Third Street update
Dear Town Trustees and Carbondale Community Members,
On behalf of the Third Street Center Board of Directors, I extend our gratitude for your unwavering support in providing winter shelter to Venezuelan immigrants, who, until early November, found refuge under the main bridge leading into our town.
The urgency of this situation required immediate action, and we are proud to have been able to offer shelter to up to 60 newcomers at the Third Street Center. Our gratitude extends to Voces Unidas for their indispensable, hands-on management of the shelter, the People’s Clinic for their guidance during the recent COVID outbreak, and our 36 tenants for their understanding and support amidst the changes to their work environment. Our gratitude also extends to the understanding of our neighbors. The overwhelming support from numerous community members and non-profits, providing food, clothing, and resources, has been a testament to the strength and compassion of our community.
As we approach the year’s end, the Third Street Center will have operated an emergency temporary shelter for eight weeks. Balancing our roles as a community center and an emergency shelter has placed significant demands on our staff, tenants, and neighbors. The increased usage has led to challenges such as the relocation of scheduled Community Hall events, strained facilities (especially restrooms), and heightened maintenance needs, exacerbated by the COVID outbreak.
These challenges underscore the unsustainability of this situation. Looking forward to 2024, our goal is to return to our core mission: fostering community and sustainability by providing affordable office space for non-profit tenants and hosting community events in our solar powered facility. Third Street Center is one of the busiest facilities in the region with thousands of tenant programs and community events each year. Our core mission is an indispensable service to our community and region.
The Town of Carbondale is actively working to establish publicly-funded shelters. In alignment with this effort, the Third Street Center Board has decided on a phased closure of our temporary emergency shelter in Community Hall with transitioning of the newcomers to more adequate town-operated facilities. We anticipate relocating 20 individuals from our shelter by January 5, 2024, with the remainder transitioning by January 19, 2024.
The recent weeks have heightened regional awareness of the broader challenge facing U.S. communities regarding supporting unhoused immigrants. Carbondale is not alone in this and we won’t be the last to face it. We urge the Carbondale Trustees and regional officials to proactively address the needs of the unhoused beyond this current crisis. This is a critical issue requiring regional and state attention and action so our community does not find itself in a similar situation next winter.
We deeply appreciate your commitment to sheltering newcomers in our community. This public health emergency calls for a comprehensive response at all governmental levels – local, county, state, and federal.
Sincerely,
Chris McDowell, President, Third Street Center Board of Directors
Kathy Feinsinger
Garret Jammaron
John Lund
Frank McSwain
Andrea Stewart (Third Street Tenant Liaison)
Luis Yllanes (Town Trustee Liaison)
Re: Gaza ceasefire
I wrote a guest opinion in last week’s issue about the war in Gaza, arguing Americans were in a unique position to stop the war and restart peace talks. I referred to the repeated U.S. vetoes of ceasefire resolutions in the U.N. Security Council, increasingly at odds with the rest of the world. Indeed, on Friday, a Security Council resolution passed that the Biden Administration had succeeded in watering down, making sure the wording “cessation of hostilities” was changed to simply, “extended pauses and humanitarian corridors,” which Israel will ignore. Aid groups were quick to point out the obvious: they can’t distribute aid while bombs still fall from the sky.
The United States continues to be the lone nation standing in the way of an end to Israel’s assault on the 2.2 million people of Gaza. Israel’s military has killed 20 times the number of innocent Palestinians as the number of innocent Israelis Hamas killed on Oct. 7. Half of Gazans are facing starvation. All are facing disease. Even if there was a ceasefire tomorrow, it will take an enormous international humanitarian effort to provide food, water and medicine to Gaza, the open-air prison they were living in now utterly leveled, as high Israeli officials promised. And only the United States, which provides 15% of Israel’s military budget and automatic veto power at the U.N. can pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire. Which is why it’s more vital than ever that we call our Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper and Representative Boebert, none of whom are among the 63 members of Congress who support a ceasefire resolution. And join Ceasefire Now RFV, a group of citizens in the valley working for an immediate ceasefire and massive humanitarian aid to Gaza. Follow us on Instagram: @CeasefireNowRFV
Will Hodges
Carbondale
Christmas cheer
A couple of days before Christmas, I found myself at City Market in Carbondale looking for last-minute items. I was cruising the aisles when two young boys, along with their parents, walked toward me and one young boy handed me a card saying, “Here, this is for you. Merry Christmas!”
I was left speechless, which anyone who knows me will now shout, “Impossible!”
But I was, and I stammered, “Why? What for and how come?”
The sweet young boy just said, “Oh, because it’s Christmas.”
I profusely thanked them, still in shock that anyone would just hand me what turned out to be a gift card to City Market, totally unprovoked and, I might add, undeserved. They walked off and I tried to gather my senses. I then followed them to say that I really did not deserve this and that they should give this gift card to a more deserving and in-need person, to which the dad replied, “Ok then, go find that person.”
I asked the boys for permission to pay it forward and they agreed. I was once again left standing in utter disbelief as now I opened the gift card and saw that it was for a whopping $50! The responsibility that card bestowed on me was made clear as I continued cruising the aisles, but this time looking for a person that could truly use a wonderful Christmas present, and that turned out not so easy a task.
I did want to do right by those two wonderful boys and their parents and find a deserving person to appreciate their largesse of heart. I found a gentleman who deserved this gift more than I did and upon handing him the card he looked just as baffled and shocked as I did a few minutes earlier and asked the same, “Why? What for and how come?” He was apprehensive at first to take the card and I came to find out he had macular degeneration and could not read the card. I explained the value of the gift card to be used right in this very store and his face lit up once I told him that two boys meant for him to have a wonderful and merry Christmas.
Those boys and their parents made my Christmas, their thoughtfulness and giving nature made my heart swell. I wish I had asked their names but, truth be told, I was so flabbergasted that all common sense left me standing in that aisle.
Most grateful and happy,
Mogli Cooper
Carbondale
Remembering Vince
In the early 1990s, Kate Marra, who was working in the Public Works Department, established the Carbondale Tree Board under the U.S. Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry Program. For 29 years, it was Vince Urbina, the community forester for the Western Slope, who guided us and taught many people in our valley about tree planting and pruning through workshops and Arbor Day planting demonstrations. He died too soon, on Nov. 29, and I keep thinking of him in this season, which holds an illuminated tree at its core.
Vince taught us how to choose, plant and care for trees in a town environment. He touched thousands of them in his career, from the three-inch sprout of an acorn collected from what he considered to be the finest burr oak on the Western Slope to the pot bound roots in a vast nursery near Fort Collins and finally to the charred arboreal remains of wildfire. He was the best investment the USDA ever made. Every town in Western Colorado that posts a Tree City sign at its entry can thank Vince Urbina for helping it craft a tree program designed specifically to resonate with its own citizens. He taught us that dead trees support more life forms than live ones, but he hated to see a perfect tree in the prime of life being cut down because it had been planted in the wrong place or because development couldn’t see a way to work around it. He was never one to criticize, however. His agenda was simple: to cultivate the natural longing he saw in people to plant a tree.
You were a good man, Vince, and I hope we will honor you by taking care of our trees.
Olivia Emery
Former Tree Board member
Forest Service
Recently, and a few times on radio news, I have heard that the Forest Service is cooperating with different places and peoples on projects in the works. How is it that the project in downtown Carbondale is an exception? First Friday, Jan. 5, meet at the Forest Service site and bring a light to shine on our trees and buildings.
Richard Vottero
Carbondale
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