Pavel Responds

Hi Bill,

With interest, I have just finished reading your article re: Rudy-the Demagogue. To my surprise, I had found a reference to my joining something, quoting…”Now a realtor and aspiring town council candidate, Pavel Lukes, has joined in the nonsense. The immigrant Czecho suggests Taosenos consider Big Box development for the sake of the “free market.” He apparently missed the dangers of deregulation—subprime mortgages, financial derivatives, and growing financial inequality, all thanks to the “free market”

Well, not so fast, especially while so low on facts. May I suggest a call to me to verify, confirm and otherwise approach the vicinity of merit?

First, I and my business have been in the direct line of fire resulting from all of the fine schemes by our financial market, thus it was hard to miss the corruption as you allege, however, I beg to differ with you as none of it had to with “free market” but DEREGULATION!

Second, as you well know, in the past I was a very vocal opponent of Super Wal-Mart attempt to waltz into our community and dictate to us how things are and what a savior Super Wal-Mart is to us. I was the only vocal sitting member of the P & Z, who had expressed opposition in a joint meeting of the Council and the P & Z. I got slammed by then Mayor Fred Peralta for doing so. Also, I wrote a “MY Turn” in the Taos News expressing my opposition to Super Wal-Mart’s invasion.

Now, fast forward to now.

From where I stand, or sit, what I see is one steady economical decline of Taos which is not a pretty picture. One thing that I have noticed over the 18 or so years that I have resided here is that our community as a whole has been a very lethargic one, lethargic to our own detriment. The only time we stand up for anything is in times of “crisis,” such as what is perceived as crisis in the “imminent” invasion of our lands by Family Dollar. Well, once again, our community has reacted in a predictable fashion of “them” against “us”, thus polarizing the entire community and scrambling not for solutions but for inflicting a mortal blow to this prospect of a metal building in the middle of a watershed and wetlands, not to mention the awe inspiring views. ( I am firmly and unequivocally against the Family Dollar in this location, just for the record)

My letter to the Council and to the P &Z was intended as an invitation to study and collect facts regarding the possibility of amending our code to allow larger retailers in a very specific area of town. Let me say again….very specific area ONLY! How refreshing would it be to actually base our decisions NOT on emotions, but on facts? Once informed of all the pros and all the cons, then and only then, let’s make a decision whether this would be a good thing for our community, but not before we have all of the facts! Why not take this approach which in the end ALL of us could embrace, instead of pitting one against the other? Otherwise I feel like we are burying our heads in the sand, our community suffers, people are losing jobs left and right and we are going to sit on our hands? Not this “immigrant Czecho”, it is just not my style to wait for things to just happen to me/us, it is time we take our own destiny into our own hands and make our own choices.

It can’t get much worse, can it? If there is any message I want to convey (therefore my memo to Council), it is that we need to become proactive and NOT reactive. The absence of being proactive creates a vacuum which inevitably invites attempts to do something utterly stupid, i.e. a metal box retail store in the most inappropriate location.

Hello?! Had we been proactive, we would have sensible land use plan in place which would make these pastures off limits to commercial (or large scale) development, period, end of story. But, no, not in Taos let’s wait and then revolt! That is also exactly what happened with Super Wal-Mart last time.

What a scary place, why would any business ever want to come to Taos, when all they can expect are vague rules or no rules, but easily radicalized masses? So, let’s no longer shoot ourselves in the foot and let’s take a proactive posture so we can implement safeguards where undesirable events are relegated to remain outside of Taos County. One thing that is undeniable is that what the Taos area is doing now is not working. We have lost numerous businesses including, hotels, automobile dealerships, restaurants, and many of the small businesses that community was hoping to protect.

So, Bill, if it is still unclear what I stand for, it is collective wisdom, merit, knowledge and factual information ( a good standard for good journalism as well) and then maybe a Big Box,………or not.

Pavel

P.S. I hope that in all fairness and in the interest of transparency you so adamantly advocate, you will publish my response for all of your readers to see!

Editor’s Note: At the Friction we are always happy to post correspondence from readers, etc. I hasten to add that we post mostly in response to rumors, stories that aren’t being covered, or outrageous claims and stupidities that move us. At the Friction we are volunteers and do not have time (currently) to pursue “both sides” of the story. If you are a public person–politico–or worthy of coverage in the local media, then you are fair game for glib remarks. Here we give letter writers their turn in response and appreciate the Czecho’s reasonable letter. We’d love to hear from Rudy and his Trustfunders or the Coopsters aka “The Traveling Trustees.”