NEWS: Housing Authority welcomes new director, A12
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VOL. 143 NO. 20 | THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2024 | $1.00
School construction to start next month Bridge closure not yet impacting budgets Abby Harrison Times Staff Writer
Nearly a year and a half after the Gunnison Watershed School District passed its historic $95 million bond for district-wide renovations, construction is set to begin at each of the Gunnison Valley schools this summer. By the end of the summer, students at Gunnison Community School (GCS) and Lake Preschool and Kindergarten will have entirely new playgrounds. At Crested Butte Community School (CBCS), contractors will start building Schools A6
BIKE BUDDIES: Gunnison Community School students navigate an obstacle course behind the school during a bike safety event on May 7. Bikers pedaled through cones and over a teetering seesaw to hone in their balance. For more, see A13. (Photo by Mariel Wiley)
CR 26 openings Homeowner sues TODAY favored by all but county over septic wildlife managers regulations INSIDE
NEWS: Western planning library renovations, A15
COMMUNITY: From the ice age, B1
SPORTS: Three GHS golfers qualify for state, B6
OBITUARIES A3 OPINION A4 CLASSIFIEDS A16-A21 SPORTS B6 ONLINE GUNNISONTIMES.COM
Increased traffic disturbs Gunnison sagegrouse, big game Bella Biondini Times Editor
The early opening of County Road 26, known as the Lake City cutoff, came with a sense of relief for many Gunnison Valley residents. The other detours out of Gunnison and around the Blue Mesa bridge closure — up to seven hours of travel time — were unreasonable. Brief windows on CR 26 in the morning and the evening allowed traffic
to bypass the closure. But in the days before the road opened, a flurry of panicked phone calls, texts and emails flew back and forth between wildlife biologists. It was mid-April, and barely past peak breeding season for the threatened Gunnison sagegrouse. As the snow melted, hens were preparing to select a nest and begin laying eggs. CR 26, rarely traveled, cuts right through the middle of Sapinero Mesa and some of the most high-value Gunnison sage-grouse habitat in the valley. As the only realistic detour to Montrose, Grand Junction and the remainder of the Western Slope, the county road is experiencing a high volume of traffic.
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Sage-grouse A8
at the start of February by the Rental property’s owner. In a matter of months, the conflict has occupancy unfolded into an ongoing legal exceeds system exchange including debate over the legal limits of the county’s capacity, county regulatory codes and accusations that the county is concealsays ing salient public records. Abby Harrison Times Staff Writer
A spacious backcountr y cabin sits in a high-country meadow north of Crested Butte, under the shadow of Gothic Mountain. Undisturbed, most would consider it a blueprint for the Gunnison Country’s more iconic terrain. But that cabin is now at the heart of a lawsuit that was filed against Gunnison County
The legal back-and-forth calls into question the county’s limits in regulating homes and cabins in the backcountry, which often have their own off-grid septic and utility systems. The lawsuit was mentioned in a hearing for a recently-defeated Senate bill that sought to limit Colorado counties’ ability to regulate backcountr y cabins under short-term rental regulations. Andrew Fink, who lives fulltime in Boulder, purchased Septic A6