{"id":2452985,"date":"2020-01-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=318771"},"modified":"2020-01-08T06:57:17","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T13:57:17","slug":"grounding-the-aspen-pitkin-county-airport-vision-with-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/grounding-the-aspen-pitkin-county-airport-vision-with-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Grounding the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport vision with reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/02\/facebook-thumbnail-1200.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The Dec. 27 \u201cadditional document\u201d authored by a fervent minority of the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport Vision Process Community Character Working Group broadly attacks the work and conclusions of the coequal Technical Working Group\u2019s final report of Dec. 5. No doubt, this new document will provide additional grist for the ASE Vision Committee, which in the coming months will make recommendations to the Pitkin County commissioners as to whether and how to go forward with the airport\u2019s modernization. The fight is on, and anyone who has a stake in or cares about the Roaring Fork Valley\u2019s future should pay attention.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">And make no mistake, it will be a fight, albeit cloaked in the dulcet public-process tones of \u201coutreach\u201d and \u201cconsensus building,\u201d because, in part, of the deeply held belief that in Aspen and elsewhere in Pitkin County the basic economic forces that drive and shape the rest of the world don\u2019t apply here. This is delusional. Aspen Exceptionalism is as much a fraud as American Exceptionalism, and equally pernicious if embraced by policy-makers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Case in point, the \u201cadditional document\u201d asserts that the airline industry will \u201cmiraculously respond\u201d to the valley\u2019s needs whatever they are because Aspen\/Pitkin is \u201can extraordinarily lucrative market.\u201d The authors of this language must have missed Bill Tomcich\u2019s detailed presentation on Dec. 5 of the ups and downs of air service at ASE. There is nothing miraculous about the shifting fleets that have served this market, and there have been times where the disappearance of a fleet has wounded the valley severely.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">This \u201cwe\u2019re special\u201d bias is not confined to a few. Every burg, village and town, every city and state, every nation, every tribe, thinks they\u2019re special. We\u2019re no different. The challenge for the Vision Committee and the BOCC is to see past that bias and deal with reality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Name\">Barry Vaughan<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Title\">El Jebel<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/letters-to-the-editor\/grounding-the-aspen-pitkin-county-airport-vision-with-reality\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dec. 27 \u201cadditional document\u201d authored by a fervent minority of the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport Vision Process Community Character Working Group broadly attacks the work and conclusions of the coequal Technical Working Group\u2019s final report of Dec. 5. No doubt, this new document will provide additional grist for the ASE Vision Committee, which in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 22:04:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2452985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2453002,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452985\/revisions\/2453002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2452985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2452985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2452985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}