The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“We’re scraping by”
After the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners approved the ballot language for the reauthorization of the Gunnison County Land Preservation Fund on Tuesday, September 4, effectively putting it to a vote in November, there was little the Mt. Crested Butte Town Council could do but withhold their support for the measure.
In a meeting with members of the group Citizens Protecting Our Open Space, Heritage and Economy two weeks before, the several members of the council said that while they personally supported the mission of the Land Preservation Fund, as representatives of the town they were frustrated by what they see as inequity in the way each of the towns—Mt. Crested Butte, Crested Butte and Gunnison—pays into the fund. That money, along with a lion’s share from the county, is used to leverage money for open space and trails projects.
The council asked that the ballot language reflect their concerns, specifically in relation to the way each town’s contribution to the fund is calculated, before they would offer their collective support.
But that couldn’t happen in the two weeks between the time the request was made and when the ballot language was approved, county Geographic Information Systems manager Mike Pelletier said. He also pointed out that the town hadn’t mentioned any of their concerns before the ballot language started circulating.
“To change the language here would require a discussion between the towns and the county and unfortunately, with two weeks, we didn’t have time to get into that,” he told the council at their meeting after the commissioners’ vote September 4. “It might not be the fairest scheme, but it is what it is. You are in a great position to ask for some money for town projects.”
With that suggestion, Councilman David O’Reilly went looking for an opportunity for the town to use money from the LPF to make improvements to trails around Mt. Crested Butte. Speaking about the open space and trails projects funded, at least in part, by the LPF, Land Preservation board member Dan Jones told the council the fund has also been involved with funding for two pedestrian bridges in the valley, saying, “It’s really a broader definition [of what’s eligible for funding] than you might think.
“And speaking as a member of the board, we believe the town of Mt. Crested Butte has benefited from a lot of the improvements that have been facilitated because of funding from the board. But we could certainly be more explicit in the future for Mt. Crested Butte,” he continued. “As one member of the board I would be very amenable to that.”
The fund officially got off the ground in 1998, with each town contributing $50,000 annually along with one half of one percent of the sales tax collected over that amount. The town’s contribution peaked at a payout of around $70,000, dropping down to around $66,000 for the last several years.
If the ballot question is approved by voters in November, the fund wouldn’t sunset until 2033, and the town wouldn’t have another chance at changing the structure until then.
The council wasn’t in favor of depriving the Land Preservation board of funding as much as they were in favor of finding spent money that could be saved in the future for more immediate needs around town.
Speaking to Pelletier, Mayor William Buck said, “By your own admission, it’s not a balanced approach … This half of one percent [sales tax] could be used for general fund purposes within the town and you heard in the manager’s report, we’ve got a diminished revenue stream, sales tax is down, we’re getting hit with a double whammy here. And from where I sit, whatever potential revenues that are out there that we could get to keep the town going, to me is an opportunity.”
“We’re scraping by,” he said, “flat scraping by.”
Councilman Dave Clayton was frustrated by the fact that, despite paying a half-percent of sales tax collected in each town over the $50,000 base level funding, all three towns were still paying exactly the same amount. “That, to me, just seems out of whack,” he said.
Councilman Danny D’Aquila agreed, adding as the other council members had before him, that he was grateful for all the land that’s been preserved so far, amounting to about 6 percent of the private land in the county. “There isn’t a time that I drive around the corner at Round Mountain without saying, ‘Look at what we’ve got,” he said. But he pointed out that another sixty-plus thousand dollars for the next 20 years would go a long way toward making improvements around town.
Pelletier tried again to make the case for the reauthorization, admitting that it was hard to determine who got what benefit from the fund and how that translates to dollars and cents. But he returned to the benefits that open space provides to everyone and the message it would send to funding organizations if the valley doesn’t show its unified support in land preservation. “It’s a big deal if this doesn’t get passed,” he said.
“We’re acutely aware of the fact that we’ll live with the consequences,” Buck responded. “But in all fairness, your approach is very single-minded and from my chair, it’s not that simple. So if there’s a choice to support the town’s basic infrastructure and services, that’s where my loyalty is going to go.
“There’s no lack of appreciation for what’s been done, I assure you,” Buck continued. “But this is a nitty-gritty time and I don’t see the shining light on the hill where sales tax is going to jump up and we’re all going to be pretty flush again. In my mind, I’m battening down for the storm, which we’re right in the middle of.”
The feeling was shared among the council members, although several said they would vote to approve a letter of support for the ballot measure from the town, if one was drafted. But ultimately the council opted not to ask for a letter of support.
