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Revelstoke tackles affordable housing

By Allen Best REVELSTOKE, B.C. – Even before the hammers have begun to swing at the new ski resort, Revelstoke has been experiencing tightening housing prices.

By Allen Best

REVELSTOKE, B.C. – Even before the hammers have begun to swing at the new ski resort, Revelstoke has been experiencing tightening housing prices. More people from Banff and Whistler, but also cities, have arrived to enjoy the mountain lifestyle but at lower costs than elsewhere.

In doing so, they are driving up prices. Almost no single-family homes have been available for rent, and those that are go for $1,800 a month. While that might seem like next to free in some resort areas, in Revelstoke, it’s about triple of rates just a few years ago, reports the Revelstoke Times Review.

Girding for a real estate boom, the city council is trying to construct an affordable housing policy. The possibilities include what are called inclusionary zoning and linkages, which require affordable housing in all development, both residential and commercial. As well, there is talk of a lodging tax, sometimes called a tourist accommodation tax.

There is some talk of discouraging the creation of vacation homes, also called second homes. One mechanism would be a higher property tax on homes that do not include full-time residents. “This is something we could do as an incentive to dissuade people from buying residential property they won’t use more than once a year,” said one Jill Zacharias, at a housing committee meeting. “Across the board, it is the out-of-town home buyers who buy in residential areas who are responsible for rising prices,”

Does that statement reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the economics currently in play? Another Revelstoke resident, Tuulikki Tennant, seems to think so. “People who can afford to play here can afford higher taxes.”

One thing that Revelstoke has going for it that many resort towns in the American West would dearly love is an abundance of land available from the provincial government that could be used specifically for affordable housing.

The Revelstoke Times Review argues that the experience of other resort communities underscores the need for government action.

“Not a single resort community that allowed the economic laws of supply and demand to determine the affordability of local housing has had any success,” said the newspaper. “What’s more, the consultants and speakers brought to town to talk about this issue have all said that affordable housing is an issue that must be dealt with sooner rather than later. If we let the market sort it all out, we’ll wake up one morning to find the middle-class priced right out of here, along with our seniors, our young families, workers, teachers, police officers and others.

“This is already happening,” adds the paper, “but we can still arrest the process — if we want. If we drag our heels, then our sense of community and our values will be irretrievably eroded.”

 

Grizzlies being de-listed

JACKSON HOLE, WYO. – Grizzly bears in Wyoming are being de-listed from the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service says there are enough grizzlies now after 30 years of protection under federal laws. Hunting seasons conducted under Wyoming state laws could occur as early as 2008.

The bears in Wyoming are limited to the Yellowstone ecosystem, but with some as far south as the Wind River Range.

“An endangered species is one that is likely to become extinct, and a threatened species is one that is likely to become endangered,” said Chris Servheen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife grizzly bear recovery coordinator. “The grizzly bear is neither one of these.”

Conservation groups think the de-listing is premature, especially in light of new evidence of climate change. If traditional food sources in Yellowstone become more scarce, due to warmer weather, the bears will go to lower elevations, where conflicts with people will become more common. They want the terrain of the bears expanded to include other mountain ranges in Wyoming.

Servheen disagrees. He says the lawsuit being readied by the group will ultimately be harmful to the cause of endangered species. “The Endangered Species Act really needs success stories to demonstrate that the act works,” he told the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

 

Native language hangs on

CANMORE, Alberta – Only three of the 50 languages once spoken by aboriginals in Canada are expected to survive into the future. Those languages — Inuktitut, Cree and Chippewa — each have more than 20,000 speakers.

Some languages are already gone. Others have just a few hundred speakers and are likely headed to extinction. The language of the Stoney-Nakoda, who live at the foot of the Canadian Rockies, between Calgary and Banff, remains in doubt.

About 4,000 of the Stoneys remain, although even many of them do not speak their native language, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook. The language suffered after the signing of a treaty in 1877. Children were then put into schools and encouraged to forsake their language and culture.

In time, this thinking that pressured the Indians to melt into the mainstream slowed a bit, and in the 1970s the Stoney-Nakoda language became written.

Now, schools teach the language. But teaching the language, notes the Outlook, is only part of the equation. Like anything, it has to be relevant.

As a result, the school at Morley, where the reserve is located, includes a strong cultural component in its curriculum. In these classes, students learn about their own culture, their history — all while also teaching skills that will allow graduates to get jobs or to receive further collegiate training.

Preserving their language is also a celebration of their culture and an affirmation that they are survivors, says the Outlook. “They are not, as once believed, mere charges of the government, but instead, in control of their future and their identity.”

Even so, survival of the language is iffy. Popular culture and mainstream media are in English.

 

Climate change top of mind

BANFF, Alberta – When do deer turn into elk, and elk into moose? Tourists may still ask those questions, but nowadays they’re also asking about climate change in the mountains, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook.

To that end, the Banff Centre this week held a two-day session entitled “Communicating Climate Change.”

“A lot of guides have been getting questions and/or comments from their guests about climate change, both in winter and in summer,” explained Dave Verhultz, executive director of the Mountain Parks Heritage Interpretation Association.

“People want to know, either what they (guides) think about climate change, if they think it’s affecting the Rockies, and are we worried about it.”

Added Verhultz: “It’s amazing how much it’s in the forefront of people’s minds.”

 

Bear jumps from roof

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – People strolling down Steamboat’s Lincoln Avenue, the town’s main street, were startled Sunday night when a bear jumped down from the roof of a diner.

The Steamboat Pilot & Today explains that the bear had been in an alley when a driver saw it, so the bear scrambled up a stairway to the roof. Before wildlife authorities could be called, the bear figured its own, unorthodox route of escape. Although the bear caused some excitement a block away, near another restaurant, there were no direct confrontations before the bear climbed a tree.

 

Vail handling tree loss

VAIL, Colo. – Hillsides of lodgepole pine trees in Vail have turned rust colored, victims of fungus introduced by bark beetles. But a research team from the University of Illinois finds no real shock yet in responses to a survey conducted last year of 29 residents.

“It’s not that they weren’t concerned, but the language didn’t have that high-anxiety element to it,” said Courtney Flint, an assistant professor in the department of natural resources and environmental sciences. “Vail residents would say, ‘At least we have our aspen.’”

But the shock may yet be coming, based on what she has seen elsewhere. She has studied Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, where 90 per cent of the forest was destroyed by beetles. She found a strongly emotional response — as has also been found elsewhere in Colorado, particularly.

“Many places in Colorado, we’re moving from the shock to the grief,” she told the Vail Daily, alluding particularly to Grand County. Those changes take a lot of energy, a lot of emotion. Colorado communities are strongly tied to their forests.”

She reported that in Walden, a small town located in Colorado’s North Park, residents see the beetle epidemic as an opportunity to revive the beleaguered economy with wood-salvaging and biomass projects. “While they’re worried about fires there, they are seeing it as an opportunity — not a sentiment I heard in Vail,” she told the Vail Daily.

So far, Vail residents have given a big kudos to the Forest Service and town officials for mitigation efforts.

 

Steamboat has ‘real jobs’

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Are there good-paying “real” jobs in mountain towns other than hawking real estate and slathering masonry around river rocks?

In Steamboat Springs there are. One of the newer companies, SmartWool, a brand name for comfortable wool socks, was founded in 1994. The actual assembly of socks is done off-shore, but the business is operated in Steamboat, where 52 employees are located.

Mark Bryden, company president, partly credits a 25 per cent increase in sales last year to the enthusiasm and talent of new employees. Those employees, drawn from Nike and other corporations, wanted career advancement while also pursuing the outdoor lifestyle implied in the company’s core product line.

“Our heritage — who we are and what we’re about as a company — is intertwined with this location,” he told the Steamboat Pilot & Today.

The company was sold in 2005 to The Timberline, a Fortune 500 company, whose international distribution network has also aided sales.

Steamboat’s mountain lifestyle also explains the location of TIC, also called The Industrial Company. Founded in Steamboat Springs in 1974, the company initially built condominiums and pipelines but now has operations in 28 states and offices in two foreign countries.

Headquarters remains in Steamboat Springs, as do 200 employees and a steady stream of the other 9,000 employees for training sessions, says Planning Magazine.

 

Glenwood Springs still vulnerable

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – In 1994, a small fire became one of the nation’s most deadly wildfires when 14 firefighters died on Storm King Mountain, located just west of Glenwood Springs. To many, the deadly fire illustrated the vulnerability of small communities in the West to wildfires

But relatively little happened in Glenwood Springs afterward.

Then again, in 2002, a fire from an underground seam of coal escaped to the surface. It was a drought year, with an abnormally early sprint melt. So, even by early June, vegetation was as dry as that of August. Whipped by winds, the fire scudded across the Colorado River, railroad tracks, and Interstate 70, eventually destroying 70 homes.

Since then, the town has started to react. Ron Biggers, the fire chief, tells the Glenwood Springs Post Independent that community wildfire plans have become increasingly common.

One homeowner, attorney Glenn Chadwick, who lives in the Glenwood Highlands subdivision, said residents there have met often to talk about the danger of wildfire. They have removed beetle-killed trees and cleared brush from ravine and on hillsides.

Still, the town remains vulnerable. A new $50,000 study finds 15 neighborhoods have a “very high” vulnerability to wildfires because of topography, fuels, and lack of availability of water.

Lack of access is among the issues. Some areas, located in the hills around Glenwood, have only one road in and out.

The plan says that in some areas, homeowners should consider staying put rather than leaving, in case of fire. Biggers notes that flame fronts usually take only a minute or two to pass. Those staying at home are advised to close doors and windows and shut down air-conditioning and fill tubs and sinks with water.

Typcally, a home will have indoor smoke and contamination levels that are 45 to 65 per cent of those found outside the home a half-hour after a wildfire strikes, the report says,

 

Mining company wins case

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. –The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case involving 155 acres of land near Crested Butte that the Bureau of Land Management has transferred to a mining company. The decision, however, was no surprise to anybody.

“It was a long-shot at best,” Crested Butte Mayor Alan Bernholtz said of the effort by various parties, including the town, to overturn the transfer of land to Phelps Dodge Corporation. Phelps Dodge has since transferred the land to another mining company, U.S. Energy.

The case has been underway for decades owing to a deposit of molybdenum within the bowels of Mt. Emmons described as world class. Amax pursued the ore deposit in the 1970s, but put the project on hold after the price of molybdenum plummeted in 1980 and 1981.

The surging world economy in recent years has resulted in fast-escalating prices for all building materials. Molybdenum strengthens steel, among dozens of other purposes.

Does this mean that U.S. Energy will soon start burrowing into Mt. Emmons? Don’t count on it, say opponents. While Phelps Dodge now owns the land without dispute, getting a permit to mine the land is another matter. The Crested Butte News reports the company is currently creating an operations plan.

“The bottom line is that there is a 155-acre donut hole surrounded by public lands,” says Roger Flynn, an attorney for the Western Mining Action Project. “If a mine ever gets proposed, they will have to have numerous federal and state permits… the community is confident it will win in the end.”

 

Lower 48’s least roaded county

LAKE CITY, Colo. – Want to get away from it all? If remoteness is defined by the absence of roads, then Hinsdale County, located in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, is the most remote place in the lower 48 states.

This distinction is based on new computer technology developed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Traditional tools for analyzing roadless space have ranked a plot of land one mile from a road the same as one several miles from a road, explains Discovery News. But this method ignores the fact that the farther a place is from a road, the less it is affected,

Using this new technology, the Geological Survey created three-dimensional pictures that finds Hinsdale County, between Gunnison and Silverton, is the nation’s most remote. Although heavily mined, it has several wilderness areas, plus five 14,000-foot peaks.

The county is also among the least populated, with a 2002 census of 790 full-time residents, more than half in the county’s only town, Lake City.

The county also has one of the highest rates of second-home owners in the nation, a large number of them from Texas. The county is also remembered as the locale for the cannibalism of Alfred Packer, the only man in the United States ever convicted of the deed.

Other notably remote areas, according to the new road-based technology, include the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park, but also some wet places: swamps in Louisiana and lakes in Minnesota. At the opposite end, the most roaded place in the nation is Brooklyn.

In a lovely polarity, The Denver Post found somebody who grew up in Brooklyn and worked as a New York City firefighter before moving to Lake City two years ago. The two places aren’t so terribly different, said Louie Bevilacqua. He said Lake City is a very small, tight community — just like the one he had left in Brooklyn.

 

Backcountry homes to be capped

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – Maps of Summit County show a checkerboard of private and public lands, a legacy of the mining era when prospectors were allowed to stake claims of 10.2 acres. The larger tracts allowed homesteaders were generally along the valley floors.

But in recent years, with the valley floors getting heavily developed, those wanting a house in the nestling pines have been looking at more remote locations — to the great concern of fire departments as well as county officials concerned about environmental impacts.

To that end, Summit County is trying to limit — not stop, but limit — how much building is done on private land in the backcountry. A new plan proposes to rezone 3,615 acres of private land into a new backcountry zone.

The regulations, if adopted, would affect 275 properties in the Snake River Basin near Keystone and the town of Montezuma. Another 66 properties would be affected in the Tenmile Basin, near Copper Mountain.

The Summit Daily News explains that the regulations would restrict the size of buildings. A two-acre parcel, for example, would be permitted a 750-square-foot cabin, and so on up to 35 acres, where the landowner would be permitted a home of up to 2,400 square feet. Landowners would be allowed to consolidate these scattered lots for purposes of building size on one lot, but would lose the right to build on the other lots.