Letter to the Editor: Ballot Questions Open A Pandora’s Box – by Community Contributor


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To the Editor:

I’ve personally experienced the lack of short-term rentals and workforce housing in years past, so I understand its effects on workforce people.

Nevertheless, we need to take a very close look at what we’re getting into if we vote “yes” on Colorado’s Proposition 123 and Chaffee County Housing Authority Ballot Issue 6A.

I believe that each is a potential Pandora’s Box that, once opened, will produce endless demands to support a politics-based growth and change agenda with taxpayer money.

I also believe that either initiative is but a temporary fix for underlying socioeconomic problems that should be resolved by means other than raising taxes on people who are already struggling to make ends meet.

The core causes of our shortage of workforce housing are high real estate prices and equally high costs of building construction. Instead of being supported by taxpayers, the cost of workforce housing for the private sector should be supported by those paying exorbitantly high prices for real estate.  But that’s a discussion for another time.

That said, I’m going to vote “no” on Colorado’s Proposition 123 and Chaffee County Housing Authority’s Ballot Issue 6A to use taxpayer money to build workforce housing for private business sector employees.

While these tax initiatives are well intentioned, we need more creative ways of building workforce housing. Neither initiative, in my opinion, meets that higher standard.

Gary E. Goms,

Buena Vista



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