News in Brief

BASALT An art center that has called Basalt home for two years is searching for a permanent space in the town.The Wyly Community Art Center wants to buy land from the Basalt town government and build a facility. The art center is eyeing town-owned land where Taqueria el Nopal restaurant, near Old Pond Park. The town already has sold a portion of the site to the Roaring Fork Conservancy for its proposed offices and education center.The Wyly currently rents space in the Riverside Plaza building along Two Rivers Road in Basalt. The nonprofits budget is strained paying the rent, according to a letter to the town from executive director Deborah Jones and Annie Chapman, the chairwoman of the board of directors.Our occupancy expenses are 25 percent of our annual budget, which has created a significant challenge for us, the letter said. At this time the organization is diligently assessing what it really takes to sustain a nonprofit community-based art center, both programmatically and financially.Jones and Chapman wrote that they have contacted the Roaring Fork Conservancys board and staff about the possibilities of adjoining facilities; they already have concluded that a permanent home in downtown Basalt is critical to its long-term viability. Our vision is to acquire the land or a portion thereof through purchase or long-term lease from the town and build a permanent visual art center with the option of shared facilities with the Conservancy, the letter said.The town hasnt taken formal action on the request yet. A work session will be scheduled in the near future to dig into details, said Basalt Town Manager Bill Efting.

BASALT The Basalt Town Council donated $2,000 on Tuesday night to study the impacts of a mudslide on the lower Fryingpan River.The study would determine the number of macroinvertebrates available in the stream, and compare it to data collected prior to Aug. 6. The movement of sediment and its effects also would be studied, according to a letter to Basalt officials from Roaring Fork Conservancy executive director Rick Lofaro.The Conservancy is seeking $2,000 eachfrom the town, the Colorado Division of Wildlife, Eagle County, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Colorado River Conservation District for the $10,000 study. The council voted 5-0 to contribute.Lofaro said the study will make recommendations on revegetation, flushing flow and possible removal of sediment.

CARBONDALE Representatives from three Ute Indian nations granted $480,000 to Ranch Good Days, a Carbondale nonprofit that provides a safe harbor to young women in need.In a recent meeting of members of the Southern Ute Indian Nation, the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Nation and the Ute Nation of Utah (home of many Roaring Fork Valley Ute people), officials agreed to sponsor the nonprofit with money from a federal funding pot.Ranch Good Days founder and director Donna Otabachian began the home in Missouri Heights as a safe place for Ute girls in trouble, but has opened her doors to all local young women.Chairman of each one of these tribes are taking the leadership, Otabachian said.There are eight homes for Native American boys, but hers is the first for girls in the state, Otabachian said.My interest is to get a house up here, so I can house up to 20 girls, she said.