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Mountain News: Economy bumps former concerns

PARK CITY, Utah - A group called Citizens for Responsible Economic Growth and Vitality has formed in Park City with the specific challenge to local officials to achieve just that.

PARK CITY, Utah - A group called Citizens for Responsible Economic Growth and Vitality has formed in Park City with the specific challenge to local officials to achieve just that.

In Park City, as in all other ski towns, the challenge to government officials in recent years was to ameliorate the effects of an overheated real-estate economy. People were concerned about loss of open space to development, about worsening traffic congestion and about the need for affordable housing. In turn, however, revenues were high, bureaucracies grew and major new buildings debuted.

Now, public officials are having to adjust their priorities. In Breckenridge, for example, the town government chipped in an extra $250,000 last winter for marketing. With some evidence that the extra marketing resulted in an increased market share of skiers, the town is prepared to do the same this year.

But at the same time, Breckenridge will reduce snow removal this winter, reports the Summit Daily News. Tim Gagen, the town manager, said the snow-removal level will be more akin to a high-end Oldsmobile as compared to the former Cadillac-level.

In Vail, it's much the same story, according to a report in the Vail Daily . "The town will have to make some hard decisions in the next six months," says Stan Zemler, the town manager. "We can't sustain the path we're on today in the near term."

In Park City, the top priorities of years' past were improved walkability, reduced traffic congestion, and lower carbon emissions. But in an editorial, the Park Record agrees that it's a "discussion worth having" whether the town money should be jostled to reflect new imperatives.

In many places, affordable housing has become less urgent. That's certainly the case in Revelstoke, B.C., where a ski area with aspirations to become a major destination resort opened two years ago. Even then, real estate prices had been appreciating rapidly.

But real estate prices have dropped 10 to 20 per cent, officials tell the Revelstoke Times Review, and an affordable housing complex that might have ultimately yielded 200 units has been postponed indefinitely. There is only one person on the waiting list.

The story is the same in Jackson, Wyo., where administrators of the local hospital have decided against spending more money on a housing project intended to benefit hospital employees. Three homes and three rental units available to hospital employees already sit vacant.

 

Some rebound?

JACKSON, Wyo. - While governments in ski towns plan for continued decline of town revenues, here and there come hopeful signs of economic recovery in the real-estate sector.

From Aspen and Vail there are reports of a thaw in real estate activity during August. In Durango, real-estate agents similarly report a rebound, far more pronounced in single-family homes within the town, as compared to condos or the exurban homes in the countryside.

Taking gauge of the real estate market in Jackson Hole, business columnist Jonathan Schechter reports stability if not exactly a rebound. He says prices are finally coming down. The more interesting question, he says, is why it took so long.

"Things have been so good for so long that many property owners - speculators and long-term owners alike - had come to believe they deserved to make a profit on their property, regardless of what they paid for it or when they bought it. Because changing market conditions didn't affect the sense of entitlement, owners continued to ask prices far higher than buyers were willing to pay. Slowly, painfully, reluctantly, that's finally starting to change, so we're starting to see a bottoming out in the free fall in sales."

 

Rules set for medical marijuana

VAIL, Colo. - One by one, towns in Colorado have been taking up the issue of whether to allow dispensaries of medical marijuana. Most have allowed the dispensaries, but with restrictions, but others have not. Still others, such as Telluride, have declared moratoriums while officials sort out the implications.

Colorado voters in 2000 had approved use of medical marijuana. It is among 13 states to have done so. Federal law, however, continued to define marijuana as an illegal substance. The friction was eased in March, when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the U.S. Justice Department would no longer spend federal money busting medical marijuana dispensaries established under state law.

Gypsum, located 37 miles west of Vail, has chosen not to allow the dispensaries, while nearby Eagle decided to open the door. The Eagle Valley Enterprise reports mixed opinions on the town board. One council member called it a "legitimate pharmaceutical business." But another trustee disagreed. "It's not a pharmacy. It's not regulated like a pharmacy. It's not even regulated like buying a beer is," said Trustee Roxie Deane.

In Vail, meanwhile, planning commissioners have come up with zoning districts in which medical-marijuana dispensaries will be allowed. There are currently eight applications, although nobody seems to think that there's enough business to support eight dispensaries.

Aspen and Breckenridge have also taken action to allow dispensaries.

 

Banff may help employees buy

BANFF, Alberta - Banff city officials are considering incentives to help the 100 full- and part-time employees of the municipality buy real estate within the town. The program, as envisioned, would be open to employees of at least one year's duration and would provide up to $40,000 by way of a second mortgage; and would match the employee's down payment on the purchase of their first home. Said employees could not own another home in the Bow River Valley, including Canmore, down the valley. But the Rocky Mountain Outlook reports some criticism of the concept by members of the municipal council, who see the program as something not available to the general public and, as such, inappropriate.

 

Cost of energy upgrades weighed

ASPEN, Colo. - Aspen city officials continue to chart their path toward a lower-carbon footprint. The latest discussion has to do with upgrading 14 government-owned buildings so that they will use less energy.

The town has been talking with McKinstry, an energy-performance contracting firm that last year conducted energy audits on the buildings. McKinstry now proposes to complete the upgrades. Upgrades range from energy-efficient lighting to retrofitting of vending machines so that they use less energy.

But how much will it cost to save energy? And how much energy will truly be saved? Those are the hard questions. McKinstry estimates the costs at $1.4 million, but promises that the changes will reduce energy use 12 per cent, saving the city about $68,000 annually.

The city council, reports the Aspen Times , has plenty of questions. Such is the hard work of trying to reduce use of energy. Yet improving energy efficiency and its first-cousin, conservation, are what all experts say should be done first before investing money in renewable energy.

Aspen is also doing that. Again in the Aspen Times comes a story about an effort by the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies to be carbon neutral within 10 years. One of the steps along that path is installation of a ground-source heat pump. Such a system taps heat of a residual source - in this case water - to deliver heat in winter and coolness in summer. It cost $80,000 to $90,000, officials say.

 

Dead bear count up to 19

ASPEN, Colo. - By all accounts, the bear problems in Aspen this year took everybody by surprise. The production of berries and nuts had been good. Too, town and county authorities in the last couple of years tightened regulations, demanding that trash containers be bear-proof - not bear resistant, like a plastic can, but bear-proof as in hard steel.

But bears were so frequent in the town that wildlife officers and police found it necessary to kill 19 of them, and transport many others up to several hundred miles away.

More worrisome yet, at least two bears seemed to attack people. Wildlife officers had long predicted that would happen unless people stopped making food available that bears could eat.

From a report in the Aspen Times , it appears that nobody has yet delivered a silver-bullet solution. It has not been for lack of trying. At a recent community meeting, all manner of ideas were presented - including one proposal to consult the Ute Indians, who claimed the Roaring Fork Valley as home until the silver miners arrived about 1880.

One essential problem is that the Aspen area just has lots of bears. Wildlife officers call it "primo" habitat.

Wildlife officers also think that Aspen represents a special problem, because it has so many part-time residents, visitors and non-English speakers.

But, none of this is new. So why, after 130 years of steady human habitation in the area, have encounters become so much worse?

That's the million-dollar question.

 

Stoll tilts at windmills

BELLEVUE, Idaho - Hold on, says Betsy Barrymore Stoll. She applauds renewable energy - but not in the form of windmills in her backyard.

"A wind turbine is not an attractive piece of machinery and is not quiet, regardless of what the manufacturer claims," she writes in a letter published in the Idaho Mountain Express, a newspaper distributed in the Ketchum/Sun Valley area.

"Our tourist economy is based on visitors who come to the Wood River Valley for its scenic beauty. If we allow our commissioners to make it legal to install these huge wind turbines in our scenic corridor, we are setting ourselves up for further economic impact in our tourism sector."

 

Cocaine, heroin drugs of choice

PARK CITY, Utah - Police in Park City have arrested and accused a 23-year-old man of trafficking methamphetamines. Agents said they seized a pound of the drug, which has a street value of $19,000. Wade Carpenter, the city's police chief, told The Park Record he was shocked to see that much of the drug, as cocaine and heroin remain the drugs of choice in Park City.

 

Green-building regulations increased

BANFF, Alberta - Town planners in Banff propose to regulate the types of windows, insulation and water fixtures installed in new or redeveloped buildings to ensure that they result in less energy use. The proposed requirements for insulation in walls, for example, would bump up the heat-retention by at least 20 per cent.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook quotes at least one builder who says that he already does use the improved techniques and fixtures and objects to government mandates. Town planners tell the newspaper that while at least some builders profess to higher environmental standards in building, their practices fall short.

 

October storm broke records

BANFF, Alberta - An early winter storm broke weather records like a bull in a china closet. The storm set five records in a row for lowest temperature in the period for Oct. 8 through Oct. 12. Meteorologist Bill McMurtry told the Rocky Mountain Outlook that the weather was of the sort more likely to be experienced in late November or early December. It also contrasts with one of the warmest Septembers experienced in Alberta since the advent of collected weather records.