Time for South Bridge

In response to Chuck Peterson’s letter of 5-16-22, “Questioning South Bridge”:

Are you maybe new in town? Letters like this have delayed the South Bridge project for years. Deception and lies have been major delaying tactics and have added fantastic costs by the “not in my backyard” crowd.

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I live on Highway 82 with a great view — from Carbondale to Storm King Mountain. I look at the Three and Four Mile valleys. My living room view is Glenwood Springs Airport. From my porch, I witnessed the Coal Seam Fire. Darned if the fire, starting 2 miles from the river, didn’t burn down the mountain, cross the river and the railroad tracks and I-70 and burn down parts of West Glenwood. No one died, because there were six means of egress. Little discussion about the impact of locals using Midland?

The federal government gave us $6 million to fix the Three and Four Mile egress. After years of meetings and dozens of open houses, the plan is as good as it gets. Keep it up, Chuck, and maybe we can get the cost up to $100 million. Two years ago, I hosted No Name evacuees for 10 days, as we watched nine helicopters use “our” airport for fighting the Grizzly Creek Fire. Thank you, voters, for saving our airport. Now, let’s finish the South Bridge before the next fire.

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Chris Janusz

Glenwood Springs

Math Awareness Week

The Colorado Mountain College Math Department would like to thank several organizations for their support of our recent Avengers Math Awareness Week! After a hiatus of three years, the high turnout for our events was exhilarating. All day long Saturday, students of every math level could be seen smiling and jumping up and down in excitement after successfully solving creative math equation games!

Gratitude goes out to our prize donors for their generous support, including Texas Instruments for the generous donations of calculators, and many local businesses for your generous gift card prizes. We extend a special thanks to White House Pizza for graciously feeding our participants at the end of the events during our awards presentation. Axelle Faughn for creating a fun new math competition “Escaping the Math Room.”

CMC Foundation and CMC faculty and staff deserve a huge thank-you for showing up and helping in so many ways during the events. Thank you to our own CMC Math Superhero Jason Vargas for using his superpowers to organize and create the amazing events! Thank you everyone who participated! You were entertaining and amazing mathematicians!

Rose Shepard, CMC math enthusiast

Glenwood Springs

Divisive Dems

Debbie Bruell’s column (PI, 5/20/22) showed how Democrats advance their agendas. They don’t debate, they denigrate and divide to dominate.

Deb begins by saying small businesses are the heart of our communities. OK, that’s a nice sentiment. But in the next paragraph, Deb feeds the Dem need to denigrate.

To enhance her small business “us,” she attacks mega corporations. “They” see us only as potential profit, says Deb the Garco Dems’ chairperson. They will invest in us, but they will abandon us when it serves their bottom line.

Deb further opines, “Placing our future in the hands of corporations who care nothing about our community is a risky proposition.”

They, us, their, our are Dem divisive pronouns. Why not focus on the mutual benefits local and big businesses provide to our communities?

Economics 101 teaches that small local businesses and big businesses operate under the same game plan. They exist to make a profit. When any business loses money, it changes or lays off or relocates or closes. Size is irrelevant.

But Dems need to create conflict to further their agenda. Like the “Big Guy” in Washington on down, Dems point fingers of blame, and offer solutions to nonexistent problems.

Big Tech and the liberal mainstream media in collusion with the Dems cannot be allowed to denigrate, divide and dominate our national public square of information and discussion.

I hope Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will be the first step toward real free speech. By the way, Elon, the Earth’s richest human and a lifelong Dem, recently rebaptized the party with a jackass for a mascot, “the party of division and hate.”

We should all hope Elon Musk’s epiphany becomes a national awakening.

Bruno Kirchenwitz

Rifle

Need more normal housing

In response to City Council’s efforts to address our housing shortage, why is it necessary to waste $50,000 to complete a survey to address an issue we know exists? That is a waste of money. Perhaps this approach, in general, is actually part of the problem.

Red tape has become the city’s famous calling and is a detriment to business from all aspects.

They say land is in short supply. That is a false statement. There is an abundance of vacant land that could easily be used for affordable types of normal homes.

Financial experts advise not spending more than 25% of household take-home pay for housing, which is sound advice. It is sustainable and realistic for those making the payments every month. Without deep diving into the math, my gut feeling tells me we need $300,000-$400,000 homes. We need normal neighborhoods for normal working people. When is the last time something even similar to that has been built? Referring back to an article that ran in the Post many months ago, perhaps last year, that discussed the quantity of new homes built in comparison to population growth: The studies have been done.

Again, the problem is real, nobody is making this up. What we need is action; we are already behind the curve, no more delays.

Having lived here for nearly 22 years, and admittedly loving this place because it’s not the big city, we have to understand and accept that growth is inevitable. It’s as if those that have the fortune have the desire to hoard this beauty all for themselves, forgetting that those who serve their hamburgers, ring the cash register, sweep the floors, fix their stuff and provide all of the basic services that go along with a normal society should be banished to driving 30-50-90 miles a day to earn their living.

It’s as if they are looked upon as peasants undeserving of a basic quality of life. This isn’t anything new, and the sentiments are widely felt and observed in daily life.

And in direct support of those we are asking to build these homes, it is illogical to ask them to do so at a loss. Would you?

Darren Stukes

Glenwood Springs

Carbondale Rotary event thanks

Carbondale Rotary’s second annual Fireball Drop May 6 was a huge success. Volunteers, scholarship recipients and spectators joined us in Sopris Park on First Friday to witness almost 1,000 ping pong balls tumble from a fire ladder truck onto targets on the ground to select our winners. It was a beautiful, sunny day and great fun!

Huge thanks go out to our title sponsor Ace Hardware of Carbondale for its consistent, dedicated support. Thanks also to our many other sponsors.

We would like to especially thank the wonderful men and women of the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District. They once again provided the equipment, manpower, expertise and good music that made it all possible!

Thanks also goes to our event partners: the Town of Carbondale Parks and Recreation Department, Andrea and everyone at the Carbondale Chamber, the Sopris Sun, Greg and the crew at KDNK, and everyone at City Market Carbondale.

Thanks also to Bennett Bramson of the Aspen Rotary Club, Carbondale Police, and the Mt. Sopris Rotary Club of Carbondale.

Lastly, many thanks to all of you who bought balls from Rotary, Ascendigo, Roaring Fork Youth Soccer, Roaring Fork Pickleball, Coventure and YouthZone, and helped us raise much-needed funds for all our community service projects, scholarships and grants.

We are indeed grateful to be a part of this wonderful community.

Alan Cole

Carbondale Rotary fundraising chair

Heather Hicks-Stumpf

Rotary president 2021-2022