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The Roaring Fork School District Board of Education voted unanimously on April 12 to approve Superintendent Rob Stein’s controversial selection for Roaring Fork High School principal, among other items on the routine personnel consent agenda.

There were several plumes of smoke in the air on April 7 when Brad Palmer, caretaker for the HHH property just east of Carbondale, set to work burning a ditch he’d cleaned out many times before.
He could have moved the bales of hay in the back of the nearby barn, or started with the tall grass on the outside of the barn’s wide slats to create a firebreak before things really got going. He could have scooted the tank of water a little further into the back of his pickup or called one of his neighbors with a full sprayer setup to help.
“Hindsight is 20/20,” he said later. “There’s probably 10 ways I could have done it different … I was just too complacent.”

Carbondale’s town leaders on April 11 agreed to “intervene” on behalf of federal land managers in a court fight over a recent decision to cancel oil drilling leases in the controversial Thompson Divide region southwest of town.But the Board of Trustees declined to take a second step that, according to Mayor Dan Richardson, would have gotten the town involved in the litigation in a much more direct way.
“I was comfortable saying ‘no’ and following Jay’s (Town Manager Jay Harrington) recommendation, until we can get more information,” said Richardson in a telephone interview the following morning.

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.

No people or livestock were hurt when a ditch burning got out of control on April 7 and spread to a nearby barn. Carbondale and Rural Fire Department officers responding to a call from the barn’s owner at 11:48 a.m. found the barn almost fully engulfed in flames, and the roof collapsed shortly thereafter.

Five reps and five sets of sit-ups, burpees, air squats and 50 meter sprints gave second graders at Crystal River Elementary School a good taste of what a real workout is when two coaches from Sopris CrossFit came by on April 3 to share the importance of being physically active and get them excited for an upcoming project.

Several dozen valley residents turned up at Pitkin County’s open house on March 30 at Basalt Town Hall, eager to learn more about and contribute ideas to the county’s plans for the property known as the Emma Townsite and Emma Open Space. The open house was called to gather public input about how to approach management of the roughly 72-acre property, which actually comprises two distinct areas straddling Highway 82 near where it crosses over the Roaring Fork River west of Basalt.

In a rapid-fire delivery laced with anecdotes and humor, Mike Johnston, the 42-year-old former Colorado state senator who in January was the first state Democrat to announce his run for governor’s seat, spent about an hour with Carbondale constituents on April 4. He told more than 100 voters about his background in education, his determination to help immigrants get a better deal in everything from school to jobs, and his campaign plan to create “local leadership teams” around the state who can help him learn more about what the voters want from their government.