Assessing - Colorado style!

Emma says: Due to a breakdown in communication (lack of cell coverage for most of us!) you are getting 2 blogs for the price of one! As Ang mentioned, today was a rare day apart for the team today as we all headed off for vocational visits.

My day started at 7am with an hour walk with my host Gail, around her home at Eagle Ridge Ranch. Gail and her husband Lee bought the ranch in 1993 and broke it up into 15 smaller parcels of land of about 35 acres each. Today it is still a working ranch owned by 15 owners each with their own parcel of land and residential site. A number of common amenities exist for the owners including two miles of live trout stream fishery on Ohio Creek, fishing pond, two mountain cabins, barn, corrals, and equestrian facilities. The ranch is conservation protected to preserve the integrity of the ranch, ecology, habitat and aesthetic values of the property. The ranch has been and will forever continue to be used for ranching and recreation purposes.

It truly is the most spectacular place and I have really enjoyed staying here.

But come 9am it was time for work. I spent the day with the County Assessors office Gunnison County and had a brilliant day (no, really!). I spent the morning in the office talking valuation with County Assessor, Kristy, and Assistant Assessor, Vicki. I learnt a lot about how titling records are kept in the County offices and also visited the Planning Department where I spoke to Neil.

After lunch with Kristy and Vicki (fabulous black bean tostadas!), I then headed off with Don and William who took me on a tour of some of the incredible properties in the county around the Crested Butte skiing area, while we discussed the common issues faced by those who value for property tax/rating purposes. It was a very interesting and indepth discussion. We also got to meet with John, who is involved in potentially developing part of Mount Crested Butte into an area called North Village. This development incorporates many of the New Urbanist principles I saw at work in the South Main development in Buena Vista (outside Salida). A really great vocational day

And I can't leave you without an update on the media frenzy surrounding GSE in Colorado. Another highlight of the day for me was being interviewed for the local paper - the Gunnison County Times. I spoke to Michael this arvo and he had the same experience, but Mandy and Angela were not interviewed (clearly they have been holding us back!). Anyway, the paper is published weekly so we'll have to wait til next week before we can see who made the front page! Still this is only small consolation after the humiliation of Montrose choosing to put a photo of a leaf on the front page of their paper during our visit (the leaf was beginning to change colour and therefore heralding the onset of fall...).

Off to District Conference in Glenwood Springs tomorrow with a wake up call on the wrong side of 6am - nasty!