notsonew

This page is an "archive" feature; an "attic" for "what's new" entries which are a month or more old.

Community cleanup Saturday April 14 was a success! About 24 people showed up for our group. The quantity of trash was less than last year so we finished up in good time for our brunch at the River Park . Below are some photos from the event (I only took 5 or 6.)

Latest news (thanks, Karen!) Tuesday: we won the community group prize.

It will be Gunnison Bucks, which we will donate (more about this later.)

Long streets, not so much trash

We got done fairly early!

Resting backs after picking up lots of cigarette butts

Here is the letter given to the Gunnison County Electric Association; it was sent to the GVCA email list earlier. And here is the letter sent to the Gunnison Country Times March 20.

This is a new page for additional information about technical issues affecting the GCEA contract.

Here is a copy of the letter sent by webmaster to Sen. Salazar and others

HERE ARE DOCUMENTS ABOUT THE CHARTER SCHOOL APPLICATION FROM RICHARD KARAS:
1) This is the formal application for the Louden Mullen Charter School (45 pages pdf)
2) Here is the School District's review of this application (recommending rejection)
3) Here are comments by Richard Karas (as a school board member)
4) This is the budget page annotated by R. Karas
5) Here is the outline of a sample "Expedition" (added later)

AND HERE ARE DOCUMENTS FROM HEIDI FINN FROM THE CHARTER SCHOOL:
1) These are the school's replies to the comments (3) by R. Karas above (also forwarded to me by R. K.); original .doc.
2) Here is a reply to the budget comments; This is the .doc file submitted
3) Here is the original budget submitted (see R.K. annotations above), here in the original .xls format

Here are a couple of pictures from the Earth Day cleanup. We won! (largest number of collectors!)

Victory! (well, mostly)
Gunnison County results (from Gunnison Valley Yes on C & D Taskforce)

C - 3549 yes, 1518 no (70% yes)
D - 3296 yes, 1758 no (65% yes)
(Richard Karas points out Gunnison's C winning margin is about 4.5 % of the total statewide margin!)

Statewide results (from Denver Post)

C - 576,339 yes, 531,309 no (52% yes)
D - 545,337 yes, 559,203 no (49.4% yes)

Congratulations to the Gunnison Valley Yes on C & D Taskforce, and many others!
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Copied over October 18, left in "new" since June 16:
The GVCA has started on new enterprises. We came to a fork in the road and took all three ways! Please check out what we are doing and join us in new efforts! See Summary Journal (June 5) for more details.
Briefly:

1) We will continue to be vigilant on design standards, especially with recent reports of some interest by Walmart. It has been suggested we push for design standards at the county level in the LUR.

2) We will have a Farmers' Market in Gunnison this year, with a new organization The Gunnison Farmers' Market "sponsored" by GVCA with some financial help and volunteeers. It's progressing very rapidly. Look for advertising soon!

3) Many of us are interested in helping with Terry Bonney's initiative to improve the range of health insurance options in Gunnison. Stay tuned for future developments.

Of course there are other possible GVCA initiatives on the horizon, such as referenda C and D this Fall. See the June 5 summary for details. If you are concerned about GVCA being spread too thin, the answer is to get more people involved... the new initiatives ought to draw in people who may have been less interested in our original activities. Please join us and/or become more active!

Copied June 6:

Here is the advertising poster for the Health Fair Benefit at Farrells' April 2; and here are the results! See the $1500 check being presented. A great success!

Fiscal Impact Study reference: http://www.civiceconomics.com/Gunnison/Gunnison_Impact_Study.pdf. It's 80+ pages though.

04/05/05 article in Rocky Mountain News about Lakewood's costly mistake (their city budget involved a big rebate to Wal-mart but didn't anticipate the revenue loss from a closed store!)

Vicki Roach Archuleta passes to us this very relevant Denver Post guest commentary, "In a hole? Stop digging!" by Bob Powell, interestingly enough from Colorado Springs. (I suppose living there maybe radicalizes some.)

You may want to read the "State of the City" speech by the Mayor of Salt Lake City this January; use the link above or see the "links" page. This discusses several issues of concern to Gunnison and the GVCA.

Older:

Note on the "links" page and here a link to the "letters" section of the Gunnison Country Times. This also is an archive for a few weeks back; GVCA letters currently available for viewing are "A Plan for Fiscal Stability" by Richard Karas and "GVCA thoughts on tax incentives" by Ellen Harriman. Scroll down "Letters" to find them.

In connection with the recent joint meeting of the City Council and the Planning and Zoning
Commission , we have added a page (click on the entry tag at the left) on "Gunnison Design
Standards Examples", which shows many existing cases of the proposed design standards
being already followed here as a matter of common sense.

Note the page (at left) "Ask Walmart". We may be able to get answers from
a Wal-Mart representative to at least some of our questions. We will post your questions and,
we, hope, the answers on this page. We've posted some of the questions we came up
with in our group, to get you started.

Here are the sales tax figures for the City of Gunnison kindly provided by the Finance Department.
They roughly reflect our local economic status, aside from changes in the sales tax rate such as
in 1982.   Note that Alco opened in 1986 (?), the new City Market opened in 1996 (?), and
Wal-Mart opened in late 1990.   An unconfirmed estimate is that there was about $400,000 total
sales tax rebate involved in the City Market move and upgrade. Does anyone know why sales tax
collections jumped nearly $1 million 1994 to 1995?   Was there a change in the tax rate?
Also note the total is nearly constant since 2000.

SEE OUR PRESS RELEASE AND RESULTS OF COMPARISON SHOPPING BELOW!

PRESS RELEASE 11/16/04               From GUNNISON VALLEY COMMUNITY ALLIANCE

         In an effort to compare retail prices, several members of the Gunnison Valley Community Alliance went shopping at 12 nationally-owned stores in Gunnison, Salida, Montrose and Delta.

         The shoppers’ mission was to purchase 12 items ranging from diapers to green beans to laundry detergent, choosing the cheapest alternative on the shelves. All items were then donated to the Gunnison Food Bank.

          The Gunnison Valley Community Alliance is a grassroots organization established to support locally-owned business, the public process, and responsible growth.

          The results of the shopping survey indicated that the Gunnison Wal-Mart (the smallest Wal-Mart in the state) had the lowest total shopping bill, lower than each of the Super Wal-Marts in Salida, Montrose, and Delta. The local City Market was also lower than the three super stores.

          The GVCA shopping survey was not scientific. The items purchased were not identical. Shoppers were influenced by their personal shopping habits, and quality of the products purchased was not considered. Men turned out to be worse shoppers than women, in another unscientific observation.

           The GVCA is currently collecting research from a multitude of sources to determine whether a super store would be of benefit to this community. Results can be found in notebooks available at the reference desks of the Gunnison Public, Crested Butte and college libraries, and on the GVCA’s website at www.gunnisonvalley.org. Complete results of the shopping survey are posted there as well.

The GVCA can be contacted by e-mail at gvcommunity_alliance@yahoo.com, by phone at 641-0491, or by mail at P.O.Box 7060, Gunnison, CO 81230.

DETAILS OF THE COMPARISON SHOPPING: (You may need to scroll sideways... this is a picture, due to formatting problems in preserving the columns and possible browser-dependent difficulties)