Heaven Help Us

I think NIMBYism has gone too far when the target of the naysaying moves beyond landfills and nuclear waste dumps, to focus on . . . monasteries. Yes, monasteries. The kind that have monks.

"To maintain their seclusion, the monks have their eyes on a 2,500-acre ranch about 50 miles away in a rugged area with creeks fed by looming mountains. The area has few roads, a few widely dispersed ranch homes, a few scattered oil and gas wells. The ranch is about 14 miles from the nearest public road, and the nearest town, 20 miles away, is Meeteetse, population about 350, that is most famous for the arrest of outlaw Butch Cassidy in 1894.

They plan to build a monastery mainly of stone with 30 separate hermitages for monks, a small dormitory for men in training to become monks, a commons area and a church spire rising the equivalent of 15 stories.

Ranch owner Dave Grabbert, whose family has held the property since 1938, has agreed to sell to the religious order, and he describes the two monks he has met as personable, intelligent and "just decent guys."

"I don't care if they're Hindus, Buddhists or what they are, but being decent people, that's really a plus in this day and age," Grabbert said. "Not everyone is."

Some of his neighbors object to the sale, citing concerns about traffic, wildlife, water -- and questioning whether the massive stone structure fits with the rural landscape.

"The plans look like someone took an old cathedral and just dropped it onto our beautiful landscape," Mary Elliott, who lives about 15 miles from the site, wrote to the Planning and Zoning Commission. She noted the religious order wouldn't be paying property taxes.

"As their contribution to this community will be prayer rather than property taxes the town will take a large loss on the currently paid property taxes," Elliott wrote. "As for prayer, I am sure we are all grateful for that but are capable of doing that ourselves."

Heaven help the country that has lost its mind.

Not to mention its soul.


P.S. An editorial writer at The Casper Star Tribune apparently had the same reaction to this story as I did, resulting in this well-deserved scolding.

Obamanomics at work in Pitkin County

"Spreading the wealth around" doesn't just occur at the federal level, despite all the focus that redistribution has received in the presidential contest. It takes place at the local level too, as a story in yesterday's Aspen Times makes clear.

Pitkin County commissioners are mulling a six-fold increase in their "affordable housing mitigation fee," according to the paper, which is actually a tax levied on builders -- and the buyers of what they build -- that's used to fund affordable housing projects in the area. It's redistribution of wealth, plain and simple: Some people pay more for a home or building than they need to, so the county can provide other people with subsidized shelter. This creates the illusion that "affordable housing" is increasing, when the net effect is to make building and housing county-wide much more expensive, deepening a "crisis" county leaders are trying to solve.

But this is what can happen when economic illiterates are in charge, and when do-gooder dogma supplants reason in policymaking circles.

As the cost of building these "affordable housing" units has risen -- a consultant hired by the county estimates that “a subsidy of $394,200 is necessary to make a 1,000-square-foot residential affordable housing unit in 2008” -- the tax extracted from builders (and passed on to customers) doesn't go as far. So now the county may raise the tax, possibly by a factor of 6, which will increase the overall cost of housing on most people in the county, while benefiting a minority of folks who win the affordable housing lottery.

If it really wanted to promote affordable housing, Pitkin County would be reducing barriers and costs for builders and developers, which would increase housing stocks and reduce sticker shock. But Pitkin County wants contradictory things: It wants to control "growth" and effectively punish developers, while offering ample affordable housing for its non-wealthy residents.

Until it recognizes the error of its ways -- and realizes that "spreading the wealth around" isn't just unfair, but also counterproductive -- the situation will only get worse.