News

How a small town is balancing the need for a boost from ‘The Stim’ By Trina Ortega While many small town mayors are scrambling to get their communities a piece of the stimulus pie, Carbondale Mayor Michael Hassig is not so quick to grab taxpayer money for hastily planned projects. Fast tracking projects the town […]

By Jeremy Heiman Looking for a way to spend all that spare time? The Town of Carbondale is calling for residents to volunteer for a housing committee being formed this spring to brainstorm ways to fund and create more affordable housing. The Carbondale Board of Trustees will appoint committee members from a pool of applicants […]

The multifaceted questions surrounding the issue of trash pickup in Carbondale, debated for five years now, may finally be headed toward resolution following a decision Tuesday night that it is time for the town’s board of trustees to get to work on an actual ordinance on the topic rather than simply calling for more discussion.
The actual work, however, is not likely to start until December at the earliest, and perhaps not until some time after the new year begins.

From the outside looking in, the new roundabout can look pretty intimidating — yes, even scary — as a cyclist. But once you know and follow the rules of the road, navigating the roundabout is manageable.
Now that the roundabout is open and northbound Highway 133 has through paths and an appropriately sized and marked shoulder, there’s no longer a need to avoid the Highway 133/Main Street intersection or overshoot and double-back on your cycling commute to City Market. That said, I admit I was not excited about cycling into the roundabout the first time. Traffic is constantly moving, and even weeks after it opened, it seemed some drivers were still learning how to get in and out of the roundabout.

A proposed new four-plex at the corner of Second Street and Sopris Avenue has churned up considerable resistance among some neighbors of the project, including an accusation by one critic that the owner of the property was engaging in “class warfare” in her remarks at a recent public hearing.
The four-plex, if approved, would be built at 191 Sopris, on the site of an existing 2,600-square-foot, one-story, single family home, most recently owned and occupied by long time local resident Harold Leonard but now owned by 13-year local resident Kim Kelley and a development company, Sopris Properties LLC.

Local commercial photographer Tyler Stableford has had a dream project in mind for quite awhile. The fine-art project that has teased his imagination and surfaced frequently was really, really LARGE and challenging.
Then in late August after mentally testing the waters for a few years, he finally put together his dream team and plunged in. Fortunately for us here in Carbondale and the Roaring Fork Valley, the public will have the opportunity to check out the images that were created out of his labor of love at a reception from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 13 at Phat Thai in downtown Carbondale. The reception will feature seven large, fine-art prints that Stableford and his Co-Director Kate Rolston photographed during their journey “Into the Deep.”

The Andy Zanca Youth Empowerment Program (AZYEP) is an organization based in Carbondale that is run through KDNK Community Radio. The program teaches radio broadcasting to youth in the Roaring Fork Valley.
There are about 30 kids in the program, ages eight to 18, who rotate to do weekly radio shows. The AZYPEP staffers — Stacy Stein and Beth Wysong — partner with local teachers to record student projects and provide opportunities for classes to learn about being on the radio. During the past school year, they have worked with more than 360 different students from various schools.

Folks have been wondering about the dark-gray surface area between the center of the new roundabout at Highway 133 and Main Street and the single-lane roadway that circles it. According to CDOT, here’s the deal. The area between the traffic lane and center is the “apron,” whose purpose is to allow longer-wheel-based vehicles, such as trucks and buses, to negotiate the roundabout by rolling over the small curb that separates it from the driving lane. The apron is not intended for use by vehicles, pedestrians or bicycles.

By Allyn Harvey U.S. Senator Michael Bennet told an audience of nearly 150 area residents that he was ready to draft one piece of legislation to protect the Thompson Divide area from energy development, and another to designate nearly 100,000 acres of public lands in Pitkin and Gunnison Counties as wilderness. Bennet spent an hour […]

By Lynn Burton Sopris Sun Staff Writer After more than two years of public review and 35 public meetings, the Village at Crystal River PUD turned a corner at Tuesday night’s board of trustees meeting. On a 5-0 vote, trustees instructed town staff to draft a document detailing all of the proposed agreements between the […]