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Environmentalism or elitism?

By Allen Best TELLURIDE, Colo. – There was heartburn aplenty in Telluride after a jury ruled that a coveted parcel of undeveloped land at the town’s entrance is worth $50 million.

By Allen Best

TELLURIDE, Colo. – There was heartburn aplenty in Telluride after a jury ruled that a coveted parcel of undeveloped land at the town’s entrance is worth $50 million.

The town has been moving to condemn the property, to prevent any development. Estimates of the value had ranged from $25 million to $60 million, with representatives of the town arguing for the lower figure.

The case has been in the works for about a decade. Last year, a compromise measure offered to Telluride voters would have allowed the owner of the 570 acres, Neal Blue, the right to develop some high-cost housing. In return, the town could have also built some low-cost affordable housing. But the remaining 91 per cent of land would have been dedicated as open space.

Although the town council, the school board, and the county commissioners all endorsed the compromise, the citizenry overwhelmingly voted against the compromise, or even further negotiations.

Instead, the case was sent to jurors to set a fair price. Eleven jurors convened in Delta, a farming town located about two hours north, and came up with a price of $50 million, close to the $56.8 million value estimated by appraisers employed by Blue.

The town has three months to secure the $50 million. It has $30 million in assets that can be devoted to the acquisition, plus private fundraisers have obtained pledges of $8 million.

Less immediately, the town has legal bills estimated at $7 million. Also, if it does acquire the property, it will need an estimated $15 million for environmental restoration.

The Telluride Watch says the valuation argument pivoted on what might likely appear on the property if developed. The developer’s representatives argued the valley floor property would yield seven-acre lots. Town representatives insisted that the property could be assumed to have only one lot per 35 acres, as Colorado law allows by right.

Much testimony concerned estimated values of the property based on comparable properties at Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge and Jackson Hole.

However, developer’s lead attorney, Darrel Waas, played to the lower-economic class sympathies of Delta in his closing statement. “It’s a playground, a playground for the super rich,” he said of Telluride. If the town wants the land for a playground, he added, it will have to pay playground prices.

The Telluride Watch offered two very different reactions.

For Rob Schultheis, who has lived for several decades in Telluride, the news from the “jurors from Jerkwater Junction,” as he described Delta, one of many such colourfully unflattering sobriquets, was unsurprising. Delta, he said, looks down its nose at Telluride and its residents.

In the 1970s, having license plates from Telluride while passing through Delta “all too often meant being pulled over on your way through that plug-ugly little burg and having your car searched on some bogus excuse or the other.”

Seth Cagin, publisher of The Watch, had an equally stinging reaction — but one aimed at Telluride. “When you gamble, sometimes you lose, and we’ve lost big time,” he said while ruing the town’s rejection last year of the compromise.

Even if the money is found to pay the $50 million, he believes Telluride has lost land it desperately needed for affordable housing.

“Where did we go wrong?” he asks.

“Simply, environmental fundamentalism ruined us. In every debate we’ve had in the last decade, open space and reduced development trumped all other values,” he writes. Telluride, he says, has become “Beverly Hills in the mountains; Aspensouth. We are now a community of very wealthy second-home owners, a few very wealthy families who can afford to live here full time, a dwindling and aging population of others who got in before the prices hit the stratosphere, and a small, static population of workers in subsidized housing. All of us are supported by a growing population of workers who commute long distances to their jobs or are undocumented immigrants living below the radar.”

This is not the first time Cagin has trumpeted such views, or of his distaste for environmentalism that places the greatest emphasis on open-space.

“What kind of environmentalism is this?” he asks. “Environmentalism that protects view corridors at the expense of forcing our workforce to commute enormous distances...

“I am sorry to be so blunt, but what has passed for environmentalism in Telluride is not environmentalism at all. It is elitism, pure and simple.”

The $50 million, he adds, could have been spent to save rainforests in the Amazon, to build a wind farm, or any other number of things. “To spend it on the Valley Floor when we could have had 91 per cent of the same land for free is one thing only: conspicuous consumption.”

Both sides may have grounds for appealing the decision. The landowner, despite getting a price close to his estimated value, had said he did not want to sell at any price.

 

Still a tourist town?

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Columnist Jonathan Schechter continues to lay out his argument that Jackson Hole long ago ceased to be powered by a tourism economy.

Nor, he insists, is the robust economy explained by the phenomenon of the huge second homes now being constructed. It’s a much broader story, best explained by the transfer payments of residents — dividends, interest income, and so forth — chronicled by government agencies.

So why does Jackson Hole still tend to think of itself as a tourist valley? Several reasons, says Schechter.

First, it’s human nature. It’s hard to recognize change. Most of us who are 55 think of ourselves as being much younger. Too, when moving to a new location, you tend to have a certain image of that place that is imprinted in your mind. “Those who moved here during tourism’s heyday have a deep-seated belief about tourism’s importance,” he says.

A community’s leaders tend to be those who have lived there a long time. As such, those making decisions think of Jackson Hole in terms of what it was when they arrived, in the 1970s and 1980s.

And, in fact, tourism still has some relevance. “Our largest businesses are those reliant on tourism,” he points out. They also form the core of local advocacy groups, like the chamber of commerce, that have a bigger splash in the local media, and by extension, consciousness.

And finally, because of the way Wyoming tax structure is set up, local government relies upon sales taxes. As such, government is very good at measuring taxable sales, but not very good at measuring economic activity from which it does not benefit.

Thus, while economic growth for any one business may be fueled by tourism, second homes, or both, collectively this is not the case for Jackson Hole.

 

Housing fee challenged

SUN VALLEY, Idaho – Second-home owners from Tacoma, Wash., have challenged a portion of the inclusionary zoning ordinance enacted by Sun Valley town officials.

The law mandates that anybody developing new residential homes must develop 20 per cent of it for employee housing, or pay an in-lieu impact fee. The couple, Hiil and Lynn Schaefer, have filed a lawsuit that argues that the Idaho Constitution “sharply limits the authorities of municipalities to impose fees and taxes,” and does not allow the in-lieu fee in question.

Sun Valley town officials, reports the Idaho Mountain Express, argue that the town does have the legal authority.

 

Biomass experiment ends

TRUCKEE, Calif. – An experiment in burning of biomass at Truckee has ended with the decommissioning of the burner, a Biomax 15.

The burner produced little electricity since it was put into use in 2005, officials tell the Sierra Sun. “It was quite labour intensive; we had to clean it continuously,” explained Shawn Mitchell, who represents the Truckee Donner Recreation and Park District.

But another goal was to help the technology advance, and Scott Terrell, of the Truckee Donner Public Utility District, believes it has done that. He says that he expects the technology of biomass burners will advance briskly in the next 10 years, and wood trimmings and forest residue may become a source of electricity in Truckee.

The decommissioned biomass plant originally cost $150,000. It may be sold for $25,000.

 

Windisch remembered

VAIL, Colo. – They say that necessity is the mother of invention. That seems to be the case with Erich Windisch, a venerated ski instructor at Vail who has died at the age of 89.

The Vail Daily reports that while a ski jumper from Germany, Windisch pioneered the arms-down style of ski jumping that now prevails. While doing so makes sense, to reduce how much the air slows the jumper’s flight, Windisch had a more practical reason: he had suffered a dislocated shoulder.

Windisch spent much of his younger life in Garmisch, Austria, but was selected to the German Olympic team in 1952. In 1956, he immigrated to the United States, first teaching at the Broadmoor ski area in Colorado Springs and then at New Mexico’s Red River, before finally sinking roots at Summit County’s Arapahoe Basin.

Then, in 1968, Vail founder Pete Seibert persuaded Windisch to become ski patrol director at Vail. Vail ski patrollers then were a particularly unruly bunch, and one of those patrollers, Steve Boyd, believes the thinking was that Windisch, being German, might instill discipline into the patrollers.

He didn’t.

Windisch was fundamentally a ski instructor, and he taught, and supervised, until finally quitting a year ago at the age of 88. His greatest joy, other than his family, was seeing a student begin to link turns for the first time.

Ever the learner, he was still trying to improve his bump skiing at age 60, his wife, Elana, told the newspaper. He also leaves behind a 19-year-old daughter, Sasha.

 

Ford name lives on

VAIL, Colo. – The Vail area was thick with Fords before, with a park, amphitheater, and an alpine gardens named after former President Gerald Ford or his wife, Betty.

Now, the post office in Vail is to be renamed Ford, who began visiting to ski in the 1960s and later owned a home in nearby Beaver Creek. In addition, a ski run at Vail, the last pitch of the black-diamond trail called Giant Steps, is to be called “38,” as he was the 38 th president. At Beaver Creek, an advanced trail called Pitchfork is to be designated “President Ford’s.”

Finally, the Vail Daily reports a proposal is afloat to designate Interstate 70 as it goes through Eagle County the Gerald Ford Highway. Among the precedents for such a designation is Interstate 25, which is called the Ronald Reagan Highway as it goes through Colorado Springs.

 

Granby continues to rebuild

GRANBY, Colo. – Granby’s open wounds from Marvin Heemeyer’s wild and crazy rampage in June 2004 are gradually healing. The latest footnote is the completion of a new town hall to replace the one Heemeyer gutted with a fortified bulldozer during his spree that damaged or destroyed 13 buildings in Granby. A new library, which had previously been part of the town hall, has also been built in the area.

Heemeyer went on his spree on a Friday afternoon in alleged retaliation for mistreatment by town officials and assorted others. At the core of his complaint was a zoning decision that he believed was unjust and adverse to his muffler repair business.

 

Cold, but not cold enough

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – It’s been cold this winter, but not nearly cold enough to break the bark beetle epidemic that continues to wax in the area from Grand Lake to Vail.

In some areas, 90 per cent of the lodgepole pine are expected to die.

A cold snap in January got to 25 below at night, almost cold enough to blunt the epidemic. But the chill lasted only briefly. Within a few nights, temperatures were up to 5 below. And daytimes got almost balmy, reported Cary Green, a forester on the White River National Forest, with highs in the high teens and 20s.

“It really takes three or four days to a week of temperatures colder than –35 degrees” to kill bark beetles, explained Joe Duda, a forester with the Colorado State Forest Service.

Duda noted that temperatures have increased over time. It’s not so much that the high temperatures are increasing as that the cold temperatures aren’t as cold, he told the Glenwood Post.

Forest Magazine explains that one previous beetle epidemic, which began in the late 1930s and continued into the early 1950s, was blunted by cold waves that hit 56 degrees below zero in Eagle, located between Glenwood Springs and Vail. A few years later, it hit 51 degrees.

 

Fraser bids to regain title

FRASER, Colo. – Cold temperatures have long been venerated in Fraser, the site of a weather station that — along with Truckee, Calif., Big Piney, Wyo, and Gunnison, Colo. — routinely reported the coldest temperature in the nation. It depended upon the season, of course, but 30 below was almost common, and 40 below not unusual.

As early as 1956, it had begun calling itself the Icebox of the Nation. But somewhere along the line, a town in northern Minnesota called International Falls began claiming the same, dubious distinction. It also went one step further, filing for the trademark registration.

The ensuing settlement allowed Fraser to continue using the name within Colorado, which it does. A sign at the town’s entrance boldly proclaims its relative absence of warmth.

But Fraser officials have been biding their time this winter, suspecting that International Falls had failed to do the paperwork to renew its trademark. The Denver Post reports that they have now swooped in, filing for the lapsed trademark.

Jeff Durbin, the town manager in Fraser, told The Denver Post that he believes the town will prevail, owing to its longer-standing claim to use of the name. And International Falls does not particularly use the phrase. An event once called Icebox days has been renamed Blast on the Border (because it is near the Canadian border), explains the Post.

Just last summer, real estate interests in Fraser were calling for the name to be abandoned altogether. Durbin at that time concurred, saying it was hard to attract employees with a reputation for coldness. But town residents dissented loudly, showing their continued embrace of a title that few would want.

 

Man survives being impaled by shovel

ANGEL FIRE, N.M.   – A 66-year-old man from Angel Fire was reported to be kind of laughing about an accident while shoveling snow from a roof that nearly cost his life.

Darrell Brigham fell 12 to 15 feet, and as he did, a shovel pieced his armpit and came out at the top of his shoulder. “He was incredibly fortunate,” his wife, Margaret, told the Sangre de Cristo Chronicle. “The shovel missed all his major arteries and didn’t hit a bone or tear any muscles.”

“He’s in real good spirits and kind of laughing about the whole thing,” she added.

 

Man dies when trench caves in

TAOS, N.M. – The owner of an excavating company died when a trench being dug for a sewer line caved in on him. The Taos News reports that the victim, Wilfred Rael, 55, was buried by mud, ice, rocks and other debris in the eight-foot trench.