Hucking slush. Where were the elected leaders?

By the weekend, the topic of this week’s editorial was too obvious: the deplorable conditions of the Crested Butte streets, including the bus route.  Sunday, the editorial was writing itself as the bus dropped me off on Sixth Street. It wouldn’t turn into town on one of the busiest evenings of the winter. So I drove the route in my green, four-wheel-drive Chevy Tahoe to see exactly why not. Holy Crap.
After that ride, it wouldn’t be hard to pen an editorial. Page 2 would be dripping with words and phrases that included ‘anger’, ‘embarrassment’, ‘lack of foresight’, ‘lack of leadership’. I just got my car aligned and I think both my car and my back now need a chiropractor.

Let’s start with the obvious.
No one was pleased with the state of the streets last weekend. It was the topic of conversation and a source of anger pretty much everywhere from Saturday to now. It was embarrassing for a ski town to let the streets get to the point where transportation was halted because of…snow?
The fact it happened during one of the busiest times of the winter made it worse. Business owners were understandably furious. Visitors in cars became stuck and mad. Tourists on the buses were dropped off on the east side of town because the Mountain Express couldn’t navigate the Bosnian-like roads. There was no way a woman in heels from Dallas was going to head from the Four-way to Slogar. Ridiculous.
As mayor Leah Williams observed: “It’s a bad deal.”
 I don’t hear any arguments on that.

Now, let’s peel it back a layer.
Riding around in a big dump truck hauling fresh slush Monday afternoon with town public works director Rodney Due, he understood the situation and admittedly wasn’t happy with it. He described his crew as hitting the “perfect storm.”
In the movie “The Perfect Storm”, George Clooney led his guys into the eye of the storm. They died. In this case, the mayor gets the honor of the George Clooney role. I think she’ll survive.
Let’s cut to the chase. Money, manpower and luck can solve most situations like this. The town had the money but ran out of luck and manpower. Based on everything I’ve heard, it seems the town staff counted on good luck and instead got bad. Could they have done more a few weeks ago in preparation for a worst-case scenario? Yeah. They may have prepped for a normal year and instead caught themselves in a zipper when a pile of bad luck kept stacking up. Knowing Rodney, I’d bet the house it won’t happen again.
Manpower is where the need is most evident and it is the thing most in the town council’s control. The town has been almost too fiscally responsible in this case with a hiring freeze on every department except the marshal’s office. Rodney says he’ll be asking the council for a few more full-time seasonal employees to help with the roads next winter. He should make that request sooner rather than later while this latest debacle is fresh in the mind of the council.
Rodney explained his grim situation pretty well. Circumstances swelled up and made it a cluster and if you want to blame God for these consistent warm temperatures, do so at your own risk. We do live at 9,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains and we keep saying we don’t want to be like Aspen or Vail but geez… So I won’t be blaming the town staff, especially the public works guys who are working 36 hours a day…there just needs to be more of them. And that is a council decision.

So, let’s go to the top.
Aside from that God fellow who is playing with our minds while playing with the weather, the top would be the mayor and town council. While they shouldn’t be blamed for not seeing this coming, how a leader handles a situation says a lot. We hit a situation. How did they handle it? I’d say on the lame side.
When the infrastructure of a ski town essentially shuts down during one of the few busy times of the winter season, you would hope there would be at least a presence of elected town representatives. Frankly, I didn’t see much of one. Maybe they were working or out of town or spending time on the phone with the people. But in the heat of a situation, I want to see who steps up as leaders to try and make a bad situation better.
Was there a way to get people up into the heart of town when buses couldn’t complete the route? Yes. Off the top of my head on the practical side, the town officials could have coordinated with the town manager and Mountain Express to get a few of the smaller condo loop buses to shuttle people between Sixth and Second streets. Those vehicles could have turned around in the town’s west end parking lot. Even the big buses could have easily delivered passengers to the Old Town Hall, had a councilperson stand at Second and Elk and halt traffic while the bus reversed back onto Elk. It’s been done before. That’s not a perfect solution but it’s better than what happened.

At the very least, or I would say at the very most, the elected ambassadors of the town…the mayor and council…should have been out there communicating with the people. They could have been explaining the situation to their constituents. They could have been greeting people as they got off the buses.
“Hi my name is Leah (or Reed, Jim, Phoebe, Roland, John or Dan) and I’m the mayor and I’m glad you’re here and I’m sorry about this but have you ever seen so much snow? Wow! I haven’t either. Let me put your skis in my car and take you to where you’re going.”
On my travails around town during the Big Air event on Saturday and walking uptown on Sunday afternoon, hanging out on Elk Avenue Monday morning and riding in a dump truck with Rodney Monday afternoon, I didn’t see any town council members. I’m sure they were out there but they weren’t wearing bells and whistles. If my experience was any indication, those councilpeople that showed their face in public probably had someone bending their ear. Human nature would excuse them if they went back to bed and pulled the covers over their head. But I would suggest they should have been out on side streets with a tow strap pulling people out of the middle of the road.
Making an overt effort to communicate honestly and openly with those impacted might have been the least these elected officials could have done. That’s a minimum expected of leadership. Figuring out how to help tourists get from the bus stop to the core business district and greeting them as they came off the bus might have been a good gesture and made a significant positive difference. That’s the symbolic side but it goes a long way for people.
Look, overall, it was an unfortunate situation made worse by the “Perfect Storm.” Oops. While that storm ended poorly for the fishermen in the movie, the town and the council have a chance to learn from this.
We are a resort town and if hiring a couple extra people will ensure this doesn’t happen again, there is no reason not to do it. The money is there, the need is evident and the council must show some direction and make this a priority.

Look at this as a wake-up call.
The stated “values” of the council listed on its agenda references preserving a high quality of life, embracing environmental stewardship, supporting a sustainable business climate, maintaining a “real” community, being fiscally responsible and preserving an historic core. The council might take this opportunity to note and prioritize the benefits of Crested Butte being a tourist-based economy and consider adding something to their values list about providing a quality experience for tourists that visit this resort town. It’s what allows us all to live here with that high quality of life and everything else on that list.
Let’s take a breath, smile and see how they buck up and address the situation at their upcoming Monday night council meeting. With the help of our Gunnison neighbors, the streets should be clear by then.  

And if anyone spots a large, green Chevy Tahoe last seen in a slushy sinkhole somewhere on the south side of town, give me a call…