April 2017

Carbondale Town Manager Jay Harrington confirmed on April 13 that he is one of three finalists for the job of town manager in Vail.
Harrington, 50, who has been the town manager for Carbondale since the summer of 2011, said he should learn more about his chances of being offered the job after interviews of the finalists have been concluded on April 18-19.

Bighorn sheep no doubt hate fire, but they will sure warm up to its aftermath following a Upper Colorado River Interagency Fire and Aviation Management Unit controlled burn up Avalanche Creek south of Carbondale on April 7. Early this week, White River National Forest wildlife biologist Natasha Goedert explained how the controlled fires help bighorn sheep.
“This area is winter range,” Goedert told The Sopris Sun.

Carbondale’s increasingly popular Spring Clean-up and Waste Reduction Day, scheduled for April 29 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and sponsored by the town’s Environmental Board and Public Works Department, is expanding this year to include recycling of mattresses, ink and toner cartridges for printers, and other electronic devices.
And, according to organizer Julia Farwell, chair of the E-Board and member of the Waste Diversion subcommittee of that board, volunteers will be handing out twice as much compost as was distributed last year, thanks to an expected increase in demand.

It’s a story so embedded in our psyches that many of us refer to it off handedly. Who hasn’t teased a cold-hearted friend that she’s acting like Nurse Ratched?
Sopris Theatre Company is bringing the award-winning play “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to the New Space Theatre at Colorado Mountain College Spring Valley on April 14-23.

The Carbondale Board of Trustees is working its way to taking a renewed look at an old question — how the town can best articulate its broad environmental goals, which include reducing the town’s carbon footprint, safeguarding the quantity and quality of Carbondale’s water supplies and cutting back on the amount of trash heading to local landfills, among other things.
A discussion on the topic, at one time scheduled for April 18, is meant to address the idea that Carbondale could use an “environmental charter” or an “environmental bill of rights,” as has repeatedly been proposed by Trustee Frosty Merriott in recent months.

The Roaring Fork High School girls’ junior varsity lacrosse program is into its second year, with plans for fielding a varsity team in 2019. The team is composed of nine players from Roaring Fork, with one each from Glenwood Springs, Basalt and Yampah Mountain high schools.
How did the team come to be? Head coach Sarah Klingelheber filled in The Sopris Sun this week.

In the last week of October 2016, Steve Hunter, a concerned local citizen, approached the biology program at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS) with a problem.
A young couple of ospreys had nested on top of an 80 foot XCEL power pole next to the RFTA Bus Stop along Highway 133 in Carbondale. The birds presented safety issues such as getting shocked or causing a power outage. Additionally, the nest has twice blown off the power line, though thankfully no eggs or fledglings were in the nest yet.

Residents in a neighborhood immediately southwest of Sopris Park are protesting a building permit that allows for a five bedroom, 4,455-square foot house (with basement and second floor) on a 7,040-square-foot lot, according to documents filed at town hall on March 31. The property, at 728 Euclid, sits between the old Ferguson “farm-house” that is undergoing an extensive renovation, and a single-story contemporary house to the west.

Around here, most kids don’t go to wild, unsupervised parties on high school graduation night.
Instead, you’ll find most of them at Project Graduation, a parent-sponsored event that got its start in Glenwood Springs 28 years ago and has since spread to Carbondale and Basalt.
“It’s usually at least 90 percent turnout, if not more,” said Cathy Derby, one of the organizers for the Carbondale event this year. “I think even more than prom it’s an emotional day. It’s their last night together, and we want to keep them safe.”