In November of 2022, a new nonprofit called “Aspen Deserves Better” launched, with a stated mission of creating “positive, more inclusive and substantive public policy dialog” here in Aspen.
But during the March municipal election, the group raised questions from community members, including former mayor Mick Ireland and then-councilmember Rachel Richards, about their involvement in the elections and the role they played in fostering community conversations.
Aspen Times reporter Josie Taris dug into some of those questions in a recent article, and spoke about it with Aspen Public Radio’s Caroline Llanes.
TRANSCRIPT:
Caroline Llanes: Remind us of what Aspen Deserves Better is, what their deal is. What kind of issues are they focused on?
Josie Taris: So they are a nonprofit that was formed in November of 2022 by two local realtors, Alexandra George and Peter Grenney, and the former Aspen City Clerk, Linda Manning. They formed their organization with the intent to spark more community conversation, is what they'll tell you. And they do that by offering a website that hosts a variety of issues and topic pages relevant to Aspen city voters like “Aspen Homeowner”, APCHA housing, childcare, second home ownership and short term rental ownership, among a few others. And each page, each topic has a landing page with a brief summary of the issues history in Aspen, and then links to mostly letters to the editor and articles published in the local papers and local news outlets.
When I first spoke to them in January of 2023, when they were really ramping things up ahead of the March Aspen city election, they said that their vision for Aspen Deserves Better, and their website and their social media was to include community input and include fresh, off-the-cuff takes on city issues. I asked them what fact checking would be like for unfiltered community content like that, and they said that they would kind of rely on themselves, following community content. So it looked like it had the potential to be a sticky situation. But what ended up happening is that the community discussion section of each topic page links out to news outlets and letters to the editors published in newspapers.
Llanes: Their founders, like you said, Alex George and Peter Grenney: they definitely have opinions on some of the issues you just described. But does Aspen Deserve Better, the group? Do they offer any positions on the issues?
Taris: Grenney and George will say no, that their whole initiative is in. Their whole purpose is to encourage people to vote and to encourage voter turnout. Aspen is known for having infamously low voter turnout in city elections, especially ones that don't happen in concurrence with a general election. A March city council election generally does not see great turnout from Aspen city voters. So no, they will say, “No. All we care about is getting voters out.”
But if you read the language on their website and their content, it kind of paints a different picture. The Aspen Homeowner page on their website reads, “Sick of having your private property rights disrespected by a punitive city hall, upset over changes to the land use code that enables dense subsidized housing complexes in every neighborhood?”
And I don't think anyone who reads that would be able to walk away and say, “This is unbiased. This is un-charged. This is apolitical content.”
Llanes: Yeah, definitely. It seems like they are driving at a point there. So then we have kind of a little insight on what they think about the issues. What about specific political candidates? I kind of get the sense that people maybe associated Aspen Deserves Better with certain candidates in the March municipal elections. But was that the case?
Taris: Officially, no. It is a threat to their tax status and explicitly prohibited with their tax status to endorse specific candidates. But they got into a bit of hot water during the campaign when a lot of their yard signs appeared almost exclusively with real estate-aligned candidates on the ballot. Bill Guth, Sam Rose, Tracy Sutton were the three. Bill Guth and Sam Rose, of course, having been elected, Tracy Sutton lost to incumbent (mayor) Torre.
As I talk about in my reporting, (then-city councilor) Skippy Mesirow texted Peter and Alexandra saying, “Hey, I've seen some of your yard signs out with certain candidates. This is not a good look.”
Alex responded, “Thanks for letting us know. We're actually seeking 501(c)(3) status, so we would never endorse candidates. We have nothing to do with where people put their yard signs.”
And they said, when I asked them about it, that they had signs available for public consumption and use, and that what people did with the signs after they picked them up was their business.
But also I found an Instagram post from December of 2022 on Alexander George’s personal/real estate page. She's holding up a sign for Aspen deserves better and tagged in the post, Tracy and Sam Rose. Bill Guth. And then Aspen Deserves Better’s page, @aspengondolatalk, and in the caption she asks for folks to give to Aspen Deserves Better. It doesn't explicitly say, give money, give time, give attention, but give something. And that's not a great look for a 501(c)(3) co-founder.
Llanes: So can you tell me a little bit more about Aspen Deserves Better’s 501(c)(3) status? What does that mean in layman's terms?
Taris: So a 501(c)(3) tax status is the most stringent tax exempt status that the IRS offers. The whole point of receiving it is that you can offer tax deductible donations to your donors. That way people can donate, write you a $500 check, and then come April, they can write that off. It's a huge benefit for nonprofits to cast a wider net in terms of raising money to operate. But with that come really strict regulations about political activity, because if there weren't, then wealthy folks would just pump their money into nonprofits and indirectly influence elections and elected bodies through 501(c)(3)s, all at a tax deduction.
According to bank statements I saw from them, they started the process to seek 501(c)(3) status in January, going through LegalZoom. That process took a few months. They said that LegalZoom wasn't going quickly. They sought out advice from another attorney, but that took a while. And when they finally got their letter from the IRS saying they had been granted the status, it was after the election, it was in mid-April, I believe, but generally 501(c)(3) status is retroactively applicable. So all of the donations that they got and all of their behavior and activity from the start of their incorporation in November of 2022 through the moment they got their tax status, is still subject to the purview of 501(c)(3) rules, regulations and benefits.
So they had a $15,000 donation in January that technically would be tax deductible now. But also, as I found out and the night before I filed, their 1023 form, which is a tax form that you send to the IRS when you want to be given 501(c)(3) status, says that they were incorporated in April. And so there's some mistakes in the filing that may or may not endanger their ability to offer that $15,000 donor tax status, may or may not endanger or protect them from consequences of losing their tax status for the way they conducted themselves during the Aspen city election.
Llanes: You've talked about the yard signs. You've talked a little bit about their website, talked about their social media pages, But kind of give me a sense of what their participation in the election look like, because it seems like, like you said, their activity is pretty targeted to those elections.
Taris: Yeah, so to start off, the breadth of their activity only occurred during the most recent Aspen City Council election. I think when you think about them as a 501(c)(3), that's important to note that they are not still posting, they are not still actively engaging with the community. Alexandra has said that they have sent out newsletters since the election, but I have not seen them, I am signed up for them. But their social media accounts and content on the web page has not been updated.
But during the election itself, they phone banked. They offered yard signs and posted retail signs throughout downtown Aspen and did a lot of social media engagement encouraging people to vote. For the phone banking, they used an app called i360 that has its own database of voters. They said that they assembled a team of about 20-something volunteers to call potential voters, remind them to register to vote, remind them that there was an election even happening in March, and answer any registration and voting, Election Day-related questions. So the phone banking ostensibly was all about encouraging voter turnout.
And then the signs, we've already discussed, were available for potential voters to do with, as they will. And a lot of talk went around a map, an interactive map of registered voters. A lot of columnists in town wrote about it as if it were something nefarious. I have seen it. I linked to it in my article. The data that fills out that map, a pinpoint of every registered voter in the city of Aspen is publicly available through Pitkin County Clerk, and it lists name, address, party, when they registered to vote. And according to Peter Grenney, they did not use that information to inform any activity. And I was not able to find otherwise in my reporting.
Llanes: Okay. Is there anything else that you want to share about your reporting?
Taris: I think the other thing to note is that the tax attorney that I interviewed for this story, Cara Lawrence, she is Denver-based, noted that the case of Aspen Deserves Better is small potatoes to the IRS. They are not going to seek out a nonprofit this small who filed the “easy” version of the 1023 because of how overworked and understaffed that agency is.
And so I think Aspen Deserves Better, has an opportunity to fix the mistakes that they've made, and flatten out the bumps where they've tripped, and potentially contribute something really meaningful to the community. But right now, with all of the mistakes that have been made, I think the community is going to be very reluctant to trust them with their money.
Llanes: That was Jose Taris of the Aspen Times speaking about her reporting on local nonprofit, Aspen Deserves Better. Josie, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with Aspen Public Radio.
Taris: Thank you for having me.
