Briefs Mt. Crested Butte

Wedding garden booming
Mt. Crested Butte wedding garden coordinator Tiffany O’Connell gave the Town Council a glance at the overall performance of the town’s wedding garden through the 2013 season.

According to her annual review, the wedding garden was a busy place this summer, with 30 weddings and almost a dozen other functions that put the town pavilion and wedding garden to use.
The space is still a work in progress but has built a consistent stream of clients who love the location. And while the wedding garden is more about bringing people to town than making money, through fees it is fully self-supported, even bringing in almost $5,000 last year.
Next year, with the purchase of chairs and a new website behind them, the wedding garden and pavilion could garner as much as $11,000, the review said. Weddings also bring about 90 people per event, the review reports.
Almost everyone who used the wedding garden and pavilion thought it was a good value, while some wanted a more polished product, or at least felt that the roof on the pavilion should be fixed to not leak during rainstorms.
“Currently we have 15 weddings booked for 2014, which is exactly how many weddings we had booked at this time last year,” O’Connell wrote.

Town council approves 2014 budget
After a first reading of a final draft of the 2014 budget at a meeting November 19, the Mt. Crested Butte Town Council gave its collective nod to the same budget on second reading December 3.

Council approves final plan for Marcellina Lane subdivision
After the council held a public hearing and gave its preliminary approval for the subdivision of Marcellina Apartments lot on Marcellina Lane in Mt. Crested Butte on November 19, it approved the final plan December 3.
The subdivision application was the same as one submitted in 2006 and withdrawn before a final plan was approved. But the owner now has someone interested in buying part of the lot and wants to finish the subdivision.
The two newly subdivided lots, at 1.63 and 1.96 acres, known as the Marcellina Center Subdivision, will still be zoned as high-density multiple family lots.

Sales tax up over summer
Mt. Crested Butte businesses pulled in more sales tax this summer than they did during the same time last year. Overall, sales tax collections for the summer were up 17 percent. In every month of this year, except one, sales tax collections have gone up at least 10 percent. In May, sales tax increased year-over-year by 38 percent.