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How do you destroy a laid-back and ramshackle little mountain town? Easy. Just add money.
A decade ago, Salida wasn't worth anything, and so nobody cared what it looked like. You just lived here without worrying about resale values.
Now, alas, Salida seems to be worth something. People care about preserving property values. They care so much that we're getting a vision statement and a master plan, prepared by consultants: the Leland Consulting Group of Denver and Portland.
To put it charitably, the consultants have trouble reading a map or figuring out where they are.
In their acknowledgements, they thank our mayor, Nancy
Sanger, as well as the Salida city administrator, the local
volunteer planning committee, and The Town of Crestone
Board of Trustees and Mayor Kent Murray
who supplied
critical information about the Crestone community early and
throughout the process.
Crestone is a charming town and like many Salidans, I
have friends there. But I still can't figure out why its
mayor and town board should have anything to do with
Salida's Comprehensive Plan and Implementation
Strategy.
In the appended maps, the main highway through town is
identified as I-50,
as in Interstate 50,
rather than its proper title of U.S. Highway 50.
Perhaps this confusion between an interstate and a federal primary route is an accident, but it could mean that the planners want us to have a genuine four-lane limited-access interstate highway, so that we could get the associated blessings of improved transportation: more noise, higher crime, franchise strips and outlet malls.
They seemed to imply that much at a public hearing last week. One of the planners explained that they had worked in Grand and Summit counties, and we should be aware that the big developers were looking southward at us, since they had pretty run out of land to improve up there.
Now, if I were a planner who had anything to do with Summit County, I'd deny it unless I faced a perjury sentence, and even then I'd think twice before confessing to such a fact.
Before the interstate invaded, Breckenridge was a pleasant place where dogs slept on Main Street, everybody important drank breakfast at the Gold Pan, and people lived in cabins, tepees, old mine tunnels and converted school buses.
Now Breckenridge aspires to join Aspen as a stop on the Euro-trash circuit. Few who work there can afford to live there. Summit County has franchise strips, traffic congestion and air pollution.
If that's what planners can do for a place, why bother? We're perfectly capable of trashing out a valley all on our own, without any help from consultants.
If we need consultants, it's to find out a way to keep Summit County from happening here.
The general thrust of the plan is to beautify and gentrify a gritty old railroad town.
Very little of the proposed zoning concerns legitimate
issues like health and safety. Instead, most of it proposes
to elevate local esthetics: the elimination of
blight-causing influences,
prohibit the use of
materials associated with lower quality industrial areas
such as chain link fencing,
control the character
and visual impact
, etc.
Naturally, the plan addresses affordable housing.
The idea is to elevate housing standards. Those who have
struggle to pay the rent now would certainly have more
trouble paying for the improved housing.
But the plan says that there are federal subsidies. Hasn't anybody heard that the great federal subsidy machine is drying up? Or that no one has yet come up with a planning mechanism to save little mountain towns from People of Money?
Here's what will happen. Salida will adopt this plan, or something quite similar. It will become very difficult to be poor here, whereas it used to be fairly easy to live here without much money.
If rising real-estate prices in general aren't enough to
drive us out, then the higher standards will force us to
spend money we don't have in order to eliminate our
blight-causing influences.
And if we're resistant, there will be fines, inspections, and similar municipal harassment. Eventually, we'll either join over-regulated live-above-your-means Mainstream America, or we'll move on.
Either way, the People of Money will triumph. They'll either chase us out or convert us. The city government which we elect to defend and promote our interests will be totally in their hands.
This happens all over Colorado, all over the Mountain West. It's happening here, and it's galling to realize how powerless you are when the People of Money, after their conquests along the I-70 sacrifice zone, decide to invade your territory.
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