News highlights: 1999

By JoAn Bjarko
North Forty News

Wellington Town Administrator Kevin Burke announced his resignation effective April 1 after three years on the job. Mayor Don Irwin credited Burke with providing the town with a foundation for growth and the means to guide growth.

CLP Junior High celebrated the 50th birthday of its building. The school building was dedicated in 1949 and became a junior high in 1964.

County commissioners selected 13 people from 62 applicants to serve on a short-term task force to review the county's animal regulations. Proposed changes to the regulations had elicited many volleys of protest from area residents during the county's hearings on a revised land use code the previous year.

Three members of the Rural Land Use Center Board resigned with complaints that the program had strayed from its original intent. All stated disapproval of changes county commissioners intended to make to the rural land use code. County commissioners later adopted some, but not all, of the changes.

Late April storms washed out stream banks and rural roads in northern Larimer County, with the worst damage sustained in Rist and Redstone canyons. Bridge director Dale Miller put the damage estimate at $200,000.

Wellington hired Dave Evertsen, a graduate student at the University of Kansas, as its new town administrator. He started work May 10.

The Colorado Wildlife Commission dropped the word "park" from the name of the Cherokee State Wildlife Area.

In what a geologist described as a natural canyon-forming process, a rockslide in Poudre Canyon came tumbling down on June 18, closing the road during prime tourist season. Many travelers had to use a detour over Rist Canyon and Stove Prairie roads.

Lory State Park south of Bellvue opened a new visitor center in June. The 2,000-square-foot building cost $500,000. Sixty percent of the building fund came from state lottery money.

Citizens for Responsible Growth in Wellington circulated petitions calling for a referendum on an annexation east of I-25 and a measure to limit the amount of residential growth to 5 percent in any given year.

Wellington area residents endured months of telephone problems while US West installed new fiber-optic cable between switching offices to ease congestion on phone lines. One Buckeye resident complained that it took 35 tries to get through to a number.

County commissioners placed a 20-year, 0.15 percent sales tax on the November ballot to fund construction of a new county fairgrounds and events center.

Larimer County and its communities spent the year preparing for Y2K - when the world rolled into the year 2000 with the potential of encountering numerous computer glitches. Massive amounts of community information told people how to prepare for emergencies such as loss of power and water.

The nuns at the Abbey of St. Walburga moved out of small modular buildings at their Virginia Dale home into permanent living quarters. The nuns had moved to the area from Boulder in August 1997.

Members of Morning Star Community Church began worshipping at their newly reconstructed church building in October.

Election results: Wellington voters supported the town's annexation of property east of I-25. Fort Collins voters directed their city government to abandon the idea of using Vine Drive as a truck bypass and to look for alternatives outside the city. County voters approved a sales tax for construction of new fairgrounds facilities and granted a 15-year sales tax extension to purchase open space.

On a 2-1 vote in late November, county commissioners adopted a new land use code--a year after the first draft went through public hearings. The new code went into effect Jan. 1.