A-Basin is Open

My other favorite place to ski is now open :) I find the comment about "there will be no beginner skiing" to be quite funny. Is there ever true beginner skiing at A-Basin? The green runs there would be double blacks in the Midwest!!

From the A-Basin website...

Arapahoe Basin Announces Opening Day
Ski Season will begin 10/9/09
10/6/2009

Arapahoe Basin ski area officials announce that its opening day for their 2009-2010 ski season will be Friday, October 9, 2009, the ski area’s earliest opening in history.

The Exhibition chairlift will open to the public at 9:00 a.m. Friday. Skiers and riders can look forward to an 18-inch base on the intermediate High Noon run and six features in the High Divide Terrain Park. There will be no beginner skiing.

A-Basin congratulates Loveland Ski Area for being the first ski area to open in North America when it opens tomorrow. It’s nice to see our neighbor take the crown this year, but we will be back in the race for the 2010-2011 ski season.

Opening Day at Loveland

So much for "global warming", huh?

From the Loveland website...Loveland Ski Area will be the first ski area in North America to open for the 2009-2010 ski season when Chair 1 starts turning at 9:00am on Wednesday, October 7th. "We took advantage of the cold temperatures and got an early start making snow this year. Those extra days paid off and we are opening a week earlier than last season," said Eric Johnstone, Snowmaking and Trail Maintenance Manager. "Now we can move some equipment to other trails and try to open more terrain as quickly as possible."

Land Map

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Government Red Tape Part 3

We received the following response from Costilla County today (note that the poor spelling is theirs, not mine!):

"Your best bet is to contact the Company you purchased this property from and have them straighten it out. I do not have the proper information on any thin on this property."

Huh? If you guys don't know what is going on, how would anyone else? Even if someone took it upon themselves to assign a bogus address at some point, aren't you the gatekeeper? I would think that someone in the County office would have had to been involved in order for the address to wind up on the public record! Maybe they think that we're stupid. I am done beating my head on the wall. If they aren't worried about it, then I won't worry about it.

Citizen or Customer?

Chicago's Mayor Daley was in the hot seat this week regarding comments he had made to justify privatizing some city services. He had said,

"They’re not customer-related. They’re gonna leave at 5 o’clock. They’re gonna leave at 4:30 or 4. I’m sorry. We’re on a time clock. They walk out. But in the private sector, when you have a customer, you’re gonna stay there making sure they're happy and satisfied. We can't compete with the private sector. The private sector has a complete idea of who your customers are. Government doesn’t have customers. They only have citizens."

It made me think about the poor response that I have received from Costilla County regarding the phantom address I wrote about in my previous posts. I guess that we are even lower on the food chain than a citizen, because although we own property there, we live out of state. Never mind that I just wrote out a check for property taxes.

By the way, we still have not received a response to our January 15th e-mail. The clock is ticking away at 23 days. I sent a follow-up today. Let's see how long it takes to get a response this time!

Government Red Tape Part 2

The Costilla County saga continues. On January 13, 2009, I sent the same message to the Planning & Zoning office that I had sent to the Assessor.

On January 15, 2009, we received this response:

"According to our plat map this property is located on {deleted} Lane. {deleted} Road does not even exist anywhere on the plat map Unit {deleted}. I have located {deleted} Place on unit {deleted} and the closest matching that address is lot {deleted} that shows vacant land. Question I would have is who assigned your address in {deleted} because they do not match what they should be as we are assigning them. We need allds the information we can get to get this mess straightened out. Many people in {deleted} are giving themselves their own address without checking with us."

We promptly responded on January 15, 2009, with the following:

"I'll tell you everything that I know. We definitely didn't request / assign an address. There is nothing there but vacant land, and we have no plans to build anything there in the immediate future.

We purchased the property in {deleted date} from {deleted entity}. I have all of the tax records since we purchased it, and I do see now that the {deleted year} tax notice (dated {deleted date}...and still listing {deleted entity} as the owner) has the {deleted address} listed as the property location.

We would greatly appreciate any help with straightening this out!"

The question that I have is if someone randomly assigned the address themselves, how in the world did it end up on the official county records if the county had nothing to do with it? Inquiring minds want to know!

Government Red Tape Part 1

Sent December 30, 2008 to the Costilla County Assessor's Office:

"We have a question regarding a piece of property that we own. The parcel # is {deleted}.

The legal description is {deleted}. The property location is showing up as {deleted} (on the q-Public website). However, based upon the maps that we have (and our previous visits to the property), we thought that it is actually on {deleted}.

Just wondering, since I received a call from a telemarketer today asking about my property on {deleted}. I told them we didn't have any there, and started doing some checking and found this.

Please advise. Thank you."

Response received January 13, 2009:

"I'm not sure about your property location, you might want to contact the Planning and Zoning office. They're actually the ones that assign the physical addresses. Perhaps they can look into it, and correct it if necessary. I can't change anything in my system until they give me the correct address if the correct address is not already on it. Their number is {deleted}."

How is that for customer service? First of all, it took two weeks for a response! A better answer would have been, "I'm not sure, but let me walk across the hall and have somebody look into this for you." We have been to the Costilla County offices. They are about the size of a shoebox, so it's not like it would have been that difficult!

Wish us luck with this one!