Gatesco email causes friction with locals

Gates apologizes, but councils wary

By Mark Reaman

An email containing some inflammatory language sent out by “The Corner at Brush Creek team” last week has piqued sitting Town Council members in both Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte and resulted in apologies from The Corner at Brush Creek developer Gary Gates.

The letter was an obvious lobbying effort to solicit a person sympathetic to the proposed housing project to apply for a vacant seat on the Mt. Crested Butte Town Council. That seat opened up when councilman Ken Lodovico resigned on October 2.

The email was sent out to social media followers of The Corner at Brush Creek. You can see the email and Gary Gates’ apology letter on page 7. Among the more controversial claims in the letter are accusations and insinuations that some members of the council are keeping hundreds of people out of affordable housing, that some people on the council now do not care about the “WHOLE community” and are only there in their self interest or to do the bidding of “certain powerful individuals.”

The letter asks that “no power-hungry, selfish people” should apply for the council seat and “no willfully ignorant fools” should be let onto the council either.

Several councilmembers took this to mean that if they had voiced concerns with the proposal, they met the definition of being a willfully ignorant fool.

Gates said the letter was written by someone in his Houston office and he didn’t fully review the wording before it was sent out. While taking ultimate responsibility for the letter, he was apologetic about the tenor of the email.

“I found the letter insulting, to say the least,” said Mt. Crested Butte mayor Todd Barnes. “The letter showed a complete lack of respect for what all of us on the town councils do and it was condescending.”

At the Monday, October 15 Crested Butte Town Council meeting, Gates apologized in person. “I’m here to apologize to you, my team and the community for the tone of that letter,” he said. “It was a draft of a letter that a staff member back in Houston had put together per my instructions concerning the opening on the Mt. Crested Butte Town Council… Neither I nor anyone from the team had drafted that email and I failed to fully review it before I authorized its distribution. I’m sorry for the distress it caused and take responsibility for allowing its distribution. I’ve taken appropriate steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen in the future.”

Crested Butte mayor Jim Schmidt did not let Gates off the hook and took the opportunity to admonish him. “I have some issues with how your team has characterized the town,” he said. “Your team has been repeating over and over and over again that we voted to approve your project. That’s not true. We voted to move into negotiations over the project. We never voted to approve the project.

“Personally, while I appreciate the apology, I find it a bit disingenuous, given your two prior missives,” Schmidt continued. “The first was a letter you wrote in the paper criticizing the community in general. The second was the response to our affordable housing consultant Melanie Rees and her analysis of the project. I found that letter to be very nasty when it didn’t need to be. In general, you repeated at the beginning of the process that 240 units was the minimum needed and you couldn’t come down,” Schmidt went on. “I take a man at his word and thought if that was the case we would move on and be working on something else. But that hasn’t happened and you said in the interview you are in it until the end.”

Gates did not respond at the council meeting.

Councilman Will Dujardin did state later in the council meeting that he felt Schmidt’s comments weren’t necessarily appropriate. “I found your response to Mr. Gates one-sided and not representative of the entire council,” he said. “I know you said it was your personal view but think of that before you make such comments.”

A similar scenario unfolded Tuesday at the Mt. Crested Butte council meeting when Gates showed up and apologized. Mayor Todd Barnes responded to his comments, first thanking him for his apology but then he said of the e-mail, “It irritated me, to say the least…because it demonstrated an inability to truly understand our community. I do care about the interests of the community.” Barnes went through several lines of the e-mail, taking issue with each and restating his commitment to an informed process and to the best interests of his constituents and to affordable housing.

“I think that your team as a whole could really step back and try and understand that we are a tight-knit, very close  community,” Barnes continued. “And sending something like this out, whether you were aware of it, whether it was directed by you… it’s disappointing. But I’ve spent a year realizing that you are a very focused individual. The tone and lack of understanding that demonstrated…it’s really a cause to discontinue working with you. If this is how you treat me when you’re courting me, how is it going to be when you marry me?”

Barnes ended by concluding that he and the other stakeholders have come too far to walk away without due diligence, stating, ”I don’t see it as a reason on a professional level to stop working with you.”

Gates said Tuesday he still thinks a deal can be worked out to bring housing to the property and while not the vision he had with a 240-unit project that included features such as underground parking, he could make the project work with a lesser number of units, at the 180 mark.

A revised version of the email without the inflammatory language was eventually posted to the group’s Facebook site.