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Showing posts from June, 2020

Whatever

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Translation:  Husband/wife have health issues.  Trustee Zornes, in my limited interactions, was at least a decent human being, even though his concern for Cody during the recall was crocodile tears.  But at least he was honest about wanting Walker out, unlike board stiff Norris.  The take home lesson here is that hair on fire harpies have short half-lives in this community.  Welcome Webermeier.

Remind me again why we have a historian laureate

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Cause it sure isn't to preserve historic structures. The McCreery/James Elkhorn "homestead" is likely one of the three oldest structures in Estes Park. You can argue a start date all you want, but it predates the earliest portion of the Elkhorn Lodge by two decades.  So tonight when the town board signs off on razing the Elkhorn homestead and quasi-preserving the Elkhorn Lodge, what exactly has been accomplished?  The Elkhorn Lodge is a work in three pieces, constructed over 10 years, the final piece added to compete with the just-completed Stanley Hotel.  In other words, an afterthought, a nose thumb, not a pioneer home in an uncertain world.  But whatever, I'm sure our eminent self-appointed historian will wax philosophical when asked to write the grand opening speech for the Elkhorn Wedding Venue and Time Share Mega-Plex.

Tempest, meet Teapot

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So what if the real reason the new mayor wants to do away with board email transparency is not because she is scared her constituents won't be able to communicate effectively with her, but because she is scared her temper, occasional lapses in impulse control, and need for perfection (plus the cover-ups and expunging required to create perfection) might get the best of her?

More pandemonium at EPHelpus?

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They may just be getting together to munch on virtual cookies and discuss hiring a new dietician, but it's a guarantee that tired old boards trot out the same tired old problems.  Executive session du jour, anyone?  Update the following morning:  Well, it's not the newly-appointed CEO, unless he is giving a farewell speech to the town trustees the following evening.

A different view on the same topic

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I'm all for opposing viewpoints.  This appeared in the paper of record last Friday: Are the citizens of Estes Park smart enough to recognize when they are being duped? The Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) recently conducted an informal, non-scientific "survey", giving the public four choices and the null hypothesis ("no change") for modifying vehicle traffic this summer on Elkhorn Avenue,  When the survey didn't return the results TAB desired, they grouped the four choices together after the fact to get enough votes to claim people wanted "something" rather than "nothing", despite no individual change choice garnering more votes than "do nothing".  Then, to compound this logical fallacy, they arbitrarily advocated moving forward with one particular choice which received fewer votes than "do nothing". Imagine a Presidential election where one major party was allowed to run two candidates agains

Is TAB actually worse than a third grade science project?

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So TAB released a "survey", which most citizens didn't participate in because they knew the outcome was already pre-ordained, and then when the results came back opposite of what TAB hoped, because TAB definitely didn't want the "do nothing" option, TAB lumped various options together to provide more votes than the "do nothing" option.  It would be like if, during the last election, the Republicans went with one candidate, Trump, while the Democrats were allowed two, Bernie and Hillary, with the option to combine the votes received by the two if both lost to Trump individually, and then pick either Bernie or Hillary if their combined vote totals topped Trump. I'm not sure if it is worth any additional breath to say, yet again, how stupid TAB is, but let's point out that, once a survey with multiple "change" options which is not ranked choice yields a result in which one of these change options emerges as the favorite, but receiv