August 2013

At Tuesday night’s meeting, the Carbondale Board of Trustees unanimously approved language to put a sales and excise tax question for recreational marijuana sales on the Nov. 5 ballot. The taxes would be five percent respectively, for a total of 10 percent on retail sales. The state of Colorado is also asking voters whether to approve statewide marijuana sales tax of 10 percent and excise tax of 15 percent.

In a YouTube video made last April, El Jebel resident Kim Doyle Wille speaks excitedly in front of Carbondale’s Third Street Center and gestures towards several brown, seemingly lifeless garden beds behind her. The spring wind buffets the microphone and tries to drown out her words, but Wille is nothing if not determined. Today that determination is stronger than ever, and the bare dirt beds have been transformed into abundant vegetable gardens.

For over a century, ranchers in the Divide Creek area south of Silt and Rifle looked to the Crystal River for irrigation water. Their hopes were lifted by a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plan to divert water from large reservoirs on the Crystal River to the dry mesas of the Divide Creek area. The plan, the West Divide Project, was included as a priority item in the Colorado River Storage Act of 1956. The project included the construction of two reservoirs on the Crystal; one on Yank Creek, a tributary to Thompson Creek; and two in the West Divide Area.

Faced with a state-mandated deadline of Oct. 1, the Carbondale trustees are moving closer to nailing down a licensing ordinance to regulate the retail marijuana trade that Colorado voters authorized when they approved Amendment 64 last November.

Garrett Kennedy was enjoying his day off on Aug. 12 when the phone rang. At around 1:30 p.m., a wildfire had broken out along County Road 115, approximately three miles southeast of Glenwood Springs. Within about 45 minutes, Glenwood Springs and Garfield County firefighters knew they needed help battling the blaze. The Carbondale Fire District got a call and so did Kennedy.

At the same time that discontent with U.S. educational policy is mounting, our local school district is preparing for a visioning process for the community to explore and define what we want locally for the education of our children. The Sopris Sun is running a series of articles that addresses some of the key concepts at the center of national and local discussions about educational reform. This article is the second in that series.

Sitting on her front porch on an August afternoon with fellow musician Josh Phillips, Ananda Banc jumps into Cole Porter’s “All of You,” a jazz standard made famous by Ella Fitzgerald.
“I love the looks of you, the lure of you….”

Monday started out with business as usual at the Carbondale fire station, then escalated to a “here they come” mode on Tuesday before settling back to a semi-regular routine on Wednesday. “We’re pretty much back to business as usual today,” Carbondale Fire Chief Ron Leach told The Sopris Sun on Wednesday afternoon. “We’ve had a rescue call on McClure Pass … a couple of 911 emergency calls.”

As Leach spoke, federal fire-fighting personnel continued settling into the Carbondale Middle School campus. The parking lot had been empty on Tuesday afternoon but filled with trailers, vehicles, fire-fighting equipment, and a mobile kitchen with mess tent as dawn broke on Wednesday. All this action was brought on by the Red Canyon wildfire that broke out three miles southeast of Glenwood Springs on Monday afternoon and later spread northeast to more than 300 acres, forcing an evacuation of about 20 homes.

Aug. 24 — A “Tomversation” at Steve’s Guitars
If you are a fan of comedy or a spiritual seeker, there’s a good chance you have heard of Tom Shadyak or seen one of his movies. The youngest staff writer for comedian Bob Hope when he was just 24, Shadyak went on to a successful Hollywood career as a director, writer and producer, best known for the films “Ace Venture: Pet Detective,” “Liar, Liar,” “Bruce Almighty,” and “The Nutty Professor.”

Update: As of Friday morning, the evacuation order for homes near the Red Canyon Fire has been lifted. The fire is now 75% contained and several engines and two SEATs have been released from duty.
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Though the plume of smoke that shrouded the lower Valley on Monday evening has mostly dissipated, the Red Canyon Fire continues to burn along the flank of Lookout Mountain. For newcomers to the area, it’s an unnerving welcome to the arid West. For longtime locals, it dredges up not-to-distant memories of 2002’s Coal Seam fire, which torched more than ten thousand acres and at least two dozen homes, and 1994’s Storm King fire, which claimed the lives of fourteen firefighters.

At an estimated 390 acres, the Red Canyon Fire has not yet approached the severity of either. After it’s initial flare up from 15 to 150 acres on Monday evening, the fire progressed fitfully, making short runs through mixed pinyon-juniper with islands of sage. Containment is at 27%, with about 100 personnel; two helicopters, two single engine and two heavy air tankers; and roughly 20 engines assigned to fight the fire. Although resources have been difficult to obtain due to other fires across the west, the Rocky Mountain Area Incident Management Team A has been assigned to Red Canyon, and took command Wednesday at 6 am MST.