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ASPEN — Most Aspenites are a few pickets short of living the American dream in a white-picket fence on the edge of town.
Their housing is cramped, their expenses high. Still, they say, Aspen is worth the aggravations, they tell The Aspen Times.
“I pay $1,000 to live in a box,” said a bartender named Kevin Gadow. “But I live here because it’s a small community, and it’s eclectic, and everyone is from somewhere else. I love living here.”
“I’m 48 and I have a roommate,” said Mikey Wechsler, an Aspen resident. “But hey, look around: Aspen Mountain is right in our face. For me, it’s all about the outdoors.”
“You are constantly weighing whether it’s worth it,” says flight attendant Lisa Gonzales-Gile, who lives with her husband, a certified public accountant and their 8-year-old child in a house so cramped that “I have to squish myself to the end of my bed to get out of it because my room is so small.”
Looking out the window, though, “does make it all worth it,” she added.
Heading the list of aggravations is the constant stream of newcomers, especially affluent retirees or part-timers. The polarity is described by one bartender as that of the “grunts” and the “gazillionaires.”
Still, there is the underground economy, the barter system, that makes the cost of living more bearable. And, in the face of housing prices that have increased 15-fold since the early 1980s, there is the community’s housing program. The deed-restricted affordable-housing program provides homes, if mostly cramped ones, to 1,400 people, or 23 percent of the local force. The community goal is 62 percent.
Some 592 people own homes through the program, and 909 people rent.
But therein lies a problem. People are permitted to retire into their affordable housing, and many have indicated that’s just what they intend to do. As such, the number of retirees living in affordable housing is projected to jump from 207 today to 1,142 in little more than 20 years.
“We’re building a retirement community without knowing it,” said Michael O’Sullivan, a resident since 1976.
The city government in Aspen recently released two reports, the “State of the Aspen area,” which attempts to document the area’s living environment in a less anecdotal way, and a “white paper” that reviews the economy since the 1970s.
Both documents, says Times reporter Carolyn Sackariason, deal essentially with the failures and successes over the last decade in keeping the community sustainable, and the government’s role in maintaining Aspen’s quality of life.
Their housing is cramped, their expenses high. Still, they say, Aspen is worth the aggravations, they tell The Aspen Times.
“I pay $1,000 to live in a box,” said a bartender named Kevin Gadow. “But I live here because it’s a small community, and it’s eclectic, and everyone is from somewhere else. I love living here.”
“I’m 48 and I have a roommate,” said Mikey Wechsler, an Aspen resident. “But hey, look around: Aspen Mountain is right in our face. For me, it’s all about the outdoors.”
“You are constantly weighing whether it’s worth it,” says flight attendant Lisa Gonzales-Gile, who lives with her husband, a certified public accountant and their 8-year-old child in a house so cramped that “I have to squish myself to the end of my bed to get out of it because my room is so small.”
Looking out the window, though, “does make it all worth it,” she added.
Heading the list of aggravations is the constant stream of newcomers, especially affluent retirees or part-timers. The polarity is described by one bartender as that of the “grunts” and the “gazillionaires.”
Still, there is the underground economy, the barter system, that makes the cost of living more bearable. And, in the face of housing prices that have increased 15-fold since the early 1980s, there is the community’s housing program. The deed-restricted affordable-housing program provides homes, if mostly cramped ones, to 1,400 people, or 23 percent of the local force. The community goal is 62 percent.
Some 592 people own homes through the program, and 909 people rent.
But therein lies a problem. People are permitted to retire into their affordable housing, and many have indicated that’s just what they intend to do. As such, the number of retirees living in affordable housing is projected to jump from 207 today to 1,142 in little more than 20 years.
“We’re building a retirement community without knowing it,” said Michael O’Sullivan, a resident since 1976.
The city government in Aspen recently released two reports, the “State of the Aspen area,” which attempts to document the area’s living environment in a less anecdotal way, and a “white paper” that reviews the economy since the 1970s.
Both documents, says Times reporter Carolyn Sackariason, deal essentially with the failures and successes over the last decade in keeping the community sustainable, and the government’s role in maintaining Aspen’s quality of life.
Higher backyard wind turbines proposed
GRANBY — As homeowners begin to study wind, solar and other renewable-energy sources located literally in their backyards, local governments are increasingly confronting that balance between private-property rights and aesthetic tastes of neighborhoods.That question of balance has come up frequently in the matter of solar collectors. To some people, the collectors are unsightly. The issue is also arising in regard to wind turbines.
Consider Grand County, home to Winter Park, Grand Lake and other communities. Wind turbines are currently restricted to a maximum height of 35 feet. But the higher the better, says Guy Larson, who operates a Granby-based alternative energy company called Simply Efficient.
“Every 10 percent increase in wind speed, you get 30 to 40 percent more production out of the turbine,” he told the Sky-Hi Daily News.
To accommodate that, Grand County officials are considering revised regulations to allow turbines of up to 65 feet or for 20 feet above treeline. This would be applicable on lots of 5 to 35 acres. Taller towers yet of 80 feet would be allowed on large properties.
Is this enough? Larson suggests not. Turbines are best located “twice the distance of the tower from a home or other structure” to lessen the likelihood of damage from gusts.
Composting plant in Whistler to cut trash
WHISTLER, B.C. — A $13.7 million composting plant completed in Whistler will be able to take discarded vegetable peelings, dead flowers and other decaying organic material.The plant will reduce the amount of trash that must be hauled from Whistler, which is located north of Vancouver, B.C., to a landfill in the Columbia River area near the border between Washington and Oregon.
However, some composting matter was already being taken to a composting facility elsewhere in British Columbia.
The material from the composting material will be combined with sewage sludge to create composted soil as well as biofuel.
There are concerns that the composting plant will be smelly, a problem that sunk a prior composting facility in the down-valley town of Squamish in 2006.
Whistler has a goal of reducing its waste stream to zero.
