{"id":2455135,"date":"2020-02-27T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T05:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/a-bridge-to-civility\/"},"modified":"2020-02-28T07:28:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T14:28:28","slug":"a-bridge-to-civility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/a-bridge-to-civility\/","title":{"rendered":"A bridge to civility"},"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\">In our era of political division and secularism, I was heartened to see both The Aspen Times and the Aspen Daily News feature front-page photos of Christians receiving the Ash Wednesday cross on their foreheads. Thank you, both newspapers. We need grace and civility at this time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">With grace and civility in mind, and in an effort to bring together our sharply divided body politic, I would like to offer my newcomer\u2019s perspective as well as a constructive suggestion to correct a persistent problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I see four broad groups of people here in Aspen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The first group is the multi-homeowner and extravagantly wealthy tourist group. Community consensus is to tax these people to the max.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The second group are the members of the Aspen government complex, who preside over the $100 million-plus a year in tax revenue haul taken from group number one, and redistributes it primarily to their less than 2,000 voter constituents in the form of subsidized housing and other free stuff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The third group are the receivers of this government largess, the \u201centitled ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The fourth group I would call \u201cthe ignored,\u201d the second-class citizens. These people support Aspen\u2019s economy by driving essential trucks in and out of town and get stuck in traffic every day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">For the sake of unity and civility, please build a second bridge over Castle Creek so these essential workers can perform their duties and spend more time with their families and less time stuck in traffic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Name\">John Hornblower<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Title\">Snowmass Village<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/letters-to-the-editor\/a-bridge-to-civility\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our era of political division and secularism, I was heartened to see both The Aspen Times and the Aspen Daily News feature front-page photos of Christians receiving the Ash Wednesday cross on their foreheads. Thank you, both newspapers. We need grace and civility at this time. With grace and civility in mind, and in [&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-2455135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 13:05:24","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\/2455135","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=2455135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2455155,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455135\/revisions\/2455155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}