NEWS: EMS building well underway, A8
SUBSCRIBE TODAY gunnisontimes.com
VOL. 143 NO. 51 | THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2024 | $1.00
City mulls new parking regulations Next year will review downtown parking, on-street storage Bella Biondini Times Editor
FLOW STATE: Kathryn Frey, Romie Uhrig, Madelyn Stice and Aiden Tomlin cheer on freshman Jade Hanna at the Cowboy Invite on Dec. 14. The Gunnison Rec Center swim meet hosted nearly 150 athletes from across the state. For more, see B6.
INSIDE
TODAY NEWS: Blue Mesa power plant renovations, A13
COMMUNITY: Carolers spread holiday cheer, B1
OBITUARIES, BIRTHS A2 OPINION A4 CLASSIFIEDS A15-A17 SPORTS B6 ONLINE GUNNISONTIMES.COM
Parking A6
School board airs Gunnison County concern over assessor retires discipline policy after 18 years District relies on ‘restorative practices’ Abby Harrison Times Staff Writer
SPORTS: Cowboy swim wins home meet, B6
As soon as early next year, the City of Gunnison may alter its parking regulations downtown and within residential neighborhoods. Parking in downtown Gunnison has been the subject of resident and business owner complaints for years, with arguments for and against the 2-hour parking limit. According to Senior City Planner Andie Ruggera, the parking complaints also extended beyond downtown: tenants displaced from convenient parking spaces near
The Gunnison Watershed School District has been using “restorative practices” for years in schools up and down the valley. But this fall, Superintendent Leslie Nichols presented the school board with one cohesive, district-wide policy that is applicable to all grade levels. In school settings, restorative practices is a philosophy meant to encourage students who are breaking the rules or bullying others to take accountability for
their actions. Students still face consequences like suspension and expulsion, but the goal is to reduce those incidents, and help students understand why their behavior is damaging. “We believe in teaching kids how to behave and not giving up on them … It's about relationships. It's about repairing harm when it occurs,” Nichols said in a November meeting. Throughout the fall, board members requested more data about how well the practice is working, amid concerns from parents that the policy does not protect bullied children. At a board meeting on Dec. 16, Nichols reviewed the district's policies about code of conduct and non-discrimination, the School board A3
McFarland guided office through recession, COVID-era valuations Abby Harrison Times Staff Writer
In the fall of 2006, a dark grey Nissan Pathfinder studded with hail damage trundled over the summit of Monarch Pass. At the wheel was a Front Range computer scientist, her face framed by a cascade of blonde hair and a pair of glasses. The woman,
a future public servant of Gunnison County, was headed into her first-ever election campaign. On her drive, she traversed lands she would come to know well — the hillsides of Monarch, which over a decade later would be ravaged by beetle kill, swaths of hay on ranchland flanking Sargents and, just before reaching town, hundreds of acres slated for the valley’s Gunnison Rising development. What was, at the time, simply a diorama of the Gunnison Country’s more iconic terrain, would soon be arranged in her mind into a checkerboard of property types: commercial, agricultural or non-taxable public lands. In her tenure of nearly twoAssessor A6