Briefs Crested Butte

Chamber getting back to business
Crested Butte-Mt. Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce executive director Dan Marshall stopped by a Crested Butte council meeting on Thursday, August 23 to tell the Town Council everything is coming together after a recent restructuring of the organization’s leadership.

“It’s not just me that’s new. The board itself is fairly new and that brings a lot of energy and engagement, which is good,” Marshall said. After the busy summer, people are starting to get back together to “get into planning for the fall with the budget,” Marshall said, “but also getting the house in order in terms of policies and procedures.”
Front and center on the agenda will be taking care of the chamber’s financial situation, which is still relying heavily on contributions from the two towns after mismanagement of funds under previous leadership.
Marshall said many area businesses had allowed their memberships to the chamber to lapse, sometimes because they’d lost trust in the organization or just needed to cut costs, leaving just 324 businesses involved.
“The things we’re working on now are looking for ways to attract new members and answering the question of why people should join the chamber,” Marshall said. “We really want to break it down to show the people the benefits of doing so.”
Councilman Glen Michel asked Marshall what he was hearing from business owners about the town’s role in making their lives easier.
Marshall relayed a conversation he’d had with a restaurateur in town who said he had “60 days to make as much money as possible, knowing winter is not going to produce that.” Marshall added, “So I think if anything is going to be on the map, it’s got to be winter. Summer is generating pretty good numbers for a lot of people in town. But winter really concerns me … If it’s another bad snow year we’re going to see a lot of businesses closing.”

Summer is indeed not the problem
If you thought July was busy, you are correct. Sales tax in Crested Butte continues to rise. July set an all time record with a 2.7 percent increase over last year’s July. For the year, sales tax in Crested Butte is up 4 percent.
“Some people hit it out of the park in July and others didn’t do great. But overall, it was a busy month,” reported Town finance director Lois Rozman.
Rozman did say that construction is a bit off compared to last year at the same time. “The building department is a little slower right now,” she said.

Race day success
Crested Butte Mayor Aaron Huckstep appeared “on the other side of the table” in his capacity as co-director of the Local Organizing Committee that led the effort surrounding the USA Pro Challenge bike race that came to town in August.
“I think overall the event went off very, very well and everybody I’ve talked to has been positive about how it went with both citizens and business owners,” Huckstep said. “It’s always virtually impossible to count the number of people … but Mountain Express, last year, had 2,600 or so riders [during the event]. This year there were 3,200. So really a 20 percent increase on the day of the race. And I think more important, Monday, the day before the race, there was a 50 percent increase in ridership.”
He said the marketing-equivalent value for the town of Crested Butte through race day was about $350,000.

Coal Creek and beyond
Coal Creek Watershed Coalition director Anthony Poponi made the most of his five minutes in front of the Town Council, telling them about a host of projects his organization is, or will be, involved in throughout the area’s drainages.
“I think those of you who have been around to see where this organization has come from way back in 2003 will have a feel for the fact that we were a pretty small organization trying to figure out where we were going and what we were doing. There was a lot of water monitoring and a lot of assessment,“ Poponi said. “We’ve used the data we’d gotten from those assessments to start doing things and we’ve been really active in both the Coal Creek and now the Slate River Watershed.”
He told the council about restoration projects in the wetlands along Coal Creek and downstream of the Standard Mine five miles outside of Crested Butte, as well as in vital riparian areas. The Coalition has also been working on diverting irrigation ditches and reclaiming water, some of which is owned by the town. They’re also looking at the effect chip-sealed roads have on roadside vegetation.
The CCWC also got a $63,000 grant from the state to do more water-quality sampling in areas outside the Coal Creek drainage next year, namely in the Slate River drainage.
Through its on-the-ground efforts, as well as in trying to secure grant funding for water-related projects in and around town, Poponi said he thinks the CCWC is “helping the town accomplish a lot of the things they’d like to accomplish.”

Almost time
Town Building and Zoning Director Bob Gillie told the council the donated clock had arrived in town and was installed at the Four-way Stop.  

Donde esta el … agua?
Gillie told the council his department had just put out a request for bids to renovate the town hall bathrooms, but wrote in an email the finished product likely wouldn’t include waterless urinals, despite some urging from councilman Shaun Matusewicz.
“Is there anyone else who would like to see [the information]?” Gillie asked the council.
Matusewicz said he could supply as many articles in support of the waterless bathroom fixtures as town Public Works Director Rodney Due had supplied that said they weren’t worth the effort.
“The decision doesn’t come down just to dollars and cents, but it also makes a statement about our town and saving 30,000-plus gallons of water a year,” he said. After some silence from the council, councilman David Owen said, “Yeah, why not see the numbers.”
Gillie agreed to work out a comparison between the waterless fixtures and the standard, flushable kind. “No problem. We can do that. All I can say is that our water and sewer department has made a case against them. I’ve talked to some plumbers who are not in favor of them,” he said. “There are pluses and minuses.”