Downtowner
I took The Downtowner for the first time last Saturday and highly recommend it. It was a totally positive experience. We need to use it or risk the possibility of losing it in December. Let’s all support this free ride! It can also save you from getting a DUI.
Tips are accepted!
Samantha Hayes
Carbondale

Peace and love at the Fair
Having done tours of duty on the Green Team and selling t-shirts at past Mountain Fairs, I decided to give the Peace Patrol a whirl this year. How tough could that be? Peace is what the Fair’s all about. Not only have I never seen a fight at the Fair, but I’ve never even heard of one.
Veterans of the Fair tell me it wasn’t always that way. In the beginning, the cowboys and the miners liked to bring their hard liquor into the Fair and beat each other up, and they both enjoyed beating up the hippies. Today’s Fair-goers have adopted other intoxicants and an “I love you, man” disposition.
I found the Peace Patrol job delightful. Standing at the Seventh Street gate and welcoming smiling attendees looking forward to a fulfilling experience was like being the greeter at church. We only had to stop one person with a dog and we got no argument from him.
Fred Malo Jr.
Carbondale

Re: Mountain lions
In response to London Lyle’s piece about Initiative 91, “Colorado voters to decide on anti-trophy hunting measure in November,” there is so much false information provided that it’s not really even a news article but rather an opinion piece to push an agenda. There is information spread by Cats Aren’t Trophies Coalition (CATs) that is completely false and the truth needs to be heard by the people versus the full on lies and flat out false information that is put out by CATs to get their measure voted on. So here is some flat truth that is fact-based and should have been researched by the writer.
Samantha Miller was quoted in this article saying, “No one has mountain lion meat in their freezer. There are a lot of ethical hunters who hunt deer and elk that support this campaign. No one’s hunting lions for their meat.” Simple answer: YES THEY ARE. And YES THEY DO HAVE MEAT IN THEIR FREEZERS. Here is the Colorado Parks and Wildlife 2024-2025 regulation for lion harvests: “All edible parts of lions must be properly prepared for human consumption, excluding internal organs. At a minimum, this means the four quarters, tenderloins and backstraps. Internal organs are not considered edible meat”
California banned lion hunting 50 years ago. They used to allow around 250 lions harvested yearly when hunting was legal. Currently, California has to euthanize around the same amount of lions a year due to conflict. Lion populations remain “stable,” yet they have to take out that many lions a year; and they blame conflict mainly on growing human population. But you still have to take out that many lions a year. Hunters did the same thing, ethically, 50 years ago. Now, some guy shoots them in a trap when they are a nuisance and throws the meat in the dump. So their false narrative that lion populations are stable and self controlling in California is actually just hiding the truth that they still have to take out the same amount of lions each year.
Lions, and wolves even, do not control chronic wasting disease (CWD). If they did, the amount of CWD would not be growing, especially in northern states with heavy wolf populations. It’s another lie put out based on “emerging evidence” — no, it’s just a belief someone has because predators only kill the “sick and weak.”
Colorado does need mountain lion hunting. It is not trophy hunting. That is a term used to turn people against it.
Josh Wamboldt
Redstone

Community housing
I am writing to advocate for affordable housing projects in our community. It’s imperative to develop affordable housing to ensure that every individual and family in our community has access to a place to live that is close to where they work.
This spring, Basalt Library staff completed 52 interviews with community members about the needs in our community. This is what we heard: housing, transportation, childcare, healthcare, wages, sustainable growth for our area and not become like Aspen.
As we build more housing, we don’t prioritize affordable housing for people who work here. We prioritize free market housing which often sells to people who don’t work here or reside here. So we’re just compounding the problem of having more people in the area, and people who work here having to drive further to get to work. People want our local governments to protect the quality of life in our area by focusing on slow, sustainable growth and prioritizing housing for people who work here.
None of the people we talked to are averse to change. They all realize that change and growth in our area are a reality. They just want some semblance of a livable community to be protected from unrestrained growth and increasing wealth disparity.
We ask the Basalt Town Council to protect rental housing in the Basalt Center Circle development to protect affordability for people who work in our community.
Amy Shipley (lives in Rifle, works in Basalt)
Basalt Library

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