Last week I was squandering my time reading Mark and Kym Todd's new novel
(The Silverville Swindle, available from your friendly local bookstore)
rather than recounting GVCA activities. And today I'm just moving in
desultory fashion, so we'll see where we get.

I'll try reverting to the index format, because I gather I'm losing readers
due to the length of my journals. But no matter what the national media --
and many politicans of all stripes -- think, you can't really explain
complicated issues in quick sound bites.

1) Gunnison City Council
    The city is starting to think affordable/essential/attainable/call it
what you will  housing, and is meeting tomorrow at 7 a.m. to discuss this
with the county commissioners. Vacation of streets keeps cropping up, both
to haunt and for the future. And while the city seems relatively flush right
now, a couple of big-time expenses, combined with $4/gallon for tourist gas,
could change that outlook.

2) Gunnison City Planning Commission
    The commission has discussed a truck by-pass to Crested Butte, the
future of A&W, the future of Wal-Mart,  and a 60-unit RV park near the
Willows. If Dick Bratton's original timeline holds forth, the city could be
hearing from him within a month.

3) County Planning Commission
    Housing is springing up everywhere, it seems: Horse River (did I get
that right? The sage-grouse road controvery) has approval; two developments
near Garlic Mike's have been sent to the commissioners for approval, and
more than 30 dwelling units are being proposed for Fairway Lane in Dos Rios.
And let's not forget the fireplaec regs revisitation.

4) Detention Facility
    Most of this has been well-covered in the Times, but the committee is
wrestling with ways to achieve public buy-in, either through a forum or
perhaps via survey, or not at all.

5) RE-1J
    Again, the big push here is to get the public to understand that neither
the local bond nor Referendum C has left the district awash in cash.

6) Community Clean-up
    Yeaaa!! We're big winners, and now so too will the Food Pantry benefit.
We are encouraging folks, both GVCA members and non, to increase our
donation. We're just going to turn our winning greenbacks, along with any
additional cash donations (I imagine we'd take food/paper products/diapers
as well), to the Food Pantry to dispose of as it sees fit. For a discussion
of "recharge," see more information later.

7) Sales tax funding
    Champions of a public swimming pool and improved hockey amentities have
teamed together to suggest an additional 1% city sales tax to help fund
these items. Apparently, trail establishment/maintenance has also been added
to the package. But that still leaves the county library out there alone.

8) Health Care
    This one has dropped off our radar, largely because the problem feels so
very much bigger than a small community group. But a couple of notes: the
League of Women Voters will be hosting a health care forum on June 7, and
the May 1 US News & World Report has an article on health clinics sprouting
up in retail stores such as Target (no mention of Wal-mart). Apparently you
can now buy health insurance from both Costco and Sam's Club.

Okay, so I think those are the high points. I guess I'll have to send out
each topic under individual headings, and most of them will have to wait for
another day. I'll see if I can't get to one.

TL

1) Gunnison City Council
    The city is starting to think affordable/essential/attainable/call it
what you will  housing, and is meeting tomorrow at 7 a.m. to discuss this
with the county commissioners. Vacation of streets keeps cropping up, both
to haunt and for the future. And while the city seems relatively flush right
now, a couple of big-time expenses, combined with $4/gallon for tourist gas,
could change that outlook.


Council is meeting with commissioners, planning to discuss three different
topics (changing the zoning of the courthouse, is one, and something else),
but the thinking is that -- much like the GVCA's own meeting, which ran over
by 44 minutes yesterday -- housing could occupy much of the discussion.

City Manager Ken Coleman has handed council memebers a notebook with CB and
Mt. CB's policies, as well as suggestions from elsewhere. The Gunnison
Contractors' Association has a letter from March, but most of those concerns
have already been pulled from the county proposal.

The formula for "affordable" is that you should be spending one-third of
your monthly income on housing, including your taxes and insurance. This
includes rent as well as mortgages.

One suggestion that has come up at the council level is that the city pay
for infrastructure, but I, for one, am not in favor of that. I've watched a
lot of projects get proposed and never grow to fruition, and I've watched
the ebb and flow of housing prices around here long enough to be leery of
assuming good fortune will last forever. A better answer, to me, would be
that the developer pay the costs up front, and the city rebate those costs
as the development fills in.

The city needs to be watching its money, anyway. Sales tax is up 10%, yes,
but the bid for the Rio Grande sewer project (which will tear up Rio Grande
Aveue for two consecutive summers) came in at $200,000 over budget, and the
city's health insurance fund (it's self-insured) owes over $100,000 to the
general fund. If gas, which already is $2.95 here (I read in one of my
magazines that San Diego's gas is more expensive than ours), goes much
higher, it may keep people closer to home this summer.

Or not: I just read that commutes are getting longer and people are spending
more time on the road in pursuit of some twisted version of the American
Dream, one that has them working 12-14 hours and never seeing their children
but gee don't we live in a great giant suburban house.

However, Atmos is reporting a very low collection rate for March: natural
gas was more expensive than people could afford. So, tourists may have to
make a choice: do I pay my natural gas bill, or fill up the tank and head to
Gunnison? And we shouldn't forget the Times' gripping reportage from the
Gulf Coast: a lot of people who used to be tourists now don't even have a
car from which to be a tourist.

As long as inland boomers still have money, maybe Gunnison will be okay. But
relying on sales tax can often be a roulette-wheel sort of proposition. If
it comes down black, great. But remember: red occupies half the spaces on
the wheel.

Oh, and I forgot street vacation, but I need to get moving, and that will
fit well under my planning commission report, which hopefully happens
tomorrow.

TL

2) Gunnison City Planning Commission
    The commission has discussed a truck by-pass to Crested Butte, the
future of A&W, the future of Wal-Mart,  and a 60-unit RV park near the
Willows. If Dick Bratton's original timeline holds forth, the city could be
hearing from him within a month.

And I forgot to include street vactions in the council report, so I'll start
there.

On this morning's agenda for the meeting (which has by now happened, but I
didn't witness it) between council memebers and county commissioners, this
was the third point of discussion, which they may not have gotten to.

The streets that theoretically run through the rodeo grounds have never been
formally vacated, so I suppose technically that the city is entitled to put
them in, should it want.

Now, over on Pine Street between the former Blackstock and O'Leary schools,
that was vacated, but with a stipulation that the street will revert to the
city should the use of the buildings change to something more conducive to
street use. (I'm sure the language is much better and far more tehcnical
than that.)

In many other areas around town, though, previous (and they could pre-date
this council by decades; I have no timeline) councils have freely
glad-handed away many of the city's rights-of-way. Regaining those
rights-of-way, which are used not only for streets and traffic but also
utility placement, coudl prove ruinously expensive.

And not gaining the rights-of-way could result in awful traffic patterns and
an unworkable utility grid.

For instance, in West Gunnison, the city has lost most, if not all, of the
possible north-south accesses. If the area ends up with residentially
development, residents could have to make serpentine treks to get home.
Sewage flow could be at issue as well.

The street vacation issue also haunted planning commission this week, when
the Gunnison Home Association proposed opening a plot of ground near the
Willows Residential Area to senior RV'ers. Because many local RV parks are
closed down, the GHA is thinking this might be a need it could fulfill,
while also helping draw down some of the red ink in its books.

The proposed park will have 60 spaces, each of them double the existing
required width. Don Crosby of the GHA explained that part of the reason some
of these other parks have closed down is their inability to accommodate
larger RVs that are popular today.

The biggest concern seemed to be traffic patterns. Roads are small anyway
down there, and because of previous vacations, the city has no ability to
provide any sort of circular access, now or in the future. All the rigs will
have to enter and exit via Third Street.

I assume -- I missed the start of the topic via television because I was at
the revived GHS Portfolio Night, which was a lot of fun -- that this project
is in sketch plan phase, although I could be mistaken. At any rate, the GHA
got approval to move forward with the next step, whatever that might be.

The previous week at commission, which I also missed because I was in dance
rehearsal (and if you missed it, fear not: National Tap Day is May 25, and
there will be a reprise of all the tap numbers, plus several new ones, at
the high school that night), the commission reviewed the concept of a truck
by-pass east of town, connecting Highways 50 and 135 without sending the big
trucks through downtown. (Like the one in Montrose.)

Steve Westbay's first suggestion for a location was met with objections from
Dick Bratton, who has been attending and participating in many of the master
plan meetings.

However, the point may be moot: CDOT apparently isn't inclined to help with
this sort of project, so the funding would have to come from the City of
Gunnison. Maybe when we end up with so much money that we don't know what to
do with it . . .

Steve also reported that the owners of A&W, whose family has certainly been
hit by hard and bad luck of late, are not going to reopen. I don't know if
he said whether the building would be torn down, or put on the market as is,
or some other option not occurring to me.

Steve also reported -- and this was the entirety of his report -- that he
had heard from the local Wal-Mart manager, who was planning to contact the
district Wal-Mart manager to pursue the possibility of expansion.

And last on my list is even less a definitive report than that, but just to
note that Dick, who has been a faithful attendee, had originally set his
timeline to bring forth a proposed project east of town within a month or so
of right now. Whether he's on his timeline or not, we probably won't know
until he either bring in a proposal. Or he doesn't, in which case we know
he's off his timeline.

That's today's report.

TL