Paul Schwartz, a Brookeville resident, has entered the race for County Council District 4.
Schwartz, a Democrat, was a columnist for the Sentinel newspapers and currently serves as a lobbyist in Annapolis, focusing on representing current and retired federal employees.
Schwartz is the third person to enter the race. Maricé Morales, a former state delegate, announced in early June that she was running for the seat, but has not formally filed to run.
Natali Fani-Gonzalez, the vice chair of the Montgomery County Planning Board, has filed to enter the race. District 4 includes Wheaton, Aspen Hill and Olney, among other areas.
Council Member Nancy Navarro, who has held the seat since 2009, can’t run for re-election because of term limits.
Scott Avett in conversation with Aspen gallerist Bob Chase at the Sundeck on Tuesday morning as part of a program launching his solo art exhibition “Power Outage” at Chase’s Hexton Gallery. (Andrew Travers/The Aspen Times)
Two days after headlining Red Rocks Ampitheatre with the Avett Brothers and amid the fury of the band’s post-vaccine return to playing rock concerts for crowds of thousands, Scott Avett took the Silver Queen Gondola to the top of Aspen Mountain for a decidedly more intimate public event Tuesday morning.
The singer and guitarist came here to talk about his work as a painter and artist, which he’s mostly kept private over the past 20 years. On Tuesday evening, Avett unveiled his solo exhibition “Power Outage” at Hexton Gallery in downtown Aspen. Longtime local gallerist Bob Chase, who met Avett through painter Eric Fischl, has been working with him in recent years and doing studio visits at his farmhouse studio in rural North Carolina.
You know how you look at teenagers sometimes and you think, “Surely, I didn’t behave like that when I was 16?” I feel the same way about people I see in Aspen doing things that make me say, “Surely, I don’t behave like that when I’m visiting (insert anywhere in the world).”
The Fourth of July holiday is, in my opinion, the best of what Aspen has to offer in the way of holidays. It’s community. It’s summer. It’s children running through fountains and dogs romping in Wagner Park. It’s Red Fox fro yo and patio cocktails. It’s toned down and amped all the way up. It’s hometown with a tequila chaser.
Visitors enjoy the gondola plaza area at the base of Aspen Mountain on Friday, July 9, 2021. A recent survey and study of mountain town residents and visitors examines the impact of the influx of people to the Colorado mountain towns and what it could mean for locals in the coming years. (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times)
Pitkin County has lots of bragging rights when it comes to its expensive housing market, like that flashy $72.5 million home sale on Red Mountain last month, or the 650-acre Snowmass Falls Ranch that recently hit the market for $50 million.
But for all of the furious action over the Aspen-area’s jaw-dropping home sales, there have been multiple reactions. That includes making it even more difficult to rent or own housing in Pitkin County.
Legends & Legacies
The Highland Tunnel entrance on Castle Creek in the 1960s Aspen’s longest tunnel. Willoughby collection
Aspen’s longest tunnels, and those with longevity, had several things in common. Most of their length was driven after 1900, all of them were designed to tap ore at the lowest possible tunnel level that could exit to the outside and they drained water from workings above.
The longest tunnel on the face of Aspen Mountain was the Durant. It exited near the Aspen Alps not far from the eastern edge of Little Nell. It was best known, until a cave-in blocked it almost at its entrance, as the tunnel that took you to the underground waterfall, a favorite of Aspen teenagers for decades.