January 2017

Up until a few years ago, the town trustees didn’t always know what their advisory boards were up to.
Sometimes, the advisory boards’ plans didn’t “align” with the trustees’, Carbondale Town Manager Jay Harrington told The Sopris Sun. The upshot was that on at least one occasion, an advisory board spent an entire year heading in one direction, and it didn’t head back in the right direction until the trustees figured out what was up and reined it in.

With police officer and firefighter Mark Luttrell preparing for retirement, Carbondale is losing a fixture of late nights downtown who sought to defuse situations before they started. “I always saw my position as more of a peace officer than a law enforcement officer,” he said. “I loved working with the Carbondale people.” That’s not to say he hasn’t seen some action in three decades on the force. He was on scene for some of the area’s worst disasters like the MidContinent mine explosion, South Canyon Fire, and Rocky Mountain Natural Gas blow up.

At roughly the same time as huge Saturday demonstrations take place in Washington, D.C., Denver, and other national and international venues too numerous to count, activists in the Roaring Fork Valley will be engaged in exactly the same kind of activity.
The rallies, aimed primarily at mobilizing women but also open to men, are being held in opposition to the pronouncements, policy proposals and behavior of President-elect Donald J. Trump, on Jan. 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration.

The Colorado Highway Department held one of an ongoing series of meetings on potential improvements to State Highway 82. In addition to the potential to expand from two lanes to four between Carbondale and Aspen – a possibility that had generated considerable debate at a meeting the previous November – several potential changes to the route were discussed…

Local government agencies may soon move to acquire and redevelop a small, 50-year-old shopping plaza that sits at the northern edge of Carbondale, and that long has been viewed as an eyesore by some or a historical bit of “messy vitality” by others. Carbondale’s Board of Trustees talked over a broad array of topics Tuesday night at a work session, ranging from ideas about what to do concerning the dilapidated wood-shell shopping center on Highway 133…

Jan. 15, 1987
The Valley Journal reported a 24-week strike by United Steel Workers of America in eight states appeared to be nearing resolution, which would send Mid-Continent coal miners in the Number 1 mine back to work. Mid-Continent’s Number 1 mine had been idled because coal from that operation was shipped to the Geneva Works steel mill in Utah, whose workers were union members. The article also pointed out shipments to South Korean customers had jumped by 90,000 tons in January, causing the recall of 50 miners.

Neighbors of Colorado Rocky Mountain School outside Carbondale this week told the Garfield County Commissioners that they were concerned that the school has not lived up to its side of a bargain about public use of a county road that cuts through the campus.

Drive-through windows are to be permitted for banks and pharmacies, but not for any other businesses, following a decision by the Carbondale Board of Trustees on Tuesday.
The decision was driven, in part, by the fact that an application has been submitted to the town by the First Bank company, which hopes to build a new bank with a drive through somewhere in town.

Thunder River Theatre Compay’s “Consensual Improv” troupe is back for one night with doors opening at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 14, and if the debut weekend last year is any guide, it’s likely to sell out fast.
“It was absolutely packed,” said TRTC artistic director Corey Simpson. That kind of response indicates that this is something we’re really hungry for.”

Two dozen people have applied to become the next station manager at KDNK, Carbondale’s community access radio station, and there is some hope that a new manager will be on the job within a matter of weeks, according to one station official.
The board has embarked on a national search to replace Steve Skinner, the long-time station manager who was dismissed late last year.