{"id":2458783,"date":"2020-05-23T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-24T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/elizabeth-milias-aspens-taj-our-fiscal-mausoleum\/"},"modified":"2020-05-24T07:59:10","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T13:59:10","slug":"elizabeth-milias-aspens-taj-our-fiscal-mausoleum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/elizabeth-milias-aspens-taj-our-fiscal-mausoleum\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Milias: Aspen\u2019s Taj \u2014 our fiscal mausoleum"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The recovery is on. Businesses in Aspen are grappling with reopening amid prescribed restrictions and protocols that frighten even the most cautiously optimistic. The \u201cnew normal\u201d is anything but, yet during the weeks of uncertainty that have brought us to this point, we have all learned to adapt, to modify our horizons, and out of necessity we\u2019ve reduced our spending and are more cognizant than ever about staying on a budget.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all in this together. It\u2019s a popular phrase, and we are. If nothing else, we\u2019ve learned firsthand how interconnected our fates and fortunes are, and how simplistic-sounding edicts have the power to trickle down to become raging torrents of destruction.<\/p>\n

But why is the city of Aspen behaving differently, as if the rules don\u2019t apply? If we are indeed all in this together, why are they continuing to build, with our tax dollars, the ill-conceived, unsupervised, over-budget, unneeded monolith known locally as the Taj Mahal City Hall when everyone else is trimming their sails? As it turns out, it\u2019s because no one is in charge. The current council barely acknowledges the project, yet alone knows anything about its progress, budget or future programming. They simply deflect when asked, falsely proclaiming that all the decisions were made by their predecessors, despite two of the current members being part of said group, and as if that absolves any of them of current or future responsibility.<\/p>\n

Mayor Torre even ran on his support for \u201ca review and changes to the final design and programming of the new city office building\u201d because it does \u201cnot appear to address community goals,\u201d only to capitulate to staff the moment he took office. Let us also not forget that this edifice to bureaucratic excess was designed to accommodate future office space needs, never mind we\u2019ve recently learned vis-\u00e0-vis the pandemic that \u201coffice space\u201d is now effectively dead. If the world wasn\u2019t working differently 10 weeks ago, it certainly is today.<\/p>\n

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