Letter to the Editor: Moving Onward & Upward

To the Winter Park Community,

I am inspired and motivated by how our community has come together to help neighbors and businesses get through the tough times imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We have adapted to a new normal of take-out food, gathering in small groups, and wearing a mask anytime we are out of the house. It is because of this work that we have been able to reopen many parts of Winter Park and welcome back visitors.

However, we are not out of the woods yet. Due to the recent increase in cases as more people travel in and out of the area, Grand County has received a “high disease” designation. While many other places, such as Denver, also have this designation, it should not be taken lightly. This means that we need to keep taking precautions to limit the spread of COVID-19. Please continue to wear masks when in public buildings and when you are enjoying the outdoors if social distancing between people is not possible. Follow any directions that businesses provide when patronizing them. Wash your hands as frequently as possible.

All of us at the Town of Winter Park have our sights set on preparing for the winter season. Our economy relies on the tourism dollars brought during ski-season and closing down during that time could be devastating to businesses and the local workforce. We do not want to see that happen and need to take measures to ensure we maintain our “open” status.

Now, how do we make this happen on a governmental level? We saw the local mask mandate, along with those ordered by Fraser and Grand Lake, as an essential step to make health in Winter Park a priority. We also continue to work closely with Grand County and other local partners to monitor and mitigate the situation. Grand County recently received funding from the State to hire additional contact tracers and testing equipment to provide additional support to the Health Department. This will allow them to respond to outbreaks in a timely, targeted manner that will prevent the need for widespread closures. Locally we are working with Winter Park Resort and the Winter Park and Fraser Chamber to preserve our brand as a welcoming community and explore new ways to share and disseminate information quickly.

We are excited about these new prospects and keep exploring other technologies to help us understand the spread of the virus. This includes the possibility of partnering with Grand County and other towns to use methods such as routine testing of wastewater influent to pinpoint and monitor COVID-19. I know the Town of Winter Park and my fellow Council Members are very willing to look into any options that will ensure our health and stabilize our economy.

COVID-19 is still very much part of our daily reality, and we need to keep the proactive work going. 

With fall and winter quickly approaching, we want to make sure our community has the precautions and initiatives in place for these busy months. Anything we can do now will help us get back to normal more quickly.

Sincerely,

Mayor Nick Kutrumbos

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To the Editor

We want to share our story of kindness and concern the chef and staff of Paellas Restaurant demonstrated on Saturday, 7/25.  We stopped by the restaurant Saturday mid-afternoon requesting CO Park to Park Cycling Challenge finish line directions and the staff recognized we needed assistance for mild hypothermia.  When we stopped in the restaurant after descending on our bikes from Berthoud Pass to Winter Park in the rain, we instantly exhibited uncontrollable shivering, fumbling fingers, and difficulty concentrating.   The staff came to our rescue – offering us towels, dry clothing, and hot tea to reverse the mild hypothermia.  Once our symptoms subsided, chef Neil, drove us and our bikes to our nearby rental property.  We can never say enough to thank Neil and the staff for their kindness and generosity to complete strangers and empathy for our situation.   We are forever indebted to them and our story is an amazing reminder we, as a society, should look out for one another.  Later that evening,we returned for dinner and had an amazing, delicious, and creative meal with attentive service.   Paellas Restaurant is a business locals and visitors should patronize for the food, dining experience, and the amazing staff who represent the ideals of a mountain community.

Trish Heisdorffer

Frisco, Colorado

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To the editor:

    Are you aware of the violence that is ongoing in our big cities? You may not hear much about it from your news sources. You may not hear much about it from Social Media/Big Tech. You certainly won’t hear anything about it from the Democrat candidates! Yet it is real, menacing and frightening. “Protests” regularly turn into riots, burning/destroying vehicles, businesses, government buildings and churches. The Democrats who run those big cities are doing their best to ignore or deny the violence. They “de-fund” police while requiring police protection of their own homes. They have directed the police to “stand down” at the riots. They have released criminals from jail. The murders in those big cities are rising rapidly – no wonder? Their virus death numbers are thru the roof. You can get pot but can’t go to church.

    Have you heard what Obama said at Lewis’ funeral? “We witnessed with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans.” Wrong, one evil cop – not plural. He also said; “- – – we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators.” Another lie. They were used only against the rioters who deserved it. He used “democracy ” and “true democracy” several times. Just in case your media doesn’t tell you, we have a Republic not a “Democracy”. In case your government education didn’t tell you, Ben Franklin, when asked what kind of government did you give us? Answered – “A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT”. What does a “true democracy” mean? It means dumping the republic in favor of his version of “democracy”. He blasted voter ID laws – apparently he wants non-citizens to be able to vote! All this at a funeral – I didn’t think we were allowed to have funerals? No mention of Martin Luther King’s peaceful demonstrations.

      If you aren’t aware of such horse puckey, maybe you should spend some time listening to/watching alternative news sources. Let us keep our Republic.

Frank Watts

Winter Park Highlands

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Hitler and Mattis and Trump, oh my

Dear Editor:

I don’t know about you, but former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis is very disturbed by the Trump presidency. In a recent statement published in “The Atlantic,” Mattis accuses Trump of abusing his presidential authority and making “a mockery of our Constitution.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

Trump’s own Pentagon chief–a four-star Marine general with 50 years of military service and a Masters degree–is saying that our current president is a threat to American democracy. In public.

Mattis writes: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people–does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.”

To illustrate the danger Trump poses to the country, Mattis cites the old Nazi slogan for destroying America: “Divide and conquer.”

Speaking of Nazis, I recently read a biography of Adolf Hitler, “Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939,” by German historian Volker Ullrich. It provided the following information, which may (or may not) also apply to current politics.

I’ll report. You decide …

— According to Nazi finance minister Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, Hitler’s primary personal characteristic was his “bottomless mendacity … He wasn’t even honest toward intimate confidants … so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth.”

— When Hitler chose subordinates, Ullrich says, “the most important criteria were absolute loyalty, discretion and obedience.”

— Adolf Hitler displayed an “unusually improvisational and personal style of leadership.”

— Thomas Mann was a Nobel-prize winning novelist, who ultimately fled Nazi Germany. He called Nazism a movement of “mass emotional conviction.”

In a 1930 Berlin speech, Mann said the Nazi party was finding political success because “people had turned away from the fundamental principles of a civil society–liberty, equality, education, optimism, belief in progress and faith in reason–to embrace forces of the unconscious … which rejected everything intellectual.”

— Hitler was “very prickly when confronted with people who obviously knew more about a topic than he did. His antipathy towards intellectuals, professors and teachers was particularly pronounced … Hitler believed he knew better than specialists and experts and treated them with arrogance.”

— Adolf Hitler “lived in fear of looking laughable. His megalomania was the flipside of his feelings of inferiority.”

— During Germany’s short-lived Weimar Republic (1919-1933), the Nazi party never won a majority in any national election. The highest they ever polled (in Weimar’s last election, when Hitler had been Chancellor for one month) was 44 percent.

According to the Gallup poll, Trump’s average job approval rating as president has been 40 percent. He won the 2016 election with 46 percent of the popular vote …

You don’t need an electoral majority to destroy a Constitutional republic from within. The scholarly Jim Mattis knows this. It probably disturbs his sleep at night.

He’s not alone.

Marty Rush,

Salida, Colorado