We’ve seen so much in our little town and allowed ourselves to be run over by our local government. It has often been stated that the salaries are not commensurate with the work, and those numbers have been published (review older blogs). How do you suppose we got this way? What happened to lead us down the path of letting an overpaid staff run the town and has the Trustees “working” for the staff? What communities let this happen?
Locally we have seen where those outside town government promote their favorite people to positions in the town where they can do the sponsor the most good. It is well known the relationship between David Taylor and Randy Repola. Who wouldn’t want a sponsor like that?
A forward thinking town would have trustees that would review hiring practices, long range planning and staff capabilities to insure that the best people are in the positions and that we are getting good services for the pay. Remember, Estes Park pays about 30% over salary for benefits.
First, what is the long range plan? Don’t have one! Long range planning would include the basics such as what areas are going to be used for future commercial use, how we revitalize the downtown area and bring the businesses into compliance for fire and safety, what services are not now but should be a part of the town.
To any observer of our current “planning” we can see that there isn’t real plan. We need to hold our politicians responsible for developing and implementing a plan and with their failure to do so should eliminate them.
A couple of observations, some previously discussed:
It is not a plan to build sidewalks outside of town limits, spending valuable resources where we get no benefit.
It is not a plan to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on property outside of town limits to preserve as open space, when it was a valuable resource and could have been a world class resort, be annexed into the town and provided lots of tax benefits. Those of you who think everything in the area should be preserved as open space are out of control. It is, in some ways, the thing that brings people here, in others the thing that most hurts us. We are long on open space and short on good sense.
It is not a plan to renew EPURA. They are misusing funds and not doing the job they were intended for. Get rid of them and the corruption they breed.
It is not a plan to say – “look what we did after the flood.” Get over yourselves. There has been very little done sense then except re-direct money into the general fund to pay the inflated salaries to people that make their own salary requests. What corporation in America would allow that to happen?
It is not a plan to keep yanking the chain of the arts groups with the “possibility” that there might be a performance center. It won’t happen and the discussions are tedious and intended to keep them quiet.
It was not a plan (although it was well planned) to put the Chamber out of business so that town staff could be protected and put into high paying permanent positions. Sad.
