March 2017

While most grocery stores don’t even compost their leftover produce, Dandelion Market goes above and beyond by turning it into hot meals for the hungry.
The donation-based Nepalese meal of the day is ready at around noon each weekday, thanks to Devika Gurung, 40, who hails from Nepal’s Mustang District and more recently from Pokhara.

Carbondale’s dedicated lodging tax hit $100,000 for the first time in 2016, fueled in part by an increase in the number of vacation rental properties, the town-owned Gateway RV Park and a wide-ranging tourism promotion campaign.
“The ($100,000) amount represents a 17 percent increase over 2015, and is 109 percent higher than 2011,” said a Carbondale Chamber of Commerce press release this week.

Dandelion Market needs some help.
That message came across loud and clear as members of what’s still generally known as the Carbondale Food Co-op came together at the Carbondale Branch Library to discuss the store’s future on March 1. Less certain was what form that might take. Bill Shepherd, the member who called the meeting, advocated for dissolution of the board and perhaps the whole organization to allow for a fresh start as a nonprofit.
“Don’t patch, fix it,” he said. “Do it right.”

“SHE” takes the stage at this week’s “Green Is The New Black” fashion show, a sold-out fundraiser for the Carbondale Arts organization to be held March 10 and 11 in the Carbondale Recreation and Community Center.
This year’s offering, the show’s creators say, is shaping up to be the most professionally produced extravaganza in the event’s 11-year history.

March 10, 1977: Garfield County tried to persuade the state government to give the county a pass on paying about a $4 million increase in property taxes due to a rise in the county’s assessed valuation of commercial, residential and industrial property, which was estimated at a rise in individual tax payments of 29 percent over the year before.

As the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority (RFTA) continues the lengthy process of updating its controversial Access Control Plan governing the Rio Grande Trail, the agency recently reached a tenuous and perhaps only temporary truce with one of the private property owners who lives next to the trail. Amy Fulstone, owner of the Confluence Lodge located near the juncture of the Roaring Fork and Crystal rivers, reached a sort of stand-off with RFTA in a federal court case last year.

An old Roaring Fork High School spring sports observation goes something like this: There’s a good chance the weather for any given baseball game will be colder than any football game in October or November. You can also add girls soccer and lacrosse, and co-ed track to the mix.
The month of March shows up most brutally, with snow, freezing train and wind sometimes postponing games or sending practices inside to the gym.

By Feb. 15, snow on the ground at the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock – or at what most water protectors by now called the Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Camp – was melting, fast. When I had arrived to camp a few days before, an uneven sheet of ice covered the terrain. But now, slowly rising waters had reached the wooden floor of the Colorado-donated army tent used by Cheyenne River tribe elders Amos Cook and Phyllis Baldeagle.

The Basalt High School Longhorns made this week’s Great 8 in the state 3A boys’ basketball tournament with a pair of convincing wins over the weekend. Meanwhile, #2 seed Manitou Springs sent the Roaring Fork Rams home with a 56-54 win on Saturday.

Starting on March 9, two dozen students from Roaring Fork High School – along with three adult teacher-chaperones – will join more than 2,000 other high schoolers in New York City for five days of simulated high-intensity diplomacy and (they hope) a good dose of sightseeing fun in the Big Apple.