I am incredibly thankful and indebted to everyone who has volunteered with me over the years to protect our quality of life and small-town values against the cumulative impacts development is having on our traffic congestion, affordable housing, quality of life and small-town values.
For over 30 years, from my time as a high school student at CRMS in Carbondale to returning after college and law school, Aspen has always been the best place on the planet to call home, in part because of our strong resistance to under-mitigated development. Recently, however, voters and City Council have moved in a different direction.
My time on City Council became immensely less fun during the past two years as voters and City Council approved multiple projects adding hundreds of thousands of job-generating square feet to Aspen while abandoning 100 percent affordable-housing mitigation.
Let the good times roll in Fat City — waive housing mitigation and ignore the cumulative impacts development is having on our community. All the while being totally uninterested in having any carrying-capacity discussions regarding the impacts of under-mitigated development or what sort and how much development our community should take on.
Leaning in for our community by volunteering on referendums and in elections has kept me busy for the past 17 years. Now it is time for me to step back, as I see no path to solving our traffic congestion and affordable-housing problems given the direction from voters and City Council members. I wish a new City Council and new community volunteers well in their struggle to solve these issues, which just became harder.
While Aspen will continue as our home base for the next 30 years, I couldn’t be happier to entirely let go of local politics and spend more time with friends and family enjoying the resort side of Aspen and traveling. Thank you again to all who have volunteered alongside me over the years.
Bert Myrin
Aspen