Will Grandbois

As local governments grapple with questions about providing broadband Internet service to area homes and businesses, one local provider has been hooking up “community anchor institutions” in Carbondale for years and stands ready to begin signing up residential customers as well, according to a company spokesman.

After consuming over 100 acres in a few hours on July 3, the Grand Hogback Fire near New Castle appears to have laid down and stayed put with at least 50 percent containment, according to Garfield County Sheriff’s Office Spokesman Walt Stowe.
“It didn’t really spread much beyond that,” he said. “We had a good breeze through come through (July 4) that would have flared anything up that wasn’t pretty well out.”

The troubled Carbondale Marketplace development proposal, on a parcel of land adjacent to the intersection of Highway 133 and Main Street, has been granted its sixth extension in a year and a half for the submission of critical documents that must be filed before any development can proceed on the property. The approval of the 90-day extension for filing a final plat for the project, however, came only after the Board of Trustees (BOT) listened to a litany of problems outlined by spokesmen for the project’s development partnership.

This is not the end for Dandelion Market — but for a moment it sure looked like it might be. A few weeks ago, the 10-year-old local food cooperative, which hasn’t turned a profit since 2013, is tens of thousands of dollars in debt to vendors and staff and is expected to be out of its current location on July 1, was facing the possibility of bankruptcy.

As the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District works on its budget for the coming year, one unknown factor continues to be the question of whether the district will ask voters this fall for a tax hike in 2018, to make up for the impending expiration of a two-year, temporary mill levy increase approved by voters in 2015. A preliminary budget for 2018, provided by Fire Chief Ron Leach, shows how the district’s finances would look if a tax question does not make it onto the ballot this fall.

When Marty Silverstein moved to the Roaring Fork Valley from New York area in 1990, there were no opportunities for him to do the kind of computer consulting he’d done back East.
“The closest place was Denver,” Silverstein told The Sopris Sun, and he wanted to live in the Roaring Fork Valley. Part of the rest of the story is one that’s been told up and down the Roaring Fork Valley for decades. Armed with a BS in political science and a minor in business administration, he eventually landed a job paying $7 an hour (plus a ski pass) at the Aspen airport.

July 2, 1987: An article by William D. Jochems reported that John Riger of the Crystal River Fish Hatchery, and Barry Stout (a rancher south of Silt), were developing a method of cryopreserving (freezing) trout semen. The purpose of the freezing was to increase production of the Tasmania strain of rainbow trout at the hatchery.

As area governments begin to put together their budgets for 2018, officials are breathing a little easier thanks to news that changes in state property tax rates for commercial and residential property will not be as financially troublesome as once anticipated. State and local officials have been told that a recalculation of state property-tax rates, as governed by the Gallagher Amendment to the state constitution, will result in a 2018 tax cut, already planned due to constitutional requirements, that is likely to be roughly half as deep as once predicted.

Carbondale’s Board of Trustees decided on June 27 that they will appoint a replacement for outgoing Trustee Katrina Byars, rather than hold a special election. Among other effects, that means local voters next spring will be electing four trustees — including seats for three who will have been recently appointed — and a mayor. Trustee Frosty Merriott will be stepping down because of term limits, putting his seat up for election as well.