The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
By Kendra Walker and Mark Reaman
The following briefs are from CB town council meetings that took place over the last several months.
Community grants
Town received 22 fall community grant applications totaling $129,000 in requests and funded 13 at the total request, seven at 50% and one was not granted money as it did not meet the community grant guidelines. The total annual budget for 2024 grants is $400,000 but half of that is collected through the nicotine tax and earmarked for specific purposes related to mental and physical health and substance abuse. The council will consider another round of 2024 grant requests in the spring.
Big Mine snow
The town does not use the bowls in the skatepark to store snow.
When asked for clarification regarding snow removal practices around Big Mine ice arena, Parks, Recreation, Open Space, and Trails director Janna Hansen assured the council that the town does not push snow into the skate park.
“It’s been a very common misperception that the town stores snow in the skatepark. We definitely don’t push snow during our snow removal operations into the park. The plows never have and never will push snow into the skate park,” she said. Hansen said there is a section of the ice arena roof that tends to shed into the big bowl.
Audit news
The official audit of the town came back and while noting the town’s very healthy financial state, it did say that some of the negative issues identified in the 2021 audit remained unresolved in 2022. The primary reason cited was the limited staff in the Finance Department for parts of 2022. The issues revolved around concerns about the “town’s failure to perform complete and accurate reconciliations to external records and outside ledger with respect to accounts receivable, payroll liabilities and deposit liabilities.” The audit noted the town did take actions to address the concerns, and aside from getting a finance director in place, two new finance department support positions were also added to help with the workload.
Town had $28.7 million in cash reserves across all funds as of the end of 2022 and the general fund is at about $134% of 2022 expenditures, which is considered excellent. Sales and use tax revenue has been climbing the last several years but so have expenditures.
