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Right to do any damn fool thing you want needs to be more expensive Compiled by Allen Best GUNNISON COUNTY, Colo. — Gunnison County has been wrestling with what commentator George Sibley describes as an endless "environment vs.

Right to do any damn fool thing you want needs to be more expensive

Compiled by Allen Best

GUNNISON COUNTY, Colo. — Gunnison County has been wrestling with what commentator George Sibley describes as an endless "environment vs. economy" argument. Specifically, at issue are fireplaces and size and what Sibley, writing in Colorado Central Magazine, calls the "megamanors" of primarily the Crested Butte area.

Open-hearth fireplaces, he says, are poor means of heating, as Benjamin Franklin pointed out long ago. Moreover, they burn inefficiently, hence polluting the atmosphere. As such, the issue devolves to one of "nostalgia and common sense." The county commissioners effected a compromise, allowing fireplaces but requiring a $1,000 fee, in effect discouraging them but allowing them "in an economically oriented society where freedom is valued more highly than responsibility."

Size of homes was the second issue. Again, the county commissioners struck a compromise. They defined homes with more than 10,000 square feet as having a "major impact, but will assess a surcharge of $5 a square foot for every foot in homes of 5,000 to 10,000 feet. Thus, a 10,000 square-foot-home will result in a $25,000 charge, with the money to go into an affordable housing fund. That, declared Sibley, is a "relatively negligible amount on a million-dollar megamanor. But it can make a considerable difference on one of those do-it-yourself homes for someone who actually wants to live and work here."

These compromises were good as far as they went – not far enough, Sibley says. "The freedom to do ‘any damn-fool thing you can afford’ needs to be made more expensive in this economy, because of what it subtracts from our common wealth and natural capital." He proposes a progressive, or incrementally higher, taxes per square foot beginning at 2,000 square feet.

"We have historically made freedom far too cheap by auctioning off our natural capital at firesale prices, while deferring the hidden costs to a future that is basically here now," he concludes. "We just can’t push these costs onto our kids anymore, let alone our grandkids."

No pot of gold after 55 years in ski biz

SQUAW VALLEY, Calif. — Are there pots of gold at the end of the rainbow of ski area development? No, says Alex Cushing, who has 55 years experience in testing that proposition.

Cushing began building Squaw Valley from a one-lift ski hill in 1949, and by 1960 the resort held the Winter Olympics. Today, at age 90, he still lives within walking distance of Squaw’s chief base-area ski lift. He was recently inducted into the U.S. National ski Hall of Fame.

"I’ve been doing this for 55 years, and what you really get out of it is that there’s no reward at the end of the rainbow," Cushing told the Sierra Sun. "It’s the day to day; that’s what you get out of it. That indicates that if you’re smart, you do everyday what you really like to do, if you can."

Rope scofflaws at T’ride losing passes for two years

TELLUIDE, Colo. — Telluride’s ski area is open for the year, but 46 people won’t be skiing there this year. These 46 were all caught skiing in closed areas, and hence had skiing privileges denied for two years. Among them, reports The Telluride Watch, were 15 who ducked ropes to ski a run called Killer Slide – unaware that explosives had just been deposited in the slope in an attempt to force unconsolidated snow to avalanche. No one was hurt.

Houses bigger even as their names shrink

WINTER PARK, Colo. — Houses keep getting bigger, even as their names shrink.

A good example is in Winter Park, where a home built on speculation has a price tag of nearly $1.4 million. For this $1.4 million the developer offers 3,700 square feet, including three master bedroom suites and plenty of perks. The house, for example, has a turret, and it’s not any old turret – the walls are 20 inches thick. In other words, this would be a fine place to ride out a hurricane.

So what do you call a fortress like that?

The Winter Park Manifest reports that the real estate and building team developing this fortress are calling it a "craftsman cottage."

Apartment vacancy rates hit 17 and 18 per cent

ASPEN, Colo. — They sound like interest rates from the early 1980s — 18.1 per cent and 17.1 per cent. In fact, those are the vacancy rates for apartments in Aspen and Eagle County (Vail) from late summer.

In Steamboat Springs and Gunnison the apartment vacancy rates were a more modest 11.3 per cent, and in Summit County 7.3 per cent and in Durango 5.3 per cent.

What’s going on in the megaresorts? It looks like a classic example of boom-and-bust, the sort of thing that various prophets of "new economies" of the West said would not occur again.

One theory: With the national recession, the push in high-end and particularly speculative real estate evaporated. That meant fewer construction hands renting apartments. Also, with lower interest rates, more people were buying homes of their own.

In the case of Eagle County, all of this is happening in a year when a great quantity of new lower-end housing is coming on line, most of it a mandate when the market was still drum-tight.

Curiously, if the state’s numbers are correct, landlords don’t drop their prices when there’s a supply glut, as the economic textbooks say they do. Rents in both Eagle County and in Aspen are higher now, with 17 and 18 per cent vacancy rates, than they were when vacancies were 1 per cent. Go figure.

Benzene levels not elevating in Banff

BANFF, Alberta — Measurements of the air in Banff last summer showed that benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, is within limits for human health as determined by the federal government. Still, a health inspector for the provincial government is urging the town to reduce benzene, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook.

Traffic exhausts are believed to be a major source of the chemical. One way to reduce those exhausts is to limit how much cars and trucks can idle. Already, the town has a law that limits idling by commercial vehicles in the municipal core, but the law is enforced only when somebody complains. The health inspector recommends a law against idling non-commercial vehicles.

Telluride earlier this year enacted a ban intended to reduce emissions from idling diesel delivery trucks.

Durango restaurateurs talk about smoke ban

DURANGO, Colo. — Add Durango to the list of towns where there is talk about a legal ban of smoking in bars and restaurants. However, the talk this time is coming not in civic chambers but among restaurateurs themselves.

A recent meeting reached no consensus, reports the Durango Telegraph, but already there is a steady drift of businesses banning smoking. Char Day, a tobacco prevention manager with a regional health department, said that a decade ago only seven restaurants in Durango banned smoking but now there are 70.

One of those restaurants is Cuckoos, which has a large TV-watching bar crowd on Sundays. Despite fears of a financial hit, the owner said, business has actually improved.

TransCanada twining short on federal funds

BANFF, Alberta — The $50 million in federal funding to four-lane the Trans-Canada Highway to the Alberta-B.C. border is only one-third the amount needed.

Figures provided at a recent forum show the entire 33.5 km of highway that needs twinning, from Castle Junction to the B.C. border, is estimated to cost $110 to $150 million. More federal funding may be forthcoming, so it may be a matter of doing the four-laning in increments, probably with work around Lake Louise beginning first, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook.

The newspaper notes that 24 people have been killed and 119 people seriously injured on the segments in question during the last five years.

Energy industry fouls the Durango-area air

DURANGO, Colo. — Californians have flocked to Durango with its red-rock deserts on one side and 14,000-thousad-foot peaks on the other. But it turns out that Durango is in the same league as Los Angeles for ozone, an odourless stew of gases that becomes toxic when heated by sunlight.

Durango’s traffic congestion is not a major problem, though. The primary culprits, reports the Durango Telegraph, are gas-well compressors and coal-fired power plants in nearby New Mexico. Up to 13,000 new gas wells and associated compressors have been approved, and there’s a proposal to build another coal-fired electricity plant in the Four Corners area.

The damage from compressors can be fixed by installing catalytic converters, says Mark Pearson, executive director of the San Juan Citizens’ Alliance. "So far the industry has been too cheap to do that."

Businesses in Ketchum reporting brisker pace

KETCHUM, Idaho — An informal survey of businesses by the Idaho Mountain Express suggests that the business pace in the Wood River Valley is picking up.

To wit, Sun Valley Lighting is 75 per cent ahead of last year. Hawley Graphics posted receipts for October that were 20 per cent over any month in the past three years. And Jo Murry, a public relations consultant, reported more work in three weeks of November than in 11 of the 12 preceding months.

Tourism is also believed to be on the upswing, although the proof of that is in the January lodgings.

Ritz-Carlton politely pampers its patrons

BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — Pampering is clearly what the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain has in mind with its new slope-side hotels and time-share projects at Aspen Highlands and Beaver Creek’s Bachelor Gulch.

Walking in ski boots? Not necessary. Caring for and storing your skis for the next day? Done, reports the Vail Daily in a story about the "Skiing Made Easy" program available to time-share buyers. Among the perks of the arrangement is easy access to a private jets, for about $100,000. Such service may be valuable to those who, in the aftermath of 9/11, are leery of commercial air service.

About 55 per cent of the timeshare units at Bachelor Gulch have been purchased,, and about 5 per cent of the buyers are from other countries.

‘Snowblind Love’ tells story of skiing addiction

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo.– ‘Snowblind Love’ is the name of an exhibit being featured at the Teton County Library.

"The love for snow in this town is absolutely unconditional," said curator Jill Anderson. "Despite the expense, all the ACL injuries, all the risk, the cold weather, the avalanches, people love their skiing. In that way, it’s so blind, but it’s definitely love."

Exhibits tell the story of skiing from the early ranchers, who made skis of red fir with elk skin on the bottoms, to the first person to snowboard down the Grand Teton.

Gypsy moths may have hitched on Rainbow Family

SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah — Two gypsy moths were discovered near where the Rainbow Family of Living Light met last summer. The two, state officials told The Park Record, probably were not coincidental.

"We believe when 10,000 people come in from all across the United States and gypsy moths turn up after that, there’s a cause and effect," said Larry Lewis, of the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.

The moths, which have killed large swaths of forest in the Northeast, are not indigenous to Utah. When 94 moths were discovered in Salt Lake several years ago, the state spent $750,0000 to eradicate them. If temperatures drop more than 20 below, the cold could prevent any reproduction.

High-speed ISPs now reach Crested Butte

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — Add Crested Butte to the list of remote mountain towns where computers can now gulp down buckets of data from the Internet.

Before September, most residents relied on satellite television packages, T-1 lines, or wireless connections using antennas and small dishes. Soon, however, there will be two companies offering broadband. The Crested Butte News reports that the Internet connectivity could make the community more attractive for business relocation.