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Volume 7, Number 11 | April 23, 2015
Library fireplace fuels heated debate Hypocritical? By John Colson Sopris Sun Correspondent
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Emily Henley plays the role of Helena in SoL Theatre Company’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Young actors from all over the Roaring Fork Valley took on the Shakespeare play about mistaken identity and mischief in the woods. For more photos, please turn to page 13 and The Sopris Sun website at soprissun.com. Photo by Jane Bachrach
fficials with the Garfield County Libraries District want to install a gas fireplace in the relatively new Carbondale Branch Library, but some people in Carbondale think a gas fireplace is a bad idea that sends the wrong message about the town’s energy priorities. The issue gained public prominence on April 14, during a discussion at the Carbondale Board of Trustees meeting between the trustees and library board member Bill Lamont, about an issue not related to the fireplace. During the discussion, Trustee Pam Zentmyer brought up the fireplace project, which is scheduled for review at the May 7 meeting of the library district’s board of directors in Parachute. Library district meetings rotate through the six towns in Garfield County, and the next Carbondale meeting is in August. Zentmyer, at the Carbondale trustees’ meeting, recalled that there was “some concern in the community about the fireplace” a few years ago, when the library was being planned to replace the older, smaller Gordon Cooper Library facility. The concerns had to do with Carbondale’s active opposition to natural-gas drilling in the Thompson Divide, a mountainous and relatively undeveloped area southwest of Carbondale, and the feelings on the part of some that having a decorative, natural-gas fireplace in a public building might be seen as hypocritical. “I feel a little alarmed,” Zentmyer said of the gas fireplace project going forward “without public input from the people in this community.” Lamont, who is Carbondale’s representative on the library board, acknowledged that the fireplace had been discussed in the planning phase for the new library, and that there had been resistance to the idea. “It was never brought to a head because we took it off the table,” he said, noting that there were other debates with town residents during the library planning process, such as the removal of several old trees for safety reasons and to make way for better views of Mt. Sopris from the facility, and the initial lack of solar panels on the roof to generate some of the power needed to run the new library facility. LIBRARY FIREPLACE page 9
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