The amount of money floating around this town amazes me, and what amazes me even more is that a lot of this money is used to separate the haves from the have-nots. One case in point are those who built free market homes with employee units attached, and now want to buy their way out of those obligations.

When you build a home here, restrictions can be pretty tight, but there are enough loopholes to get what you want. Some people will simply build what they want, and when they are found out, cry that they didn’t know the rules, or the architect screwed up, or whatever, to get out of the sticky situation they now find them selves in. And I guarantee you they knew exactly what they were doing when they did it, hoping their “mistake” would simply fall through the cracks.

Remember the guy who built his swimming pool on forest service land? He just assumed that either nobody would notice, or maybe he could buy his way out. But I guarantee you that the surveyor did not make an error.

This reminds me of some people who built a commercial building in Maryland and kinda added an extra floor to it. Think the government made them tear it down? Nah. All they had to do was donate some money to something-or-other, and they were home free. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen a lot, but, unfortunately, many builders know they can get away with this kind of thing with only a slap on the wrist.

Somebody in my sister’s neighborhood tried to get away with building a deck all around his house without asking permission, and what he did was totally against the rules of the homeowner’s association. Well, the association made him take it down, and he eventually moved. What irks me is that he had the audacity to build the thing in the first place, assuming nobody would take action after the fact. Well, in this case they did, like it or not.

Here in Aspen, the rules often allow you to buy your way out of a problem.

But sometimes they don’t.

For a long time, it was popular to build a bigger home by adding on a caretaker unit or an employee housing unit. Either could be rented out, but there were guidelines as to what those rents could be. Now, I don’t have to tell you that most of the people who built those homes didn’t really need or want a roommate. What they needed or wanted was a spare bedroom/den/billiard room/office — anything except a space for a lowlife employee.

And the city didn’t really have enough resources to go around to all those homes and see who was living in those units. Everyone was on the honor system, which seems to work for some people, but not for others.

Even people who purchased their own employee units can’t seem to abide by an honor system and/or the rules. Some rent their units out at free-market prices, and others get jobs and buy elsewhere, continuing to hold onto units they purchased in Aspen. We see a lot of these legal battles in the paper all the time, and even a three-year-old sitting on a jury can tell you they broke the rules.

But when I hear that a homeowner is trying to buy his way out of a contractual agreement with the city, it really gets to me. Not so much that he wants to do what he wants with his own property, but that he so doesn’t want to be around the town’s riff-raff that he’s willing to spend big bucks to do it.

Think about the private club at the top of Aspen Mountain: These people so don’t want to eat with many of us that they are willing to pay around $100,000 to avoid us. And if you think that’s something, the members of this club wanted to make it even more exclusive by having the ability to blackball members who had the money to join.

I know I’ve said this before, but when I moved here, the tourists and second homeowners really wanted to be like the locals. They dressed like us, they went to the same bars and restaurants we went to, and they even wanted to hang out with us. And, to be quite honest, it was a very positive thing for both parties. It was not only positive — it was fun.

Not all the “haves” want to separate themselves from the have-nots, but enough of them do to change the face of Aspen, and even sour the reasons I came here in the first place.

I guess if I were on council, I wouldn’t make my decision based on a bunch of lawyers battling it out to see who wins. I would simply ask these homeowners what is so terrible about living up to your obligations? Better yet, what’s so terrible about having an employee living in your house?

Why don’t we ask them? I’d love to hear the answers.

Sheldon Fingerman welcomes your comments at sheldon@sopris.net.