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Illegal immigrant fired following TV expose, Steamboat real estate sets sail

By Allen Best GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – The day after Christmas, newsman Tom Brokaw narrated an hour-long special about foreign immigration, using the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado as the setting. It was called “In the Shadow of the American Dream.

By Allen Best

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – The day after Christmas, newsman Tom Brokaw narrated an hour-long special about foreign immigration, using the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado as the setting. It was called “In the Shadow of the American Dream.”

The story was a familiar one, if Brokaw’s newscast had value in telling the story with vivid human voices and faces, both that of a construction contractor and an immigrant who deceives the contractor with fraudulent documents.

The contractor, who does business in the Aspen and Vail areas, tells of his quest to find employees for $14 an hour, the de facto minimum wage for construction labourers in these resort valleys. He gets many applications, mostly from Latinos and some with obviously fraudulent documents. In the program, he rejected them. But others have documents that appear valid, and he hires the immigrants, knowing that he has probably been deceived by some.

As well, the show took cameras into schools in Carbondale, down valley from Aspen. The schools are largely Spanish speaking. Locals, despite being generally very liberal, have enrolled their children at other schools, particularly in Aspen. Parents with children remaining express their worries.

Even more unusual was the program’s ability to put light on the shadow. Viewers were taken clandestinely to the trailer where a document forger does business. The illegal immigrant, Trino, speaks freely and at length and freely into the camera, explaining the manner of his deceit, the motivation, and his ultimate goal: creating his own construction business in Mexico. He also allowed the cameras into the four-bedroom house that he shares with 18 others, and even at his wedding.

The contractor, Mark Gould, defends the shadowy world as the backbone for prosperity. He means not only his business, but also more broadly the real estate and tourism-based economy of the Aspen and Vail areas. The viewer is left to conclude that the nation’s prosperity of the last 20 years is also built on the foundation of immigration labor.

The Glenwood Springs Post Independent reported that Gould was inundated by 600 job applications the day after the show, and also e-mails. “The hate mail bothered me the most,” said Gould. “People want to put their head in the sand about this issue.”

Gould fired the illegal immigrant, Trino, and his brother, Juan, the day after the broadcast. “We had to,” Gould told the Glenwood newspaper. “I did not know he was illegal until last night (when the show aired).” But, he added, he felt badly about it. “They’re darned good workers. They learned fast. They learned English.”

Concluded Gould: “It was hard to watch last night. I didn’t feel all warm and fuzzy inside. There’s something wrong with the world and we need to fix it. We can’t fix it unless we talk about it.”

The New York Times described the Brokaw show as a “decent job of translating one of the year’s most bloviated-upon topics, immigration, into human terms.” But the newspaper also noted where the one-hour show fell short: “Essentially absent, though, are the rich people and vacationers whose demands for creature comforts are presumably fueling all of this. Who is going to be staying in that hotel Gould Construction is working on?”

Making that point more tartly was Frosty Woolridge, a long-time anti-immigration activist from the Boulder area of Colorado. “Follow the money!” he demands in a column published in The Aspen Times . “With unending growth, 21 st -century robber barons enjoy unending profits.”

And, for Woolridge, the other reality is “the rest of us live (with the) harsh realities of an invasion by a foreign country named Mexico.”

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Real estate sales during the last year were brisk in Steamboat Springs and Routt County, with a total volume surging past $1 billion for the first time. Sales and prices are expected to escalate even more as a result of Intrawest’s projected purchase of the Steamboat Ski Resort.

“It will put petrol onto a large and already hot fire,” said developer Michael Hurley. “It was already burning. It’s just going to go quicker, faster and hotter,” he told the Steamboat Pilot & Today.

Jim Cook, a developer, projected the greatest impact will be redevelopment of the ski area base, which is located several miles from downtown Steamboat Springs. “American Skiing Co. (the current owner) has a lot of good people here, but they had no money to spend. This is going to be encouragement for projects already on the board.”

Condominiums that previously sold for $500 per square foot are now selling for $600 to $700 per square feet, realty agents tell the newspaper, and could fetch $800 a square foot within the next year. Meanwhile, entry-level condominiums that were selling for $200 per square foot have shot up to $350 per square foot.

But the broader story here is that mountain town prosperity is not directly correlated to the growth in skiing. Mountain town observer Jonathan Schecther crunched numbers for Steamboat and Routt County for the period from 1991 through 2004. Skier numbers actually declined by 2 per cent during that period, while constant dollar per capita income increased 34 per cent.

In Colorado’s Summit County, Linda Venturoni made the same observation. There, population and sales tax revenues have both far outpaced the growth in skier days.

 

Gondola serves several purposes

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – A new gondola has been put into service in Breckenridge. This gondola serves multiple purposes, similar to the gondola that links Telluride with its sister, slope-side town of Mountain Village.

Breckenridge has had nightmarish traffic for years. This new gondola starts at the town’s transportation centre near Main Street, well away from the ski slopes, and goes to the Peak 8 base area. Next year, the gondola will be extended to the Peak 7 base area. Altogether, it will be not quite 1.5 miles long. Cabins accommodate eight people.

The gondola will also service new base area real estate projects, called resort villages, at Peaks 7 and 8. Ultimately, the gondola will service 450 residential units.

The ski area operator, Vail Resorts, and the Town of Breckenridge shared in the cost of the gondola, as did a development company. “Our partnership with the ski resort will serve as a model for other resort towns to emulate as they begin to look for modes of mass transit that both raise the level of guest service and are environmentally friendly,” said Ernie Blake, mayor of Breckenridge.

 

Jail time for boarder

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – An 18-year-old snowboarder from Maryland spent Christmas in jail, a penalty for killing a skier nearly two years ago on the slopes of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

But in addressing the family of the dead woman at his sentencing, Greg Doda said he pays a price daily. “There is not a morning I wake up that I don’t think about your daughter,” he said. “Sometimes I wake up to tears, and sometimes I am going down the highway to work and I burst out into tears. It’s just waves of sorrow. It’s going to be something I always have with me.”

Eyewitnesses said that Doda straight-lined the majority of Laramie Bowl before crashing into the woman, 29-year-old Heather Donahue, who had been standing in the middle of the run waiting for her husband. He was probably traveling 47 mph when he hit her, knocking her out of her gloves, skis, poles, hat, goggles, and neck warmer. It broke the snowboard in two, notes the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

Because he was 16 at the time of the accident, Doda was charged as a child. Had he been 18, he could have been sentenced to 20 years. As is, he must spent 240 hours in community service, pay $4,000 in fines, and write an article for a national magazine about the incident and snowboarding safety.

The county judge, Timothy Day, told Doda that the purpose of the holiday incarceration was “to impart upon you in some degree the emptiness that Heather Donahue’s family feels every day.”

The family members had asked for a maximum sentence, a year in jail. “You, Greg Doda, took my daughter’s lifelong dream of practicing veterinary medicine,” said her father, Michael. “Mr. Doda, I can only hope you don’t get a slap on the hand for what you did.”

 

Wealthy favouring Jackson Hole

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Surveying tax numbers in Jackson Hole, economic sleuth Jonathan Schechter finds that the biggest gains in the local economy during the boom since 2003 have been in two sectors: lodging and construction.

What’s happening? Jackson Hole, he theorizes, is becoming steadily more the playground of the rich. Several new high-end hotels are now starting to hit their stride, getting the kinds of occupancy levels and room rates that explain this gain in lodging. Traditional tourism stereotyped by families traveling through Yellowstone National Park is sliding.

“With room rates ranging from $200 to more than $4,000/night, the Four Seasons and Amangani are obviously appealing to a different kind of crowd than ma and pa and their 2.5 kids in the station wagon visiting the national parks,” he writes in a column published in the Jackson Hole News & Guide. “Critically, they’ve also influenced other local hotels to upgrade their facilities and services. As a result, Jackson Hole will increasingly be catering to a higher-end guest, one who comes here as much for the amenities as for the landscape and recreational opportunities.”

Schechter also reports a construction boom, not as big as that of the 1990s, but this time for more high-dollar projects.

 

Parks allows some expansion

BANFF, Alberta – Ski areas located in the national parks of Alberta may very well be changing, although they are unlikely to become clones of the amenity-littered resorts found in the United States and in other parts of Canada.

Parks Canada, which administers Banff and Jasper National Parks, where several of the ski areas are located, has released new rules governing modifications. The ski areas will be able to install new lifts, cut new runs, and widen existing ski trails. As well, they can expand their warming huts, restaurants, and other buildings — but only if these changes are within the existing footprint.

Two ski areas, Marmot Basin in Jasper and Ski Banff @ Norquay, will also be able to introduce summer use, as long as they can prove it won’t create environmental disruption.

What the ski area operators did not win, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook, is authority to build base-area lodging and new restaurants. Instead, skiers will be required to commute to existing towns, particularly Banff.

 

Glenwood split on climate pact

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – Resort towns of the West have been joining the Mayors’ Agreement on Climate Protection in droves, usually by unanimous votes. Glenwood Springs, located between Vail and Aspen, has also joined, but not without significant dissent.

“I didn’t know I was going to solve the problems of the world when I was elected onto council,” said Larry Beckwith. Too, he remains skeptical that people are the cause of the global warming. Mars is warming without SUVs being implicated, he noted.

Another council member, Dave Merritt, questioned the cost of returning the city’s emissions to the levels of 1990. And a city resident, Floyd Diemoz, suggested the carbon-abatement measures required of signatories were “extremely radical” and “hysterical.”

But the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent notes that the majority of council members sided with a traditionally conservative voice, that of a banker. Alpine Bank, a chain with banks across Colorado’s Western Slope, has enacted a variety of energy conservation measures. An executive with the bank, Dave Scruby, said the bank believes the undertaking will produce savings for shareholders in the long run. The Glenwood council, he said, should not get too concerned about what costs the city might face.

“You know we’re in a desperate situation when a banker is here to talk about global warming,” said Scruby. Desperate or not, the council approved the agreement by a 5-to-3 vote.

 

Cancelled ski races raise concern

KITZBUHEL, Austria – Two World Cup races scheduled for the Alps in December were postponed for lack of snow or even weather sufficiently cold to permit meaningful snowmaking. This isn’t the first time that the Alps — or, for that matter, the Rocky Mountains — have edged toward Christmas bereft of snow.

But the warm autumn again focuses attention again on the changing climate. Underscoring those concerns are two new studies, reports the New York Times. One study says the Alps are the warmest they have been since the 8 th century. The second study, an echo of earlier studies, predicts that an increase of two degrees Celsius would leave half of the Alpine resorts with too little snow to do business.

Among those resorts likely to be affected sooner, instead of later, is Austria’s Kitzbühel, elevation 2,624 feet. Already, the resort community there has been diversifying its amenities to include lavish Turkish baths, says the Times.

A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development noted that 83 per cent of ski resorts in the Alps have enough snow for 100 days a season. With an increase of two degrees Celsius, only 50 per cent will.

The background for this study is a climate that has warmed since 1980, causing retreat by 90 per cent of glaciers. New studies suggest that the Alps are warming twice as fast as the average in the rest of the world. One explanation is that the Alps are located inland, far from any oceans, which act to moderate warming trends.

Reinhold Bohm, a meteorologist who worked on the study of Alpine temperatures, said that despite the rapidly changing climate, there has been little talk of how to prepare for global warming in the resorts. “Nobody in ski tourism plans out further than 10 years,” he said.

But the newspaper also quotes Georg Hechenberger, who directs one of the ski companies at Kitzbühel. He notes the uncertainty of global warming theories. One theory, he noted, is that rising temperatures will disrupt the Gulf Stream, plunging northern Europe into a period of chillier weather. If that happens, the low-elevation resorts will have the upper hand, and higher-elevation resorts may be abandoned.

 

Ford remembered

VAIL, Colo. – The death of Jerry Ford the day after Christmas produced a torrent of reviews of his brief tenure as U.S. president, nearly all aiming toward the same general conclusion that he was a decent, unpretentious and even heroic person, sort of an everyman in extraordinary times.

That same view shared by many in Vail and the Eagle Valley, where Ford was a familiar figure for more than 30 years,

A Congressman from Michigan whose highest goal had been to be speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, he ended up president upon the shameful resignations of first Vice President Spiro Agnew and then President Richard Nixon. As such, he was the only person never elected on a presidential ticket to achieve that rank.

In a sense, his was the American dream. Raised by a stepfather with an eighth-grade education in a household that struggled to survive the Great Depression, Ford had gone to Yale law school, married the prettiest woman in Grand Rapids, and lived his post-president years in two well-heeled resort communities, spending his summers and ski vacations in Vail, with a home nearby in Beaver Creek, and his winters in California’s Rancho Mirage.

At Vail, Ford had rented condominiums for ski vacations when both he and the resort were both something less than household names. Upon his escalation to the White House in 1974, Vail was in the news often, and Vail appreciated that fact mightily. The resort basked in shirttail fame. “He put us on the map,” people said.

That relationship between the Fords and Vail deepened after his presidency. The name Ford is affixed to a park, alpine gardens, and outdoor performing amphitheater. He also hosted a golf tournament that attracted comedian Bob Hope, golfer Jack Nicklaus, actor Clint Eastwood, country music star Charlie Pride, and even basketball star Michael Jordan, to name a few, and proceeds were devoted to scholarships given to youth of the Eagle Valley. He also hosted the World Forum, at which prime ministers, economists and dozens of others conferred in closed sessions.

The Fords — “Betty and I,” he always said in speeches, never putting himself first — were engaged with the community. The couple was a fixture in the reviewing stand at Fourth of July parades, the lighting of the Christmas tree, and many other events.

A short-lived New York-based magazine called Spy in the early 1990s reviewed Ford’s retirement, and found it laughably short of accomplishment. He was the golfing president who had lent his name to a real estate development, said the magazine, while another former president, Jimmy Carter, who vacationed at Crested Butte, had become an activist in international affairs and a hammer-wielding volunteer for Habitat Humanity.

Be that as it may, the locals in Vail and the Eagle Valley best remember Ford for his many small kindnesses. Once, after a bitterly cold lighting of the Christmas tree in Vail at which the Fords presided, the couple returned to their limousine. Then, the door opened again. Jerry Ford got out of the car and walked over to the police officer assigned to the event and thanked him. He didn’t need to do so, but he did. Such stories were told by the dozen.

He was a person who never let his rank and privileges go to his head. Whatever his faults, they were commissioned by neither insecurity nor an out-sized ego.

“He set an example of how to be a good human being,” said one resident, a Democrat who probably voted for Carter, not Ford.

 

Did Ford save water?

VAIL, Colo. – Although he vacationed in Vail beginning in the 1960s, and owned a home in nearby Beaver Creek from 1981 until his death, former president Jerry Ford almost never engaged in local politics. An exception came in 1989, when asked to oppose a major water project that would have drawn water from Summit and Eagle counties to metropolitan Denver.

The water project, called Two Forks, proposed a 550-foot dam southwest of Denver. Denver Water was the lead proponent, but allied with 40 suburban districts, most important being the south metro districts then and now reliant upon diminishing wells. The project had received most necessary permits, but was still subject to approval by the Environmental Protection Agency.

A major protagonist was a group now called Environmental Defense. Daniel Luecke, then the office manager for the group in the Rocky Mountain region, had assembled evidence that persuaded William K. Reilly, administrator of the EPA, to veto the project. But both sides in the dispute believed that the ultimate decision would be made by the White House. As such, he says, both sides used whatever connections they had to influence the White House.

Lee Atwater, the Republican National Committee and campaign manager for President George Bush, traveled to Colorado and promised suburban Republicans that Bush would not allow Two Forks to be vetoed.

Luecke and Bob Weaver, a hydrologic consultant who frequently works in the Vail area, briefed Ford on the dispute, outlining how the water project would be inimical to Vail-area interests. Ford wrote a letter to Bush urging that the veto planned by Reilly be allowed to continue.

Bush did not interfere with Reilly’s veto. In a 2000 interview with Ed Marston of High Country News, Reilly said he never heard from Bush on the matter.

Was Ford’s intervention the key in blocking Atwater’s intercession? Luecke tells Mountain Town News that he doesn’t really know. “We believe that Ford's letter made a difference, but we don't really know.”

 

Why the decline in park visits?

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – Visits to national parks have been on a downhill slide for a decade, some 20 per cent for overnight stays and slightly more for camping. Why?

Both young people and minorities are not being drawn to the parks, National Park Service officials tell the Los Angeles Times.

Children have more say in family vacation destinations than ever before, says Emilyn Sheffield, a social scientist at Cal State Chico. If they must be outdoors, they prefer theme parks. Too, they prefer parks closer to cities.

Minorities are also more inclined to stay away, and they comprise an increasingly larger part of the U.S. population. One reason is that they do not feel welcome or safe in parks. Part of the reason is culture. For example, while extended Latino families may number 15 to 20 at picnics, park regulations require a permit for such a large group.

Baby Boomers are also going to parks less frequently. Boomers remain enthralled with adventure, be it paddling kayaks or climbing rocks, but are also more gadget-oriented. For example, they like mountain bikes and other things not normally permitted in national parks. Finally, they want more luxuries, at least by night.

“Baby Boomers want hard adventure by day and soft adventure by night. They want to paddle and rock-climb and also their Cabernet and almond-crusted salmon with asparagus. And a nice bed,” said Frank Hugelmeyer, president of the Outdoor Industry Association.

Why not satisfy this market demand? If national parks become slaves to recreational fashion, critics tell the Times, they will soon roar with the sound of jet skis, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles, and cell phone towers would rise among redwoods and touch-screen computers would dot wilderness trails.

Another take on why park visits have declined comes from Bill Schneider. Writing on the website New West (and reprinted in the Jackson Hole News & Guide), Schneider points the finger at the increased user fees authorized by Congress in 1996. If the money hasn’t been used to tackle the deferred maintenance of national parks, that may be just as well, he says. Less attractive parks may revert to “wild nature.”

 

Escorts face more regulation

PARK CITY, Utah – Some 20 escort services are now operating in Park City, a response to tightening regulations by cities along the nearby Wasatch Front. But Park City has now adopted its own, more exacting regulations.

Those new regulations, reports The Park Record, require that escorts must obtain a license, but also meet with the police chief. “I don’t think we’re the moral police,” said Lloyd Evans, the police chief. But the escorts will be required to prove who they say they are.

Escort services are just that, although in at least some cases they have been used as fronts for prostitution. Four people from an escort service in Park City were charged last year with prostitution.

 

A final conversation

TELLURIDE, Colo. – Telluride has more than its share of globe-trotting mountain climbers, journalists, and other adventurers, among them Charlie Fowler, whose body was found on a peak in China last week after he disappeared on Nov. 8. Searchers suspected an avalanche.

Writing in The Telluride Watch, Rob Schultheis, a journalist and book-writer and himself a frequent traveler to Asia, recalled his last, hurried conversation with Fowler on a street in Telluride several months ago:

“Charlie! Hey, where’ve you been?”

“Ah, I was just in Tibet, climbing,” that familiar, raspy voice, terse and minimalist, like soloing seven new 6,000-meter peaks was barely worth talking about.

“Back for awhile?”

“Nah, I’m going back to China, Szechuan again. How about you?”

“Going back to Afghanistan, then maybe Iraq, north this time. I’ll be back in September if you’re gone be here.”

“I should be back in October.”

“Let’s try and get together then. Coffee or something.”

“Definitely. Hey, gotta run.”

“Me too. Happy trails.”

 

Steamboat limits big boxes

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – The Steamboat Springs City Council has adopted strong limitations on the size of commercial businesses. The aim is not just national franchise big boxes, but even the medium-sized boxes. Exempted are grocery stores.

In the old downtown area and east to the ski area, stores are capped at 15,000 square feet. On the towns’ rapidly developing west fringe, stores will be limited to 40,000 square feet.

That, notes the Steamboat Pilot & Today, precludes Wal-Mart, Target, Office Depot, and a good number of other national retailers. By comparison, chain bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble range in size from 25,000 to 40,000.

The newspaper, in its editorial columns, commended the council for wanting to protect Steamboat’s natural beauty and sense of community. “Big box stores detract from both,” it said.

But the newspaper also warned against trying to stare down reality. Big box stores, it noted, are successful because they provide large selection and lower prices. If Steamboat lacks such big boxes, local consumers will drive elsewhere or do their shopping online. Either way, the town loses sales tax revenues. Steamboat, like nearly all towns in Colorado, depends primarily upon sales taxes to pay for government services.

The argument may be moot for the time being, as national retailers like Lowe’s and Target have shown no interest in Steamboat, although that may change in 5 to 10 years as the population of Steamboat and the Yampa Valley expands.

 

More planes but not more noise

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — The number of people flying in and out of Jackson Hole has increased substantially, but the noise levels have not.

The reason for this seeming anomaly is that the Federal Aviation Administration now requires commercial airlines to use quieter, stage-III engines. “If you look at any airport throughout the country, the stage-III engines are lowering the noise footprint dramatically,” said Ray Bishop, director of the Jackson Hole Airport. “It’s been a quiet revolution, so to speak.”

The airport is located within Grand Teton National Park.

 

Yellowstone studied for clues

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Two scientists have been studying Yellowstone National Park to better understand how accumulating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may affect vegetation during the 21 st century.

Carbon dioxide is released from vents in the park, which overlies a giant volcanic caldera. The concentration of carbon dioxide is about 600 parts per million, or about the level that is predicted for the general atmosphere by the end of the 21 st century if greenhouse gas emission are not curbed. Current carbon dioxide levels are at about 382 parts per million.

The researchers, Shikha Sharma and David Williams, who come from the University of Wyoming, said leaves and needles located near the volcanic vents contain less protein than those farther away. The implication is that herbivores will need to eat more to sustain themselves in the future. They also find that these same plants don’t use water as efficiently. Finally, there is some evidence that weeds might be more invasive in this carbon-heavy future.

But, Williams, told the Jackson Hole News & Guide, the research is in its early phases. There are, he said, “a lot of unknowns.”

 

Drunk man drowns in hot tub

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – A 56-year-old Jackson man drowned in a hot tub at a hotel. Police said he had a blood-alcohol level of .32. That’s four times the legal intoxication level in Wyoming specified by state law. Teton County Corner Bob Campbell said that going into a hot tub while drunk “will make you pass out,” reported the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

 

Schwarzenegger breaks leg

KETCHUM, Idaho -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was described as a more-than-competent skier, and in fact, has a ski run named in his honor at the Sun Valley ski area. He owns a home near Ketchum. But the 59-year-old former actor tripped over his own ski pole, fell on his leg, and broke his right femur on the weekend before Christmas. Ski patrollers told the Idaho Mountain Express that Schwarzenegger was “really tough about it.”

 

10 th Mountain ski hut planned

CAMP HALE, Colo. – After a hiatus of about 10 years, the 10 th Mountain Division Hut Association is planning to expand again. The newest hut is proposed near Camp Hale, where the 10 th Mountain Division trained during World War II. The area is described as being 1.5 miles northeast of Vance’s Cabin, near Ski Cooper. All of this is located between Vail and Leadville.

 

Telluride has first tattoo parlor

TELLURIDE, Colo. – Telluride now has a tattoo business, called Telluride Tattoo, which is believed to be the first in the town. Still, the Telluride Daily Planet does not see tattoos as particularly cutting edge. “Getting tattoos is about as daring as riding your bike one-handed,” noted the reporter.

The two business owners spoke to eighth-graders at the Telluride Middle School. The reporter noted that several teachers had tattoos, and acknowledged his own tattoo. He divulged that even his mother, an elementary school principal elsewhere, has a tattoo.

Still, for something rather ho-hum, the students seemed greatly absorbed in the presentation. Teachers confirmed that they never ask as many questions about, for example, the history of the Crimean War.