[ By Katherine Nettles ]
After several weeks of deliberation, one Gunnison County rancher has replaced another on the Colorado River District board of directors. County commissioners appointed Kathleen Curry on Tuesday, January 12 to replace former member Bill Trampe. Curry has served as chair of the Gunnison Basin Roundtable for the past three years, works as a water lobbyist and is also a former state legislator, having represented Gunnison County in House District 61 from 2005 to 2011.
Curry was one of three initial applicants for the appointment that came when Trampe, a prominent rancher in the Gunnison Valley, announced he would retire from the board at the end of 2020. “We’ve been faithfully served by Bill Trampe for the past 20 years,” said commissioner chairperson Jonathan Houck.
How a group of nonresident homeowners tried to influence a rural Colorado election. Image credit: Luna Anna Archey/High Country News Jan. 1, 2021 From the print edition
April 2020, and the novel coronavirus was spreading through the United States. As businesses closed and hospitals filled, Jim Moran found himself sheltering in place in Colorado, at his second home. His mansion has dark wood siding and a jutting patio, and it perches on a bluff above Crested Butte, a small snow globe of a town whose brightly painted cottages huddle at the base of mountains at the north end of the Gunnison Valley, a long thin basin high in the Rockies. Moran is from Dallas, Texas, where he managed private equity firms. From his back door, he can ski directly onto Crested Butte Mountain Resort, one of Colorado’s iconic ski areas. Moran speaks quickly and passionately and has swept-back silver hair. Housing prices in rural towns have surged since the pandemic as well