Vail Daily letters to the editor

Great idea for Minturn

Thank you, Warren Miller.

I am so happy with your columnSunday about connecting Minturn to Vail and Beaver Creek.

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I have been outspoken and trying for years to get this to happen. If you would like any help please contact me thru my website at http://www.minturntimes.com.

What a beautiful thing this would be to connect these areas in time for the 2015 World Alpine Ski Championships. There will be guests coming from all over the world and an expected 1 billion TV viewers.

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We may also have the option of connecting Dean Adler’s (Lubert-Adler Real Estate Funds) property to Vail.

Mr. Miller, you need to talk with Dean Adler. Also, I am sure the Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy in Minturn would love this idea also.

So there are a few powerful entities that can help you, and I can put you in touch with both of them.

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But here is the sad truth, Mr. Miller: Our Minturn Town Council is dead set against connecting Minturn to Vail or Beaver Creek.

Our council is small-minded and would rather allow irresponsible growth than responsible growth.

Case in point: I am currently on a council agenda item to fire our town manager, Jim White, and our town planner, Chris Cermile, for allowing a house to be built that I believe is too big and against town code.

On the other side of the spectrum, our mayor, Hawkeye Flaherty, has a 20-foot-long travel trailer parked on his vacant lot that he calls a house.

I see it as just more Minturn corruption, because the council has already allowed both of these, but I will try one more time.

Johnie Rosenfeld, currently on the Minturn council, is running for Eagle County commissioner. This should not happen.

Johnie would be bad for Eagle County just as he has been bad for Minturn. When it gets closer to election time, I will delve into this more.

Mr. Miller, I have never been to the French resort of Courchevel, but it sounds like a wonderful place with people who had the foresight to create a great skiing experience for their guests.

I can only hope that one day I can hop on a Minturn ski lift with my family and ski to Beaver Creek or Vail. This would truly make our area a world-class resort.

Thank you again, Warren Miller, and hopefully some more smart people in Minturn will help to propel this idea forward to improve Minturn with responsible growth so the citizens have more family benefits like sidewalks, bike paths, a recreation center, etc., and Minturn businesses can increase their sales and grow.

Please do not stop being the carrier of new ideas, Warren Miller. There are people who agree with you. I agree with you and I have the energy and will continue the fight in Minturn of new ideas.

Frank Lorenti

Minturn

Paving way for Obama

This week’s delightful cover of The New Yorker magazine depicts five elephants failing at doing tricks in a circus setting, a not-so-subtle lampooning of the current field of Republican Party candidates for president.

The only Republican in the race with the credentials and experience to make a fine president, Jon Huntsman (and the breadth of popular appeal to stand a chance of getting elected), announced that he was dropping out of the race. A very sad day indeed for the United States.

With Mitt Romney now virtually assured of his party’s nomination and the far right wing of the Republicans once again in firm control of the not-so-formidable Republican juggernaut, the circus will likely continue even though there are very few people in the audience and it is now a foregone conclusion that Barack Obama will be handed four more years in office.

Given the general dissatisfaction with President Obama’s job performance (given his total lack of experience for the job, what did you expect?), this election cycle seemed to be the Republicans to lose.

Instead of focusing on abortion, same-sex marriages, “don’t ask don’t tell,” the hocus-pocus surrounding the myth of some non-existent deity and a seeming delight in protecting the bank accounts of the wealthiest 1 percent among us — if they came up with a concrete plan as to how to put millions of Americans back to work, the Republicans would have won the White House in a walk.

Remember 2008? Well, come this November, it looks to be a certainty that the Republican Party will demonstrate once again its penchant for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Bring on the clowns.

Peter Bergh

Edwards

Insult to Minturn

I’m writing this letter to respond to Warren Miller’s commentary about connecting Vail and Beaver Creek. I take offense to Mr. Millers comment about the elk. In your column, you say “what about them,” referring to the elk and their migration routs. It’s obvious that you are ignorant about wildlife and their needs. You only see them as an obstruction to your far fetched ideas.

Elk, deer, bear, mountain lions and many others have always migrated through the Gore and Eagle valleys. Before Vail and the interstate was built, these awesome animals migrated freely. Now they are forced into smaller and smaller migration corridors and an ever-shrinking winter range.

I have seen these animals struggle and die from auto collisions and starvation because there is simply not enough quality winter range for them. Development and human encroachment see to that.

I suggest you do some research on wildlife and their needs before you make such outrageous, far-fetched ideas. I love our wildlife. I don’t think you care much for them.

My family and I have lived in Minturn all our lives. To state that we could become a parking lot for Vail and Beaver Creek is an insult to the fine people of Minturn. I wonder what you really think of our “little town.”

Jim Gonzales

Minturn

Lady was right

Kate Portz, your indignant reply to Ms. Borch’s letter to the editor regarding the Vail Mountain safety group is so absurd it’s comical.

To quote your attempt at sarcasm: “It might help your own awareness” if you stood on the hill to observe skiers and riders zip past “slow down now” signs manned by yellow-jacketed men and women talking to each other.

Use that keen sense of awareness and notice where they are standing: behind the signs – because that’s the only safe place to be.

I laughed out loud at your condescending invitation to the Sunday-morning violators’ safety class and then how you let us all in on the secret that you will be on a snowboard while “educating” whoever is lucky enough to go out with you for the day.

As for your name dropping, Julie Rust and Jeff Wiles are leaders who do exemplary work and probably cringed at being mentioned in your letter. OMG, Kate, can you really fit that enormous head of yours in a helmet?

Dan Woolner

Edwards

More dangerous now

I’m responding to Butch Mazzuca’s letter about the Marines: As for what these guys did, regardless of any losses they may have had or any other reason, what they did was put even more Americans in even more danger than they already are.

I feel I have a right to speak up simply because my son is heading to Afghanistan at the end of February or start of March. This will be his fourth tour between there and Iraq.

What these guys did puts my son in even more danger.

And why anyone would take pictures of this, in this day and age, is beyond me.

Shame on them and anyone else who does things like this and then posts pics.

Theresa Ladenburger

Gypsum