We don’t have to be another Aspen

Is Whitefish doomed to become Aspen? As mentioned in The Pilot, this was a topic discussed in the Community Development Board meeting May 21. Many said that it’s too late. “We’re already there.”

But we aren’t. Not so long ago our town offered more working class jobs. Our teachers lived here, our chairlift attendants supported families, most city staff lived in town.

The it’s-too-late mentality offers no future for working class people. It commits us to this path of million dollar homes and closed signs for favorite cafes. We need change. Understandably, we fear it. But remember that famous line, “change we can believe in”? Change is imagining something better. It doesn’t have to sacrifice the identity of our town.

My family left our trailer home in Aspen in 1989 because the town no longer felt like a home for us. I don’t want to repeat that history. We don’t have to be another Aspen. We have to believe in something better--a future that still feels true to us. 

Marti Brandt, Whitefish