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Bayfield Town Board debates economic development proposals
5/20/2013 By: By Carole McWilliams
News updates for this week:
Benefit bake sale Friday and Saturday for Denise Hess at Brenda's Old West Cafe. Denise is starting chemotherapy this week for colorectal cancer. Donations of baked goods are welcome! Please email prt@pinerivertimes.com for more information, or to volunteer to staff our table or donate cookies, brownies, etc. Thank you!
Family movie night at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the BES gym benefitting the Blitz girls basketball team. Showing Saturday: Wreck It Ralph and Thunderstruck.
Bayfield Town Board debates economic development proposals
Times senior staff writer
It’s too soon to go hiring a consultant to do a Bayfield market study, town trustees said at their May 7 meeting.
Town Manager Chris La May presented the proposal from Front Range consultant Katy Press, with a cost of $7,500. “This is kind of out of the blue, because we haven’t talked about it,” La May said. “I wanted to run it by you.”
The town has $10,000 budgeted this year for economic development, he said, and the money for the study could come from that.
He compared this with another consultant proposal last year that would have cost $25,000 plus $15,000 in following years for updates.
Trustee Debbi Renfro was interested in the new proposal, but trustee Michelle Nelson called it “jumping the gun” versus gathering information in-house. Trustee Matt Nyberg agreed.
“I’m not excited about it,” trustee Tom Au said.
Mayor Rick Smith commented, “I’m always interested in pushing us forward. I kind of like the idea. It’s extremely reasonable compared to the last one. Maybe we’re jumping the gun a little bit. I’d like to keep this on the burner though, for when we go to the next step. I think Bayfield is on the verge of beginning to grow again.”
Trustee Rachel Davenport suggested the study could help identify economic development needs for use in negotiations with the Colorado Department of Transportation.
Nelson objected there’s no vision for the town’s future.
Davenport didn’t want the town to do a study that will be out of date by the time the town gets around to implementing it.
Smith suggested a renewed effort to get the community involved in economic development discussions.
A citizens group worked on an economic development plan in summer 2008, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) to prospects for economic development. Those are broken into things the town can control, and things outside of town control.
The plan was finalized in winter 2008-2009 as the national economy was in free-fall. It included goals and action steps.
The plan was reviewed at a meeting last September. La May suggested then that the goals and action steps needed to be prioritized and pared down substantially to be more realistic.
Also at the May 7 meeting, La May reported on a just- completed inventory of town road maintenance needs.
The maintenance backlog is more than $2 million, he said. “We are talking to the engineer about options, and projects to be done this summer with the money that’s budgeted.”
He suggested a board retreat or work session to discuss this and other items. That will happen on May 30 from 6 to 9 p.m.
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