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Development fees may be cut

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif.

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. - The national debate about how to stimulate the economy is playing out in Mammoth Lakes, where town officials are considering whether to further cut fees assessed on new development in order to nudge the carpenters, masons and others back to work.

Four types of fees are on the table, reports The Sheet , and some of them have already been curtailed. The cuts parallel those in broader Mono County.

Condominiums that were selling for $1,000 a square foot just three or four years ago are now selling for $400 per square foot. And the construction price is $450 a square foot, a local real estate agent said.

But will slashing government fees alone put the construction industry back to work? That's the big question, and at least one city council member questions whether these are the right carrots to dangle. "Are the fees the tipping point? Builders I have spoken with say yes, but I want a firmer handle (on the idea)," said Rick Wood.

 

Improved trails draw bikers

SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. - The slopes of Snowmass are alive with mountain bikers this year, the result of a stepped-up development of mountain bike trails.

At the end of the last ski season, the Aspen Skiing Co., the operator of Snowmass, got approval from the Forest Service to build several new mountain biking trails.

Gravity Logic, the company that designed Whistler's mountain bike terrain park, was hired to design the trails. The same firm is designing expanded offerings on the slopes of Steamboat.

Snow still blocking roads

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - Going into August, some of the more formidable snowbanks on mountain roads of the West still block roads.

"If you've witnessed more August snow than what we have in 2011, you've been around for a very long time," writes Tom Ross in Steamboat Today . He's been around Steamboat since about 1978.

Ross reported water levels are now just falling and that some creeks in the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness Area can be forded safely, while snow continues to crowd some high-country lakes.

The road across Buffalo Pass remained blocked by two snowbanks going into August. Located north of Steamboat, the snow-measuring site there perennially has Colorado's deepest snowpack.

From Crested Butte, the road to the old mining town of Schofield is usually blocked well into July. This year, entering the second week of August, it's still blocked.

Dad saves daughter from cougar

CANMORE, Alberta - Quick action by the father scared a cougar that had attacked his six-year-old daughter.

The father was walking in front of the girl along a lake southeast of Banff and Canmore when the cougar pounced. The father screamed and threw his water bottle at the 36-kilogram cat. The startled cougar took off, leaving the girl with few scratches.

Had the cougar been a better hunter, the outcome might have been different, wildlife authorities told the Rocky Mountain Outlook . Just the same, they were puzzled why the cougar had attacked. It was well fed. They know the mother of the two-year-old lion had died, and they think the cat had failed to learn to be wary of people.

The cat was later tracked down and killed, as history has shown that if a young cat attacks a human once, it will do so again. That said this is the first cougar attack in the Banff-Canmore area since 2001.

About 400 kilometres south in Montana, a grizzly bear attacked a 50-year-old hiker in the Glacier National Park. The hiker said he had been making noise, but nonetheless rounded a bend in the trail and encountered the sow, which had one sub-adult with her. The hiker sustained bites to his leg and arm before the bear retreated. He was able to hike out on his own, reports the Whitefish Pilot .

 

Burgess fossil thieves nabbed

GOLDEN, B.C. - A pair of thieves tried to make off with fossils from the world-famous Burgess shale deposits in a quarry in Yoho National Park.

Law enforcement officials with Parks Canada say the two men fled into the Kicking Horse River. The one with a heavier backpack swam back to shore, where he was arrested, but the other one disappeared. Cops feared he had drowned, but they found him that night in the rail yards at nearby Field.

The two men, who are from the Czech Republic, were charged with removal of a natural object.

Ski valleys experience different markets

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. - Real estate sales in Crested Butte have picked up in volume this summer, but it appears to be due to bottom-feeding as buyers snapped up foreclosed properties. The Crested Butte News reports a median price of $280,000, compared to $340,000 last year.

In Eagle County, one-fifth of all sales have been bank sales, the Vail Daily reported. Measured simply by total dollar volume, the market has slipped from last year.

Buoyed by sale of a $16 million house and a $38 million hotel in Snowmass Village, Pitkin County had a strong June. The average sale price of $4.8 million is 10 per cent ahead of last year. The number of foreclosures was just eight per cent of all sales, reports The Aspen Times .

 

Plastic-bag fee coming

BASALT, Colo. - Town councils in Aspen, Basalt and Carbondale will soon formally take up a proposal to enact a 10-cent to 20-cent "impact" fee on plastic bags.

The idea has been kicking around since last winter, when an Aspen City councilman returned from a vacation in the Bahamas deeply concerned by the proliferation of plastic in the ocean. Telluride had previously adopted a fee on plastic bags, as have San Francisco, Ireland and others.

By one estimate, the average American gets 400 plastic bags per year, most of them at grocery stores.

The three towns, all of which have grocery stores, might be more effective if they enacted similar regulations in concert. A fourth, Glenwood Springs, has rejected a fee. As reported by the Glenwood Springs Post Independent , council members were split, but the prevailing opinion was that the government does not have a justified role in this component of the marketplace.

Some companies, however, are trying to reduce use of plastic bags. Wal-Mart has set an internal goal of reducing plastic bags by one-third at its stores by 2013.

Whole Foods Market, which will open a store in Basalt next year, has taken an even stronger stand. The grocery chain, which specializes in organic foods, banned plastic bags in 2008 and has never looked back.

"There was very little push-back," a spokesman told The Aspen Times . Whole Foods sells re-useable grocery bags for less than $1, but will provide paper bags that are made from 100 per cent post-consumer recycled content.

 

Pay-to-throw trash a hit

GRAND LAKE, Colo. - An innovative program designed to reduce illegal dumping and spilled trash cans seems to be working even better than was hoped for in Grand Lake, at the west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Trash bags are sold and can then be pitched into a community dumpster. The program is of great convenience to the weekenders, notes the Sky-Hi News .

 

Higher tax to prop up direct flights

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - Voters in Steamboat Springs will be asked to approve a quarter-cent sales tax in order to boost the revenue guarantees for airline flights during ski season.

Steamboat has had a direct flight program since the 1970s. A decade ago, the ski company asked the community to share a greater proportion of the expenses, and so a two per cent lodging tax was adopted in 2004.

However, with the recession, the proportion of seats occupied has declined, and partly because of increased fuel prices, airlines have higher costs.

The ski area operator intends to continue paying just as much money. Rob Perlman, senior vice president of marketing for the Steamboat Ski Corp., a division of Intrawest, said the ski company bears half the cost but captures only 25 per cent of money spent by winter visitors.

"The ski area is committed at a minimum to the average of what we've paid for the last three years, $1.1 million," he said.

The sales tax was chosen because it was seen as spreading the cost over those most likely to benefit: the entire community. Destination visitors are estimated to spend $1,100 on average at restaurants, retail and for services.

 

Mountain post offices closings

RICO, Colo. - The post office in Rico, a town located 56 kilometres south of Telluride, is being considered for closing. Rico Mayor Barbara Betts says it's a serious situation and plans to call a community meeting to feel out a response.

"The post office is really more than a place to get your mail," explained Betts. "It's the community gathering place for us. It's the way we communicate with one another. We go to the post office, we run into people and say, 'Did you hear this about so and so?'" says Betts.

The same is said at Ophir, another town located south of Telluride, which may also lose its post office.

The U.S. Postal Service has had its sales trimmed for years, losing business first to UPS and Fed Ex and, particularly in the last decade, to the Internet. Advertisers have been sending less information through the mail - and, for that matter, so have people. More and more, we dispatch e-mails instead of letters.

As it gets no federal taxpayer support, the Postal Service has cut corners, assigning carriers to longer routes, for example. It has also talked about cutting service on Saturdays.

Two weeks ago, the Postal Service announced plans to study the nearly 3,700 post offices that it says are underused. In at least some cases, the agency would like to sell stamps, flat-rate packaging and other basic services through a third-party purveyor, such as a grocery store.

Ophir has no other businesses. It's an old railroad town set at nearly 2,960 metres in the San Juan Mountains that also served as a headquarters for mining camps. It now has a population of about 200 people.

Rico is a little larger, with a population of 250 people that doubles in summer, and it is directly on a highway, helping nourish a restaurant, gas station and a few other businesses. As the name (Spanish for "rich") indicates, it too was a mining town, which in turn brought a railroad. The railroad tracks, however, were torn up more than a half-century ago.

Various other mountain towns of the West are also being considered for closing. Those in Colorado include Red Cliff, located a dozen winding miles south of Vail, and Silver Plume, which is located along I-70, between Summit County and Denver, plus Pitkin and Parlin, located east of Gunnison, and Ward, located west of Boulder along the Peak to Peak Highway.

In Rico, Mayor Betts plans a community meeting. As in other matters of great seriousness, she's sending out a broadcast alert - by e-mail. It is, after all, cheaper than sending a letter.

 

Betty Ford's spunk recalled at service

AVON, Colo. - Betty Ford, who brightened many a Christmas in Vail with her husband Gerald Ford, lighting the holiday tree in December, was remembered with joy at a celebration of her life. The couple first visited Vail in 1969, when he was still a congressman from Michigan, later buying a condominium in Vail and then, after his presidency, a home at Beaver Creek.

Stories told at the service, which was covered by the Vail Daily , included this one: She was cooking when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in 1973 and Gerry became the nation's chief executive. When he called to tell her, she said, "If you're president of the United States, why am I cooking dinner?"

She was, noted the Vail Daily , a professional dancer and a Sunday school teacher and a woman without pretense. She was also remembered for her convictions. They were not necessarily those of the Republican Party then, or now.