The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
More jobs, more vehicles, more legal fees, no Butte Bucks, less reserves
By Mark Reaman
The Crested Butte budget process that sets the priorities for the coming year is coming to a close. The council is moving ahead with adding some new town staff employee positions in 2017; they will tap into reserves for projects that include the Mt. Emmons and Cypress annexation issues, and will add pavement and bathrooms to the Four-way Stop area. Service grant funding was also expanded out of reserves to allocate money for drug awareness and youth education programs.
The new employees will include: a new human resources technician; a planning department employee who will take on the Creative District management, open space/trails duties and some general planning responsibilities; and a full-time employee to help in the facilities maintenance department.
Overall, town employees will see a 4 percent raise. The council was somewhat amazed that health insurance rates would increase only 3.5 percent.
On the capital side of the budget, the council gave the nod to spend money this year on costs associated with the potential Cypress Foothills annexation; constructing a new transit and bathroom center at the Four-way Stop by the current Visitors Center; and performing some significant upgrades to town-owned buildings. Citizens will also see some new town vehicles buzzing around, including a new hybrid and electrical vehicle.
The capital budget dipped into reserves to the tune of about $1,045,000. That will still leave almost $2.3 million in reserves. Still, agreeing to those spending decisions will mean holding off on some projects that have recently been discussed, including getting Avalanche Campground south of town ready for tents, doing any major improvements to the skate park, or adding locker room improvements at Big Mine Ice Arena.
“I just want to make it clear you are dipping pretty significantly into the reserves,” town finance director Lois Rozman told the council at a work session on November 7. “I want to make sure you are okay with this. Once that money is spent, it is gone and won’t be there for anything else.”
Rozman said the reserves would remain very strong, even with the proposed 2017 spending.
“We have had some good savings,” said mayor Glenn Michel. “And now we have opportunities in front of us. I’m comfortable with the spending decisions.”
The Crested Butte legal budget expanded significantly with the upcoming Mt. Emmons mining negotiations taking place with Freeport McMoRan, the upcoming Cypress Foothills annexation process and some water law issues. The town’s legal budget is set at $442,100 for 2017.
“The town has waited 39 years for a possible resolution on Red Lady so I think if it works, it will be money well spent,” said Michel.
One of the longer discussions at the work session centered on a Gunnison County Substance Abuse Protection Project (GCSAPP) request to have an annual $25,000 line-item donation to the organization included in this and future budgets.
Michel noted that former town manager Susan Parker had weaned the local non-profit organizations off the line-item section of the budget and into a service grant process.
While the council members were generally in favor of finding a way to use some sales tax revenues from recreational marijuana sales to fund drug awareness programs for youth, they did not want to put GCSAPP back into the annual budget.
“I’m against specific non-profits being a line item in the budget,” said councilman Roland Mason. “I think we should encourage them to apply for grants. But I am in favor of some mechanism to have some of the marijuana money collected by the town go to drug education and awareness.”
The council had budgeted $90,000 for non-profit grants. Rozman suggested they could specifically allocate a certain amount from that area to such drug-related programs. She noted that many communities that had voted for allowing marijuana sales had also included a specific excise tax on the product for such purposes. Crested Butte did not do that. And sales tax revenues generated from legal marijuana in Crested Butte have been declining pretty dramatically since Gunnison allowed dispensaries to open and more states are legalizing marijuana. In September 2016, councilman Jim Schmidt pointed out, weed sales were down 65 percent compared to 2015. Marijuana sales tax revenue is down 20 percent for the year.
Still, the council wanted to have staff come up with a mechanism that would tie some of the marijuana sales tax revenue to education programs. For the upcoming year, they anticipated there would be about $10,000 set aside in the grant process for potential awareness programs.
In the fall granting process, the council declined to fund the chamber of commerce’s Butte Bucks program. Councilman Chris Ladoulis explained that while the idea might have been great during the recession to help generate some local spending, “Butte Bucks may not have the same reach as before. It did a great thing back then, but is it what we need today?”
They were surprised to not receive any grants requests from entities like Vinotok, Six Points or the Gunnison Valley Mentors programs.
The council will review a final version of the draft of the budget with the expectation to have the first reading at the November 21 meeting.
