Almost makes us miss the drought

Yes, we know. We need the moisture. But its arrival does cause some complications. We get accustomed to sunny, dry days, then the clouds roll in and there's a dump. When the sun returns, there's mud, except for ice in the shady spots. Hal Walter reported from the Wet Mountains that the combination of mud and ice made his driveway impossible to use, so he had to take his chances parking along the county road.

Custer County apparently got the biggest storm, with as much as five feet falling in the Lake San Isabel area on Jan. 29 and 30; two feet or more fell at Hal's Ilse, along with Wetmore and Hillside. Power outages were common in that area, even down to Cañon City.

Saguache had sufficient snow to cause problems - people contracted to plow driveways and parking lots were dumping the snow into streets and intersections, thus leaving the town government to figure out what to do with it.

Gunnison is more used to snow in its streets, which are wide enough to offer a median area for temporary storage. Then it's hauled to the two official municipal snowpiles. One had 22,000 cubic yards of snow in early February, while the other was about half that size. Not enough was getting hauled away, though; Atmos Energy, which supplies natural gas, took out ads urging people not to pile snow around their gas meters.

Crested Butte got 60 inches from a multi-day storm in early January, and the ski resort had to close some runs on account of avalanche danger. That same storm inspired a snowslide that closed Monarch Pass for six hours on Jan. 10.

A town without principals

If you've got the credentials to be a school principal in Colorado, Buena Vista would be a good place to look for work. On Feb. 8, Sandra Dawson resigned as principal of Chaffee County High School there (it's a non-traditional school which offers classes, but no clubs, sports, or rah-rah stuff offered at regular high schools).

As the Chaffee County Times reported, the announcement means that principal vacancies now exist for all of the district's schools (Avery-Parsons Elementary, McGinnis Middle, Buena Vista High and Chaffee County High) as a result of resignations or retirements.

Observations

When plans for a regional airport in Park County emerged anew after being thrashed a decade ago, Dan Drucker of the Center of Colorado Water Conservancy District suggested that the new county motto should be "Come to Park County, where nothing ever dies."

--Fairplay Flume, Feb. 11, p. 2

"Local attorney Dick Bratton said he had been an accounting major in school and had once worked preparing other people's taxes. 'I don't even do my own taxes any more,' he said. It's too complicated."

-- Gunnison Country Times, Jan. 20, p. 5

"I wasn't inclined to argue anyway. I only allow myself to argue nine days a month nowadays and I'd already used up my quota."

-- Jim Stiles in the Canyon Country Zephyr, Feb.-March 2005, p. 2

Addressing a representative from U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar's office, Park County Commissioner Leni Walker "asked if the federal government had any grant funding to educate the public before moving to a rural area that health care is lacking."

-- Fairplay Flume, Feb. 11, p. 11

With resignations and recall petitions concerning the hospital board in Leadville, Karen Lundell resigned from the St. Vincent Hospital Foundation Board of Directors. "I can't go out now and ask people to donate money to the hospital."

-- Leadville Herald-Democrat, Feb. 3, p. 4

"Living in a small town can be both a blessing and a curse. Everyone knows everyone and everyone else's business."

-- De Strelow in the Chaffee County Times, Jan. 20, p. 7

Lake County has started action against a property owner who started construction on a dwelling without a building permit. Phil Danielson, a county building inspector, reported that property owner Michael Worthington "said he was Amish and not subject to building codes."

-- Leadville Herald-Democrat, Feb. 10, p. 2

Buena Vista art galleries, like all other enterprises, would like to bring in more money. But one business owner observed that "Buena Vista does not have a ski resort, so the galleries don't have a winter draw. And snowmobilers, while contributing to the economy of the county in many ways, don't go to galleries."

-- Chaffee County Times, Feb. 3, p. 11

"What with little dribbles and dabs of intermittent snow, alternating between melting muck and freezing ice, it seemed like oftentimes there was too much slop for enjoyable hiking and too little good snow for enjoyable cross-country skiing. Or maybe I'm just getting old and fat and lazy and the weather was just a convenient excuse for my slothful ways."

-- Larry Charrier in the Wet Mountain Tribune,
Jan. 20, p. 4

The housing pinch

Our mountain counties have never been real cheap places to live, since just about everything we consume has to be shipped in, and that means things generally cost more here than in more civilized zones.

But housing costs even more than that would suggest. The Gunnison County Long Range Planning Office compiled some numbers. In 1994, the median household income was $27,040, and the median home sale price in and around town was $110,621.

The rule of thumb is that a house price should not exceed three times the household annual income - that figure would have been $81,120 in 1994, and thus many people were already priced out of the market.

Move to 2004. The median household income has risen to $43,187, which makes a house costing $129,561 affordable. But the median house price is now $210,667 in and near Gunnison.

Get closer to the ski lifts, and the prices rise much higher. Crested Butte's median home price is now $630,000, up from $371,000 just two years ago, and $247,500 in 1994. It's safe to guess that those houses aren't being bought by people who work there.

Good News and Bad News

Last August, a neighbor reported a starving horse kept in the Bailey area of Park County. The gelding, about 23 years old, weighed only 635 pounds and its ribs were quite visible. All that was available to the horse was three bales of moldy hay and a few gallons of unpalatable water.

The sheriff's department notified the property owner, got no response, and took the horse. It was placed in foster care. By January, it was up to 1,090 pounds and looked sleek and healthy as it was put up for adoption.

The horse's owner was Cody Quick, a Denver Police Department patrol officer. He pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals, and agreed to pay $484 in court fees while being placed on unsupervised probation for a year.

Not so fortunate was Frankie, a thin and mangy horse purchased at the Delta Sales Yard on Feb. 5 by Sarah Hoffman of Gunnison. She hoped to nurse the $120 horse back to health, but Frankie died two days later.

Safer Crossing Over

Walking across Highway 24 in Buena Vista on a summer day could qualify for one of those X-treme Adventure shows, so the Colorado Department of Transportation is trying some new signs.

Motorists seem to be ignoring the large pedestrian-crossing signs at the sides of the road, so now smaller signs will be erected in the middle of the road during peak tourism season, May 15 to Sept. 15. The new signs will stand at three crosswalks: at the drugstore, Evergreen Café, and Phillips 66.

A Hard Year so Far

Keeping track of public officials and employees in Leadville and Lake County could be a full-time job, what with recall petitions, protests to the petitions, court trials, and resignations. That, and the school district was placed on academic watch by the Colorado Department of Education because test scores have not improved in recent years.

One teacher, Amanda Perkins, faces charges of menacing and disorderly conduct following incidents on Oct. 11, 2004, and Jan. 2, 2005. And a former principal, Linda Lewis, was on trial at press time; she is charged with being too zealous in disciplining children.

Now to the St. Vincent's Hospital Board. Recall petitions had been circulating against two members, Joe King and Molly Barnes. Protests to the petitions had also been filed. King resigned from the board on Feb. 1, making his recall moot, but Barnes's recall election is set for April 5. At that Feb. 1 meeting, the board fired hospital administrator Larry Leaming, and another board member, John Cirullo, also resigned.

The municipal government lost City Clerk Suzanne Hiles, who resigned in January, saying the city council displayed "a lack of appreciation for my services," and she could "deal with every city employee but not the city council." The job paid $12,000 a year and was supposed to be part-time, but she said it involved considerably more than 16 to 20 hours a week.

A Bright Spot in the Cloud City

The Mineral Belt Trail, which winds for 11.6 miles through the old mining district on the east side of Leadville, was honored by the Colorado Mining Association on Feb. 4 for preserving historic mining resources.

The trail, some of it along old railroad grades, offers interpretive signs with pictures of the mines in their heyday, along with a variety of wayside exhibits that includes old mining machinery.

Preserving history
and the environment

Virginia Sutherland of Saguache County may be best known to most of us as one of the main movers for the Saguache Museum, but she's also a rancher, and her work on the range got her named "Cattleman of the Year" by the San Luis Valley Cattleman's Association at its 2005 annual meeting.

The award honors someone who promotes both beef and land stewardship. To quote the Crescent, "Virginia lives just three miles from where she was raised," which was a sheep operation in those days. In 1997, she was named "Conservationist of the Year" by a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Wonderful World of Water

The Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District supports expansion of Turquoise Reservoir, west of Leadville, and Pueblo Reservoir, a few miles upstream from its namesake city. If the reservoirs were expanded, there would be more storage to ameliorate those dry years like 2002 - and more water for the City of Aurora.

The first step is a feasibility study, and so Southeastern has applied to the federal government for permission to conduct one. The feds are involved because the reservoirs were constructed by the federal Bureau of Reclamation as part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas diversion project.

The downriver flow between those reservoirs is a major concern in the summer, since recreation is such a big part of the economy in Lake, Chaffee and Frémont counties.

For the past 15 years, a voluntary agreement among various entities has kept enough water in the river for rafting through Aug. 15, but Chaffee County has filed for a "recreational in-channel diversion" (RICD). That would provide a water right, but it might upset entities that have in the past agreed to the voluntary program.

RICD water rights could become essentially meaningless anyway, if a bill introduced by state Sen. Jack Taylor of Steamboat Springs becomes law. It would require a water court to determine what effect a RICD might have on "future upstream water storage and development projects."

Jack McClow, attorney for the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, said that if this bill "passes as proposed, you'd never be able to call that [RICD] a water right."

The Upper Gunnison district holds a RICD on the west side of town to insure flows for kayakers and other recreationalists, and it's looking at a reservoir site upstream. The district holds some conditional water rights that date back to the 1950s and the legislation to build the Aspinall Unit's three dams across the river.

To keep those rights, the district has to show "due diligence" in finding a way to put the water to beneficial use, and one possibility is a big reservoir at Leap's Gulch near the Lost Canyon Resort. The district must show some progress by December, 2007, and attorney McClow said the water judge has made it clear that he expects the district to be "moving some dirt" by then.