Referendum 2 is a nightmare in the making
By Howie Mallory
We should all be very clear about what Referendum 2 does, because the loaded language in the ballot question comes at the very end of long paragraphs of legalese.
Referendum 2 asks Aspen voters to turn a big part of the Marolt Open space over to the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) long before the agency has an actual highway designed. For CDOT it’s a dream outcome, but for all of us who live in Aspen it is a nightmare in the making.
CDOT is a powerful state agency that usually gets its way, except in places like Aspen, where voters have the final say on open space and parks. Fortunately, CDOT cannot build bus and traffic lanes across our open space without first gaining voter approval at the ballot box.
This power to vote is crucial. If CDOT has to win over voters, then it must come up with a plan that truly serves the community with minimal impact. Referendum 2 strips this leverage over CDOT, allowing it to build whatever it wants, whenever it wants. This alone is reason to vote NO on Referendum 2.
Referendum 2 backers claim misleadingly that the new highway will reduce emissions and greenhouse gases. This is unproven and likely untrue. The straight shot requires a new traffic light at 7th & Main that will back traffic up right at the point we have to merge to one lane. Emissions will get worse, or stay the same.
Referendum 2 backers also claim a new highway will benefit wildlife. This is simply false. Tom Cardamone, the director of Roaring Fork Safe Passages, wrote an excellent piece about the extensive and negative wildlife impacts of a new highway across Marolt Open Space (A Knife Through The Heart, bit.ly/417Bz9F). Please read it.
An illegal open space exchange?
I am most concerned about the claim in Referendum 2 that CDOT has already satisfied the requirement to provide replacement open space in exchange for turning Marolt Open Space into a highway.
Section 13.4 of the Aspen’s City Charter specifically requires that any conversion of existing open space to a non-open space use must be “… replaced with other open space property of equivalent or greater value as of the date of sale or conversion as determined by the City Council by resolution following a public hearing taking into consideration monetary, environmental and aesthetic values.”
There is good reason to believe that CDOT has not met this this requirement. Here’s a quick history:
In 1998, CDOT and the city of Aspen and Pitkin County, signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) on the Entrance to Aspen project from Brush Creek Road to Aspen. As part of the deal, CDOT gave the city and county the Mills Ranch property in 1999, a mostly inaccessible strip of land on a 50 degree slope below the Brush Creek intercept lot.
This open space exchange allowed CDOT to build the roundabout and make other Highway 82 improvements between the intercept lot to the roundabout using small portions of and public open space. Ever since then, CDOT has used the Mills Ranch property as a “landbank” to take control of our open spaces.
For instance, in 2002 city council voted 3-2 to grant CDOT right-of-way across Marolt Open Space for a light rail system and two traffic lanes. I’ve dug through years of city council’s records between 1998-2002 and found no evidence that they ever held a public hearing to consider the “monetary, environmental and aesthetic” values of the Mills Ranch property relative to Marolt Open Space.
Aspen’s home rule charter doesn’t allow CDOT to give us land in 1999 and then use it as a landbank to acquire a right-of-way across our open space, whether in 2002 or 2025. Referendum 2 is the worst property deal ever proposed in Aspen.
Let’s “defy ordinary” by voting NO on Referendum 2 to reject the utterly ordinary 135-foot strip of pavement that CDOT wants to build across our green open space.
Howie Mallory has spent 22 years volunteering to protect and steward our parks and open space, serving as the chair on the Pitkin County and Aspen Open Space and Trails boards.