Imagine my dismay when I learned Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland failed to win the “best recent change in Aspen” competition outright. The Mayor, in fact, ended the vote in a dead heat with the spanky Silver Queen Gondola now servicing Aspen Mountain like a slavish bellhop at an Aspen 5-star hotel. In the spirit of tie goes to the bummer, it has fallen upon yours truly to cast the deciding ballot.

Now there are those of you out there who believe that I am unduly harsh in my treatment of Aspen’s spandex Mayor. You think that my continuing portrayal of Mick as a stop-the-music boss is just out of tune with the times. You embrace his insistence on spending taxpayers money–no matter the cost–as long as it goes to state-owned buildings that represent in-your-face socialism with a human face. And you forgive his outright rudeness as no more than the outward manifestation of a man who is far too righteous to care all that much about doing the right thing by people

I have had my doubts about the democratic street cred of a Mayor who would suppress debate, push through an “emergency” ban on changes to “historical” houses built before 1977–and then get the City Council to pony up $200,000 to study the “emergency” he just made up on the bike path. This seems to me an awful lot like throwing money at a problem you just created. Nonetheless and irregardless, the head-to-head competition with the gondola has brought the governance of Aspen to the light of day for the likes of me.

First of all, the gondola goes up and down, up and down, with no end in sight, whereas Mayor Mick likes to go around and around and around with the same message over and over and over. This seems to me prima facie evidence that Ireland has the edge. But there’s more. The spruced-up Silver Queen is inarguably an inanimate object, while the Mayor of Aspen is nothing if not animated as he gavels away debate and squashes freedom of expression. On the gondola, you often have to talk to actual people, compared to the Mayor’s preferred form of lone wolf transportation on wheels.

The deciding factor, of course, is that the Silver Queen Gondola operates as part of the private enterprise owned by Aspen Skiing Company dedicated to actually making a buck. Mayor Mick, in contrast, believes that money is evil incarnate, and that no one should threaten his place near the bottom of the “wealth pyramid” he decries.

So Mick Ireland is clearly the winner of this “best of” competititon for me. The Silver Queen can’t hope to compete with the King of Aspen.