News

Solar Friendly Communities has awarded the town of Carbondale a Silver Level certification for adopting “best practices” designed to make it faster, easier and more affordable for residents to go solar.
“Carbondale has long been a solar leader…,” said Rebecca Cantwell, senior program director for Solar Friendly Communities.

Carbondale trustees are still a few hits away from putting a fine point on the town’s pot regulations, but they are starting to take shape.
At Tuesday night’s work session, trustees indicated they’ll allow retail outlets to cook and sell products such as marijuana-laced brownies, but to do so will probably require a special use permit. The town might establish zone-district “overlays” to determine where retail marijuana stores can and can’t operate. The trustees decided to measure minimum-allowed distances from pot shops to schools as the public would travel them, rather than as the crow flies. The trustees also instructed staff to draft a memo to address the issue of whether to ask voters to put a 5 percent additional sales tax on legally-sold marijuana.

Nearing the end of July and I haven’t had a day off since the middle of June, won’t have one until late August, and while at first I was staying socially buoyant by going to the Snowmass Concert Series, hanging out with friends and sleeping, more than a few weeks ago I hit full-tilt hustle, became a pinball wizard, and have had my eyes glued to the silver ball of my life bouncing around the bumpers and chutes of various local rivers racking up enough fish, funds and clients to keep me afloat in non-profit-teaching-writing land for another year.

Mountain Fair notes • Off to the CrossFit games • Wyly news • GCSO members excel

CDOT holds 133 open house • Valley View holds blood drive • CMC informs students • RFOV goes 14ers • Pitkin County distributes broadband survey • Bike park open house slated • Library district holds finance meeting • Senior matters starts Chatter Box • Crystal Caucus meets

Send in Mountain Fair memories • Grett heading to Lindenwood • Free yoga session • Renegade Band rehearsal • Sopris Run-off returns • C’dale residents graduate CMC • Dr. Peters joins Red Hill

Faced with escalating costs and at times escalating tempers, Mountain Fair is holding a first-ever lottery for 20 shade-tent spaces this year.
According to the Carbondale Council on Arts and Humanities’ current newsletter, CCAH members who are chosen in the lottery will be charged $100 for a 10’X10′ spot to pitch their open-sided tents during the three-day party, while non-members will pay $125.
Money raised will go toward Mountain Fair creating a “shade structure” or structures that will be put up in years to come to create shade for everybody.

The Carbondale Board of Trustees voted 5-1 to allow a 170-foot-long solar array at the entrance to the Nature Park on Tuesday night, but not before John Foulkrod invoked one of the environmental movement’s most quoted songs.
“We’re paving paradise to put up a parking lot,” said Foulkrod, paraphrasing one of Joni Mitchell’s best-known songs. “ … we’re destroying one of (the most) beautiful things we have left in town.”
Foulkrod voted against the array. Voting for it were Stacey Bernot, John Hoffmann, Elizabeth Murphy, Pam Zentmyer and Allyn Harvey. Frosty Merriott was absent.

Years of planning and discussion between the town of Carbondale and the Colorado Department of Transportation will translate into actual construction this September, when crews begin removing power lines along Highway 133.
Electric, cable TV and fiber-optic lines should be completely relocated and buried by November, opening the door to a major overhaul of the highway itself in April-October 2014. A third traffic lane will be added in the center of the highway to function as a left-turn lane for both northbound and southbound cars, and a new roundabout will take the place of the existing signalized intersection at Main Street and 133.
While they’re at it, crews will also make a series of pedestrian- and bicycle-oriented improvements — adding paved trails and crosswalks to ease travel along the highway and across the highway.

Taking off from a portable 4’x4’ blue helipad with a bright orange H, an eight-rotor remote control helicopter with an HD camera launches into the air. And hovers.
Moments later it skims a farm irrigation system for several hundred yards then swoops higher into the air capturing a shot of Red Hill.
“Let’s get the shot in reverse,” suggests co-owner and pilot Jon Fredericks of Altitude Filmworks to co-owner and camera operator Louis Wilsher.
Swooping backwards through the air in a reverse bell curve the helicopter returns then does a 90-degree jib and flies off toward Spring Gulch while capturing the Colorado Rocky Mountain School’s campus. After a few more fly-overs, Mark Gotfredson, CRMS’s Director of Communications, nods in approval and Fredericks lands the helicopter back on the pad.