Mayor's Minute

January Mayor's Minute

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Dear neighbors, I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are continuing to enjoy this great snow. Last month was a busy one where we not only enjoyed all of the usual holiday festivities, but also got a lot of work done. We discussed our historical approach to the business development area where businesses were asked how the town can support their goals. While we want all of our businesses to thrive, any opportunities involving significant staff time or town expenditure will come through our budget process for full Town Council review. There was further discussion of the Telluride Venture Accelerator and co-working spaces. While I recused myself, Mayor Pro-tem Marty McKinley led the discussion where Council put a placeholder for each expense pending further budget specificity before the amounts are released. We passed our revised 2015 and final 2016 budgets, and set the mill levies for both the town and the Metro District (which precedes the town and holds some of the debt behind our assets). We had a good discussion of our recycling program given the changing nature of commodity markets, which are getting worse, and what are our real goals should be: reduction, recycling or reducing carbon footprint? The Village Pond was approved for use this winter as an experiment.  A Council off-site retreat was designed for early in the New Year so Council can coalesce on its goals and priorities for the town. We decided not to launch a plaza use committee, as staff continues to feel that they can handle the decisions needed and will escalate any issue that are contentious to Council.  Finally, we discussed joining a possible Regional Transit Authority and the Council consensus was to continue full participation in the process including intergovernmental meetings early in the New Year where specific issues will be negotiated to enable progress to a November election. This week another full meeting has been agendized. We will have the opportunity to meet and hear from Bill Jensen the new leader of Telluride Ski & Golf Company (TSG).  Working with the Telluride Foundation, we will conduct a work session on a potential pocket park near the gondola station at Oak Street Plaza in Telluride. There will be a discussion of an ordinance prohibiting the possession of weapons on town property. We will also start to define a Town Hall Center Subarea planning process in concert with our friends at the Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association and TSG. Finally, in addition to some routine land use matters, we will have a worksession about defining a budget granting process to ensure equity, transparency and coordination with other grant-making bodies. As always, if you have any views on the above, or any other issues, please come to the meeting, listen online, or . Warm Regards, Dan Jansen Mountain Village Mayor

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