Aspenites are turning on each other over city council plans to spend $22 million to build a new office building for bureaucrats, because it would block the mountain view.
In other news, Medicaid registration has dramatically spiked in Pitkin County by nine percent because people there are poor. But we digress.
The new town hall would be located right smack dab in the middle of town on prime, expensive real estate, and rise nearly 20 feet higher than is permitted for other buildings.
Oh, the injustice.
Adding insult to injury, the council has fund a way to bypass the required public vote to approve construction “out of concern that the project would lose in an election.”
City Manager Steve Barwick has advised that voters view the construction of new government buildings “right down there with tax increases and mandatory colonoscopies.”
“Don’t underestimate the possibility of losing this,” Barwick said, adding that from the average voter’s perspective, new government offices offer nothing of value.
And after all, Aspen is all about value.