I wanted to take the opportunity to compliment the Estes Valley/Estes Park community on your wonderful area and city. My wife and I spend at least a week every fall in your community, and we look forward to the trip all year.

I also wanted to share with you the fact that the workforce housing struggle you are facing is a problem that is not unique to you.

We live in Blue Ridge, Georgia, which is a mountain community about two and a half hours north of Atlanta. We are situated in the Cohutta Range of the Appalachian Mtns. And we are, much like you, a tourism-driven community.

As a lifelong resident of the area, I have watched us go from a quiet, sleepy agriculture-based county to a street-filled, can’t get into town, all the groceries are gone, prices at restaurants are unaffordable, come spend your tourism money, type community. This has been evident more so in our incorporated cities than in the rural sections of the county. However, the cabin rental business has taken root in every corner of our county. I have watched housing prices skyrocket to the point that local workers and residents simply cannot afford to live here any longer, much less young couples trying to get a start in life. When these folks leave to find more affordable housing, and they have no choice but to do so, they take their job skills and the positive contributions they would make to the community with them.

As I read the Trail-Gazette weekly, I am amazed at the similarities between our communities.

I have worked in law enforcement for 35-plus years in a neighboring community which is facing the same issues we are here in Blue Ridge. I have served as Police Chief or Public Safety Director since 2000, and I have had the opportunity to participate in trying to manage these issues from a local government standpoint. In some ways we have been successful and in others we have failed miserably.

I would offer this advice to your community leaders: You are not going to find answers that are going to please everyone. There are no magic bullets for this problem. I would encourage you to move slowly in the changes you make. In our case, very few of them can ever be reversed. When a mountain is flattened out for a building, I have yet to see it put back in place when minds were changed later. A lot of the mistakes we have made were due to moving too quickly on changes and projects without fully understanding the long-term results.

Please do not forget or forsake your local people. Do not sacrifice them to chase the sales tax dollar. It is easy to become reliant on the mighty sales tax dollar, and we have done so here at home in some ways. Remember it is your community and your people who make the area attractive. Don’t change those things that brought people in to start with.

I appreciate all you do to make your community what it is. Keep up the good work. See you in October.

Larry Callahan, Georgia