{"id":24552,"date":"2019-05-30T18:24:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T00:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/breckenridge-officials-host-state-of-the-town-address\/"},"modified":"2019-05-30T18:24:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T00:24:00","slug":"breckenridge-officials-host-state-of-the-town-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/breckenridge-officials-host-state-of-the-town-address\/","title":{"rendered":"Breckenridge officials host State of the Town address"},"content":{"rendered":"
Breckenridge Mayor Eric Mamula speaks during the State of the Town address Wednesday night at town hall as Councilwoman Erin Gigliello looks on.<\/strong>
Eli Pace \/ epace@summitdaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Breckenridge Town Council went round-robin for the annual State of the Town address on Wednesday, as its seven members covered some of the most important initiatives and projects shaping the town today.<\/p>\n

After the council concluded the presentations, the audience posed questions of the elected leaders, prodding them for info on everything from the town\u2019s efforts to build a new high-speed fiber network in Breckenridge and the water treatment plant to the trailside troll and the town\u2019s long-awaited parking garage.<\/p>\n

The fiber<\/p>\n

Frustrated with their internet service and residents reportedly not getting the speeds they\u2019re paying for, council said the town\u2019s high-speed fiber network isn\u2019t about putting any current providers, like Comcast and CenturyLink, out of business.<\/p>\n

The town\u2019s network, coined Fiber9600<\/a>, is under construction, and the evidence is apparent. However, even though the town is partnering with ALLO Communications to be the network\u2019s exclusive provider initially, though, council said the project should only promote competition.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile residents wanted to know if ALLO will have a local presence with support staff in Breckenridge and when the first customers might start signing up for service. To answer their questions, council said ALLO will have a local storefront and goal hope is the first homes and businesses could come online as early as this fall.<\/p>\n

The troll<\/p>\n

Throughout the State of the Town, council detailed multiple projects worth tens of millions of dollars over the coming years, but they acknowledged that nothing in Breckenridge garnered more pubic attention over the last year than the town\u2019s trailside troll named, Isak Heartstone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After the hugely popular sculpture made of reclaimed wood drew giant crowds and was taken down in November with the town citing safety concerns, the larger-than-life troll has been reborn by the Stephen C. West Ice Arena.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost importantly for you to know, he\u2019s back,\u201d said Councilwoman Wendy Wolfe as she again encouraged people to be respectful of the town and \u201cleave no trace\u201d when they go to visit the troll.<\/p>\n

The area remains off-limits to the public while the town constructs a new trail specific to the sculpture, which is expected to be ready for public viewing in June.<\/p>\n

The arts<\/p>\n

Breckenridge Creative Arts, or BreckCreate, has existed since 2014 as the agency that manages and programs the town\u2019s portfolio of art-related venues, but it\u2019s in the process of being overhauled<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over the years, council said, BreckCreate has created a \u201ctremendous amount of success,\u201d but with the organization\u2019s president and CEO moving on and BreckCreate coming of age, council thinks this is a good time to revisit the startup organization to see if the goals still work. After bringing in an outside consultant to look at BreckCreate and resident arts organizations, council is pushing for greater collaboration.<\/p>\n

The water<\/p>\n

Breckenridge has \u201can unbelievable portfolio of water\u201d Mayor Eric Mamula said as he called the town\u2019s water resources \u201cthe envy\u201d of many municipalities much larger than Breckenridge.<\/p>\n

But Breckenridge has a couple major projects on the water front, including a new $42 million water treatment plant<\/a> that\u2019s under construction now and subsequent repairs to an aging dam that are to follow.<\/p>\n

Council said the new plant is halfway done, and they\u2019ve spent half of the budget so the project is tracking as planned. They anticipate the plant will be complete by summer 2020 with the capacity to handle 3 million gallons per day.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s good news because, in addition to giving the town a second option for water, the new plant will allow Breckenridge to turn off the town\u2019s only existing source by the Goose Pasture Tarn, which is a necessary step to repair the earthen dam<\/a> that holding back the tarn.<\/p>\n

Parking garage<\/p>\n

The mayor remembers last year\u2019s State of the Town, when much of the night\u2019s focus went to the town\u2019s relationship with Vail Resorts and Breckenridge\u2019s efforts to build a new parking garage.<\/p>\n

What a difference a year makes. The town recently finalized a lease<\/a> with the company that owns Breckenridge Ski Resort and, as Mamula talked about the project, he said that the town is about to make good on a promise made during negotiations over the town\u2019s lift-ticket tax from a previous council to increase parking in the downtown core.<\/p>\n

Now, the town and Vail Resorts are in the planning process to build the parking garage on a piece of resort-owned property, and Mamula called the project \u201csuper exciting.\u201d He added that Breckenridge and officials from the ski resort are working together much better these day, and that\u2019s been nice.<\/p>\n

Short-term rentals<\/p>\n

The \u201cSTR\u201d acronym has become part of the lexicon in Breckenridge. Seeing the impacts of the rentals on many of their neighbors, town leaders put new regulations<\/a> on the short-term rental units last August.<\/p>\n

The driving forces behind the new measures were complaints regarding issues like trash, noise and parking, but as the town sees other impacts of the units continuing to pile up, council expressed a willingness to start looking at more stringent regulations.<\/p>\n

Other discussion topics covered the town\u2019s sustainability efforts<\/a>, its new destination management plan<\/a>, renovations at the ice rink<\/a>, a push to cut down unkempt dog poop<\/a> and growth of the town\u2019s open space program.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Breckenridge Mayor Eric Mamula speaks during the State of the Town address Wednesday night at town hall as Councilwoman Erin Gigliello looks on.Eli Pace \/ epace@summitdaily.com Breckenridge Town Council went round-robin for the annual State of the Town address on Wednesday, as its seven members covered some of the most important initiatives and projects shaping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 08:56:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}