The nearly century-old network of copper communications wiring strung throughout Lafayette dates to a time when horse-drawn carriages, not cars, ruled the streets.

Now that copper network has been deemed obsolete, impractical and inefficient. Soon, a speedy new fiber optic communications network will serve residents in Lafayette, now and for generations to come.

Earlier this month, city residents overwhelmingly approved Measure A, giving city officials the right to reclaim and provide broadband, cable, phone and other telecommunication services.

For years, telecommunication lobbyists held sway over the state legislature, limiting what rural communities could do to improve next-generation infrastructure, according to the city.

By a measure of 3,982 to 1,397, or 74 percent, voters have given the city the chance to determine how it will proceed in transforming Lafayette into a “gigabyte city,” where every home and business can have rich broadband service through a fiber optic network.

“It’s a quality of life issue for sure, it’s an economic development issue, and it’s an education issue,” said Virgil Turner, the city’s director of innovation and citizen engagement, on Tuesday. “Essentially what that vote was, the citizens gave us permission to more forward, and now that we have that permission by an overwhelming margin, we will spend the next few months determining what our next move will be.”

The city will begin a feasibility study, which will include comprehensive phone surveys of local residents, financial studies and a business model to prepare for public inspection sometime this summer.

Turner said the surveys will include all age groups and various demographics “to make sure we have a good understanding of what the community wants, if there are additional costs, and what they are willing to pay.”

The key is determining if Lafayette taxpayers have enough discretionary funds to make the process “slow and steady” or “short and fast,” Turner said.

He said the City of Santa Monica, Calif. chose to pay for its fiber optic broadband by not issuing revenue bonds and are “paying as they go.”

“That’s not the fastest option,” Turner said, adding that the other business model would ask voters to approve a bond to “allow the city to move much faster.”

The end goal is to have fiber optic cable pass through every premise in town, placing Lafayette in a better position to attract new jobs and bolster local education. In today’s business climate it does not make economic or practical sense to continue to upgrade or support a copper network.

Turner previously told The Watch the city has seen companies that are not considering relocating to Lafayette, because the city does not have a high-speed fiber optic network.

“We’ve seen companies move some of their services away, or move people away, because that service isn’t here,” he said.
Luring the next generation of savvy entrepreneurs and tech companies to Lafayette, with its mild climate and endless outdoor recreation opportunities, is now viewed as essential.

In his office on Tuesday, Turner presented a piece of current copper wiring, which was strung in the 1930s in Lafayette, and a length of fiber-optic cable. He said the city has been wiring fiber optics through the city for the past decade, connecting places like the Pavilion and the wastewater treatment center.

All of those users are commercial, he said. “I’m not aware of any private users or homes.”

Turner displayed a length of cable showing multiple bundles of fiber-optic threads. He said each thread of fiber can service up to 32 homes, versus the thick copper cable which has “reached its maturity.”

Currently, there are about 30 to 40 miles of fiber optics. Turner said fiber-optic installation will service Lafayette for generations to come, the way copper did for the past century. With the fiber in place, only the electronics of the system would need upgrading as technology continues to develop.

“We want to try to act quickly to try and understand what type of business model is feasible here in Lafayette,” Turner said, comparing an overhanging system, like the copper network, to an underground network, which is much more expensive. We’ve seen some companies in the service industry thrive like this painting company (website).

The city council passed a resolution in March stating that installing fiber would allow the “city to partner with the private sector, increase competition, and enable more companies to compete on price and services, resulting in significant benefits for Lafayette in the form of increased jobs, new and improved services, and ultimately lower costs.”

The city cited the effort by the City of Chattanooga (Tenn.), which was listed as one of the best places in the country to operate a business, because it has invested heavily in fiber-optics. According to the City of Chattanooga’s website, it provides “one gigabit-per-second Internet speed available to every home and business – over 150,000 of them – throughout the entire community.”

There was no doubt Tuesday that the Montrose City Council would approve the sale of undeveloped land to be used by Federal Express for its new facility on the north side of the city, as the building’s contractor was already in town from Colorado Springs.

By a vote of 5-0, Council approved Ordinance 2337 on second reading, which authorized the sale of two parcels located in the Airport Industrial Park totaling 5.57-acres to be developed as a new 22,840 square-foot Federal Express sorting facility.

The Montrose Economic Development Corporation purchased the property with private investment dollars in 1989 and quick-claimed the property to the city in the early 1990s as a way of avoiding real estate taxes. The sum listed on the deed at that time was $10. With approval, the city will quick-claim the property back to MEDC for $20.

Tuesday’s vote was merely procedural, to fulfill a provision from the city’s charter that states if council is to approve the sale of public land it, it must create and adopt an ordinance.

Ground is expected to be broken at the FedEx location in coming days; earlier this week, T-Bone Construction Inc. of Colorado Springs began delivering equipment to the site.

T-Bone is the contractor hired by Setzer Properties, a company that works closely with FedEx on building new facilities. According to the city, Setzer paid for the building permit last week.

The question that still looms over the transaction is who will receive the proceeds from the sale: the city, or the MEDC? Both parties reluctantly agreed to hold the money in escrow until the issue is resolved at a future meeting.

Mayor Bob Nicholson said the city and MEDC both had “skin in the game,” and that he hopes a future meeting between the two parties “is productive.”

During the hearing, supporters and critics of MEDC exchanged views on MEDC’s history in Montrose.

“MEDC does not have the full respect and trust in this community,” said resident Dennis Olmstead, describing what he said was a lack of transparency from the organization that receives taxpayer funds.

Others wondered if MEDC had moved away from being an economic development company to become a land company. Over the years the city has made improvements to the area proposed for FedEx and now will quick-claim the land, with those improvements, back to MEDC. One critic told council the city was “spending too much and receiving too little from this organization.” Another said all city-controlled MEDC-owned land needed to be returned to MEDC as soon as possible.

Resident Roger Brown said he wants the city and MEDC to split the sale’s proceeds. Last week, during a special meeting, supporters of MEDC said the city had no authority over the land because it was purchased privately by investors of MEDC. They said the city should quick-claim the deed back to the MEDC with no strings attacked.

A representative of Ek Horn Painting, who are house painters Castle Rock, told council the purchase of the mill by Wyoming-based Neiman Enterprises would not have happened without the help of MEDC. He said the mill, with its its 80-or-so jobs, pumps millions of dollars into the local economy, impacting services like fuel sales and housing.

Resident Curtis Robinson, an investor in MEDC and former board member, told the council he was offended by comments that MEDC has done little for the community.

“Just go back and take every business that MEDC has brought to Montrose and add it up, and tell the community what it is so that these people — who imagine they know what the hell they are talking about — could maybe be informed,” Robinson said.

Resident Jim Anderson said the city and MEDC need to work together more ethically, with honesty and transparency,  to keep the Montrose area growing, and that back room, hand shake real estate deals need to be eliminated.

Anderson said economic development in Montrose is growing, thanks to the increased openness of city staff, “in ways that have never been done before.”

The council agreed with Anderson. Mayor Nicholson’s statement that details of future deals between the city and MEDC need to be disclosed, with “nothing hidden” and a clear chain of title, drew nods of support from MEDC representatives attending the meeting.

The sale price of the land has yet to be disclosed, but will be made public once the paperwork reaches the county clerk’s office.

There has been no word of when the city and MEDC will discuss proceeds from the sale.

After laying 16,000 ft. of steel pipe last summer and an additional 22,000 ft. of pipe being installed this summer, the Telluride Ski Resort’s once antiquated snowmaking capabilities are becoming vastly more efficient and will now bring better snow conditions to more places on the mountain in a shorter period of time.

Simply put, the new system will enable snowmaking crews to use the same amount of water as in the past, but in a more powerful way, meaning more runs will be open earlier in the season. And all this will be accomplished, using less energy.

The infrastructure upgrade is big and expensive (close to $3 million over the last two years), but Telluride Ski and Golf Co. officials say it will properly lay the groundwork for future snowmaking expansions on the Town of Telluride side of the resort.

“Once this is built and built right, we are setting ourselves up for success,” Jeff Proteau, Telski Vice President of mountain operations and planning, said last week.

Telski’s Manager of Snowmaking Brandon Green, the designer of the ski area’s multi-year infrastructure upgrade project, works closely with the renowned snowmaking engineer firm, Torrent Engineering and Equipment. Last summer, crews replaced 16,000 ft. of steel pipe around the Lift 4 area. The old  antiquated pipe often froze, and caused major snowmaking delays while crews were called to fix the breakage. That old system also contained dead ends and one-way legs that held back snowmaking crews back. If there was a frozen pipe or a burst pipe, the entire system had to be shut down until it was fixed.

The new pipe system laid last summer was designed with a loop and various shut-off valves, so if a pipe does freeze, the entire system won’t have to be shut down.

The new infrastructure also has the ability to bring water at a higher pressure, up to 800 p.s.i, which is needed for  60 new low energy Snow Logic snowmaking guns. These new guns, along with the higher pressure, make it possible to begin snowmaking at a higher temperature (anywhere below 26 degrees Fahrenheit) than the previous system.

The improvements made to the snowmaking system had a big impact on the ski area’s snowmaking ability last year, at the same time dramatically reducing its energy consumption.

“We basically finished making snow on Dec. 23,” Green said, adding that many longtime snowmaking employees in Telluride hadn’t had Christmas off in years. “This year they had Christmas off. It was a huge change.”

Green also said the improvements saved the ski area energy costs by about 30 percent.

“It’s all about reducing our carbon footprint and snowmaking is the place to do it,” Proteau said. “There are so many things you can do to improve snowmaking and, so far, we are really proud of what we’ve done.”

Telski didn’t stop there. This summer, even more improvements are taking place. Currently, there are seven track-hoes, three dozers and approximately 30 workers excavating, welding and installing 22,000 ft. of steel pipe from the top of Lift 4, down Boomerang, to the bottom of Lift 5. It is in this trench that three new steel pipes are being installed. One will carry pressured water for snowmaking. One will carry high-pressure air to operate about 38 new Snow Logic snowmaking guns this winter. A third pipe will be used to fill either one of Telski’s two water reservoirs near the top of Lift 4.

The snowmaking system it replaces used one pipe for both snowmaking and reservoir-filling needs, which slowed down snowmaking efforts.

The new line will carry 38 new Snow Logic guns along the route, a major boost from the previous 12 old guns that were operated along this line. With the energy efficient Snow Logic Guns in place and the ability to move water where it’s needed while snowmaking is in progress, the new system will, Green says, allow his crew to be more selective about when and where snow is made.

“We’ll have 38 new snowmaking locations instead of 12,” Green says. “This is really going to speed up our process.”

The new pump line is dedicated to keeping reservoirs full and, upon completion of future upgrades at the the base of the gondola, will enable crews to fill those reservoirs with San Miguel River water. Upgrades also include a new gravity feed line down to the Meadows, Double Cabins and the Peaks where snowmaking capabilities will be increased.

Each winter season, Telski uses between 90 million and 110 million gallons of water for snowmaking purposes; the new snowmaking infrastructure will consume no more water.

“We won’t need more water, but we will have the ability to move more water more efficiently,” Proteau explains. “In the past, we had to make snow whenever we could. Now Brandon can be more selective about where the water needs to be. As soon as the temperatures get right, he can light the place up with snow.”

Proteau says it has been and will always be the ski resort’s policy to open easy runs into the Mountain Village base area first, because skiers and riders of all abilities can use them. But as soon as they are open, they will move the snowmaking to the front side of the resort to give skiers and riders access to Telluride as well. All of this new snowmaking infrastructure will help ensure the front side gets access sooner than it has in the past. In addition, the new work between Lift 4 and 5 will enable crews to open connector runs more quickly, which means upper portions of the mountain can be opened more quickly.

And what about upgrading the front side’s snowmaking infrastructure? That leg of the big picture project is still in the works but both Green and Proteau said the current projects need to be completed first.

“It’s been great to have an owner like Chuck who listens to us on what needs to be done to improve the ski area,” Green says. “This is a fun project to conceptualize, see it through and then finally turn it on.”

This summer’s installation is expected to be completed by Aug. 20.

Jerky Business Plans New Store in Ouray

MONTROSE — An early morning fire on Sunday caused about $40,000 in damage to the Ray’s Good Stuff jerky store south of Montrose, but the owner has vowed to press on with a new location in Ouray.

At approximately 5:04 a.m. Sunday, firefighters with Stations One and Two of the Montrose Fire Protection District were dispatched to Rays, located at 20413 U.S. Highway 550.

Upon arrival at 5:10 a.m., firefighters observed smoke and flames coming from the north side of the building, according to Montrose Fire Protection District Chief Tad Rowan.

FIRE AT RAYS – An early Sunday morning fire at Rays Good Stuff jerky store south of Montrose caused an estimated $20,000 in damage. The business has moved to Ouray. (Photo by William Woody)

“We did not determine an exact cause of the fire, but we were able to determine the exact origin,” Rowan said.

Rowan said the fire originated at a corner on the building’s north side, and that an investigation is ongoing.

About $20,000 worth of damage was inflicted on the building and another $20,000 worth of equipment inside was also destroyed.

Rowan said there was a significant amount of inventory in the store that was undamaged. Other parts of the store suffered heat and smoke damage. Firefighters left the scene at about 8:24 a.m.

A sign on the front door of the store said the business was closed but urged customers to visit its new location at 710 Main Street in Ouray.

Attempts to contact owner Ray Valentine were unsuccessful as of press time Wednesday. On Facebook, Valentine said he was appreciative of all the support he has received since the fire.

“Many thanks to my family, friends and neighbors who have lent a helping hand or a kind phone call and keeping things positive. So Very Appreciated…” Valentine wrote. “Weather permitting we will try and be outside at the picnic table for you die hard jerky lovers!”

Ray’s Good Stuff was founded in Ridgway in 2002. The company’s vast menu of products are sold in 250 stores throughout the region.