It was interesting to see the recently featured article in an edition of Summit Daily News about Breckenridge’s accumulation of land over the years; some 5,200 plus acres using imposed tax funding lead by the efforts of the person featured in the article.

I did some research regarding what Summit County has done along the same lines.

Since 1985 through December 2024, Summit County has acquired, according to the County’s own web site, through tax dollars purchase and gifting, almost 18,000 acres.

Adding the two sums together it is evident that these actions have resulted in over 23,000 acres of what was once privately owned land being taken off the property tax rolls and sequestered in perpetuity.

It is evident that the remaining lands in private ownership now bear the brunt of the onerous and omnivorous demands of these two government entities to operate their ever-expanding social engineering goals with taxation of the remaining private owners.

As such, the question must be asked: “Have these two government entities acted in the interests of a few to the determent of the many?”

Considering the dearth of “buildable land” that is now a fact, the two government entities actions and the minutia bound restrictions of the Planning and Zoning departments of both, what available developmental land could exist to address today’s stark needs?

Not all the land would be suitable to be developed, but I suspect a considerable amount would qualify.

An irony exists that this “sequestering sector of society’s social justice warriors” live, in Summit County alone, amid an estimated 2.2 million acres of the White River National Forest. Such acres even encircle and entwine the county and town boundaries. Huggable trees abound.

Had these governments been less given to myopia and more planful, would the housing crisis exist today?