ISSUE #233: Is this what we've become? (11/1/22)

"Visitors to Aspen could have the most positive impact by not vacationing here at all."

-- Roger Marolt

I sat down to write a special issue of The Red Ant after reading a published column in today’s Aspen Daily News by life-long local Roger Marolt. I cringed when I read the headline, “Save our city, right now.”  That isn’t offensive on its face, and I agree that Aspen desperately needs “saving,” but where we disagree is from whom and from what. That it entitled a column by Marolt foreshadowed the hateful perspective and message that followed.

A little background: Marolt is from Aspen. He’s never lived anywhere else. Therefore, his worldview and frame of reference are exceedingly narrow. (He has become the poster-child of what’s wrong with blooming where you’re planted!)

He is also obsessed with nostalgia and wants nothing more than for Aspen to return to what it was 50 years ago.  This mentality is sadly not his own; he shares it with a growing number of malcontents who seek to do everything they can in the public policy realm to destroy Aspen the tourism destination and resort in an effort to return Aspen to the locals. Yes, that means without second homeowners. (He is willing to allow a few tourists.)

I’m not kidding. Here is what he writes:

• The likely-to-pass 5%-10% excise taxes on STRs including Aspen’s traditional condo rentals and condo-hotels (but not fractionals or hotels) “will make visitors mindful that they create immediate negative impacts on our town while they are here. It is a necessary self awareness that most currently lack. It’s time to send the message.”

• “Visitors to Aspen could have the most positive impact by not vacationing here at all”

• “(Visitors) create more impacts on the town and highways and consume far more local resources than does a family just living in a similar house.”

• Our visitors are not “oblivious,” they’re “selfish.”

• “To me, a real town has more than half its residential units occupied by people who work in the town.”

• To make Aspen a "real town" again, we need to "get rid of second homeowners"

• “We need to make sure that everyone knows that visitors create negative impacts on our home town that need to be mitigated.”

HERE is the column. Please read it and let me know what you think. 

Instead of opining here as intended, I have decided that the issue warrants a Sunday column of its own. Besides, I file my column for Sunday, November 6, tomorrow, and need to button that one up before I dive headfirst into this one.

I have a lot more to say on the matter. Today I am disgusted.