Now is our season. Now is time when our dun fields bespeckled with sagebrush don their bright white finery. This should be cause for excitement, but like a white-tailed doe, this attracts a certain enthusiastic and often unwanted attention. Allow me an opportunity to change your mind on the direction our town is taking.
During the ski season, we experience a rush hour worthy of large cities drawn up in increments by the most myopic of planners. Please take my word for it. I am a Chicago transplant or metastatic cell, depending on your perspective.
There is a temptation to think this inability to travel is bad. I implore you to think beyond the immediate. What is the consequence of an inability to drive anywhere? As we learn from Goliaths like New York City and Los Angeles, the more cars choking on insufficient roads, the fewer the people willing to drive — a clear environmental win. (If you are a Rivian owner with a cobalt-heavy battery and a Congolese diamond wedding ring, feel free to dismiss this point.)
So please, if you’re tempted to rend your garments and scream into the open sky about our wonderful City Council’s decision to add some more affordable housing on the same route from U.S. 40 jammed cork-tight every single morning and evening, try to remember: Vail Resort execs have to feed their kids too. They need the low labor costs. Have you seen what a Michelin-starred meal costs these days?
Besides, are you really willing to come out against adding some more affordable housing to the pockmarked oceans of Jordanelle multi-family units and downtown apartment buildings? Whom are you trying to keep out? What would your pals at Deer Valley après ski think?
The renowned intellects on our council have already birthed several revolutionarily brilliant ideas. Get out of your car and ride with a stranger, walk on your ski boots to a bus stop, or “shut the expletive up and wait.”
For the love of all that is beauty and goodness, send these little Berias packing. I’m tempted to liken their skills to that of a manual labor job in condescension, but there is dignity in hard work and I’d rather not slander my fellow residents by comparing them to blank-eyed, blinking stooges captured by ideology and influence.
Do you want your mountainscapes cut by widget-manufacturers outputting tax revenue, cancer and valley-choking smog like our friends in Salt Lake? It may be too late. Moving back here after a 20-year absence has me rethinking the Ship of Theseus.
Are you willing to stand up to these schoolmarms? Or will you prioritize your reputation at the après? It is up to you.
Alex Korndorf
Park City