February 2014

He called me and asked what the weather was like in Greece. Puzzled by his question, mine was “Why are you concerned about things in Greece?”
”Could you look it up on the computer for me?” he answered.
Knowing he didn’t have a computer my answer was “Sure Clifford I’ll look it up for you.”
Before asking another question he said, “I need to know what I should wear. I’m flying to Athens to bring the Olympic torch to Atlanta for the games.”
It wouldn’t be first or last time Northern Ute Elder Clifford Duncan would be an ambassador of international good will.

The Colorado League of Charter Schools has recognized Compass Executive Director Skye Skinner for its 2014 Charter School Leadership award.
The annual award, which recognizes a leader who “demonstrates significant influence in developing or maintaining a charter school, improving school accountability and performance, or driving other aspects of school excellence,” was presented on Feb. 20 at the league’s annual conference in Denver, according to a press release.

Carbondale officials on Tuesday adopted a set of proposals from a Special Event Task Force appointed by the board of trustees in response to ongoing complaints about noise and other disruptions emanating from events staged at Sopris Park.
The task force, created last September, was made up of neighbors of the park (Jeri Alberts and Frank Nadell), town trustees Allyn Harvey and Pam Zentmyer, Amy Kimberly of the Carbondale Council on Arts and Humanities, and other citizens, business representatives and town staff members.
A list of 15 specific events was drawn up, including seven that take place in Sopris Park, with the annual Mountain Fair weekend as the report’s main target.

Carbondale voters elected Katrina Byars, AJ (Alexander) Hobbs and Frosty Merriott to the town’s board of trustees on Tuesday, and returned incumbent mayor Stacey Bernot who was running unopposed. For more information, see this week’s print version of The Sopris Sun.

Driving by, few would guess that the boxy-looking building at 398 Merrill Ave. houses what may be the most technologically advanced manufacturing facility in Carbondale.
During a recent tour, Balentine Collection International Operations Manager Whitney Linman opens the door to a vast room. “We fabricate and finish stone here to make kitchen counters, vanities, fireplace surrounds, table tops and benches. We have even made a few memorial headstones; the shop can do some engraving. … Watch your step. There’s water on the floor.”
As the shop’s five huge machines carve, cut and polish, they spew out finely powdered stone. To settle the dust and cool the cutting blades, water constantly sluices across the machines’ work beds and runs onto the floor. Both the water and the dust are recycled.

Members of the Garfield County Planning Commission were up late on Feb. 12, when a public hearing on Colorado Rocky Mountain School’s application for vacation of a county right-of-way through the school’s campus lasted over five hours, wrapping up just past midnight. The room was packed and more than 50 people offered input, split roughly evenly between proponents and opponents of the request.
The eventual “no” vote of 5-2 to recommend denying the “Location and Extent” (L&E) portion of the request and 5-2 recommending denial of the “Vacation” portion of the request came after a somewhat heated late-night discussion between members of the commission.

So what’ll it be this time around for the former library building: a performing arts facility, non-profit outfit, for-profit business, day-care center, educational facility or numerous other uses with the probable exception of a bilingual Bingo parlor?
Folks have until March 28 to speculate because that’s the deadline for proposals to lease the 3,800-square-foot building from the town. The RFP (request for proposals) is available on-line and at town hall. The field is fairly wide open because the RFP only states that the town is soliciting proposals from “qualified non-profits, for-profit businesses and community groups” to occupy the former Gordon Cooper Library at 76 S. Fourth St.

After a public hearing of over five hours, which lasted until just after midnight, the Garfield County Planning Commission voted 6 to 2 on Wednesday to deny the “Location and Extent” portion of CRMS’s application for Vacation of the County Road 106 right-of-way that runs through the school’s campus

Ray Sauvey called the Station 81 ladder truck “a parade float.”
Mike Waski said “(higher) taxes … straight out” doomed last November’s fire district mill levy ballot question.
Jason Sewell said the “GQ” public doesn’t understand the services the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District provides, then said they see fire trucks at the stations getting washed “every other day,” which they see as “big waste of resources.”
And so it went on Feb. 4, as the grassroots group Who Ya Gonna Call met to discuss what went wrong with last November’s mill levy ballot question, plus “trouble shoot” for another mill levy question in November, stir interest in May’s district board elections, and generally try to figure out where the district should go next.
“ … What does the community want for essential emergency services … on a budget it can afford?” group organizer Jeff Wadley said as he kicked off the forum, held at the Third Street Center.

Tony Award-winning poet/playwright Lemon Andersen makes his Carbondale debut in “Project Verse” at the Crystal Theatre at 8 p.m. on Feb. 14.
Carbondale wordsmith Wade Newsom, along with a select group of local poets, will warm up the stage for Andersen.
In “Project Verse,” Andersen will share stories and poetry that create a vivid portrait of his adverse yet often humorous coming-of-age experiences while growing up in Brooklyn in the ’80s and ’90s. “Andersen’s poems touch on young love, sibling rivalry, juvenile crime, addiction and, ultimately, personal triumph toward self-discovery and redemption,” said a press release.