Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Mountain News: Jackson has tax envy

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – The town of Jackson is itching to levy what amounts to a sales tax on real estate transactions. Aspen has one. So does Vail. But Wyoming’s state government won’t let Jackson adopt one.

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – The town of Jackson is itching to levy what amounts to a sales tax on real estate transactions. Aspen has one. So does Vail. But Wyoming’s state government won’t let Jackson adopt one.

Bob McLaurin, the town administrator for Jackson, met with state officials recently in Cheyenne to make the town’s case. He was well-armed: a letter from Rod Slifer, of Vail.

Slifer was a house painter in Aspen in 1959 when ground was broken for Vail. He became Vail’s first real estate agent and, in later years, served several terms as mayor, as recently as early this year. His name is still on the largest real estate company in Vail.

And what does Slifer say about a real-estate transfer tax? It hasn’t hurt Vail, he said. He suggested Wyoming should let Jackson levy such a tax, if Jackson deems it in its own best interests.

Not everybody in Jackson thinks it’s a swell idea. The Teton Board of Realtors actively opposes a transfer tax, or even giving local governments the option. But even within the ranks of the realty agents, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide, there are tax supporters.

“Each county should have the opportunity to look at it on a county-by-county basis,” said Michael Pruett, a real estate agent who also sits on the Jackson Planning Commission.

McLaurin — who used to be the Vail town manager — reported Wyoming officials were polite but showed no enthusiasm for his pitch. “There just didn’t seem to be a lot of appetite for it.”

Jackson could levy property and lodging taxes, but has chosen not to.

Vail for many years used its transfer tax to fund open-space purchases or, more recently, parks and maintenance. Lately, it has talked about diverting funds to affordable housing. Aspen uses its money partly for affordable housing.

Both Aspen and Vail transfer taxes are grandfathered in, as Colorado voters as part of the Taxpayers Bill of Right (a.k.a. the Bruce amendment), in 1992 banned adoption of any future transfer taxes.

 

Another casualty in war on terror

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – It doesn’t take much for the sparks to fly from Tom Long when the subject of the Denver Water Department comes up. He had cause last week when the agency summarily closed the road across Dillon Dam, a shortcut between Frisco and the communities of Dillon and Silverthorne.

The dam, said representatives of Denver Water, was vulnerable to destruction by a terrorist. Other dams operated by the agency in the Colorado Rockies apparently are not, as similar restrictions have not been imposed.

“They way they’ve gone about this pisses me off,” said Long, a county commissioner, peeved of no prior consultation. He was not alone, says the Summit Daily News .

Just what new information had become available to provoke the closure has not been divulged. No threat is imminent, said Penfield Tate, a commissioner for the water agency. Apparently, however, the decision was made on short notice.

A Denver newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News , defended the closing as appropriate. Of course, the newspaper didn’t seem to have a very strong grasp of the situation. A breach of the dam, it said, could result in flooding of Vail.

Maybe it could, but the water would have to flow uphill about 1,700 feet to get across Vail Pass, the lowest crossing of the Gore Range in that vicinity.

 

Durango bus ridership up 34%

DURANGO, Colo. – Bus systems in mountain resort valleys continue to surge with riders. In Durango, ridership on the local bus system increased 34 per cent in June. An outlying bus service to the nearby town of Bayfield, about 20 miles away, has increased 168 per cent, reports the Durango Telegraph.

 

Owner probes effects of high gas

ASPEN, Colo. – Jim Crown, the managing partner for the Chicago-based family that owns the Aspen Skiing Co., says he’s worried about how the price of fuel is affecting airlines.

“Airlines are an extremely important form of mass transit, and the lifeblood of any destination resort,” he tells The Aspen Times. If the airlines cut service, that “would be bad for us.”

He wants to see the runway at Pitkin County Airfield lengthened, not only to increase safety, but “to gives us the best chance to make the area accessible to the greatest number of these new, fuel-efficient regional jets.”

If the new generation of regional jets cannot be accommodated, he says, residents and visitors “might find themselves with very limited and expensive air travel choices, and be spending a lot more time in their cars. That would hurt the valley both financially and environmentally.”

He says that Aspen is also facing two “operational issues with growing severity: employee housing and the shortage of H2B visas for temporary workers.”

Crown also told the newspaper that he was surprised that Aspen didn’t post larger ski numbers last year. There was great snow, air service seats were up 11 per cent, and the economy started out the ski season in good shape. The skier days at the four resorts, 1.47 million, was still substantially below the historical peak in the early 1990s.

He also spoke to the future success of Snowmass, where work on redevelopment of the base village is now nearing completion.

“We are still a few years short of seeing Snowmass shine with its full potential,” he said. However, he foresees the day when Snowmass “will be recognized as one of the great skiing experiences on the planet.”

 

Lion does not lie with sheep

BANFF, Alberta – Five people paddling in a boat in Lake Minnewanka had a rare opportunity recently to observe the perhaps grim reality of nature. They watched a mountain lion, also called a cougar, quietly walk along the lake shore until it was on a small cliff band above two bighorn rams at water’s edge. A raven was circling overhead.

“Then all the birds in the area fly out of the bush, and then the cougar nestles down on top of a six-foot cliff,” explained Shawn Geniole.

One of the sheep fled. The other one finished drinking water, then headed back toward the embankment.

“When it was three feet away, the muscles in the bighorn sheep tensed right up and the cougar jumped off the cliff, grabbed it by the neck and took it down,” Geniole told the Rocky Mountain Outlook.

“The cougar stopped and just stared at us, and we’re just 10 feet away. It had blood all over its face. It tried dragging the sheep into the woods, but it couldn’t because it was stuck on a rock.”

Geniole, an employ of a company that offers boat tours on the lake inside Banff National Park, called it “pretty gruesome, but amazing.”

 

Dirt-moving began 50 year ago

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Although there has been skiing in Steamboat for a century, perhaps more, the physical work of creating lift-served skiing on Mt. Werner began 50 years ago this summer.

The Steamboat Pilot & Today tells of the ground-breaking work in July 1958. Surveying the ski hill chosen for the resort, then called Storm Mountain, the newspaper reported that the “possibilities for the greatest ski area in the nation stagger the imagination,” said the newspaper, which was then simply called The Steamboat Pilot.

Others were thinking similar thoughts in 1958. When Steamboat opened in 1961, ski areas were also opened in two decaying mining towns, Breckenridge and Crested Butte. Vail opened the next year, 1962.

 

Cleared forest improves odds

TRUCKEE, Calif. – Smoke in the skies during the last week from blazes in California has people thinking about the potential for big fires in their own backyards.

But even after several big fires in the Lake Tahoe-Truckee area during the 21 st century, a drive through any neighbourhood in that area will uncover at least a few homes “that won’t stand a chance in a wildfire,” notes the Sierra Sun. The reason: too much brush under trees too close to homes.

California law now requires defensible space clearances around homes and structures to a minimum of 100 feet. One study, by the University of Nevada, Reno, found that homes with 101 feet of defensible space and a fire resistance roof have a 0.7 per cent chance of burning in a wildfire. A house with the same roof — but only 30 feet or less of defensible space—has a 24 per cent chance of going up in flames.

“If wildfire isn’t on your mind, it should be,” says the newspaper.

 

Ski expansion plans now off piste

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – Vail Resorts has run into resistance in its bid to expand the Breckenridge ski area. Some 67 acres in the proposed expansion would be below treeline, and 285 acres would be above.

Some 100 comments criticizing the plan have been submitted to the U.S. Forest Service, reports the Summit Daily News. The newspaper did not say how many statements of support had been offered.

There are questions about whether Breckenridge, the town, has the carrying capacity to support the expansion. As well, there is resistance to the invasion of more sidecountry.

The response of Vail Resorts has been to convene a task force of community members to evaluate the plan. However, there are doubts as to how representative the task force is, says the Summit Daily.

As well, there are questions about too-cozy relationships among consultants. The Forest Service has retained Sno-Engineering to oversee the environmental review. The company previously designed the expansion while working for Vail Resorts.

Ryan Demmy Bidwell, executive director of Colorado Wild, says that a consultant working for both the applicant and the agency is not unusual, although he believes it poses a conflict of interest. Sno-Engineering, he said, has “sort of has a monopoly on this business.”

 

New York scribes go west

SUN VALLEY, Idaho – With Manhattan suffocating in summer heat, it looks like reporters from New York newspapers were eager for excuses to visit mountain towns in the West.

At Ketchum, site of the annual Allen & Co. confab of corporate chieftains, the draw was a reasonable one. After all, the conference, now in its 27 th year, has often produced major business news. For reporters, it’s useful to be there for the conversation.

When nothing happens, the reporters are forced to do their best to make news. Such was the case with Monday’s report in the New York Times, which detailed the policy governing alcohol consumption by pilots at the picnics. While also slipping in the name of Ernest Hemingway, the reporters noted 80 corporate jets packed in at the local airport down-valley at Hailey.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, has been to Donnelley, near the Idaho resort of Tamarack Resort. Tamarack, the first major new ski area in the West in 26 years, was growing great guns two years ago. Tennis stars Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf were developing a hotel, the saws and hammers were busy, and down in the valley, every piece of ranch and farm land seemed to be at play.

Then, the financing fell through. That shoe fell last winter, and there really hasn’t been any change since. Neither Intrawest nor Vail Resorts has swooped in to seize the property at pennies on the dollar and restore the dream under new ownership.

“The area for a Thai restaurant is roofless. The ski shop and pub are in plastic tents. Home sales have withered,” reports the newspaper.

Jackson Hole was the setting for a reflective piece about art and nature. After visiting the 51,000-square-foot National Museum of Wildlife, art critic Edward Rothstein of The New York Times found a theme: Unvarying homage is paid to animals’ nobility. “They seem conceptually tamed, leaving little that is unkempt or truly wild,” he wrote.

He ruminated on “the peculiar genre of wildlife art,” but also said that art is not the main point. What matters is the “impulse,” he says. It’s an impulse that managed to unite environmentalist, hunters and wildlife painters into perhaps strange bedfellows, he explains.

That same impulse was evident in his own hiking in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. He confesses to wanting to snap photos time and again as he followed a creek through the snow.

“I keep pausing, trying to capture a slice of the vista with a camera, knowing what I will end up with instead is a giant echo of the experience, a reminder rather than an echo.”

 

Park City pond vanishes

PARK CITY, Colo. – A pond in the Park City area recently vanished, its water apparently disappearing into an abandoned mine shaft. “It’s like pulling the plug out of the bath tub,” Louis Amoldt, a state geologist, told The Park Record. A sinkhole-like depression was noted. Mining in that particular area occurred in the first half of the 20 th century, before Park City became a ski town and resort area.

 

Wind farm blown off

TAOS, N.M. – Officials in Taos County have postponed consideration of two proposed wind farms. Some 65 wind turbines, each nearly 300 feet tall, were proposed, and tests have been conducted for about six months. But county planners, reports The Taos News, believed too many questions remained unanswered. As well, there was strong neighbourhood opposition. “The NIMBY’s show their heads again,” wrote one blogger on the newspaper’s website. Other bloggers wondered whether the land is better suited for solar farms.

 

Western State pulls plug on ski team

GUNNISON, Colo. – There are ski towns, and then there are ski colleges. Western State, located in Gunnison, is one of the few schools with the latter reputation. With Crested Butte only 30 miles away, skiing ranks prominently as a reason why students enroll at the school.

But Western State is now losing its ski team. The program costs $150,000 annually, and the athletic budget has been increasingly strapped. A plan assembled several years ago called for a $3 million endowment, but donations have lagged, reports the Gunnison Country Times.

Famed Nordic ski coach Sven Wiik, now 87 and semi-retired in Steamboat Springs, retained faint hope, urging college leaders to send a letter to all alumni to “wake everyone up.” Wiik coached the school’s team from 1949 to 1969.

Also lamenting the program’s end was Derek Taylor, editor of Powder magazine and an alum of Western State. “Skiing and Western State are synonymous,” he said.

 

Crested Butte continues to talk about mining

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – The proposal to mine molybdenum in Crested Butte’s backyard has quieted. The Canadian firm that was willing to shell out big bucks cashed out its chips this year, apparently deterred by the extent of local opposition.

But the mine proposal remains active, warns Aleesha Towns, editor of the Crested Butte News. She notes statements by the property owner, Keith Larsen, president and chief executive of U.S. Energy, who has told potential investors that Crested Butte is of two minds about the mine. Not so, she counters.

Opponents would like to kill the proposal, and are pinning some of their hopes on work by Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, a Democrat. He was in Crested Butte last Saturday night to talk about reform of the 1872 Mining Law. The law allows liberal terms for mining companies to gain control of federal lands for mining purposes.

Crested Butte is also hoping for help in Mining Law reform from Mark Udall, and his cousin, Tom. Both are now congressman, but bucking for election to the U.S. Senate. The cousins spent considerable time in Crested Butte during their salad days.

 

Attack of biker fuels comments about dogs

RED CLIFF, Colo. – Call it a battle of the Old West and the New West. A woman competing in a mountain bike race in the vicinity of Camp Hale, the former 10 th Mountain Division training base, was attacked by two Great Pyrenees.

The Daily said no report of the injuries to the bicycle rider was available.

The dogs, which weigh from 85 to 125 pounds, were possibly in the area to protect domestic sheep that graze on a national forest allotment. Or at least so said commentators on the Vail Daily website.

Differing viewpoints were offered. “Wanna have sheep? Get your own damn property and train pit bulls to guard the flock,” said one blogger. “Times have changed… and so should the grazing laws.”

But another blogger, who identified him or herself as a former rock-climbing guide who used the Camp Hale area, had a different view. “These dogs are not unfriendly, and only are there to protect the livestock.”