said something that indicated her husband was some kind of a big deal in the world of food, but I could not have cared less if he were Wolfgang Puck. It was our chair. I had saved the seat under the universal law found in the Constitution that decrees all men are created equal no matter how nifty you might be with pulled pork and coleslaw.
ASPEN, COLORADO—What does the little town of Harper Woods, Michigan, unremarkable in so many ways, have to do with the Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, Aspen’s own monarch with the $135 million manse in the beyond posh Starwood section of this mountain town?
Here in Aspen, in fact, the Prince is known as generous to local charities, kind to animals, and generous to a fault when his multiple wives hit the downtown mall with multiple plastic. He is also known to ski within a circle of bodyguards, and to rent out the downtown Isis theatre in toto so as to enjoy a movie of his choice in privacy.
In Harper Woods, in contrast, said Sultan is prince non grata, accused by the town’s employee pension fund of embezzling some $2 billion over 20 years as the go-between betwixt the Saudi government and BAE Systems of the United Kingdom.
The Con Man welcomes the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboarding Club back to the program, then explains why the conventional wisdom that said Democrats would be damanged by the primaries was so completely wrong.
The Con Man can't help himself: he has to liken the Burlingate affordable housing scandal in Aspen to the neoconservatives who rule(d) Washington. What do they have in common? Both the local liberals and the Beltway conservatives felt they knew better.
Don't miss the call from former Aspen City Councilor Torre in the second half of the show.
I don’t get to Aspen City Council work sessions that often—who has time for comedy in these days of Food and Wine?—but the first hour or so of the work session on Burlingate and affordable housing was a doozie.
I came in during a Council meltdown Tuesday night and it took me a good twenty minutes to figure out that Mayor Mick Ireland, Jack Johnson, and Steve Skadron were squawking about the necessity of televising the session as bankrolled by Marilyn Marks, a member of the Citizens Budget Task Force, a group formed at the suggestion of Mayor Mick to his eternal regret. Marks, also a member of the affordable housing subcommittee, has done nothing but make their lives miserable, mainly by pointing out the Council and City staff has no clue about where the money goes or is going in affordable housing.
Higher than average snowpack has emergency management officials in Pitkin County, the city of Aspen and the towns of Snowmass and Basalt gearing up for possible flooding this runoff season.
