MT. CRESTED BUTTE — Town officials in Mt. Crested Butte, the slope-side resort town, have adopted a law that mandates wildlife–resistant refuse containers for storage of trash that is not kept inside until the day of trash pickup. Increasing problems with bears have been reported during the last several years.

Nearby Crested Butte, the old mining town, took similar action within the last year.

After first requiring resistant containers, towns in the Aspen and Vail areas have upped the ante to the more expensive and sturdy wildlife-proof containers.

<b>Telluride uses market to get affordable housing</b>

TELLURIDE — Telluride’s town government has taken to using the leverage of free-market real estate to reduce the cost of affordable housing. The Telluride Watch explains that in the case of an 18-unit employee housing project, one unit is being sold at free-market rates, reducing the town’s subsidy for the project by 15 percent.

<b>Restrictions on real-estate offices protested in Crested Butte</b>

CRESTED BUTTE — The town council in Crested Butte is still getting plenty of kick from people who don’t like the proposed zoning that would restrict new real-estate and other such offices from ground-floor along the town’s main tourist-oriented business strip, called Elk Avenue.

Existing uses would be grandfathered, explains the Crested Butte News.

Crested Butte officials are worried about a sluggish retail environment, which results in fewer sales and hence fewer sales tax revenues, the primary sources for municipal operations in Colorado.

A business owner on the strip, Steven Ein, said restricting the use might decrease the value of property by 10 to 30 percent.

Another speaker, Gordon Bray, wondered at the logic that assumes a real estate office is bad and a medical office is good.