Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Alberta resorts want new taxes

By Allen Best BANFF, Alberta – Resort communities in Alberta — including Banff, Canmore and Jasper — want authority from the provincial government to levy new taxes.

By Allen Best

BANFF, Alberta – Resort communities in Alberta — including Banff, Canmore and Jasper — want authority from the provincial government to levy new taxes.

The current funding formula used by the provincial government is based on full-time population, ignoring both tourists and owners of vacation homes.

Banff Mayor John Stutz said Banff’s population is 8,300 people, though the actual population averages between 16,000 and 20,000, with spikes of up to 35,000 people. The local ambulance district has a population of 10,000, but actually serves about 40,000 people, including people at the ski areas who are at higher risk for injuries.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook says amusement, tourism, and proper taxes could be included, as could special gas and vehicle registration taxes. One thing the resorts are adamant about, however, is that the taxes cannot be temporary.

 

Empty airline seats costly

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – Crested Butte is likely to pay out $900,000 in revenue guarantees to airlines providing flights during the past winter. Airplanes this past winter averaged half to two-thirds full, whereas they need to be three-quarters full for the airlines to avoid losses that the community must cover.

“We have to fill some seats. That’s the bottom line,” said Kent Meyers, the aviation consultant who helped assemble the flight program.

Flight guarantees for American Airlines were capped at $500,000. The airline flew 126 round-trip flights into the valley this past winter, mostly from Houston, Dallas, and other cities. “When you fly these aircraft up here for $30,000 a throw (and they’re partially empty), that’s an expensive ordeal,” Myers said. “We need to move the load factor from 67 per cent to 75 per cent,” he said.

United Airlines is the other major carrier, and it provides mostly shuttles from Denver. Those were on average only half full.

A valley-wide transportation district, funded by a 2 per cent sales tax, will bear the brunt of the loss, about $750,000. The ski area operator, Crested Butte Mountain Resort, will pick up the additional $150,000.

While Myers called the report “kind of sobering,” Regional Transportation Authority director Scott Truex saw a silver lining. The Club Med operation at Crested Butte was sold last year, and the resort consequently saw few Club Med visitors this winter. The resort, he suggested, was lucky to tread water. Plans are being made to put the Club Med property back into use.

 

Vail Resorts may manage in Aspen

ASPEN, Colo. – Talk about the camel getting its snout under the tent. Vail Resorts has announced it is likely to manage an icon of Aspen, the Hotel Jerome. The hotel would be managed by the company’s subsidiary that manages luxury hotels, RockResorts.

The 92-room Jerome is located in the heart of Aspen, just a block from the city and county offices. The hotel dates to 1889, when Aspen was flush with the silver mining boom, and after several updates, remains on the must-visit list of any number of ski and travel magazines.

The hotel has changed hands at various times through the years, and is still owned by Oklahoma Publishing. But that company, says The Aspen Times, grew tired of a municipal review of a renovation plan and announced the pending sale of the property, reportedly for $50 million to Elysian Worldwide LLC. The newspaper, in a March report, said that Elysian commonly converts properties to condo-hotels — a conversion not welcomed in Aspen.

“It is the heart and soul of Aspen, and if you have 60 or 70 different owners going in and out, game over,” Dick Butera, who co-owned the property in the late 1980s, told the Times.

Jerry Jones, a long-time ski and hospitality industry veteran, said he found the news interesting, but not surprising, given that RockResorts has been lining up hotel management contracts with properties at a great many places. The hotel-management division of the company, he noted, is separate from the ski area management.

The contract is contingent upon the sale of the property to Elysian and Lodging Capital Partners, both from Chicago, in the next 45 days.

 

‘Glacial’, ‘slow’ not synonyms

DuBOIS, Wyo. – As she climbed Gannett Peak, Wyoming’s tallest mountain, during mid-April, Amy McCarthy dwelled on the connotation of the word “glacial.” It used to mean slow.

But the speed with which glaciers on Gannett and elsewhere have been melting, that connotation of “glacial” is outdated. “I was thinking it could be within my lifetime that that beautiful basin of glaciers doesn’t exist,” she told the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

McCarthy and six others hiked the remote, 13,804-foot peak in the Wind River Range as part of author Bill McKibben’s Step It Up effort to draw attention to anthropogenic climate change. At a rally in Jackson, also held as part of Step It Up, speakers talked about learning to carpool, using water filters instead of buying bottled water, and other lifestyle changes.

On Gannett Peak, climbing guide Forrest McCarthy talked about the changes he has already seen there. Fifteen years ago, enough snow remained into August to allow easy climbing in a key passage called Gooseneck Couloir. Now, the snow is gone by July, leaving treacherous, unstable rock. “If current warming trends continue,” says McCarthy, “they’re forecasting these glaciers will disappear in 20 years.”

McCarthy, who is working on a master’s thesis on landscape changes in arctic Alaska, points out global warming predictions that hold that even a 25 per cent reduction in carbon emissions will result in an increase in temperatures of two degrees by 2050. “Even with two degree warming, these will disappear,” he said of the glaciers. “The only hope is an 80 per cent reduction.”

 

The next best thing…

McCALL, IDAHO – Since at least 1950, people have been peeling out of Aspen, looking to find the next best ski place.

Ex-Aspenite Pete Seibert rummaged around the San Juans and Grand Lake before his Brigham Young moment at Vail in 1957.

Ex-Aspenite Kingsbury Pitcher created something new at Ruidoso, N.M., and strengthened Wolf Creek, Colo.

Joe Zoline, who had a ranch on the outskirts of Aspen, liked Aspen so much he decided to start the Telluride ski area.

The tradition continues even today on various levels. Kelly Hayes, who lives in Old Snowmass, a few miles downvalley from Aspen, writes of a visit to McCall, Idaho, halfway between an old-fashioned ski area called Brundage and a new resort called Tamarack.

Writing in The Aspen Times, Hayes proclaims Tamarack a wonderful place, with $360 million of real estate in the ground, the occasional presence of tennis royalty Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi, and a jewel of a mountain for skiing. The ski area has size, 2,100 acres, and snow, 300 inches annually.

While in McCall, says Hayes, he came upon a shop-owner. He says the locals fear the “Aspenization” of the valley, and so he did not immediately divulge his origins. It turns out the shop owner had also fled Aspen, if 25 years ago, although he’s now scouting out the next best place.

Where?

In the tradition of the game, he would not say.

 

The issue in Aspen: growth

ASPEN, Colo. – The mayorcampaign in Aspen continues to be a lively affair in what is vaguely shaping up as a referendum on — what else — growth.

Mick Ireland, a three-term county commissioner, has received the most campaign contributions, $18,339, with substantial support from local elected officials, past and present, and government employees. He has been sharply critical of the new wave of high-end housing in Aspen, particularly the fractional-share condominiums. He emphasizes his vision of Aspen as a place that includes lower-income people, which means government-engineered affordable housing.

Close behind, at least in campaign contributions, is Tim Semrau, a city council member, who has received $17,525 in contributions, with many cheques coming from the real estate and development community. As a developer, he represents himself as an advocate of affordable housing — a representation that some knowledgeable affordable housing advocates dispute. Nonetheless, supporters have described his “intelligent” leveraging of free-market development to finance deed-restricted affordable housing.

But what the two candidates agree about is also notable. Both Semrau and Ireland, as well as a third candidate simply named Torre, support construction of additional lanes of traffic at the town’s edge, to be used exclusively by buses and other high-occupancy vehicles. The lanes would infringe upon declared open space. Supporters of the added lanes argue that it is needed to reduce Aspen’s nightmarish rush-hour crawls.

 

Vail bids for world champs

VAIL, Colo. – Boosters in Vail are hoping to host the World Alpine Ski Championships once again in 2013. Vail and Beaver Creek previously hosted the championships in 1989 and 1999. The selection will be made next spring at the FIS Congress in South Africa. In reporting the bid proposal, the Vail Daily does not say whether this proposal could damage a bid being assembled for Colorado to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

 

San Miguel extends power contract

TELLURIDE, Colo. – San Miguel Power Authority has thrown its lot with Tri-State Generation and Transmission, agreeing to a contract extension to 2050.

“It’s easier to make changes inside the system,” board member Jerry Heffer told the Telluride Daily Planet. That’s the same logic used by board members in the Durango-based La Plata Electric several months ago in approving the contract extension.

Tri-State sells wholesale electricity to 44 rural co-operatives in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Nebraska. It had originally proposed to build two and possibly three new coal-fired power plants, raising the hackles of some local electricity purchasers who want “softer” and non-coal-fired energy.

Holy Cross Electric, which serves Aspen, Vail and Glenwood Springs, several years ago left the Tri-State “family.”Nearby Delta-Montrose Electric Association this winter rejected the contract extension. Mountain Parks Electric, based in Granby, agreed to the longer contract after getting assurances that local co-operatives would have latitude to provide more of their own power through biomass or other means.

After heatedly debating the contract extension for months, Gunnison County Electric Association was scheduled to make a decision on Tuesday.

Tri-State has said the longer contracts will allow it to secure better interest rates on the massive loans needed to build power plants. “Whether they build coal plants or wind, they still need that commitment to get the best financing,” said Marcus Wilson, San Miguel’s representative to the Tri-State board. “What we want Tri-State to do is a secondary question. It’s mainly financial.”

Since last year, Tri-State has backed away from its more rigid goals of building more coal-fired plants and has indicated a willingness to investigate more alternative energy and energy conservation measures. The final resource plan, however, remains vague.

 

More low-end housing needed

EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. – Eagle County officials are looking to do another major affordable-housing project somewhat similar to the Miller Ranch project, a New Urbanist-type project at Edwards. The county hopes to find a 30-acre site by December, reports the Vail Daily.

The problem is a familiar one. Despite a major binge of new deed-restricted lower-end housing built during the last five years from Vail to Gypsum, free-market housing prices continue to escalate. The median price of condos, townhomes and free-standing houses has increased from $400,000 to $550,000 in just the last 18 months. A moderate income for a family of three is defined as $73,000.

 

Clock ticks on $50+ million deadline

TELLURIDE, Colo. – It’s snooze time in Telluride, with the town vacated for off-season. But the clock is still ticking in the community’s condemnation of 524 acres for open space, notes The Telluride Watch.

The town has until May 21 to deliver $50 million, plus interest, to the landowner, as per a jury’s decision in February. Slightly more than half that money must come from donations, and for several weeks now fundraisers have been stuck at $2.4 million still to be raised.

Meanwhile, the interest on the $50 million is piling up at $11,000 a day, reaching $693,000 as of this week.

 

‘It’s supposed to be snowy’

VAIL, Colo. – Several years ago as part of an infrastructure replacement, Vail installed snow-melting systems in several of the pedestrian areas of Vail Village. While the older methods of snow removal caused emissions of green-house gases, some see the heat-melt system as a wanton excess during a time when use of fossil fuels needs to be crimped.

“It’s a frickin’ ski town,” said Matt Scherr of the Eagle Valley Alliance for Sustainability. “It’s supposed to be snowy.”

But Greg Moffat, a town councilman, tells the Vail Daily that he believes the street-melt system makes sense for Vail’s winding, cobble-stoned pedestrian paths. The old way was difficult and noisy, and still didn’t eliminate ice, a danger to both visitors and residents.

But areas that can be more easily plowed, such as asphalt streets, need to be plowed, said Moffat. “It’s incumbent on the town that we talk a big game and that we play a big game,” he said.

The town had investigated use of solar energy and ground-source heat-pumps, but found both unfeasible or too expensive — although the price of natural gas, which is burned to provide the heat, has more than doubled the cost.

 

Car co-op saves money

REVELSTOKE, B.C. – Revelstoke has a car-share co-operative, in which 10 people share one car. It costs $500 (refundable) to join, and then the cost of using the car is $1.50 per hour and 20 cents per kilometre. That includes insurance, maintenance and gas. If the car is in use, and somebody else needs a car, the co-op allows a cab or car rental, whichever is cheapest. The program, explains the Revelstoke Times Review, is operated through an organization called Nelson Carshare. Whistler has a similar program. The theory of such co-ops seems to be that they force prioritization, reducing costs and pollution.

 

Pumpback of water killed

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – A plan to pump water from Green Mountain Reservoir nearly to Breckenridge has been shelved, although perhaps not permanently.

Despite all of the snow that falls there, the upper Blue River drainage, where Breckenridge is located, is a place where supply and demand are bumping up against one another on the sidewalk. Both Denver and Colorado Springs divert large amounts of water from the basin, and demands by resort towns, including water for snowmaking at ski areas, has been steadily growing.

This means there is more sewage. It also means less water in the stream with which to dilute the treated effluent. Now come new federal standards for sewage treatment.

Directors of the Breckenridge Sanitation District spent $500,000 toying with building a $10 million pumpback from the reservoir, located about 25 miles downstream, to provide more water for dilution. The plan has snagged on opposition from the town.

The sewage district will now focus on spending more money on technology to achieve a higher quality of effluent.

Ironically, the Summit Daily News reports interest by Breckenridge town officials in reviving the project, but with different operating parameters. What exactly city officials would do differently was not disclosed.

 

Exercise helps, but thin air poses risks

VAIL, Colo. – Does living and playing in the mountains make you healthier? Well, yes, to a point, says Dr. Larry Gaul. But the thin air itself is problematic.

Gaul told the Summit Daily News of the case where a man’s main coronary artery became blocked. But instead of dying of a massive heart attack, as might have occurred elsewhere, blood vessels had been created around the blockage. This was the result of the man biking hundreds of miles each week.

Such cases are not uncommon in Summit County and the Eagle Valley, where the Vail-based Gaul has been the only cardiologist since 1993. Physical activity is common and obesity is not.

But Gaul also warns against over-confidence. Heart disease, if found in lower-than-average rates, remains the No. 1 killer. Too, some residents develop an affliction called secondary pulmonary hypertension, an elevation of pressure inside the lungs due to the thinner air found at higher elevations. Someone who has lived there for 30 years could develop this condition and have to leave.

High elevations also contribute to sleep apnea, in which a person has episodes of not breathing while sleeping. Such apneas can cause high blood pressure and are a factor in secondary pulmonary hypertension.

While coronary disease remains common, it shows up sooner when people move to higher elevations. That’s because with less oxygen available, blockages become evident sooner. Methods for treating heart disease improve every year, Gaul told the newspaper.

 

Silverton hosts record 300 skiers

SILVERTON, Colo. – There were lines at the coffee shop, lines at the restaurants, and lines of cars. But the longest lines, thanks to an exceptional snowstorm, were of people waiting to ride the Silverton Mountain Ski Area’s lone chairlift.

Lines may be common in Silverton during warm-weather months, when the narrow-gauge train arrives, unloading hundreds of passengers for mid-day ramblings. Otherwise, even lines for the women’s restrooms have been virtually unheard of since the last mine closed near Silverton several years ago.

What’s going on? The Silverton Standard explains that the ski area got nearly four feet of snow, far more than other areas, resulting in a record crowd of 500 people showing up at the four-year-old ski area. The ski area could accommodate only 300 with avalanche gear, which is requisite on Silverton’s steep, steep slopes.

 

Aspen man sentenced to 7 years

ASPEN, Colo. – An Aspen man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for selling cocaine. Prosecutors portrayed Jose Jesus “Chuy” Sanchez-Ceja, 53, as ringleader in cocaine sales. They said they found more than $30,000 in cash at his house. The man’s lawyer, reports The Aspen Times, said police got the story wrong. His client, he says, deserved probation because he was only a little fish in the cocaine distribution network.

 

For the record

Mountain Town News for the week of April 16 had an error in the account of Benjamin Bradley, who was murdered while hitchhiking between Tabernash, Colo., and Jackson, Wyo. He left on June 2, 2006, two days before he was to go snowboarding with friends in Jackson Hole, but did not arrive. His body was found Oct. 1 north of Rock Springs. The story said the trip occurred in October.