Briefs Mt. Crested Butte

Mt. Crested Butte roadwork continues after pause
The wet spring set back paving crews from United Industries who have been working on a paving project in the Goldlink subdivision and around town. Then they had to go out of town for another job, but town manager Joe Fitzpatrick said he was promised crews would be back in town to finish the roadwork by Monday, July 25, and they were.
He told the council, “That is the only thing they have left in this summer’s paving project other than paving outside of town hall.”
The work outside of town hall will involve drainage and utility work as well as the construction of a wall on the site.
If all goes as planned, the roadwork should be finished by the end of this week, while the town is hoping to have the work in front of town hall completed by the fall.
A contract for the work was awarded to United Companies, one of only two bidders on the project, and still had some road improvements left on a contract the town had with the company last year.
The roadwork was started May 12, which was earlier than anticipated despite the slow onset of spring, and focused mainly on several sections of Gothic Road, the town’s main thoroughfare.

Lindros replaces Arwood as town clerk
Donna Arwood, Mt. Crested Butte’s former town clerk, is heading for warmer climes in Austin, Texas, and Jill Lindros is taking over her post.
Lindros will be handling the record keeping as the new town clerk, as well as elections. She’s currently also helping out in the finance department doing payroll, accounts receivable and accounts payable.
All the change has Lindros doing three different jobs and leaves a vacancy in the town’s staff. Fitzpatrick said the search has started for someone to take over for Lindros as the town’s assistant clerk, court clerk and reception and administrative assistant. Already, Fitzpatrick said the town had received about a dozen applications, but he hadn’t had a chance to review any.
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Sales tax down for May, but still up for year
The overall rising economic trends in Mt. Crested Butte continues despite a slight dip in May, which yielded almost $10,000 less in sales tax revenue than what was budgeted.
The two accounting categories that saw declines in revenues over last year were lodging and “other,” which dropped 22 percent and 29.5 percent, respectively, while retail and restaurant collections both saw increases of more than 50 percent. The latter two contributed less than $4,000 together toward the $32,000 in sales tax collected in May.
The strong spring season, however, continues to carry a positive trend year-to-date over 2010, as the town’s sales tax collection is 14.6 percent, or about $102,600, more in sales tax than was budgeted for the first five months of the year.
Fitzpatrick said he was optimistic about what June would bring in and that already July is looking busy, pointing out “the parking lot looks as busy as it does in winter. So it’s pretty exciting.”
Based on what he had heard from business owners, the sales tax numbers are an accurate reflection of the revenues coming in this season.
“We’re on a positive trend… but we’ll see how it all shakes out,” Fitzpatrick said.

Another economic development presentation
Gunnison County Commissioner Paula Swenson and Housing Authority director KT Gazunis went to the Mt. Crested Butte Town Council to continue their valley-wide campaign to get the municipalities up to speed on the emerging economic development effort.
While a more detailed vision of how the local economy can be further developed is expected in September, Swenson started with the basics: growing the valley’s existing businesses and bring in new businesses, streamlining the bureaucratic processes entrepreneurs have to negotiate, improve air service and telecommunications infrastructure locally and market the plan to prospective businesses and the public.
The plan was an answer to a call from Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper to have a statewide “bottom-up” economic development plan that relies heavily on county involvement and ideas.
But the council was interested in the ideas that had been pursued that would directly affect the town of Mt. Crested Butte.
 “At what level was ski area expansion onto Snodgrass discussed? I noticed it wasn’t one of the action items,” councilman Chris Morgan said. Swenson referred the question to the “people who were at the meetings.”
Mayor William Buck responded, “I brought it up at the first meeting and asked what the view on the ski area expansion was as an economic development mechanism and there was no conversation. So obviously that’s a key point for us.”
“Certainly a measurable result in three other Colorado ski towns can be directly linked to ski area expansion,” Morgan said. He later asked what the committee steering the plan had considered related to energy development.
“There was talk about extraction of natural resources, there are the rare earth minerals that have been identified down by Powderhorn… Perry Anderson was in on the conversations, although we didn’t specifically say molybdenum or talk about that mine [pointing toward Mt. Emmons]. Also we’ve been talking about the geothermal development near Waunita that is being explored right now and there was some conversation about solar energy,” Swenson said. “So a vast array of different kinds of energies are being discussed.”
Swenson said she would note the council’s concerns about the plan. The measure of its success, she said, would be the creation of jobs and an increase in the county’s per capita income.