Archive

  • Locations: News Published

    E-Board recommends expanding ban on plastic bags

    Carbondale’s Environmental Board this week recommended that the town expand its ban on plastic shopping bags to include all businesses, instead of just City Market, the town’s largest grocery store and its biggest generator of sales tax revenues. The E-Board, as it is known, on Monday approved a proposed ordinance to be sent on to the town’s Board of Trustees. It was the E-Board that came up with the town’s existing bag ban, passed in 2011, which outlaws the use of plastic shopping bags by all grocery stores larger than 3,500 square feet, and requires grocery stores to charge a 20-cent fee on any paper grocery bags handed out to customers who do not have a reusable bag for their purchases. A portion of that fee can be retained by the grocer, for use in educating consumers about the bag ban, under the original ordinance. read more →
  • Locations: News Published

    City Market kicks off application process for new store

    With repeated assurances that the action would not carry over to broader approvals or “entitlements” for this or other nearby development proposals, Carbondale’s Board of Trustees on Tuesday agreed to waive a Community Impact Assessment requirement for a planned new 58,000-square foot City Market grocery store, on land once tied to two failed, large-scale development proposals — the Village at Crystal River (VCR) and the Crystal River Market Place (CRMP). The 7.8-acre project site, at the northwest corner of Main Street and Highway 133 on land once owned by the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, also would contain a gas station and a smaller retail building. The grocery store is meant to replace the existing City Market store, which the owner, Kroger Corporation, called “outdated and dysfunctional” in a memo to the trustees. read more →
  • Locations: News Published

    Nepalese expect disaster with upcoming monsoon

    There is a feeling among all the relief workers and local people that when the monsoon hits, so will disaster. The surface has been loosened by earthquakes and prepped to wash away in the rain. “The monsoon is coming” has added a new level of urgency to our work. At the beginning of June. Robin, Collin, Devika and myself went back to the Dalit village, Bonpale, to determine if they wanted to learn to build earth bag houses. We knew we had to pass through Palungtar, the village that previously ignored half of it inhabitants because they were from a lower caste. I felt compelled to go back and deliver the supplies requested by those excluded in an attempt to balance things out, right the social injustice. On one hand it felt good, but on the other I couldn’t help but wonder if this will only perpetuate the caste divisions. Just talking about it, even writing about it is a way of acknowledging that the system is in effect. I believe that if you want to induce major social change, one must begin with the language. “Choose your words carefully.” read more →
  • Locations: News Published

    Cops crack down on Sopris Park booze

    Continuing a zero tolerance policy that started during Dandelion Days, Carbondale police issued three citations for open containers of alcohol at Sunday’s inaugural Summer Music Series concert at Sopris Park. Carbondale resident Sam Schroyer, the recipient of a $130 citation for bringing wine into the park in a plastic bottle, responded by writing a lengthy letter to the town trustees, Police Chief Gene Schilling and Town Manager Jay Harrington that said in part, “My … experience left a very negative impression, and if what happened to me happens to visiting tourists, I believe Carbondale will very rapidly get a bad reputation.” (A short version of the letter is printed on page 2). read more →
  • Locations: News Published

    Carbondale woman cultivating industrial hemp for seeds

    The nascent Colorado hemp industry has gotten a double boost in recent months, with a federal decision that made it legal to import hemp seeds into the state for research purposes, and the production of thousands of pounds of seeds by the Colorado Hemp Project. And here in Carbondale the industry is beginning to take root, as activists start growing their own plots of hemp with the plan of producing seeds for sale to other hopeful hemp farmers. The news that hemp seed can now be imported into Colorado by entities engaged in official research projects was announced on May 11, in a story by KUNC public radio sin Greeley. The story, by former Aspen Public Radio reporter Luke Runyon, revealed that the Colorado Department of Agriculture had received permission from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to import industrial hemp seeds from other countries. read more →
  • Locations: News Published

    Lawyer lauds town over Thompson Divide issues

    Carbondale’s elected leaders were encouraged to keep up the pressure against oil and gas development in the Thompson Divide area during a phone-in discussion with the town’s contract attorney in oil and gas issues, Mike Chiropolos of Denver. “That’s the way this battle is being won,” Chiropolos said at a meeting of the board of trustees on June 9, after he praised the town and its citizens for their activism on behalf of Thompson Divide. The fact that Carbondale is being listened to in the Thompson Divide matter, Chiropolos declared, “really speaks to the resiliency and combativeness” of the local effort. read more →
  • Locations: News Published

    Sun shining on Colorado’s rainbow trout these days

    After being devastated by whirling disease in the 1990s, rainbow trout populations are increasing in most major rivers in the state, thanks to a 20-year effort by Colorado Parks and Wildlife aquatic scientists and biologists. “It’s been a long road, but bringing back populations of fish that were essentially extirpated from Colorado can only be called a huge success,” said George Schisler, CPW’s aquatic research team leader who is based in Fort Collins. The comeback is positive news for anglers who can once again fish for rainbows and brown trout in Colorado’s big rivers and streams. For the past 15 years brown trout have dominated most of the state’s rivers. But since last summer, anglers have reported that they are catching nice-size rainbows in the upper Colorado, Rio Grande, upper Gunnison, Poudre, East, Taylor, Arkansas and Yampa rivers and others. read more →
  • Locations: News Published

    RE-1 board considering tax ballot question

    Parents of children attending the Roaring Fork School District Re-1 are being asked to complete a “parent satisfaction survey,” posted on the school’s website (www.rfsd.k12.co.us), that at the very end asks how parents and the community feel about being asked whether to raise property taxes to pay for school construction. Information about a possible tax question on the November 2015 ballot is available on the website, along with the survey questionnaire and other information. According to the website, the school board talked about putting a tax hike to voters at its May 27 meeting, although no decisions were made at that meeting. read more →
  • Locations: News Published

    Trustees consider cat ordinance, bear fencing

    Carbondale’s avian population took up considerable discussion time at this week’s meeting of the Board of Trustees, in the form of a citizen’s appeal for regulations to keep cats from roaming free and killing wild birds, and a new ordinance requiring residents to install electrified fencing to protect chickens from marauding bears. Long time area resident Mary Harris, president of the Roaring Fork chapter of the Audubon Society, appeared during the citizen-comments portion of the meeting’s agenda to talk about the society’s ongoing campaign to convince cat owners to keep their felines under better control for the sake of local birds. “It’s a huge, basically unrecognized problem,” she said of the annual death rate of wild birds killed by roaming, domesticated cats. She maintained that cats, like dogs, must be controlled in order to prevent depredation of the local bird population. And she showed a photo of her son, walking the family cat on a leash, saying, “It can be done.” read more →
  • Locations: News Published

    Leach withdraws contract request during executive session

    Carbondale Fire Chief Ron Leach, who has served for decades without an employment contract at the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District, recently told the district’s board of directors he wants a contract for his remaining time on the job. But at a special meeting on June 2, after the fire board ran into opposition over its attempt to take Leach’s request behind closed doors, the discussion was moved to the fire board’s next regular meeting, scheduled for June 10. The chair of the fire board, Carbondale Police Chief Gene Schilling, told The Sopris Sun in the wake of the June 2 meeting, “Ron withdrew his request for a contract” after a brief executive session. But, Schilling continued, further discussion will be on the agenda for the June 10 meeting, about the advisability of having a contract in place for the position of chief, which in 2014 carried an annual salary of nearly $115,000. read more →