News

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 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 […]

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 […]

The Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District’s draft budget for 2015 dips in to reserves to the tune of approximately $700,000 and also for the first time spells out in easy-to-understand language where some of the funds are, and aren’t, going.

Bridges High School was founded 18 years ago by Michael Blaire. He went door to door looking for students who hadn’t completed high school and convinced them to come back and try it again. At first, the school was housed at Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood.

Garfield County residents returned Republican Tom Jankovsky to the Garfield County Board of County Commissioners with almost 59 percent of the vote over Democratic challenger Michael Sullivan on Tuesday.
Jankovsky will re-join fellow Republicans John Martin and Mike Samson on the three-member board.

The Basalt-based Roaring Fork Conservancy, and the Aspen Center for Environmental studies, were recently picked to help advise the state on implementing its first-ever Colorado Environmental Education plan, according to a press release.
The Colorado Department of National Resources, and Colorado Department of Education, chose RFC and ACES as one of several organizations to comprise the new Colorado Environmental Education Council, whose mission is to implement the new Colorado Environmental Education Plan (CEEP).
“The council is bringing together innovative, creative thought leaders from all different sectors who share a passion for advancing education and helping students learn about the environment where they live,” said Katie Navin, executive director of the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education.

Carbondale folks love their trails, and may be willing to hike taxes for them and other recreation-related facilities.
That’s one take on a just-released recreation survey the town will use in drafting a new 10-year master plan for recreation facilities and programs.
A whopping 761 surveys were completed and returned to the town, which planning firm Design Workshop said is “more than double the amount needed to be statistically significant for Carbondale.”
Among the survey’s highlights:
• 73 percent of the respondents use the paved trail system every day, followed by 29 percent for dog parks, 24 percent for playgrounds in town parks, and 22 percent for athletic fields.
• 75 percent of the respondents strongly support or somewhat support a ¼ cent sales-tax hike to maintain the current level of service.

Carbondale artist Mark Yale Harris is living proof that it is never too late to follow your dreams. His resume lists more than 220 solo, museum and international exhibitions featuring his sculptures. In the past 10 years, his work has also been featured in 85 publications as well as in three books. Most recently, his sculptures have been exhibited at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; the Red Brick Center for the Arts in Aspen; and the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon. Such a large body of work might suggest a lifetime of creating art, but that has not been the case for Harris. It’s true that he had a lifelong passion for art, but the road to fulfilling that passion took many turns.

A spat between neighbors in old-town Carbondale, which in part evokes differing interpretations of the town’s historically relaxed and “funky” appearance, has erupted in recent meetings of the town’s board of trustees and sent town staffers searching into allegations of zoning code violations by one or the other neighbor.
The spat that got it all started is between Veronica Whitney and Charlie Wertheim, 660 Lincoln Ave., and their neighbors, Julia Farwell and David Galey, who live at 188 N. Seventh St. (at the corner of 7th and Lincoln).
Their properties are adjacent to each other in the 600 block of Lincoln Avenue next to the Carbondale Recreation Center. Both properties are just south of an area of town affectionately called “The Architects’ Ghetto,” due to the number of architects who built distinctive homes there in the late 1990s and early 2000’s.