The details of creating rules for sales of 420

CRESTED BUTTE – Details, details, details. Across Colorado, towns and county officials are fiddling with whether to allow sale of marijuana for recreational purposes and under what terms.

Some are inclined to just say no. Crested Butte is not among them. It went through some anxieties several years ago in drawing up rules governing sale of medical marijuana sales, but that has worked out pretty well.

This time, the Town ocuncil appears to be leaning toward allowing sale of marijuana throughout the town’s business districts. There has been some sentiment to restricting it to those areas reserved more for support services, such as the paint stores, plumbing shops and so forth, as was done with medical marijuana.

Stephanie Cantu, manager of Acme Dispensary, one of three stores in Crested Butte already licensed to sell marijuana for medical purposes, said zoning marijuana to the side streets won’t preclude business. “You guys say you don’t want to scare tourists away? On average, we probably get 12 tourists in every day just checking us out.”

Others pointed out that Elk Avenue, the prime venue for tourism, already has a distillery and a brewery. If those are tolerable, what’s to fear from recreational marijuana?

Also under discussion, according to a report in the Crested Butte News, were whether hours of operation should be limited. And should there be controls over advertising? Some medical marijuana retailers had used lollipops and candy in advertisements, which some people saw as a direct appeal to children. This is probably the touchiest issue in Crested Butte and many other places.

In Aspen, city officials plan to allow only a handful of retailers, but those will be regulated much like alcohol. In other words, all business zones will be fine. However, staff members advise elected officials to ban private “pot clubs.” Public use is banned under public law, and the legality of private clubs is still unclear. Aspen is inclined to let some other jurisdiction figure that out.

For governments, recreational marijuana figures to be a big tax gain. Aspen has collected more than $100,000 from its three existing medical marijuana dispensaries since they opened in 2009. The state plans substantial taxes for recreational marijuana. Local governments can add more. Some people worry that an underground market for marijuana will continue in Colorado even after it becomes legal in January.

Giving Colorado some comfort as it draws up a regulatory framework for marijuana sales is a memorandum issued by a U.S. Justice Department official in late May. That memo says prosecution of federal marijuana laws in Colorado and Washington will not be a priority.

Those laws had been in place since 1937 when Congress, with nary any dissent, banned marijuana, a drug whose use was then confined mostly by marginalized people.

The first arrest under the new law was a 57-year-old unemployed laborer in Denver, who was sentenced to four years at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas for selling two joints.

 

Banff votes to keep doors open to cold

BANFF, Alberta – Stores in Banff can continue to heat the great outdoors if they so choose. A proposal before the council would have required that retailers close their doors when the temperature dropped below -10 C. Not one council member supported the bylaw.

The town had heard scattered complaints that a town whose economy depends upon the environmental integrity of Banff National Park shouldn’t condone the waste of energy, helping fuel pollution of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.

The council agreed with the sentiment but refused to tell storekeepers to zip it up.

“Morally we should try to save energy, but we also know what happens when we close doors. It hurts businesses,” said retailer Kees Vanderlee.

Retailers urged the use of electric fans, also called air curtains or air barriers, to reduce losses of air from open doors, in something of a compromise

Councilor Leslie Taylor said she believes leaving doors open on cold winter days affects Banff’s image. But from the experience of family members in retail, open doors do draw more customers.

“If the door is open, they do walk in. If it’s closed, they don’t. It’s a weird piece of human psychology. But I believe it to be true.”

 

Park City leery about scraping of A-frames

PARK CITY, Utah – Pop quiz: What ski town doesn't have A-frame houses?

Answer: Very few. Even in many mining towns, including Park City, the triangular-structures popped up in the 1960s and early 1970s like mushrooms after a summer rain.

The question before Park City is whether owners should be required to keep them, similar to other historic structures. Proposals to demolish the structures have started to arrive, and Park City wants to hang onto artifacts of that early period of ski towns.

The Park Record says the city planning department has two pending applications for the demolition of A-frames in the Old Town district.

Architectural gems or pebbles from the detritus of the past? The Record notes varying opinions among council members. The city seems to be in no hurry to reach consensus.

 

Governor endorses vertical greenhouse

JACKSON, Wyo. – Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead admits he was initially skeptical about the proposal to build a greenhouse adjacent to the three-level parking garage in Jackson. He has since changed his mind.

In June, Mead voted to approve a $1.5 million state loan for the project. This is on top of $300,000 grant from the town of Jackson.

“The people involved in it had such a high level of commitment,” said Mead during a recent tour in Jackson. “They convinced me.”

The 13,500-square-foot hydroponic greenhouse is to be built on the south-facing side of the municipal parking garage in downtown Jackson to grow and sell vegetables year round to restaurants, grocery stores and directly to consumers.

Despite warming winters, it still gets cold in Jackson – sometimes cold enough to provoke colorful comparisons to well drillers and bankers’ hearts. No problem, says Vertical Harvest, the low-profit, limited liability company formed to sponsor the project. The company proffers studies that show vegetables can be grown even during short days and long, cold nights. A greenhouse engineer with 20 years experience designing greenhouses in such places as Maine, Siberia and Iceland, has been hired.

The organization’s website also points to advantages of hydroponic farming: it uses 10 percent less water than traditional farming and 25 percent of the space. Some crops can grow twice as fast as traditionally farmed crops.

Vertical Harvest vows to hire local developmentally disabled people to tend the operations except for the supervisory role.

The structure is projected to be complete by late 2014.

 

Uranium mill west of Telluride on hold

TELLRUIDE – Energy Fuels has postponed construction of a uranium processing mill in Paradox, about 80 miles west of Telluride. The mill has been opposed by environmental groups but also the town of Telluride, which thought that Colorado permitting procedures had been lax. The Telluride Daily Planet reports that Energy Fuels is delaying construction because of significant drops in uranium prices: from $50 per pound in June to $35 per pound last week.

 

Real estate market on the rise in Aspen area

ASPEN – After faltering early in the year, real estate sales have been coming on during late summer in Aspen and nearby areas. A similar report comes from Telluride.

While sales volume in the Aspen market through August was down 10 percent, Andrew Ernemann, broker associate for B.J. Adams and Co. Real Estate, said he expects the market to catch up with last year by the end of September.

“I do expect that by the end of September we’ll be ahead of last year in terms of dollar volume and certainly ahead in number of sales, and we’ll also see prices going up,” he told The Aspen Times.

In price per square foot, condominiums and single-family homes are selling for about 5 percent more. “It’s not a market that’s going on a tear and going crazy, but it’s fundamentally solid, and you have lower inventory and higher sales, putting pressure on prices,” he said.

That strengthening market is also seen in the price of retail rents in downtown Aspen and in the low levels of vacancies for retail. Vacancies for office space are dropping.

From Telluride comes an echo. Telluride Consulting reports a 23 percent boost during August, the largest spike since the pre-recession boom of 2007. The firm’s Judi Kiernan said she is hard-pressed to point to any cause, but also noted that still leaves Telluride lagging last year. Dirk de Pagter, a real estate broker, told the Telluride Daily Planet that a more complete picture of the market should emerge by mid-October.

 

Loose dog and bull moose equal trouble

GRAND LAKE – Moose are not to be trifled with. If that wasn’t already clear, a reminder was served recently when a woman was along the shores of Shadow Mountain Reservoir, located near the west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.

She had just parked her car and begun walking when a bull moose charged her, knocking her down and rendering her unconscious. State wildlife officials intimated to the Sky-Hi News that the woman’s off-leash dog may have spooked the moose, which tend to see all yapping and howling canines as potential predators. There is, however, no evidence the 30-year-old woman was howling.

This is the second time in recent months that a moose has knocked down a Grand Lake woman accompanied by a dog.

 

Aspen hotel wants to close in shoulder seasons

ASPEN – Even Aspen slows down substantially in the shoulder seasons. The 179-unit St. Regis Aspen Resort wants to be allowed to close down for two to four weeks each spring and fall.

In 2003, explains the Aspen Times, the hotel was required to continue operations year round because of the conversion of many hotel rooms in Aspen to time-share units. City staffers say that’s no longer a concern.

Hotel representatives explain that occupancy rates are low. That translates into shaky earnings for employees and continued maintenance costs for the hotel but with reduced income.

 

Forest fires result of beetle kill? Not really

GRAND LAKE – How much can you blame the forest fires on the bark beetle? The answer to that will probably be debated for as long as there are fires, but at least in the case of a fire that occurred in Rocky Mountain National Park in June, the answer seems to be: not too much.

The most important issue is the weather. “When it’s hot, dry and windy, you get things to burn,” said Mike Lewelling, fire management specialist with the National Park Service. “Beetles are just one part of the equation.”

Two fires have occurred in the park in the last three years, both of them in June. The fire this year, called Big Meadows, burned 653 acres. Both live spruce trees and beetle-killed lodgepole pine were burned. But another fire three years ago had little beetle-killed trees and it covered twice as much territory as this year’s fire.

Beetle kill, however, does play a major role in how fires are fought. Downed and weakened trees create significant hazards for firefighters. Because of that, Lewelling told the Sky Hi Daily News, he pulls crews from beetle-killed fires at night. Too, dead fuels, including beetle kill, allow materials to burn longer and keep heat overnight.

4-lane highways a bad thing for Jackson?

JACKSON, Wyo. – Teton County commissioners are jousting with Wyoming transportation officials about highways.

The two-lane highways south and west of the valley’s only town, Jackson, have been increasingly congested. The answer of the state government is to build wider roads, four and five lanes wide. County commissioners, however, warn of further impacts to moose, elk and other wildlife, and an erosion of the valley’s small-town feel.

The Jackson Hole News&Guide sides with the local decision-makers on this. “Teton County can make public transportation cool,” it says. “Visitors take note of, even seek out, car-free ski resorts in the U.S. and Europe.”

Imagine, says the paper, taking a tram from the airport to Teton Village, at the base of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

– Allen Best

More of Mountain Town News can be found at http://mountaintownnews.net