epgarbage

As the most recent vote demonstrates, the board of trustees as currently constituted is out of alignment with the wishes of the majority of the population of Estes Park within town limits. The trustees will argue this point, as they do everything with my name attached, but at a minimum, two to three of the six should have some sympathy with the voters as regards responsible development. Facing the dais from the public speaking podium, there would be no acknowledgement of this truth from the three trustees currently seated to the right of the mayor, and perhaps one, maybe occasionally two depending on the particulars, who can read the writing on the wall to the left of the mayor. So the four to five who definitely march to their own minority opinion drum, you either have to be spectacular in other areas of governance and engaging with people you disagree with on a regular basis (still have yet to heear from you besides attacking me), or you may need to start rethinking how the wind b...

One hour before close of polls: For everyone who worked so hard, it just wasn't possible with the town board using our meetings to campaign against us, and the fake newly-minted EVUN group of white supremacists Jim Crow-era voter suppression tactics. Yes-40% No-60%, reversed and smaller margin on 300

Emails to the town board through my regular account are now blocked from public view. So much for transparency. But what the hell do you readers care? It's just free news to you that you can edify yourself with as you sit on your couches eating Fritos, doing nothing except allowing your democracy to circle down the drain while the front line fighters get mowed down on your behalf. Hi all - Two things that I would be interested in the town media exploring when they get the time: 1) Those of you who have ever driven on our nation's interstate highway system may be familiar with the occasional annoying practice of some truck drivers occupying both lanes of the interstate (passing lane and driving lane) on the two-lane sections and not passing each other, just driving side by side for miles and miles and miles (generally well below the posted speed limit for normal driving conditions) without allowing anyone behind them to pass. I'm sure this is illegal, but without enf...

Our three geriatric Board members just voted not to extend the board meeting past 10 o'clock. This may be the first time in the history of the town board (since it first met in 1917) that the trustees waved the white flag and said there were too tired to perform their duties. Cory Booker just stood up and spoke for 25 straight hours on the Senate floor, but Trustee Lead Ass Nervous Laugh (aka Trustee Drone On and On) can't be up past his bedtime? It is sad that the mayor feels compelled to talk mindlessly about every topic that comes up for discussion, it is sad that Trustee Drone On and On uses Liaison Time to tell people to spend more time looking at particular items in the Consent Agenda to recognize how great the town is, but it is especially sad when they can't bring themselves to finish a board meeting they themselves contribute most to making run beyond three hours. What message did this vote send to town staff and stakeholders, beyond "We are petulant and l...

The Trail-Gazette is a nonsense publication, run by clowns. I don't have the time or frankly the ability to generate fake emails. For the still-skeptics and non-believers (and Jody Street's family, if he has any) I am happy to meet at the local library or your favorite coffee shop and open the entire email chain.

To a town and a dynamic you are certainly quite familiar with, that of information and truth being hidden from the public, and only a select few being granted access to critical decision-making data. We still don't know what happened during the aborted CEO search, and likely never will, but when its not your money (meaning when it doesn't come directly from you via door to door shakedown, but rather comes indirectly from you because visitors don't have as much left to spend after VEP extorts their share at the entrance gate), you are a mushroom in every sense of the word, and you and VEP can run things with Jeffrey Epstein-level impunity. Plus you don't live here, which is critical because those of us who live here are automatically disqualified from any input on matters or positions of importance. Our stupidity in thinking living here and having skin in the game should be a requirement for making decisions that impact other residents' lives is outmoded and juven...

to over 100 EP residents and board members: "It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Remember to vote for the smashers. You can identify them by their repeated assurances that they aren't smashers.

Because when you get the most votes, you are entitled to re-create these organizations in your own image. And the self-entitled, tone-deaf leaders of these organizations, who think spending two hours every couple of weeks is the same thing as being in charge, have already walked right into their traps. Belle "Ring My" Morris is not only the lifetime president of TAB, she is TAB. What she thinks is what all TAB members (drones, worker bees, borg) think, as part of the collective. If they think otherwise, she let's them know who calls the shots, and how to toe the line or start walkin'.

Just like Estes Park individuals, Estes Park businesses are born and die. Some live a long time. Some are still alive. Some last only a few months, or a few years. But to pretend otherwise, to be casual with assigning dates of operation, is lazy history. Take Copeland Lake Lodge, south of Estes Park on Highway 7, and closer to Allens Park. It was built in 1914, and when it sold in December 1938, it ceased to exist as Copeland Lake Lodge. The new owners renamed it Wild Basin Lodge, and started advertising it as "Wild Basin Lodge, formerly Copeland Lake Lodge" by the summer of 1939 (my guess is, it was primarily a summer operation, as so many smaller lodges were at the time, and some still are). Inertia is a real thing, and I'm sure there were some folks at the time who still accidentally and automatically referred to it as Copeland Lake Lodge well into the 1940s. I still hear media outlets refer to the microblogging app "X" as Twitter, despite the fact t...

i don't know bcuz i stopped watching after bill brown used his liaison report time to demand for ten minutes how the code needed to be changed immediately so john culken and the stanley could turn downtown into disneyland i didn't know we had created a department of give john culken everything his heart desires with bill as chief sucker the public should start asking the mayor at the next mayor's chat (does the mayor have mayor's chats or ever answer questions from citizens in public) if trustee liaison reports should be about liaison reports or about whatever topic or advertisement or lobbying interest pops into a trustees head when it is their turn to speak

Because rare things hold their value more than common things Because this century offers multiple options for finding these rare things more easily, meaning without spending so much money and time/effort in tracking them down as was required in the past Because Estes Park, despite its smaller size and sometimes because of its smaller size, created a lot of rare things This is especially true for short-lived businesses, and Estes Park had thousands of these in the past hundred and fifty years Because when you collect rare things, you often find yourself in the company of other intelligent people who share interesting information on a variety of topics (think Antiques Roadshow) Plus you have an instant admission into places that wouldn't necessarily be open to the general public, like wealthy people's estates and the secret chambers of museums and special collections libraries, plus get to go right to the top and speak to the directors and experts at these institutions, because...

The owners had a private meeting with Sen. Bennet and apparently started crying about how this may be their last year of business because two former employees of RMNP lost their jobs. You can of course see the direct connection. I will do my best in the coming months to eliminate some of their uncertainty by promising not to dine at either of their establishments, so they won't have to wonder whether I will be doing my part to save them from the uncertainty of who, if anyone, will vacation or eat in Estes Park this summer, or whether the Uneed Piepers will have to start selling tumbleweeds online. Cry me an onion. Meanwhile, a number of businesses in Estes Park closed already this winter furreal, and it had nothing to do with the federal government and all to do with local landlords wanting to grow richer than they already are. The real problem might be better examined by looking inward, and shaming landlords who extort their tenants by making outrageous demands and charging e...

Self-entitled, unelected, with influence and destructive impact far beyond their qualifications. I have for years referrred to her as Estes Park's Belle in a china shop, all teenaged testosterone, always looking for things to break. S/he is an immolator, not a nurturer, and that gltchy tic of hers when Belle (Chuck?) speaks in public is strange, which is why she retreats behind the curtain to write things like "frankly, your opinions are putrid and pathetic" while keeping her claws clutched tightly around her only means of self-worth. Does TAB have other candidates for chair, or is Belt our NGO dictator for life?

When it comes to understanding, er, proselytizing downtown paid parking, Trustee Hazelton's legerdemain is leg-en-dairy. Not only does she remember 100% of everything from her high-school level biology correspondence course (I think she was home schooled) related to randomized double blind scientific studies, she also is versed in logic puzzles and, hyperintuitively, what the absence of a letter of support from TAB means, and how it might mean the opposite of what you low-level cretins reflexively thonk it means, and vice versa. Plus she is always correct. So we have that going for us as taxpayers. We have to continue with the paid parking "experiment", sayeth Trustee Ovaltine, because the Loop was the variable last year and the paid parking "trial" (now in its third year) was the constant in reduced sales tax numbers. This year, the Loop will be the constant and paid parking will be the, um, second constant leading to a reduction in downtown business? Oh,...

the trail brass have a word limit on guest columns (not sure why bill brown's "insights" always get considered for guest columns instead of being lumped in with run-of-the-mill letters to the editor, with an even stricter word limit, but all the animals are equal and some are more equal, etc.) and bill brown will not be threatened by any rigid or unyielding word limits. he is not an ordinary writer expressing ordinary opinions. bb made it very clear to the plebian trail what he writes cannot be shortened, because every thought and every word he transfers to the page is gold, jerry, pure gold, and, besides, there are other outlets in town for his musings, including one on the other side of his bed (or in a separate bed, i don't claim knowledge of sleeping arrangements). so take that, trail. bb can get his stuff published without editing or shortening elsewhere, the same as the mayor. we may have two mayors in town, or none, hard to know when the list of actual accom...

$15,000 less collected than in January 2024, which was already $80,000 less than in January 2023. Visit Estes Park always cherrypicks one or two months out of twelve (remember VEP, there are twelve months in the year) where sales tax revenue is slightly up and attributes it entirely to activities Visit Estes Park introduced to Estes Park, whether Estes Park wanted them or not, whether VEP has any actual PROOF this caused people to come up in larger numbers or spend more money or not. I am now wondering what Visit Estes Park didn't do this January or last January that they will be apologizing for, and when they will be announcing their promise to do better next time, and refund some of the money they take from visitors through the lodging tax.

Did the office of Estes Park mayor become the office of aspiring state poet laureate? How about using however long it takes to pull motivational quotes from the internet to hold an actual mayor's chat, or preparing a "state of the town" address and delivering it sometime this century? Why did our mayoral position go from a figurehead and tie-breaker to a integral voting member who should be representing 100% of the community and gathering input from 100% of the community instead of spending that time writing an unedited weekly newspaper column that will never admit mistakes, never allow for counterpoint, and go largely unchallenged and unread because it has the consistency of vanilla pudding-flavored rainbows?

How 'bout this one: LWV is non-partisan

so the trail-gazette has a new editor-publisher, replacing the old publisher. i wouldn't ever expect anyone besides hired staff enjoying a smooth glide path into seeing their submitted writing in print, and believe me, if it hurt my feelings to not get every single submitted letter or column or story idea or suggestion in hard font, i would have run off crying into the candycane forest decades ago. this blog has over 1300 entries since its inception, so i'm not exactly taciturn, or agonizing over word choice so much i can't generate more than a few crafted and high gloss polished phrases a week. but let's not pretend for a second any of our local media is the equivalent of the new york times or washington post, bursting at the seams with content and difficult to near impossible to crack the editorial pages of as a regular joe without suffering through 50 rejection letters or (the modern equivalent) no response at all beyond an "ackowledgement of receipt" fo...

CAST is currently nothing more than a junket for whichever board member serves as its liaison, and especially currently. Free weekend ski trips to Breckenridge and Aspen and Vail, paid for with taxpayer funds, and no follow-up or genuine benefit. Watch the recent town board meeting liaison reports if you think otherwise. The current liaison just got back from Breckenridge, and said two things were interesting, one of which we know about already (workforce housing) and one of which she couldn't explain (geothermal energy). That is the level of detail required to justify wasting taxpayer money? There is always the promise of a follow-up report which is never delivered and apparently never required. So it is just a free 3-day vacation at taxpayer expense for one lucky board member. Estes Park should be ashamed - a robot or gerbil could contribute as much to the public discourse, and would require much less in the form of a compensated hotel room with travel expenses.