GVCA Journal for 05/01/05
Summary:

1) The long-awaited, promised Mark Collins report
    The city manager spoke to the candidates at the GVCA-sponsored candidate
briefing, and touched on several issues the council will need to focus on.

2) Design standards first reading
    I know we keep asking folks to attend meetings, telling you this one's
important, that one's important, but there's another meeting this Thursday
-- yes, Thursday, at 7 p.m.: city council will conduct the first reading of
the design standards ordinance. If the council votes it down, the moratorium
will be over and there will be no standards.

3) Election
    The ballot count received at city hall as of Monday is 557. Another 300
or so were returned as undeliverable, which leaves something like 1900 at
large. Don't forget to vote, and don't forget to vote only for candidates
you actually believe in, even if that's only one, two or three of them.
There are write-in spaces for your other votes, if you feel the need to cast
all four.

4) Farmers' Market
    Ah, here's a sticky wicket. Based on Sunday's meeting our representative
has already sent an e-mail to last year's organizer, telling him we had
volunteered to take this on in December, but that May is too late. Some GVCA
members have a concern that this could result in no farmers' market this
summer, and are still eyeing a contingency plan, should last year's
organizers not pick their own ball back up.

Details:
Gory yet quick details:

1) Mark Collins Report
    The candidate briefing we hosted awhile back featured three speakers:
Wendy Hanson addressed budget issues; Diane Lothamer spoke about planning
issues; and Mark Collins, filling in for Stu Ferguson, covered the rest of
the territory.

Primarily, Gunnions is a full-service municipality, so the council is
responsible for overseeing water, sewer, wastewater treatment, electric
distribution (which goes beyond the city, as do the sewer lines), and
maintenance.

A big-budget item is streets and infrastructure. The city spends up to
$500,000 annually on streets. Mark talked about utilizing consultants with
high-tech equpment to find the problems before they become big. Next year
(2006) will be a large expenditure on New York and Rio Grande streets, to
get ready for the detours in 2007, caused by CDOT's rebuild and overlay of
both Highways 50 and 135. The city has no say over those two roads, which
are owned by the state.

Mark talked about the importance of regionalism and intergovernmental
cooperation to maximize dollars and resources. Included in that was
recognition of the importance of WSC as both an economic and cultural
resource.

He talked about the new acquisitions of city equipment, 'the right tools the
the right jobs,' and a state-of-the-art communications system that is shared
with the county.

He noted all of this has been done without a sales tax increase, except for
the RTA funds, which all go, every year, to airlines. The last property tax
increase was in 1992.

The candidates were reminded that water is always an issue, but that the
city has retained Tim Beaton, whom Mark referred to as "one of the best
water attorneys."

The other issue this council will address soon after their watch begins is a
new police chief. Last I heard, 30 candidates had applied, and there might
be others who come over from the Montrose applicant pool, since that city is
also searching for a police chief. Both searches are being conducted by the
consultant whose name I've forgotten, but who also supervised the Mt. CB
city manager search, which resulted in long-time local and interim manger
Joe Fitzpatrick getting the job.


2) Design Standards
    Despite the outpouring of support for the design standards, and the
total lack of public opposition since January, the GVCA still has concerns
that members of this council might vote against the proposed ordinance. if
the vote is 3-2 against, then the standards will die right there. A new
council could revive them, but the moratorium will be over, and if an
applicant comes in before the ordinance is passed, it will not be required
to follow the standards.

It's entirely possible we're being paranoid, but we are hoping that people
turn out so that the council doesn't conduct this vote in front of a limited
audience. The meeting is at 7 p.m. on Thursday in council chambers, and I
would urge attendees to be there shortly before that, since I don't really
anticipate much discussion before the vote.


3) Election
    Just another reminder to vote, and to remind you to remind your friends
and neighbors to vote. Gail Davidson is assuming people are traditionalists
and are still waiting for the official election day, which is May 10. But
don't do what I tend to do, which is mark the day and then forget all about
it until the day after. Get your ballots in! And remember, you should only
vote for candidates you feel confident in. Frequently, the candidates that
no one really feels strongly about are the ones who get elected, because
they end up being everyone's fourth vote.

If you or your friends have questions abou the candidates,  GVCA members
have been monitoring candidate presentations and would be happy to discuss
the issues and what candidates have said about them. And I'm sure the Times
would be happy to give you a copy of their candidate response section, in
which all of the candidates address 11 questions posed by the Times. We
really want to thank the Times and its staff for all of its effort to get
voters informed.


4) Farmers' Market
    In December, last year's organizers of the Gunnison Farmers' Market went
before city council to report a successful first year and to say that they
didn't think they'd be around, and some other organization such as Main
Street or the chamber should take over the market. Main Street is now
officially defunct, and I don't know that anyone ever formally took this
idea to the chamber.

We contacted the organizers and suggested we might take it over for them. It
took the organizers over a month to get back to our initial inquiry, and by
then they had decided they might stay on. We offered them our information
and were told they already knew everything there was to know about running a
farmers' market.

Then, after another month went by, they recanted and allowed a how they
might want some help. We offered to take over the PR. After another lengthy
pause, we were given orders but no budget, timing or information.

The organizers advertised a meeting here in Gunnison, and three or four
people showed up, including Karen, representing the GVCA -- but the
organizers never appeared.

Karen sent another e-mail; after a couple of weeks, she received a reply
that they got busy and couldn't make the meeting. They never did reply to
our requests for more information regarding PR.

Then the organizers sent another e-mail saying that one of the three of them
wanted us to take over, and he hadn't checked with the other two.

After discussion on Sunday, Karen sent, at our direction, an e-mail telling
the organizer that we would have been happy to do this in December, but May
is too late.

Now, we do have concerns about the farmers' market being dropped altogether.
We are no longer interested in obtaining anything from last year's
organizers, but might not be opposed to starting from scratch. However, we
don't want to do this if the organizers are going to go ahead with their
market.

We also don't want to get into legal trouble or way out of pocket without
finding some facts out first. Right now we need to know what an organizer's
liabilities would be. So we may do a little more research, but a lot of it
hinges on what last year's organizers are going to do. Given their response
time on everything else, we're not sure what to do, or when might be an
appropriate time to decide that they're doing nothing. By then, it may well
be too late to put anything together for this summer.

If anyone has any advice or suggestions, we're willing to listen. We do not
want the GVCA's name affiliated with something that will be disastrous, but
we do see this as an event that fits into our mission statement of
supporting local endeavors.

And that's the confused report from here.

TL