Letter: Elections have consequences
“Elections have consequences” is a phrase that we’ve heard in national politics recently. This is also clearly true in Vail, where East Vail residents finally tilted the balance of the Vail Town Council toward their goal of keeping the Vail Resorts workforce from living within eyesight.
With the addition of Jonathan Staufer to council, the merry band of NIMBY letter-writers (including Merv Lapin, who has made a lifetime career of developing this valley) can smugly bite the hand that feeds — by using the convenient excuse of the hallowed sheep. Never mind that the sole reason these people have been blessed in business and real estate is their proximity to a wildly popular ski resort. Instead of supporting the organization whose success has boosted their property values into the stratosphere and brought dollars to their shops, they choose to declare war against the economic engine that powers the town.
That side of I-70 has, presently and in the past, been continuously developed with multi-million dollar homes with nary a peep from the fair-weather Jane Goodalls of East Vail. But now somebody wants to build beds for employees? Look out, here comes an environmental revolution!
It looks like the only way for VR to get anything accomplished is to support sympathetic candidates for council, and to get people to vote for them. Sadly, there are fewer and fewer worker-friendly residents of Vail to engage in democracy these days. Where would they live?
Ray Dixon
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West Vail