Steamboat Springs — To the anti-development bloggers:

Your cowardice is clear from your usernames, and your ignorance is exposed in your comments.

I have lived full time in Steamboat Springs for more than 11 years. I was married here, have three children here and have started and maintain multiple businesses in town that serve the community and provide for my family. In the past 11 years, our companies have provided employment and livelihood for hundreds of different people in Steamboat, including singles, families, men, women, businessmen and businesswomen, ski bums and various other types of locals.

Today, our companies provide a paycheck for more than 80 families with more than 100 children in Steamboat. All these people are the ones you see eating at restaurants, at the parades, shopping, dropping their children at school, working out at Old Town Hot Springs, on the Yampa River Core Trail, in the grocery store and at all the other activities that make them a local. We have built numerous affordable houses for local families and have built just as many “unaffordable” second homes for part-time residents. We work with local charities in raising funds for nonprofits, and we donate hours of work to the same. We are involved with housing committees, development committees, growth committees and education committees – all that work to protect Steamboat and provide for its people and future.

To assume that developers are from out of town and are just here to “make a few million and then leave” shows enormous ignorance and self-centeredness. To assert that you know better than the thousands of community members that participated in the Steamboat Springs Area Community Plan and the Mountain Town Sub Area Plan localizing density and growth at the base area is ridiculous and shows that you do not really have the community’s interest in mind but, instead, your own self-serving agenda. To threaten elected officials shows again the sub-level character from which you operate and the lack of maturity you possess in dealing with contention. And, above all, your comments reveal the fact that you are not truly part of the core of the Steamboat community.

What City Council has kept in mind and continues to keep in mind is the large majority of people that make up our community. The ones who actually live and work in our community and are not just spectators; the ones who actually participate organically in making Steamboat Springs a living, breathing, operating community of people. People who need jobs, need the opportunity for homes, need parks and trails, need schools and libraries, need streets and public spaces and, above all, need a governing body that is planning for their futures. These people need a mature, determined council, such as we have, that will guide the growth of our community, not obstruct it, and in turn provide for them the opportunity to make a living.

I strongly suggest that every person and family that is living and making a living in this town consider the impacts, short term and long term, of our primary economic engine – the base area – lying in ruins and, worse yet, under-developed. Every working-class community member, from waiters, carpenters, fishing guides, ski instructors, coaches and teachers, investors, Realtors, entrepreneurs, main street business owners and base area business owners, along with their futures, will be detrimentally affected by a short-sighted redevelopment of the base area.

May we all realize the opportunity that is at our fingertips and the legacy of provision we can leave for our families – the next generation of locals.

Jeremy S. MacGray

JSM Builders, Inc.; KM Management, LLC; Capstone Endeavors; Affordable Housing Group; Corpus Development Group, LLC; Mambo Italiano Restaurant