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If you think the Department of Motor Vehicles is the worst kind of bureaucracy, you might ask Jesus Ortiz about his 17-year journey to citizenship. “It’s been hard,” he’ll tell you. “It’s not just sending in an application. It’s a long, long process.” Ortiz, 46, has been part of Carbondale’s Public Works crew since 2012 and officially became an American in April, an accomplishment he credits largely to his sponsor, former Pour House Manager Skip Bell.

Local music lovers this Friday will once again get the chance to watch, listen to and dance to a sampling of Western Slope bands on the stage at the Fourth Street Plaza, as well as to music performed at several downtown bars and establishments — all timed to coincide with the First Friday celebration for July. The 17th Annual Mt. Sopris Music Fest, put together by well-known Carbondale impresario Steve Standiford of Steve’s Guitars fame, starts at 5 p.m. with the Lookout Mountain Showdown, which KDNK music director Luke Nestler in April called “a promising new string band from Glenwood Springs.”

After consuming over 100 acres in a few hours on July 3, the Grand Hogback Fire near New Castle appears to have laid down and stayed put with at least 50 percent containment, according to Garfield County Sheriff’s Office Spokesman Walt Stowe.
“It didn’t really spread much beyond that,” he said. “We had a good breeze through come through (July 4) that would have flared anything up that wasn’t pretty well out.”

The Aspen Music Festival summer season opens June 29, and if $60 to see Arnaud Sussmann and Wu Han that evening seems steep, don’t worry — there are plenty of events in keeping with a downvalley budget.
Chief among them is a free concert in memory of Carbondalian Mary Crouch Lilly, which features the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra playing Verdi, Kraft and Brahms at 4 p.m. July 3 at the Benedict Music Tent (960 N 3rd St, Aspen).

Arbaney Park in Basalt was probably the happiest, happenist place in town on the evening of June 22, with dozens of Buddy Program mentors and mentees chowing down on potluck picnics and pizza, slugging down soft drinks, swarming around on cool green grass, playing games and engaging in various ball-related activities, chasing each other and generally having a good time under clear skies and pleasant temperatures.

The troubled Carbondale Marketplace development proposal, on a parcel of land adjacent to the intersection of Highway 133 and Main Street, has been granted its sixth extension in a year and a half for the submission of critical documents that must be filed before any development can proceed on the property. The approval of the 90-day extension for filing a final plat for the project, however, came only after the Board of Trustees (BOT) listened to a litany of problems outlined by spokesmen for the project’s development partnership.

This is not the end for Dandelion Market — but for a moment it sure looked like it might be. A few weeks ago, the 10-year-old local food cooperative, which hasn’t turned a profit since 2013, is tens of thousands of dollars in debt to vendors and staff and is expected to be out of its current location on July 1, was facing the possibility of bankruptcy.

As the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District works on its budget for the coming year, one unknown factor continues to be the question of whether the district will ask voters this fall for a tax hike in 2018, to make up for the impending expiration of a two-year, temporary mill levy increase approved by voters in 2015. A preliminary budget for 2018, provided by Fire Chief Ron Leach, shows how the district’s finances would look if a tax question does not make it onto the ballot this fall.

When Marty Silverstein moved to the Roaring Fork Valley from New York area in 1990, there were no opportunities for him to do the kind of computer consulting he’d done back East.
“The closest place was Denver,” Silverstein told The Sopris Sun, and he wanted to live in the Roaring Fork Valley. Part of the rest of the story is one that’s been told up and down the Roaring Fork Valley for decades. Armed with a BS in political science and a minor in business administration, he eventually landed a job paying $7 an hour (plus a ski pass) at the Aspen airport.

July 2, 1987: An article by William D. Jochems reported that John Riger of the Crystal River Fish Hatchery, and Barry Stout (a rancher south of Silt), were developing a method of cryopreserving (freezing) trout semen. The purpose of the freezing was to increase production of the Tasmania strain of rainbow trout at the hatchery.