At the start of 2023 I changed beats at the Steamboat Pilot & Today to cover the city after more than two years of primarily covering Routt County. Since I have enjoyed learning more about and getting to know city officials and staff.
I have also written a few stories that I think have had an impact in the community, and in Centennial Hall where City Council meets. Here are five stories I have written in the last four months that you should check out.
This story started when we got word that former Steamboat Springs Police Chief Sherry Burlingame resigned. I submitted a public records request to the city using the Colorado Open Records Act, which turned up the documents that is largely the sourcing for this story.
That records request returned documents that showed City Manager Gary Suiter intended to fire the chief but gave her the option to resign first. I got these documents late on a Friday afternoon and immediately canceled my weekend plans allowing me to have a draft of the story the next day.
Being able to get such documents (which you can do too, as they are public and I have no more of a right to them than you do) is important to be able to hold our leaders to account. Shout out to Pilot Assistant Editor Shelby Reardon who was instrumental in making this story happen so quickly. Read the story here.
The idea for this story came after I waited through multiple executive sessions after which Council did not have much public discussion about the Brown Ranch. While previous annexation agreements have been struck in public sessions, things have been happening differently with the Brown Ranch.
Executive sessions are allowable and in many cases a valuable tool for elected leaders. They are also the only time elected leaders are allowed to discuss topics without the people that voted for them being able to watch.
Since the story, Council is discussing the Brown Ranch in public in more detail. Read the story here.
This story stemmed from a discussion about the new city hall building, which will remove 41 parking spaces from downtown. It got lots of response to the story, with several people emailing me to share their ideas for how the perceived parking issues could be addressed. (Email your comments on Bugle stories to me at dylan@yampavalleybugle.com.)
Parking is often a big consideration in developments and comes up in pretty much every Planning Commission meeting. Council has indicated that they want to explore parking more throughout the year, so more news to come on this. In the meantime, read the story here.
On one of the first days I was in Steamboat my mom and I walked to check out the Steamboat Spring and learned about how it once was a geyser. But that stopped when the railroad was brought through and now it is simply a mineral spring — which is still pretty cool.
This was a fun story to do because it allowed me to learn about the mineral springs that give Steamboat its name. I delved into how they work and stared at a graphic that is included on the sign near the Steamboat Spring for way too long.
These kinds of stories are pretty fun to do and are part of what makes local news at this level so rewarding for me. Read the story here.
The Poma lift at Howelsen Hill is one of the steepest that exists, meaning it isn’t embarrassing if you fall of it. It is also crucial to how Howelsen Hill works, allowing skiers and riders to get off at various points of the trip up.
I fell off the poma the first time I tried. The second time I made it, and then fell off the third time. Now it is the main lift I use when I ski at Howelsen, which I got to do quite a bit this season. The lift is pretty old, but the city has also worked hard to keep it lifting long into the future.
This was a fun story to write and it became even more fun when the lifties at the oldest continuously operating ski area in North America made jokes about how puzzling it is for them to operate. Check out the story here and you’ll understand the joke.