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Colorado - Thu. 09/04/25 |
A Free Business Publication from Alpine Bank
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NO SNOW YET, BUT CHAIN LAW IS IN EFFECT IN COLORADO
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Monday was not only Labor Day, it was also the day that Colorado’s chain law and passenger vehicle traction law took effect for 2025-26. Snow is not unusual this time of year in the mountains. That’s why the chain law and passenger vehicle traction law are in effect each year from Sept. 1 to May 31. Colorado’s chain law requires that all vehicles be prepared with adequate tires and equipment when traveling during the winter. Under state law, all vehicles under 16,000 pounds traveling on any portion of I-70 between Morrison and Dotsero must carry tire chains for two or more tires, an approved alternate traction device or tires with a tread depth of at least three-sixteenths of an inch rated for either “all weather” or “mud and snow.” Drivers could receive a $50 fine with a $17 surcharge for failing to comply with this law.
State law also requires commercial vehicles and buses to carry chains or an approved alternative traction device regardless of current weather on I-70 west of Morrison, on Colorado Hwy. 9 between Frisco and Fairplay, on U.S. Route 40 west of Empire, and U.S. Route 50 west of Salida. The State Patrol will hold its first commercial vehicle chain-check operation on I-70 near Dotsero on Thursday. The chain checks are held even when the weather is not expected to be inclement to help ensure that commercial and private drivers are prepared at all times.
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HISTORIC DENARGO MARKET HAS GRAND OPENING OF MAKEOVER ON THURSDAY
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Until a major fire in 1971, Denargo Market, along the South Platte River northwest of downtown Denver now known as RiNo, was Denver’s largest market, with as many as 500 grower stands. Following the fire, the area had some industrial relocation but was largely vacant until a redevelopment program began in 2023. Now, Denargo Market is zoned for three million square feet of mixed-use development on 17 acres. Included in the plan are four acres of public space, with parks, dog parks, playgrounds, sports courts, a half-acre green lawn, all connected to downtown with pedestrian and bike paths.
In the heart of the open space, which is named Public Realm at Denargo, is Rhingo, a 30-foot-tall climbable steel rhino sculpture at the corner of 29th St. and Arkins Court. To celebrate the grand opening of the park space, there will be a community block party today, Sept. 4, from 4 to 8 p.m. There will be a market featuring local artists, food trucks and pop-up bars as well as live music with Rootbeer Richie & The Reveille, Velvet Daydream and Something Vinyl Club.
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SKI COUNTRY’S KIDS PASSPORT EXPANDS BY ADDING KINDERGARTEN THROUGH SECOND GRADE
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The Ski Country Passport program of Colorado Ski Country USA turns 30 this ski season and marks the anniversary by including kindergarten through second grade in its program offering days of low-cost skiing for children in grades three through six. The Ski Country Passport is honored at Arapahoe Basin, Aspen Highlands, Aspen Mountain, Buttermilk, Cooper, Copper Mountain, Echo Mountain, Eldora, Granby Ranch, Howelsen Hill, Loveland, Monarch, Powderhorn, Purgatory, Snowmass, Steamboat, Sunlight, Telluride and Winter Park. The Passport offers four days of skiing at these areas for less than a dollar a day. The cost is $67 for students, kindergarten through second grade; $72 per child, third through sixth grade. The passport program debuted 30 years ago as the Fifth Grade Passport. Sixth grade was added a decade ago. Third and fourth grades were added for the 2022-23 season.
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WAYMO BEGINS TESTING IN DENVER
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Waymo, the driverless taxi service, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet, is beginning an exploratory testing phase of its electric autonomous vehicle service in Denver this week. However, the company said the commuter service will not begin in Denver until next year. Waymo has local teams that oversee and manage the vehicles, which will be Waymo electric Jaguar I-PACE and Zeekr RT cars, the company said. The company did not disclose how large the Denver team will be once the company scales its local presence. Currently, Waymo is operating in parts of Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles with 24 hours a day, seven days a week service. It also is available on Uber in Austin and Atlanta.
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EARLY JULY LABOR REPORT: HIRING & LAYOFFS ARE IN STEADY PATTERN
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The Job Openings and Labor Turnover report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Wednesday showed hiring and layoffs were broadly steady in July, although the 7.18 million job openings in July marked only the second time since the end of 2020 that there were fewer than 7.2 million openings. There were 7.4 million in June. Hiring was broadly steady too, with the rate of new job offers holding at 3.3 percent. About 5.3 million Americans were hired in July, up slightly from the June level. The rate at which people quit jobs held steady from June at 2 percent.
The data overall paints a picture of a slowing labor market but not one that has stalled out. People out of work have faced difficult job searches, with more drawn-out stretches of unemployment and fewer open roles. But the economy has held together well largely because people with steady paychecks haven’t faced large-scale layoffs. A more up-to-date look at the job market is due Friday morning, when the BLS will publish the August jobs report.
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SOME EAGLE COUNTY VOTERS TO DECIDE ON A 2% INCREASE IN LODGING TAX
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The Eagle County commissioners Tuesday voted in favor of asking voters in unincorporated Eagle County (Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch, Edwards, EagleVail, El Jebel and Arrowhead, and the town of Gypsum) whether to increase the existing lodging tax by an additional 2 percent to fund childcare and public safety services. The county's finance staff told the commissioners that the county is projected to collect $2.25 million a year in revenue for each 1 percent increase in the lodging tax. The commissioners strongly considered posing the full 4 percent increase (6 percent total) to voters. But after receiving constituent feedback across several meetings, the county held nine meetings total on the measure, the commissioners opted for the 2 percent increase, to 4 percent total.
The county’s finance staff gave information on what other areas’ tax levels are:
- Aspen levies 21.3 percent in taxes on its visitors, including sales taxes, resort/district assessments and fees and lodging and short-term rental taxes.
- Vail, if its proposed short-term rental tax passes this year, will be at 16.8 percent.
- Bachelor Gulch will be at 19.4 percent if the 2 percent lodging tax increase passes.
- Beaver Creek will be at 15.2 percent.
- Arrowhead will be at 13.7 percent.
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WRNF & BLM UPPER COLORADO RIVER DISTRICT MOVE TO STAGE 1 FIRE RESTRICTIONS FRIDAY
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All lands managed by the White River National Forest and the Bureau of Land Management Upper Colorado River District will be under stage 1 fire restrictions beginning Friday, Sept. 5. Under stage 1 restrictions for the Bureau of Land Management and White River National Forest:
- Campfires are only allowed within designated fire grates in developed picnic areas and campgrounds (including the Forest Service Homestake Valley designated dispersed camping sites in Eagle County); this means a metal, permanently installed in-ground containment structure -- fire pans and rock campfire rings are not acceptable.
- No fires of any type, including charcoal outside of developed areas
- Fully enclosed metal stoves common in hunting tents are allowed on the White River National Forest provided the chimney is at least five feet in length and has a spark arrester with a quarter inch or less screen opening and the area is cleared of vegetation
- No smoking except within an enclosed vehicle or building, a developed recreation site or in a barren area free of vegetation
- No use of explosive materials, including explosive targets
- No welding or operation of an acetylene or other similar torch with open flame except from an area that has been cleared of vegetation
- No operation of any internal combustion engine without a spark arresting device properly installed and in working order
The restriction orders detailing the specific prohibitions are available at fs.usda.gov/r02/whiteriver/alerts and Upper Colorado River District Fire Restrictions.
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WORST-EVER WILDFIRE IN CANADA PROVIDES VALUABLE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES
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Wildfires caused record destruction in Canada in 2023, and by far the most ferocious firestorm was in Jasper National Park in Alberta. The Jasper fire forced the evacuation of 20,000 people, destroyed hundreds of properties, and devastated vast parts of one of Canada’s best-known and most majestic destinations. The Jasper fire was acknowledged as reaching energy levels that experts believe have never before been seen in Canada. The fire incinerated the soil, exposed dark bedrock and stripped the bark off trees.
The Jasper fire is now an incredible laboratory for researching wildfire science, and Canada is the world leader in wildfire research. Canada’s natural resources department, which houses the Canadian Forest Service and other research branches, promotes the country as a global leader in wildfire management and science. At least a dozen nations, including the U.S., have borrowed or adapted the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System, a scientific model to predict the likelihood of whether a wildfire will ignite, and how it will behave if it does.
The other reason that Jasper is such a critical laboratory is that Jasper National Park has had decades of deployment of fire-mitigation strategies. The devastating fire provided an extreme test case for what worked and what did not. Dr. Lori Daniels, a forest and conservation sciences professor at the University of British Columbia and leader of UBC’s tree ring lab, is leading the field research. Dr. Daniels said despite the fire's intensity, she was encouraged by early signs that past wildfire-mitigation efforts blunted the fire’s effects in some areas. Some pine trees still have their needles attached, and there are patches of green amid the charred landscape. “There’s strong evidence of success in those treated areas,” said Dr. Daniels.
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THE TRUE SIZE OF COUNTRIES, THE PROBLEM OF MAKING MAPS FROM A GLOBE
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We work with maps every day, maps hang on our walls, people look on Google Maps for directions. The standard for flat maps is the Mercator map, which was first created in the 16th century. However, like any map that flattens the spherical Earth onto a flat surface (paper or screen) there is some distortion. The dominant approach was to project the globe onto a geometric shape that could be unfolded flat, a technique called “projection.” Gerardus Mercator’s projection, in his renowned 1569 map, used a cylinder which was straightened out to provide straight lines.
However, the Mercator map expands the sizes of land masses farther from the equator. For example, Greenland often appears as big as Africa on a Mercator map, when in reality Africa is about 14 times larger. The African Union, a political and economic organization of 55 African countries, has endorsed the “Correct the Map” campaign, advocating for replacing the Mercator projection with the Equal Earth projection, a map that accurately represents the relative sizes of countries.
When scaled proportionately to true land area, Africa can fit the United States, China, India and most of Europe within the continent:
- Land area of Africa: 30.3 million square kilometers (a square kilometer is about .38 percent of a square mile)
These countries total 29.9 million square kilometers:
- USA: 9.8 km² million
- China: 9.6
- India: 3.3
- Saudi Arabia: 2.1
- Peru: 1.3
- France: 0.6
- Spain: 0.5
- Sweden: 0.5
- Japan: 0.4
- Finland: 0.3
- Norway: 0.3
- United Kingdom: 0.2
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AS EXPECTED, INTERNATIONAL VISITATION DOWN, NUMBERS FOR JUNE 2025
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Travel analysts predicted that there would be a drop in international visitors to the U.S. following an increase in visa and other restrictions on travelers who were residents of other countries. In June, the National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) reported:
- Total non-U.S. resident international visitor volume to the U.S. in June was 5,278,944
- That is down 6.2 percent from June 2024
- It is only 83.4 percent of the total international visitor volume in pre-pandemic June 2019
- The largest number of international visitor arrivals was from Mexico (1,375,762) and Canada (1,100,227)
- The visitor arrivals from Mexico were up 6 percent from June 2024; arrivals from Canada were down 23 percent from June 2024
- Top overseas arrivals were from: United Kingdom (237,677); India (166,527); Brazil (149,179); Colombia (116,544); and Japan (111,072)
- In terms of U.S. citizens traveling overseas, total U.S. citizen departures in June – 11,473,103, an increase of 2.5 percent over June 2024, and 9 percent higher than the total departures in pre-pandemic June 2019
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MARKET UPDATE - 09/03/2025 Close
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(Courtesy of Alpine Bank Wealth Management*)
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Canadian dollar (per U.S. dollar)
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Mexican peso (per U.S. dollar)
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30-year fixed mortgage rate (Freddie Mac 08/28/2025)
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*Not FDIC insured. May lose value. Not guaranteed by the bank.
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Alpine Bank is an independent, employee-owned organization with headquarters in Glenwood Springs and banking offices across Colorado's Western Slope, mountains and Front Range. Alpine Bank serves customers with retail, business, wealth management*, mortgage and electronic banking services. Learn more at alpinebank.com.
*Alpine Bank Wealth Management services are not FDIC insured, may lose value and are not guaranteed by the bank.
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