What do the Estes Park Town Trustees know that not one other community in Colorado has been able to figure out?
It pays dividends to have an advertising department (propaganda ministry) in your town.
On average the Town staff spends about 40 man hours per year, every year, purchasing the same thirty ads that they have purchased for the past thirty five years. Same picture, same text, same magazine. So what in the world are they doing the rest of the time?
Well for one, they are out starting fires all over town. It is a full time job keeping the community divided. It is very important to the town trustees that the accommodations people are at odds with the retail people who are at odds with the real-estate people, the non-profit groups are placed at odds with the business community. Recently the town administrator was found to be at war with the school board. Town staff spent two years dividing the chamber ambassadors away from the Chamber of Commerce. Why? They start fights between groups,, divide and conquer.
While you are all at war with yourselves you cannot come together to seriously over see anything.
The lack of any serious political opposition is nirvana for any town government. Face it, no one really trusts town hall in any community, but Estes Park town government has eliminated all serious oversight of their activities. As long as the business community feels it is totally beholding to the towns anemic advertising efforts they are loosing dollars by settling for dimes. A town divided.
