Tim Semrau
Aspen Mayoral Candidate
Zele Community Table
March 13, 2007
Tim Semrau; Zele director of marketing Lisa Zimet; Lucy; Judge Bob Nix; Michael Conniff
MICHAEL CONNIFF: So why are your running for Mayor?
TIM SEMRAU: Imagine living in Aspen where a few of our problems are actually solved. I personally would like to live my next 20 years to see that, even though the pay is lousy and the hours are miserable.
MC: How do you solve the traffic problem?
TS: The modified direct is part of the answer. After 27 years, nobody can remember what the question was any more. The city voted for a four-lane highway in the 90s a couple times. It passed but was never built because the City Council didn’t believe in it. They stonewalled it.
MC: What do you want to do differently?
TS: Very specifically, without jargon, I want some forward movement. Specifically, to get to a vote in November. Yes-no on the only long-term alternative, the modified direct with an accurate model and a price tag. We lost our state money. The state pulled us out of our highway improvement budgets because we voted against it in 2001. They weren’t going to force it on us.
LISA ZIMET: What’s going to happen to Bruce Berger’s house?
TS: I think it stays. Is he on the left?
CB: He’s on the right.
TS: It impacts him for sure.
MC: What is the modified direct?
TS: It’s the only environmentally approved plan. You have to have an environmental impact statement. I’m not saying this is the best and only plan, but any other plan will take at leas two to three years for an environmental impact statement. I suggest we take the only plan we have, make it the best we can, and decide if we want it. Voters have approved different plans. The state highway has to agree and there has to be an environmental impact statement. If it fails, then we’re at ground zero. We don’t have time to go to ground zero.
MC: Why has it gotten so much worse?
TS: The amount of traffic over the Castle Creek bridge is static–it has not increased. That’s an incredible achievement. The traffic count is the same. It seems worse because of the canyon improvement. The same number of cars are bunching up, hence it seems worse. Another caveat. The traffic is actually the #1 drain on the entire community.
LZ: There was a steady number of cars who used to come over the bridge. Now more people are working downvalley. That’s a little piece of Aspen burning. There are less people, a smaller workforce.
LUCY: Don’t you think there are going to be fewer people?
LZ: Once the developments are constructed. From Aspen to Basalt, it will probably be solid development
TS: 85 percent of Pitkin County is actually controlled development.
Lucy: What about Eagle County? There’ll be constant development in El Jebel.
LZ: The daily commuter traffic, Monday through Friday.
Lucy: It seems like there’s more traffic.
TS: It’s actually been static for years. They count the traffic every day on Castle Creek Bridge. It does seem so much worse. And in the morning, there’s the school traffic.
Lucy: The roundabout has caused trouble. People get hung up.
LZ: They’re backed up all the way to the airport.
TS: It’s starting to affect our visitors, how frustrated they are.
LZ: People want to have their cars.
Lucy: They don’t pay taxes here.
TS: We have a chance to improve that in April with a new bus to Burlingame and the ABC. We can open that airport parking lot to 250 cars.
Lucy: 250 cars a day is a lot.
TS: Commuters park a thousand cars a day downtown. One dump truck is a big presence.
LZ: Why can’t they leave their tools at the job site?
TS: Most construction sites aren’t secure.
Lucy: All they need is a trailer to lock in their tools.
TS: The Lodge at Aspen has 100-page construction mitigation plan.
MC: What about the moratorium?
TS: The Red Onion moratorium is where City Council froze interior development in the core. Subsequently they suspended it. They wanted to call the new bar The Red Onion. The moratorium exempted it. I think it’s terrible.
Lucy: It’s very prejudicial.
TS: The Isis is also exempted. The city spent $9.5 million on that. I’m infuriated. It’s the worst real estate deal in the history of Aspen. The city bought the Isis outright, leasing it back to Banana Republic at below-market rate. The leasee gets to rent at market rates. AspenFilm gets to keep it free and clear in 30 years.
Lucy: It’s the dumbest real estate deal ever.
TS: The city was afraid with everything under a moratorium. The building is already protected as a historic landmark. Now they’re trying to extend to the interior. That means the city in its wisdom decrees a bar stays a bar. The moratorium ends June 30. Businesses can’t re-model. The want to open a restaurant and they can’t. Is it appropriate for the city’s long hand to be involved in all that? The entire core is under historic status and the city controls it.
LZ: We’d still have another drug store where Ralph Lauren is. This town would be better.
TS: You’d have to subsidize businesses. We’d have empty spaces. You have to pay for it.
MC: You own two retail stores.
TS: I own Distractions and Imelda’s.
Lucy: If you put your house on the market and along comes the Historic Society, do you think they have the right?
TS: The city has too many dollars and not enough sense. Another part of the Isis deal granted a lease—AspenFilm will own it free and clear. Why give that to a nonprofit? Grant a multimillion asset to a nonprofit? Give a $130,000 up front and lease payment substantially under market? Your point is actually very well-taken. I’m a liberal, too, but it takes a little wisdom.
MC: Should the city stay out of those deals?
TS: Absolutely and completely. The government is excluding buyers. Bill Stirling puts the Explore Bookstore on the market and lo and behold a philanthropist shows up. Double Diamond is now incredible as the Belly Up because a philanthropist bought it. Philanthropists wanted to buy the Isis. Philanthropists have offered an ice rink. The city’s anti-capitalist stance is self-defeating. If Walter Paepcke showed up today, people would call him a big money guy from Chicago and he’d be run out of town in five seconds. If the city just worked with the assets we have we’d be fine.
MC: How do we put more local businesses in business?
TS: Now a trend is to create “affordable commercial.” What does it mean and who pays? It didn’t work well in Havana. The city’s in the background on that. What’s sad to me about the Isis, the city is subsidizing the commercial space and bringing in a chain–they wouldn’t reserve it for a local-serving business.
MC: What about your proposal on Affordable Housing, to raise cap on appreciation to 5 percent?
TS: The story is that people in the deed-restricted units are getting old. The Housing Authority is driving them around in a homecare program. That’s beyond their scope. It brings huge liability issues. Housing is not a cradle-to-grave. Should the Housing Authority be a caretaker? They have to get trained for it. The city ought to be careful to do what it can do well.
LZ: Shouldn’t that be part of senior services?
TS: You move to assisted living. You don’t ask your landlord to take care of you.
JUDGE BOB NIX: Isn’t it capitalistic for the investors to get paid up?
TS: They don’t put up any money.
MC: Is Affordable Housing broken?
TS: Is not perfect but it’s not broken. I was chairman of the board of the Housing Authority. Some 49 percent of people who work in Aspen live in deed-restricted housing. Can you imagine our traffic if that weren’t the case? They’d have to commute. We would have created a gated community in a way.
MC: How many units are there?
TS: There are 842 city ownership units; 1,171 rental units in the city. The Affordable Housing originally started as short-term employee housing. “Move-up housing.” You got your foot in the door. It was approximately 22 years ago. It wasn’t Siberia on the Roaring Fork because Aspen became so attractive. But no one anticipated a $5.4 million cost for an average family home.
MC: What does that mean to a person in Affordable Housing?
TS: If you want to face reality, where your living is where you will be.
MC: Why did you start building Affordable Housing yourself?
TS: I kept losing the lottery and I had no place to live with my four kids. Then I saw this place that was four dumps across the street. To get a unit to live in with my two kids, I donated my services and got it built.
MC: Where was it?
TS: At Garmisch and Bleecker. It was deed-restricted. I did it after losing housing lottery after housing lottery because I had two kids stuck in Truscott. You still get 200 people in a lottery.
MC: What’s your plan?
TS: I’m proposing the city raise the appreciation cap to 5 percent. It’s now 3 percent or the CPI [Consumer Price Index], and that averages at 2 to 2.5 percent. This change would take affect now and not retroactive. The mean price of an Affordable Housing unit is $180,000. That would increase $3,600 per year. The beauty is it would require voluntary participation. The city buys down a deed-restricted unit at sale. At that sale, after ten years, the city can give the owner $500,000; the next owner buys it for $100,000, using the RETT [Real Estate Transfer Tax] all the people have helped to create. As it is that money is being used to create four units, with a $1 million subsidy for each. That’s $4 million. I think that’s terrible–$400,000 a bedroom.
LUCY: That’s almost $1 million per person.
TS: What I’m suggesting is an improvement. And you would be able to double the ability to improve your home from 10 percent to 20 percent as an investment. That would give people a chance to improve where they live. And they can get it back when they sell it.
MC: Is this communism?
TS: Actually, I think this is a move toward capitalism. With more equity in their home, it moves them closer to the American Dream.
LZ: Let’s say you made it retroactive. Where are they going to go?
TS: Most would stay. This would be a reward for your presence. It’s more an incentive to stay, to keep your future home. It empowers people a little more.
LUCY: It’s definitely socialism.
TS: But it’s tax income, a function of how desirable the town is. Those people who live in Affordable Housing make the town desirable.
MC: Why do you want to be Mayor of Aspen? You agreed it sounds like a lousy job—low pay, long hours.
TS: Because I really do believe I can solve some problems and make the town better.