Chance to avoid white privilege
The decent thing for Rob Stein to do is refuse the salary increase he is receiving. To accept it would be, of course, another example of egregious “white privilege.” Instead, he should steer that money towards the benefit of the Latino students in his district.
N. Guy Eniquoc
Glenwood Springs
Trump a CEO failure
OK, he’s a con artist and a compulsive liar. Maybe a crook. Much worse than that, he’s a flagrantly incompetent chief executive. Whether POTUS or CEO of General Motors or Berthod Motors, your responsibility is to surround yourself with the best and the brightest. Identify, attract, orchestrate, motivate and retain the very best talent available — talent that is smarter and harder working than even you, which in this case wouldn’t be difficult.
He piloted six bankruptcies harming lenders and suppliers in the process. Oh well, they should have known better.
How about 78% turnover in the White House top echelon positions? How about 31% multiple turnovers on his A-Team? How about 9 of 15 Cabinet members turned over?
A recent Brookings Institute study labeled this chaotic turnover as “historic, unprecedented, off the charts.”
How do you explain this? Easy. He has no idea how to identify, attract, orchestrate, motivate and retain talent. The only organization he has ever run is his family business, and the family is extraordinarily well-compensated for putting up with his ridiculous oafishness. His daddy fed him with a silver spoon, which he damn near squandered, and he has maintained that family tradition — buy and own your “faithful” flock.
It’s understandable that few accomplished and ambitious talents would want to work for this guy. A bunch have given it a shot but either quit or been fired for failure to kiss his ring. Pence and Pompeo both have their eyes on the throne and if kissing rings or derrieres is part of the process, they’ll out-kiss the rest.
Even the most “asleep at the wheel” board of directors (think Enron) would have fired this guy two years ago.
Jim Noyes
Carbondale
CMC violating signed agreement
The conflict I have with CMC goes back to the very beginning of the Aspen Business Center in the late 1960s. Let me explain.
In 1966 we moved to Aspen when I was offered a job by Bill Janss to help design and develop Snowmass Village. It was through this job I became friends with Fritz Benedict and Elizabeth Paepcke. Fritz was a planner for Snowmass. Mrs. Paepcke was the trustee for the land surrounding the airport on both sides of Highway 82.
Between us and Mrs. Paepcke’s architect friend, world-class architect Harry Weese, we conceived of and developed the idea for the Aspen Airport Business Center. Through plans for the ABC we all finally agreed upon a vision for a home for numerous local serving businesses along with related apartments and housing for local workers. Today there are 187 businesses and 166 living units in the ABC and No. 40.
When CMC first came to us 24 years ago, they understood the concept and guidelines for the ABC and the No 40. The college was cramped on the high school campus. They wanted their own home, and as a community college, they liked the location at the No. 40 in the ABC, because of the proximity to Aspen and Snowmass to serve local students who lived in those communities.
Because CMC agreed to be contained by our original vision, height restrictions and setbacks, we agreed to sell them the land at one-half the going market rate. This is memorialized in a contract and addendum dated June 3, 1999, between me and then president Cynthia Heelan.
Sadly the proposed expansion by CMC today to become a residential college for 175 nonresident students violates that agreement entirely and is unacceptable.
But the CMC proposal is just not a violation of our agreement, it is an attack on the No. 40 neighborhood, who believed CMC would honor the agreement CMC made with me just before the No. 40 homeowners bought their lots and built their homes. They relied on my vision and assurance I was given from the college.
Just because an educational organization like CMC can bypass local zoning constraints does not make it acceptable to violate signed agreements. For a college that teaches philosophy and morality, to knowingly and selfishly decide to abandon a written agreement to pursue a goal that was never agreed to is wrong.
John McBride
Snowmass
