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The trails on Boston Hills are washed out, a related issue. At the end of October 2017 the Town of Silver City (ToSC) disbanded its Office of Sustainability (OoS) with the resignation of its last employee, Director Denise Smith who excepted a job with Stream Dynamics. For a new concept in a government department it worked very well but times have changed with our new era of austerity. One of the job of the OoS was to interface with the trails community and for a brief time the Town considered replacing the OoS with a Trails Coordinator but, according to Assistant Town Manager James Marshall, after consultation with the local trails activists it was decided to hire a "Trails Maintenance Worker". Though the application time ended November 9 the job offer is still on the Town's website See it HERE and no word yet on wether anybody has applied or been hired .

In the seven years or more that I have been following and writing about the OoS they have brought in over $2.2 Million in grants that started with the formation of the office which, in conjunction with Grant County (Joint Office of Sustainability) and their original grant weatherized low income housing and upgraded lights and water saving devices as well as lighting in many town and county offices after which the original grands ran out and the county dropped out while the town continued for another 6 years.

Over the years the OoS has acquired the money that built the Solar Carport at the visitors center which supplies a good portion of its electricity, facilitated a large solar array at the sewer treatment plant which supplies about 80% of its electricity, acquired a grant to supply the recycling center with a compactor/bailer, put recycle bins in the parks during events, taught town crews about water diversion/catchment and other resiliency issues etc etc and the list goes on.

Some of us will miss this innovative office but the Asst Town Manager assures me that the town departments have been taught well and will continue the direction, we'll see and now the community will need to hold the town to that. A couple of years ago the Town was talking a lot about putting a solar array at the Gabby Hayes well and running a shorter, more efficient waterline to the gravity tanks which could assure us water in the event of power failures of a long term nature as well as saving lots of money, but that talk has mysteriously gone quiet.

Very sad. there appears to be a lot of grant money ripe for picking and we have a great resource of intelligent people who know how to get it.

It should be noted that the Bridge Community and three other non-profits have moved to this space.
So -- it's not vacant, and being put to good community-minded use.

Hmmm. Not so sustainable, itself. Sad.

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Create a great day! Gale

And yet the Town has $100,000 to supplement the operations of the golf course and tens of thousands to spend on repairs of the golf course. I guess this shows the priorities of the local politicos.

Was there a non-public (secret) agreement between the Town and the University that if the University took the political liability of the golf course off the Town's hands the Town would make payments to help covers the losses?