I am not the author of "EstesTruth" on Facebook

That is the owner of the Taffy Shop on West Elkhorn, Mark Igel.

Mark Igel is currently tilting at the parking windmill, which I recognized as something that couldn't be reversed once it was implemented last year, and just started walking to work.  Come next Monday, though, I will plant my car gleefully right in the midst of the former paid parking spots, and not worry about the "squishy" GPS equipment that can't tell if you have been parking in the same spot for three hours, in one spot for one hour and the neighboring spot for two hours, or in three adjacent spots, each for one hour.  Of course, if you want to complain and get this problem rectified on the spot, you can't stop the Yellow Pee, or whatever it is called, because the driver has been instructed to take evasive action and quickly speed away from anyone waving an inappropriately issued ticket and/or pointing out their incompetence.  Rather, your complaints will be handled by a call center in Grozny, East Chechnya, business hours 11:00 GMT to 12:00 GMT, in the order they were received.  Please be prepared to speak fluent Russian, or have a Russian translator handy.

Oh, so Estes Park's case count only grew by 2% between March 2021 and October 2021?  No, it grew by at least 300 cases, or more than 40%

But that is not the point of resurrecting the Garbage Heap.  No, the reason for applying voltage to the temples and springing Garbagestein back to life is the complete indifference and total inability to comprehend how COVID is not something to play with, and COVID statistics, if you bother keeping them, should not be manipulated to boost the summer tourist season by reassuring the tourists "nothing to see here, folks, let's move along - oh look, caramel apples".

Back in March, when cases in Estes Park started jumping, and, more importantly, the only meaningful metric to compare cases between municipalities, cases/100,000 population, started indicating Estes Park was among the worst performers when compared to other cities and towns in Larimer County, the town administrator, either at the behest of someone from the Economic Development Corporation, the Chamber of Commerce, or the Mayor or Town Trustees (Note: Attempts to elicit who provided the pressure have been unsuccessful.  The Estes Park mayor has vehemently denied any involvement, which is not surprising, because the current Estes Park mayor has been hands off on anything related to getting involved with taxpayers.  Naturally.  So let's pretend the Town Administrator just decided to bend logic and cheat science and save the town of his own accord), or just because he is such a great supporter of tax revenue for the town, pled with the Larimer County epidemiologist Jared Cushner, sorry, Jared Olson (note, Dr. Olson has the title of doctor, but he is not a medical doctor, he is a PhD doctor, which means he stood at the bedside of exactly zero people throughout his training and watched them die, so numbers and scientific data in his world are something to adjust and manipulate on a whim, not something to be revered and extremely unwilling to manipulate) and/or the Larimer County director of Public Health, Environment and Data Fudging (also not a doctor) to increase the number of the bottom of the fraction, the denominator, to make Estes Park's "cases/100K" smaller, and thus disappear Estes Park from the front of the pack to somewhere in the middle, where it could hide out and not draw attention to itself.

We can argue about whether this was fair or right or useful or appropriate.  Larimer County is currently unable to distinguish people who live within the Estes Park town limits (for example, from their street address) from people who own property ten miles outside of Estes Park and visit and occupy this property two weeks out of the year.  The point it, the denominator they decided upon for Estes Park's population is not being displayed, and is very much open to debate.  Or would be, if they would display it.  But they won't.  

My guess is, if Estes Park starts edging back towards the front, someone on town staff will find another hidden pocket of potential phantom population (maybe folks in Estes Park, Iowa, or anyone who has a "Rocky Mountain National Park" decal on the rear window of their car) to add to the denominator.  Just do whatever it takes so that Estes Park isn't the longest bar in the "cases/100K" bar chart.   Because, dammit, this is Fourth of July weekend, and no great white sharks are going to close down Amityville on the busiest weekend of the year.  (Note: In "Jaws", the Amityville mayor's misguided decision led to two additional deaths.  I'm sure future historians will note how many people died in Estes Park between April 2021 and October 2021, and dwell upon the irony.).

Are deaths in Estes Park just numbers to be ignored, or explained away, or prayed for in church, like when someone's wife "falls down the stairs"?  Thus far, given the curt response from Tom Gonzales, apparently, yes.  Let's all move along, and stop dwelling on the negatives.  Sure, there are folks in town who lost their father over something preventable or at least something we all could be honest about, but as long as it's not me in that casket, right?